"And here I am.... I came immediately to tell you of the affair ... directly. I am free. Long live divorce!"
And she began to dance in the middle of the drawing-room, while the little baroness, who was thoughtful and vexed, said:
"Why did you not invite me to see it?"
[BELLFLOWER][17]
How strange those old recollections are which haunt us, without our being able to get rid of them!
This one is so very old that I cannot understand how it has clung so vividly and tenaciously to my memory. Since then I have seen so many sinister things, which were either affecting or terrible, that I am astonished at not being able to pass a single day without the face of Mother Bellflower recurring to my mind's eye, just as I knew her formerly, now so long ago, when I was ten or twelve years old.
She was an old seamstress, who came to my parents house once a week, every Thursday to mend the linen. My parents lived in one of those country houses called châteaux, and which are merely old houses with pointed roofs, which are surrounded by three or four farms.
The village, a large village, almost a small market town, was a few hundred yards off, and lay closely round the church, a red brick church, which had become black with age.