Two or three months passed, I resisting and my mother begging and praying me to go.
Finally, one fine day when she had used every inducement she could think of to make me go, promising solemnly, on her word of honour, that I should always be free to come home if I did not like the rules of the Seminary, I let fall the fatal yes, and I consented to all her wishes.
There was a week granted me to make my preparations for departure. It was a great separation, and it cost my mother as much as it did me; but she tried to hide her tears, till I unjustly imagined she was quite pleased to get rid of me.
The day before that on which I was to travel in the coach which plied twice a week between Villers-Cotterets and Soissons, as I was collecting all my little wants for my school life, I discovered I hadn't an inkstand. I told my mother of this, and she, recognising the justice of my request, asked me what sort I would like.
I had luxurious ideas concerning that inkstand. I wished a horn inkstand with a place for pens. But, as my mother did not clearly understand my explanations, she gave me twelve sous, and told me to go and buy the inkstand myself.
Please pay great attention to this little matter; for, puerile though it may seem, it changed the whole course of my life.
I hurried off to a grocer named Devaux. I took good care not to go to Lebègue's: the reader knows why.
The grocer had not the kind of inkpot I wanted; but he promised to get me one by evening.
When evening came, I returned, and he had the inkpot ready for me; but as luck would have it I found my cousin Cécile in the shop.