At the church, during the ceremony of confirmation, when I kissed the paten and Monseigneur approached his fingers to my face, Maribert’s influence suddenly took possession of me again, and I said, without being conscious of the words I pronounced, words which froze with horror my schoolmates, kneeling near me, and which made Maribert laugh:
“Lightly, Monseigneur, I beg of you!”
He tapped my cheek harder than he tapped those of my schoolmates. Why did I say it? I do not know, but I felt that I had resisted a diabolical desire to say something worse. The sacred gesture suddenly seemed to me like a slap in my face. Maribert was kneeling at a short distance from me. Was it her wicked spirit which had inspired me with this act of revolt?
The dean called me to the sacristy after the confirmation, and scolded me in a severe but fatherly manner, and gave me a penance to perform.
A few years afterwards, at an evening party given at Soissons, where I had arrived as a young bride, Monseigneur de Garsignies, as I entered the room and bowed to him, exclaimed:
“The little girl whom I confirmed!”
XXVII
WE DISCUSS FRENCH LITERATURE
THE school-house in our old garden had been built during the summer months. It was now being finished with all possible haste. The school was to be reopened in October in the new building. One could see the odious structure above the high wall, for which I felt a violent hatred. In the evening large fires were lit in it, which I could see from the hall leading to my room on the first story, and they looked to me like the mouth of the infernal regions.
I continually declared that I would never, never, go to that school, and it was in vain that grandmother and my mother, at the family dinner given on the day of my first communion, endeavoured to make me promise I would go to the new school in October. My father was not present at the dinner, for he disapproved of, although he submitted to, what he called the continuation of my baptism. I literally lost my head when I thought that I might be obliged to repeat my lessons over the destroyed ground of my garden, or play over the place where my “temple of verdure” had been. Grandmother was distressed at my obstinacy, and perhaps was even more irritated by it. Our affection suffered from all this, and we hurt each other’s feelings often in spite of the deep love we bore each other. I took no more interest in my dear grandparents’ happiness; I stood between them no longer; I kept silence when a discussion arose; the impersonal pronouns were frequently used again. Blondeau was sad over my grief, and I was all the more unhappy because Maribert excited ill-feeling against me at school, keeping up a relentless fight. There were two hostile camps. The girls were either on her side or on mine. Her party was full of activity, tormenting us, playing us all manner of bad tricks; mine resisted indolently, because I, their head, was discouraged, and worked no longer. I was constantly scolded and punished. I became ill-tempered, I, whom my companions had loved until then especially on account of my good-humour. I could no longer, as formerly, bring them fruit from my garden. The sugar-plums were a thing of the past; in a word, I was undone and did not care for anything.