As for so poor Mimsey, her grief was so overwhelming that she could not come out and wish me goodbye like the others; and it led, as I afterwards heard, to a long illness, the worst she ever had; and when she recovered it was to find that her beautiful mother was no more.
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Madame Seraskier died of the cholera, and so did le Père et la Mère François, and Madame Pelé, and one of the Napoleonic prisoners (not M. le Major), and several other people we had known, including a servant of our own, Thérèse, the devoted Thérèse, to whom we were all devoted in return. That malodorous tocsin, which I have compared to the big bell of Notre Dame, had warned, and warned, and warned in vain.
The maison de santé was broken up. M. le Major and his friends went and roosted on parole elsewhere, until a good time arrived for them, when their lost leader came back and remained—first as President of the French Republic, then as Emperor of the French themselves. No more parole was needed after that.
My grandmother and Aunt Plunket and her children fled in terror to
Tours, and Mimsey went to Russia with her father.
Thus miserably ended that too happy septennate, and so no more at present of
"Le joli lieu de ma naissance!"
Part Two
The next decade of my outer life is so uninteresting, even to myself, that I will hurry through it as fast as I can. It will prove dull reading, I fear.
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