But Mademoiselle Suzette came to look with grieved eyes.

"And why kill the poor creature, Sophie? It does us no harm," she said, and helped the worm to disappear in the soft earth.

The Demoiselles de Coatnamprun died one winter of some pulmonary affection and within a day of one another. They died with the simplicity and sincerity that had marked all their lives, and toward the end they were heard to murmur continually, while they smiled as if in sleep, "Maman—Papa."

Isménie died first; but since it was seen that Suzette had only a few hours to live, the body was kept lying on the bed near hers, and she did not know that her beloved sister had been taken from her. They were buried together on the same day.

"In the days of the Terror ... it had been used ... as a prison"

There was another and very different old lady in Landerneau of whom I was very fond and whom, since she took a great fancy to me, I saw often. Her daughter was a friend of maman's and made a mésalliance that caused the doors of Landerneau to close upon her. Maman, however, remained devoted to her, and continued to see as much of her as ever, and her mother, my old friend, was entirely indifferent to the doors, closed or open, of Landerneau. She wore a brightly colored Turkish silk handkerchief tied turban-wise about her head, and soft gray-leather riding boots,—men's boots,—so that she was known in her quarter as Chat-botté. In her own house she wore men's dress-breeches, short jacket, and high boots. Her feet were remarkably small, and the wave of hair on her forehead was as black as jet. She was very downright and ready of speech, and used to talk to me as though I were a person of her own age. "Do you see, Sophie," she would say, "my poor daughter is a great goose. She struggles to be received, and gets only buffets for her pains. Why give oneself so much trouble for nothing?"

The disconsolate daughter and the son-in-law made their home with her in a great old house standing on the banks of the river. He was a wholesale wine merchant, and barrels and casks of wine stood about the entrance. My old friend lived almost entirely in her own room on the first floor, the strangest room. It was at once spotlessly clean and completely untidy. The bed had no posts or canopy and was shaped like a cradle. Bottles of salad-oil stood on the mantel-shelf, and a bunch of carrots might be lying on the table among bundles of newspapers. From the windows one had beautiful views up and down the river and could see the stone bridge that had old houses built upon it. Across the river were her gardens, and she used often to row me over to them and to show me the immense old cherry-tree, planted by her grandfather, that grew far down the river against the walls of an old tower. This tower had its story, and I could not sleep at night for thinking of it. In her girlhood mad people were shut up there. There was only a dungeon-room, and the water often rose in it so that the forsaken creatures stood up to their knees in water. Food was thrown to them through the iron bars of the windows, but it was quite insufficient, and she gave me terrible descriptions of the faces she used to see looking out, ravenous and imploring. She remembered that the bones protruded from the knuckles of one old man as he clutched the bars. She used to pile loaves of bread in her little boat, row across to the tower, and fix the loaves on the end of an oar so that she could pass them up to the window, and she would then see the mad people snatching the bread apart and devouring it. And when the cherries on the great tree were ripe she used to climb up into the branches and bend them against the window so that they might gather the fruit themselves from among the leaves, and she herself would gather all she could reach and throw them in. They had not even straw to sleep on. When one of them died, the body was taken out, and this was all the care they had. Such were the horrors in a town where people across the river quietly ate and slept, and the church-bells rang all day.

CHAPTER VII
BON PAPA

My most vivid recollections of Grandfather de Rosval place him at Landerneau, where he would stop with us on his way to Quimper during his tours of inspection. His arrivals in the sleepy little town were great affairs and caused immense excitement: post-chaise, postilion, whips cracking, horns blowing, and a retinue of Parisian servants. We children never had more than a glimpse of him at first, for he withdrew at once to his own rooms to rest and go through his papers. When he made his entry into the salon,—the salon of the slippery parquet and the nodding mandarins,—all the household was ranged on each side, as if for the arrival of a sovereign, and we had all to drop deep curtseys before him.