"I spent two hours every day learning to read and write French and Spanish with Monsieur le Curé Anjorrant. He never scolded me, he was always pleased with me. No one ever saw such a kind-hearted man! He loved me so much that my mother was jealous sometimes. She used to say to me:
"'Come, I will wager that you love the priest better than you do me!'
"But I would say:
"'No, indeed! I love you both the same. I love you as much as I can. I love you as big as the mountains, and more too; as big as the sky!'
"But when I was ten years old, everything changed. All of a sudden Monsieur Anjorrant was taken very sick, because he walked too much in the snow to save some little children who were lost and whom he found, for we used to have snow in winter, sometimes as high as the top of your house. And all of a sudden Monsieur Anjorrant died.
"My mother and I cried so much that I don't see how we have any eyes left to see with.
"Then my mother said to me:
"'We must do what our father, our friend who is dead, wanted us to do. He has left with us the papers and jewels which may serve to make your family acknowledge you. He has written to the French minister about you many times. He never had any answer. Perhaps they did not get his letters. We will go and see the king, or someone who can speak to him for us, and if you have a grandmother or aunts or cousins, they will see to it that you do not remain a slave, because you were born free, and freedom is the greatest thing in the world.'
"We started with very little money. Good Monsieur Anjorrant left nothing for anybody. As soon as he got a piece of money he would give it to somebody who needed it. We walked and walked; France is so big! For three months now we have been on the road. My mother, when she saw how far it was, was afraid we should never get there, and we begged bread and shelter at every door. People always gave us something, because my mother is so sweet, and they thought I was a pretty boy. But we did not know the roads, and we took many steps which delayed us instead of taking us forward.
"Then we met some very funny people, who called themselves Egyptians, and they told us we could go to Poitou with them if we knew how to do anything. My mother can sing very well in Arabic, and I can play the tympanon a little, and the guitar of the Pyrenees. I will play for you all you want. Those people thought that we knew enough. They were not unkind to us, and there was a little Moorish girl with them named Pilar, whom I was very fond of, and a bigger boy, La Flèche, who is a Frenchman and who amused me with his wry faces and his stories. But they were almost all thieves, and it pained my mother to see how gluttonous and lazy they were.