How should those who are born with a bear’s ungainly paws, bear the branch of palm or scatter lilies throughout the world! There are a few, like our good Barnes, whose hands were made to carry lilies. Wherever she turned, balsam sprang forth. Her own life was joyless, but for the comfort it brought to others, and therein she found abiding happiness.
Barnes lies buried in the church at Meinau, and a tablet with a most touching and beautiful inscription is put up to her memory. But what is that beside the tablet on which her memory is engraved within my heart!—I still see her with her eyes riveted on Otto’s face, following every change in it with an expression of the deepest concern, and the words, “that poor child!” ever and anon breaking involuntarily from her lips. Of herself, her own sufferings, her own fatigue, never a word; it was always of him she spoke, of his marvellous patience, his unexampled fortitude. Surely she must be rewarded now, in seeing him no longer writhing with pain, but radiant in health and youthful beauty, having shuffled off this mortal coil, to live on triumphant with the life of the spirit.
CHAPTER XI
[THE FAMILY VALETTE]
It was on my governess, Fräulein Josse, that devolved the pleasing task of bringing a little innocent amusement into our lives. She lent herself the more willingly to this, I fancy, that she was often in her inmost soul distressed to see us thus early initiated into so much sorrow and suffering, such painful daily experiences naturally robbing us of the healthy unthinking lightheartedness, befitting our age. Nor was she in the least a partisan of the uncompromisingly matter-of-fact system of education on which we were brought up. She actually read some Mährchen aloud to us, and we absolutely revelled in the enchantments of that delicious fairy-world, whose gates were thus thrown open to us. This was the beginning of a quite new sort of game, in which even poor little Otto could take part, these delightful stories being acted over and over again by us, and we grew quite inventive in devising characters for him, which he could impersonate sitting in his chair, and thus have the illusion of playing his part. It was kind Fräulein Josse too, who gave me the “Wide, Wide World,” the only book in the least resembling a novel which I was allowed to read while in my teens. I was so fond of it, that I used to hide it under a chair, whence I could fetch it out and devour a few pages, in the hours when I ought, perhaps, to have been committing lines of Horace or Ovid to memory, or writing an essay on some period of Church history.
The “Wide, Wide World” thus became, with “Augustin,” the story I have already mentioned, the favourite reading of my childhood, and those two simple books were my inseparable companions all through my schooldays. My own pleasure in them had been so great, I would have liked to share it with others, and one of the very first things I did on arriving in Roumania, was to have “Augustin” translated into the language of my new country. Unfortunately, the translator’s knowledge of Roumanian was insufficient, a circumstance of which I was then unable to judge, so my plan did not succeed.
During my first stay in Paris, whither Fräulein Josse had accompanied us, in 1853-54, I made the acquaintance of her best friends there, a family called Valette. My governess and Madame Valette had known one another as young girls, the latter being the daughter of the Pasteur Affiat, pastor of the French Protestant community in Hanau, so that both were delighted at thus meeting again. And now, Madame Valette’s husband being pastor of the little Protestant chapel in the Marais, it became our delight, Wilhelm’s and mine, to wander over there with our governess, to spend our weekly half-holiday with the Valette children. Every Thursday then, we set out on foot from our house in the Champs Elysées, for the picturesque little dwelling in the Rue Pavée, that quaint old-fashioned street, whose very name conjures up such pleasant memories for
me after all these years. What happy hours we passed, playing in the beautiful garden, which our friends shared in common with several other families, whom we also learned to know. It was such a delicious new sensation to us, of freedom from all restraint and supervision, our elders always remaining together talking, leaving us children to race unmolested through house and garden, exercising our active young limbs and our sound young lungs, and clearing away the cobwebs from our tired brains. Staircase, passages, basement, how well I remember it all, and the pastor himself, whom we thought at first rather stiff, but who occasionally unbent to joke with us. And his dear good wife, who let us do just whatever came into our heads, never interfering with our wildest play, as we tore through the rooms, springing down the stairs two or three steps at a time, and hiding in dark corners, whence we could spring out and frighten one another. On cold dull days we stayed indoors, acting charades, or sitting contentedly round the big dining-room table covered with oil-cloth, telling stories in turn, laughing and chattering, so perfectly happy and at our ease in these modest surroundings, and learning more French in half-an-hour than in a whole week’s lessons.
The eldest daughter, Marie, was almost grown up, but I was especially fond of her, she was the leader in all our games, and told us most delightful stories. Her next sister, Minna, was more reserved, and did not care to join in our play, but then came two, just of our own age, Cècile and Charlotte. The last-named, who died quite young, was the sweetest little creature, and I still see her flying to meet us, with her long fair curls streaming behind her, and flinging her arms round us both in her joy to welcome us. The only son, a gentle, dreamy lad, of a serious turn of mind, afterwards became a pastor. Marie afterwards married the son of the celebrated preacher, Adolphe Monod, whose sermons were so much talked of, that it was a great disappointment to me not to be taken to hear him, but my mother would not consent to our going to church before we had attained our twelfth year.