The two snakes—M. de Valence and Madame de Montesson—Who little Hermine was—Garnier the wheelwright and Madame de Valence—Madame Lafarge—Fantastic apparition of Madame de Genlis.
I had a great fright one day in that beautiful garden. At one corner stood a kind of ruined and roofless tower; in August, the sun's rays concentrated inside this tower and made it as hot as a furnace. It was a curious sight then to watch the flies buzzing there, and the butterflies dancing, the beautiful grey and green lizards gliding along its walls. One day when I was playing near the tower, I heard a sharp hissing noise, and, on going to look what it was, I saw through the opening which had once been a door, two long snakes sitting on their tails, with their bodies coiled round in spirals, darting out their long black tongues at one another, and hissing either with love or rage. Such as these must have been the two serpents to whom Mercury threw his wand, for they looked just like the two that have for ever coiled round that rod.
But I was not Mercury, I had not the magic wand that pacified the bitterest hatreds; I took to flight, as Laocoon would have done if he had seen the two serpents of Tenedos rolling in with the tide of the Dardanelles, had he known they had left their island on purpose to strangle himself and his children.
As I fled I met M. Deviolaine, who, seeing me in such a fright, asked me what was the matter: I told him, and to my great amazement he did not in the least share my fears; he merely tore up from the ground a pole which propped up a young tree and walked towards the tower, whence, after five minutes' fight, he came out, having conquered the two hydras.
From that moment I looked upon M. Deviolaine as a Hercules, the tamer of monsters.
I shall often return to M. Deviolaine, for he had great influence over my life; I was more afraid of him than of any man, but at the same time I loved him next after my father.
We will now proceed to M. Collard.
M. Collard was as good-natured as M. Deviolaine, his most intimate friend, was ill-tempered: his smiling face was as great a contrast to his friend's forbidding aspect. M. Collard was the head of a family to which the terrible and mysterious Glandier law-suit has since given such a sinister notoriety.