This charmed everybody; and, as I was then only seven years of age, and it was my first clever saying, I crave the indulgence of the public for mentioning it.
It did not, however, prevent my cousin Cécile from declaring, when she was performing some of her common tomboy tricks, that I neither was nor ever would be fit to be anything but a Seminarist.
We shall soon see how very nearly her prediction came to being fulfilled.
I believe I had five great frights in my life, and, happily, all came in my early childhood. I have mentioned the first three; the Amiens snake, the two adders at Saint Remy and Madame de Genlis.
We will now proceed to the fourth.
I was playing at marbles at the door of a grocer called Lebègue, who was scraping and spreading out chocolate on a marble slab with a long, flexible knife that I believe they call a spatula. I began a dispute with my companion, and we fell to pummelling one another. Please take note that when it was a question of fists I was never a coward. He was stronger than I, he pushed me roughly back and I fell over backwards into a tub of honey.
I at once saw the consequences of my accident, I uttered a cry which made the grocer look up, and he soon saw what had happened, namely, that, as I have said, I was seated in a tub of honey. I sprang up as though springs were attached to my legs, in spite of the resistance of the substance to which I was glued: and I fled incontinently.
My prudent and rapid flight was due to a view of the grocer dashing out knife in hand at the same time.
I naturally ran in the direction of my home, but it was in the centre of the rue de Lormet, and a good way off the scene of the accident. I ran with all my might, but the grocer's legs were double the length of mine; I was driven by terror, but he was moved by greed. I turned to look behind me as I ran, and saw that awful tradesman, with fiery eyes and open lips and frowning brow, knife in hand, gaining upon me every minute. At last, weltering with heat, panting, speechless, and on the point of a collapse, I flung myself on the pavement ten paces from our door, convinced that it was all over with me, and that Lebègue was pursuing me for no other purpose than to cut my throat.
Nothing of the kind happened. After a struggle, in which I resisted him tooth and nail, he laid me face down on his knees, and scraped the seat of my trousers with his spatula, set me on my feet, and returned perfectly content to his shop.