My grandmother’s regrets calmed my grief, but my poor grandfather was snubbed many times for his way of “consoling” me.
XXVI
MY FIRST COMMUNION
IT is impossible to imagine to-day the importance of a railway journey in the time of my childhood. All Chauny talked of it when I started; all Chauny questioned me concerning it on my return. When I went out with grandfather, people stopped me in the street to ask me if a railway journey was very frightful.
Truth to tell, the horrible whistles, the deafening threatening noise of the locomotives, the tunnels (oh, those tunnels!), the frightful black smoke that made one look like a coal-man in a few hours, had filled me with apprehension, and everything connected with it seemed to me like something coming straight from hell.
“It splits your ears, it blinds you if you put your nose out of the window, it shakes you so that you tremble, it is ugly and makes you ugly,” I replied to everyone who questioned me.
At school I had a great success. All the big girls asked me about it, to satisfy their own curiosity and that of their families. All the little girls wished to know the entire history of the railway journey, and all about the sea and the ships.
My large basket of shells was emptied in a few days. The numberless presents I had brought disappeared quickly. A week after my return I had nothing left. “Those,” I said, speaking of my shells, “were not bought. I picked them up myself by the sea, the real sea!”
These words produced an immense sensation. At recreations I held forth, surrounded by numerous listeners with eager eyes and open mouths. Questions came from all sides. They never tired of hearing my stories told over and over again. The history of the woman beheaded in the tunnel made them all tremble.
“Why did she look out of the window?” asked the big girls. “One should take great care in travelling, for there is always great risk. One has only to read about it to know it.”