NOTHING in particular happened to occupy or disturb my life until the winter of 1847. Things repeated themselves monotonously. The collisions between my relatives were multiplied, the divergence between their reciprocal opinions became more and more intensified. My grandmother became somewhat embittered, and occasionally blamed her dear King Louis Philippe; my grandfather declared himself more certain of the future triumph of his Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. He was a member of several Bonapartist committees. My father thought he was nearer to his democratic-socialist republic; my aunts mourned more and more over the imbecility of the people in believing in those who deceived them; over political immorality, and the madness of all parties.
I had at that time one of the most violent, most despairing revolts, and one of the most inconsolable sorrows of my life.
The winter was particularly cold. My large garden was filled with snow, but I had discovered that it still possessed beauty. My grandmother, who felt the cold severely, did not move from her room, which opened into the drawing-room, or from the drawing-room itself. She kept up a large wood fire in it, which she excelled in making.
Grandfather often said to her that she proved the untruth of the proverb which said that “one must be in love or be a philosopher to know how to make a good fire.” “Now, you are neither the one nor the other,” he added one day.
Grandmother replied:
“I am a philosopher because I bear with you, and am not angry with you in spite of all you have made me endure. I am no longer in love with you, but is it not because my passion for my husband was destroyed at a very early hour that I remain in love with love, and that I console or distract myself in reading of the romantic happiness or unhappiness of others?”
Blondeau loved the snow as much as I. Well-shod with Strasburg woollen socks and thick sabots, we would go after breakfast to make enormous heaps of snow in which we would dig galleries, or else we would mould figures with it. The trees, the plants, the borderings of box, the walled-fruit, were prettier one than the other, under their snowy garments.
Along the high wall, overtopping the trees of my temple of verdure, at the end of the garden, whose branches were all powdered with brilliant hoar-frost shining on a carpet looking like white wool, huge stalactites hung, superb and glittering. It was a fairy scene when at sunset these stalactites would light up, shining under the last rays of the sun, when drops like diamonds would hang on the extreme end of their delicate points.
“Blondeau, my dear Blondeau, look at this, look at that, how pretty, how beautiful, how splendid and brilliant it is!” I would cry.
My admiration was inexhaustible as was Blondeau’s pleasure at listening to me and seeing me so delighted, so merrily happy.