XIIII MAKE NEW FRIENDS
MY three aunts and my grandmother’s stepmother, whom I afterwards called great-grandmother, appeared before me, standing together on the steps, as soon as the front door was opened. For a moment I stood aghast, for my grandmother’s three sisters, unlike her, who always wore such handsome gowns, were dressed as peasants, just like their maid Marguerite, in cotton jackets, cotton skirts gathered full around the hips, cotton kerchiefs, large grey linen-aprons with pockets, and they wore caps on their heads!
The youngest of them, aunt Anastasie, cried out, “Good-evening, niece! and welcome here!” in a clear, gay voice, and with the pretty accent of Soissons, the native place of her mother, who had returned thither with her husband, and from whom she had inherited it, doubtless. Marguerite took me off the donkey. My two other aunts and my “great-grandmother” had such high-bred manners that I concluded they must have disguised themselves to amuse me.
I went indoors, while Roussot was led off to thestable, braying loudly, I accompanying his song, which sent my aunts into fits of laughter.
The ice was broken; I had my supper, I chattered, and then fell asleep. It was about eleven o’clock at night.
At noon the next day I was still sleeping, and aunt Anastasie became frightened, and awakened me. They had been waiting an hour for breakfast.
Marguerite appeared, a parcel of clothes in her arms, and said to me:
“Now, Mam’zelle Juliette, you must dress as a peasant. We will put all your fine clothes away in a cupboard, and then you can enjoy yourself without fear of spoiling anything.”
So I tried on jackets and skirts belonging to aunt Anastasie, who was the most coquettish of the three! And such coquettishness! Coarse print gowns, faded, and washed out; and the old-fashioned patterns of them all, and the way they were cut! I was at last equipped in a horrible fashion. The skirt, being too long, was pulled over the waist-band, and bulged out all around my waist; the apron, rolled up in the same way, came nearly up to my chin. I pulled the sleeves up above my elbows. My cap I pushed back as they wear them in Bordeaux, so that it just rested on my long, braided hair.
It was too funny! I nearly fell over from a chair on which I had climbed to look at myself in a mirror. I screamed with laughter, for it is impossible to describe how absurdly I looked thus transformed. Grandmother would have cried out in holy horror—she who was scandalised if my dress was a little soiled, or my hair “à la quatre-six-deux,” as she would say.
I entered the dining-room with complete success. I did not know where to place my elbows, because the rolls of my skirt quite covered my hips. I was forced to raise my shoulders, and great-grandmother, after much laughter, declared that, when breakfast was over, the hem of the skirt must be cut off and the skirt made shorter, and all the rolls taken away, as they deformed my shoulders, and might make me a hunchback.
“I will look droll as much as you like, dear, adorably rustic aunts, but not hunchback,” said I.
I was less of a child than these five women, including Marguerite, who ate at the same table with us. They were interested in little nothings; my manner of talking, my funny ways, my assurance and important air were taken in earnest whenever any “great questions” were discussed. My aunts were delighted to feel their minds in constant movement under my impulsion.
Monsieur de Talleyrand had found his equal, and I thought how in my turn I could chaff grandfather.
After breakfast I went out into the garden with aunt Constance, and no sooner was I on the steps than I saw Roussot coming along for his daily piece of bread, his “tit-bit,” as we used to say. As soon as he saw me he began to bray, and I answered. Outside the gate we heard the village children laughing at Roussot’s extraordinary music, answered by another song.
I went to visit the donkey-stable, Roussot following. He seemed quite at home in it, walking about and showing us around. Then I went to the poultry-yard, and saw the cow and her little calf, the rabbits, the ducks, the fruit-storehouse, the cellar, and the large garden. It was so large that it took me a long while to look, one by one, at all the fruit-trees, laden with fruit, and to discover at the end a nice little covered wash-house, in which I promised myself I would often dabble.
I came back after a while, and little aunt Anastasie—she alone in my mind deserved this endearing epithet—showed me the lovely flowers she had made during the winter to trim the altar, which was always raised in the garden, on Corpus ChristiDay, and was admired by the whole country-side. The large gate was opened wide only on that day.
Aunt Sophie showed me her room, which she always cleaned herself, and into which not one of the household, still less an outsider, not even Marguerite, was ever admitted.
To see me in aunt Sophie’s room seemed an extraordinary and astonishing event, and the whole bee-hive was in commotion. Marguerite told me afterwards of the sensation created by my hour’s stay in aunt Sophie’s room.
Her room was much more elegantly furnished than our rooms at Chauny, only the walls were simply whitewashed. Opposite each other stood two old chests of drawers with fine, highly polished brass ornaments; on the other side of the room stood a very handsome bed of carved wood, without curtains, but covered with a pale-green coverlet embroidered in fine wools, the design of which formed large bouquets of shaded roses, surrounded with dark-green foliage, which pleased me so much that when I left she made me a present of it.
The two large windows were draped with small pink and green muslin curtains, trimmed with guipure, and sliding on rods. There were books on shelves and on the chests of drawers, and on a very handsome consol table were several vases filledwith field-flowers, so artistically arranged that I at once said to aunt Sophie:
“You will teach me, won’t you, how to make these lovely bouquets of field-flowers?”
A large tree in the garden outside threw a cool shade in the room; near one window stood a table, on which were scattered, in graceful disorder, books, papers, a bowl of flowers; and everything, in fact, that was needful to study, to read, and to write in quiet, and amid pretty surroundings.
I thought of grandfather’s speech:
“Your aunt Sophie will teach you Latin, which you can afterwards translate to Marguerite, to the donkey,” etc.
