“Why, yes, because she received a good price for it.”
“So, in your opinion she has done well?”
“Without doubt—she would never have found such a good chance again. Perhaps, besides the question of money, she decided to do it a little for your sake.”
“Oh! that is too much!”
“Why? You will have only a few steps to take to go to your school. She will even be able to see you play from a wing she wishes to build.”
“Then grandmother is going to make the little yard still smaller? Well, papa, I cannot tell you the pain all this gives me. They have taken away the paths where I used to walk and play, my trees, all that I loved in immaterial things; they have deprived me of the happiness of looking at growing leaves, of studying how plants bud, how blossoms become fruit; they have prevented me from listening to the stirring and putting forth of all that has life in it, and from hearing the sigh, followed by cold silence, of that which dies. To me, papa, the sun is a divine being to whom I speak and who answers me in written signs, which I see in the rays of its light. I will make you half close your eyes at mid-day, and will show you the shining signs, the golden writing. The moon follows me as I walk, and I feel that it is a friend. I assure you, papa, I have heard the earth burst with a little sound above the asparagus heads, or when the seeds that have been sown sprout forth. I do not know how to express all this to you, or how to explain these things, but if I love to read, if books instruct me so greatly—above all, if travels make the world larger to me—I think, papa, I have learned a great deal in my garden about all small things.”
My father listened to me, his eyes fixed on mine; he held the reins so loosely in his hands that suddenly, feeling gay, or perhaps made nervous by fatigue, Coq began to behave badly for the first time. A stroke of the whip calmed him.
“This Coq,” said my father, “is unworthy of too much confidence.” Then he added:
“Go on talking, Juliette, dear, go on. You do not know the pleasure you give me. You love nature as I love it; you feel it, you poetise it as I do. Ah! old Homer is giving back to me to-day what I gave to him in teaching you to love him. It is he who has given you the love of immaterial things. You will be a heathen some day, I am certain of it.”
“Oh, papa! what an abominable thing to say! Don’t repeat it, especially before grandmother—it would give her too much pain, and, besides, it isn’t true; it was not the dryads, the nymphs, the homodryads, that I saw and listened to in my garden; it was really the trees, the plants, and the fruits.”