“Little one, be full as an egg, wholesome as bread, wise as salt, and straight as a match.”
Perhaps some will think it childish to relate these things. But after all every one is free to tell their own tale, and I find great pleasure in returning, in thought, to my first swaddling clothes, my cradle of mulberry wood, and my wheel-cart, for there I revive the sweetest joys of my young mother.
When I was six months old I was released from the bands which swathed me, Nanounet, my grandmother, having strongly counselled that I should be kept tightly bound for this period. “Children well swathed,” said she, “are neither bandy-legged nor knock-kneed.”
On St. Joseph’s Day, according to the custom of Provence, I was “given my feet.” Triumphantly my mother bore me to the church of Maillane, and there on the saint’s altar, while she held me by the skirts and my godmother sang to me “Avène, avène, avène” (Come, come, come), I was made to take my first steps.
Every Sunday we went to Maillane for the Mass. It was at least two miles distant. All the way my mother rocked me in her arms. Oh, how I loved to rest on that tender breast, in that soft nest! But a time came, I must have been five years old, when midway to the village my poor mother put me down, bidding me walk, for I was too heavy to be carried any more.
After Mass I used to go with my mother to visit my grandparents in the fine vaulted kitchen of white stone, where usually congregated the notabilities of the place, Monsieur Deville, Monsieur Dumas, Monsieur Raboux, the younger Rivière, and discussed politics as they paced the stone-flagged floor to and fro between the fireplace and the dresser.
Monsieur Dumas, who had been a judge and resigned in the year 1830, was specially fond of giving his advice to the young mothers present, such as these words of wisdom, for example, which he repeated regularly every Sunday:
“Neither knives, keys, or books should be given to children—for with a knife the child may cut himself, a key he may lose, and a book he may tear.”
Monsieur Dumas did not come alone: with his opulent wife and their eleven or twelve children they filled the parlour, the fine ancestral parlour, all hung with Marseilles tapestry on which were represented little birds and baskets of flowers. There, to show off the fine education of his progeny, proudly he made them declaim, verse by verse, a little from one, a little from another, the story of Théramène.
This accomplished, he would turn to my mother: