“To Amiens, Abbeville, and Verton. I will show her the sea, which I wish to behold myself, for I have never seen it. And better still, we shall travel to it on the railway.”
“Ah, no! Not in the railway coaches!” cried my grandmother. “I am afraid of those monstrosities, for they say that every day, every time people get into them, there are accidents—persons killed and wounded. Juliette is not yet old enough to guarantee herself from danger by making her will. But how has this great plan come about?”
“You remember, dear mother, that young workman, Liénard, who was so wonderfully intelligent, in whom I was so interested, and whom I had educated to be an engineer?”
“Yes, yes, and that was one of your good works. To elevate a poor man from a low position, is meritorious and useful, in a different manner from that of torturing one’s mind to discover a way to ruin the middle classes, and to make poverty universal.”
“Do you hear that, Jean Louis?” said my father, laughing.
“Well,” he continued, “Liénard has made his way brilliantly. He is now the head of a division of the Boulogne-sur-Mer railway. He has six hundred employés and workmen under him to-day, and he wishes me to see him in the exercise of a function of which he is proud, and which he owes to me. He has invited me to pass a fortnight, together with Juliette, at Verton. Madame Liénard is devoted to our daughter, whom she always comes to see when she knows she is at Blérancourt, doesn’t she, Juliette?”
“Grandmother,” I replied, “if you will permit it, I should be delighted to take a long journey with papa. It is my dream to travel. I am very fond of Madame Liénard.” And stooping down to her ear, I added: “And besides, grandmother, it will distract me from my great sorrow.”
“Yes, Juliette, I think so, too,” she answered. “Your father must leave you with me for two weeks to prepare your wardrobe, for I wish you to have everything you may need, and then you shall go to see the sea.”
When my father had left, grandmother said to me: “I must obtain a dispensation from the curé so that you may leave the catechism class without having your first communion delayed in consequence. But I think there will be no difficulty about it.”
The entire town of Chauny was interested in this journey. My grandfather told how it had come about to all who wished to hear it. At school I was much questioned, and in the same degree that I had been humiliated at having the girls say to me: “It seems that your grandmother has sold your famous garden which you thought as fine as a kingdom,” just so proud was I in thinking of all the interesting things that I should have to relate to my little friends on my return.