I soon gave him the title of friend, and, as he was tired of table d’hôte life, and, as his old servant, whom he had brought with him from Lons-le-Saulnier, was capable only of cooking his breakfast passably well, I obtained grandmother’s permission to have him dine with us every evening, knowing it was his dream and ambition. He was another one fanatically devoted to me—rather let me say, one of my slaves.
Although he had much work to do, having no clerk, I enlisted him to aid me in doing my arithmetic exercises and in copying out my week’s compositions. He read admirably, far better than grandmother, and he became my habitual reader.
It would not have been strange had I been persuaded by all these flattering opinions that my talents, which Blondeau said “grew as fast as grass,” surpassed those of all known prodigies.
Even my father, who was a lettered man, and whose good taste should have enlightened him concerning his daughter’s lucubrations, considered my writings marvellous.
But my mother, with her usual lack of indulgence, rendered me the service of sobering me regarding all this praise. She put things in their proper place, even exaggerating them in a contrary sense. She declared that what I wrote was inept, and that they would make me a mediocre person by fostering in me a phenomenal pride.
I alone was not vexed with her. She helped me to criticise myself, although sometimes I thought her criticisms as excessive as the admiration of my flatterers was exaggerated.
Having a sufficient company at home on Sundays, my friend Charles included, I determined to put my weekly reviews into dialogues. Each one of us read his personal pages in turn, or we replied to one another.
When I think of all I made my grandparents and Blondeau read and say, I am abashed. Moreover, everyone kept the name I had given him, and the character of the rôle assigned to him, throughout the evening. They allowed themselves to be questioned by me, and answered “attentively,” as my friend Charles said. Had they at least been amused with this child’s play, it would have been tolerable, but on the contrary, they were obliged to rediscuss the weekly discussions, the wherefores of the most subtle questions I had laid before myself, which must often have been rare nonsense and silliness.
My heart is full of gratitude and tenderness for my four sufferers, and, as these recollections bring them before me, perhaps I love them to-day even more than I did at that time.