“Is it true, auntie, that you read Latin books?” I asked.
“Oh! yes.”
“Does it amuse you?”
“Very much.”
“I would like to see one.”
She showed me a pretty little old book with gilt edges, which enchanted me, and told me that it was Virgil’s “Bucolics.” She read me a passage and translated it, and I said to her:
“Why, it is just like the stories of old Homer, which papa tells so well. In the seventh canto of the Odyssey, old Homer, in speaking of the four-acregarden of Alcynous, enumerates the fine trees which yield such beautiful fruit, and which Ulysses so admires. Your Virgil is like my Homer, but he is not so old.”
Aunt Sophie kissed me.
“Why! do you know Homer? Do you love him, and like to talk of him?”
“Certainly, I do, aunt Sophie; that and the history of our France are my favourite studies. Whenever papa comes to Chauny he recites to me a new canto of the ‘Iliad,’ or the ‘Odyssey.’ I make him begin over again those I like the best. You can question me, aunt Sophie; I know the names of all the gods and the heroes of Greece. Ancient Greece and ancient Gaul are my two passions. But I shall not like your Latin. I hate the Romans, whose greatest man was Cæsar; he put out the eyes of our Vercingetorix; the Romans pillaged Greece and then——”
“We shall get on very well, Juliette,” said aunt Sophie, “and I will teach you to love Virgil, who is the most Greek of the Latin poets. I will teach you, as he has taught me, to love Nature, and to find pleasure in a country life. I will repeat to you the cantos of the ‘Æneïd,’ as your father has told you those of Homer.”
“But, aunt Sophie, I am not so ignorant as yousuppose. Papa has taught me to know and to love Nature. I will love it with you, but not with your Latins. I cannot bear them.”
During the next few days the chief thought of my great-grandmother, of aunt Constance, and aunt Anastasie, was to know what aunt Sophie had said to me, and what her room was like. Marguerite even questioned me.
On leaving her room, aunt Sophie had followed me into the dining-room; then, having taken her mother into the drawing-room, which was up a few steps, and seated her near the large window, out of which she could see the field and her daughters at their work, she gave her a trumpet to call us in case of need, and then said to us all:
“To work!”
A skirt, shortened by aunt Constance, was put on me, and each of us, with a sickle in our hands, proceeded to cut fresh grass and clover for the cow and for Roussot.
My aunts showed me how to use my sickle, and I was really not too awkward. Marguerite made small heaps of the grass we cut, and carried them to the stable in a little low-wheeled cart, which she drew herself.
They made me wear my cap more forward, and I overheard my aunts, who were already dear tome, discussing a book which they were in turn reading aloud in the evenings. It seemed to number many volumes, for they had been reading it for the last eight months, and still it was not yet finished. I asked aunt Constance the name of the book, and she told me that it was “The History of the Italian Republics,” by Sismondi.
My aunts spoke so clearly of things, in such simple language, their ideas, clearly and precisely expressed, were so easily comprehensible to me that I became much interested in their conversations.
I can see them now, on their knees, cutting clover, and judging of facts, of actions, of ideas of men in a way that kept my curiosity on the alert. The conversation was about Savonarola, a sonorous name that at once struck my memory, and of his mad attempts to transform society. Many of Savonarola’s ideas resembled my father’s, but I did not dare to say so, nor to uphold any principles contrary to those which my aunts seemed to defend. I might, perhaps, do so at some later time. I could already have said my say in this conversation had I wished, and I was inwardly grateful to my father for having opened my mind to the comprehension of politics.
So, while cutting away at my clover, I thought what true ladies, clever and cultivated, were myaunts under their peasant garb. They looked as if they wore a disguise, but the expression of their faces, their way of speaking, and all their gestures, were distinguished and elegant.
“We are boring this child; she is cutting the clover as hard as she can so as not to fall asleep,” said Anastasie.
“You are mistaken, auntie,” I answered, “I am listening. Papa wants to make a Republican of me, grandmother is determined that I shall be a Royalist, and grandfather tries all the time to make me love his Emperor. So I am delighted to hear about the Italian Republics. I learn things I never knew before, and I love to be instructed.”
Aunt Constance was the only one who would not use the “thee” and “thou” to me. She was very witty and quizzical, her eyes and lips expressed great fun, and she pretended in a laughing way to have an exaggerated respect for my very youthful self.
“You are a young lady like few others, I must confess,” said aunt Constance, suddenly laying her sickle down by her side.
Marguerite came past them and said that sufficient clover was cut. My aunts and I went to the foot of a tree, and when we were all seated sideby side in the shade, I answered aunt Constance in the same tone she had taken:
“I am, indeed, a young lady like few others, and this is not the end of my being so. I promise you, auntie, that I do not mean to stop half-way.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked aunt Sophie.
“You can easily understand,” I answered, in a serious, grave, mysterious tone—for I felt that I must initiate my dear great-aunts in my secret thoughts, that they were worthy of my confidence, and that I could repeat to them what my grandmother was always saying to me—“you can easily understand that I am not going to live all my life at Chauny, that I shall go to Paris and become a woman unlike everyone else.”
“Are you going to be a celebrity, dear?” asked aunt Sophie.
“How long a time do you propose to take before you render your family illustrious?” asked aunt Constance.
“Forty years,” I replied.
Aunt Constance and aunt Anastasie burst out laughing at my answer.
Marguerite, leaning on her little cart, was listening, open-mouthed. “It is just possible that it may be,” she said.
“Well, Juliette, I promise you I will live to see it,” said aunt Sophie, solemnly and seriously.[B]