This nearly killed me. The people, the good people, so patient, so generous, who had behaved so admirably in the fateful days of February, were being urged to yield to the evil instincts of plunder from the poverty imposed upon them.
I was so unhappy at all I felt, and my suffering came so much into contradiction with my grandparents’ and Blondeau’s excessive hardness of heart, who said: “Let them finish at once with the beggars!” that I begged grandmother to allow me to return to Blérancourt with my father on his next visit.
“You can do as you please,” she said. “But I warn you, my poor Juliette, that in your present state of aberration of mind, the little good sense remaining to you will be imperilled if you live with your father. He will destroy it, and your marriage with a workman will be an appropriate ending to your follies. Now, I must confide to you that young X. has already expressed great admiration for you. He is seventeen years old, and his father, half seriously, half laughingly, on account of your youth, has made overtures to me regarding a possible alliance, a few years hence, between our two families. Certainly, this is not what I had hoped for you, for I should like you to be married in Paris, where I would go and live part of the year with you, in order to direct your steps in the path of that destiny which, until lately, I had foreseen for you. But you have such insane notions that perhaps a good middle-class marriage in the country would be better for you than all I had desired for my only grandchild. Here is what I propose: Will you go to school as a boarder? The school is so near that I shall feel you still with me. You can lecture your schoolmates as much as you please, and then your grandfather and I and Blondeau, having to bear with you only once a week, will be better able to endure your outbursts of passion. But if we must see you weep or be angry, either suffering or in a rage every day because this good Republic does not suit you, why, then, my darling grandchild, the situation will be untenable.”
I realised then, from this proposition, the amount of annoyance I had caused my grandparents. Could it be possible that grandmother, who until lately had found the hours I spent at school too long, and our separation, while I was at Chivres or Blérancourt, unbearable—could she wish that I should go to boarding-school? I was stunned; however, my foolish pride prevented me from throwing myself on grandmother’s neck and asking pardon for my folly, for I realised at that moment how absurd I had been; and then, what she had told me of X., a handsome young man, whom I found charming and witty, raised me in my own estimation so much that I thought a young person like myself, nearly twelve years old, could not ask pardon like a little girl, so I replied, although with an aching heart:
“Very well, grandmother, it is agreed; I will go to boarding-school as soon as you wish.”
“To-morrow,” she replied.
I nearly burst into tears, but it was class-hour, and I left for school, saying to myself it would be the last day that I would have my own room all to myself, where, from morning until night, I was surrounded by evidences of my grandmother’s passionate tenderness and my grandfather’s gay affection. I could see only from afar my pigeons fly down, cooing and pecking in the courtyard. I should miss the friendship of Blondeau, to whom I could no longer confide my sorrows, or experiment upon with my father’s startling theories, which I had fully adopted, but which he accepted only with certain modifications.
The next day I went as a boarder to the Mlles. André’s school. My grandfather accompanied me there, and it needed all my courage, when I bade him good-bye, not to beg him to allow me to return home at night. I breakfasted and dined with my schoolmates. At class, at recreations, and all the day long, I saw no one but them. The absolute silence at table was a veritable torture. When I had gone to bed, I was so unhappy and wept so much that I could not sleep, and this was the first sleepless night I had ever passed in my life. I was frightened to think of the next night, for this had seemed to me as terrible as the infernal regions, and I imagined I could never sleep again; this caused me great anxiety, but of course I did not confide it to any of my friends, the most intimate of whom were boarders like myself.
One of my political enemies who knew me well, said to herself that some disaster, some great quarrel between my grandmother and myself, could alone have caused our separation, and she amused herself maliciously by passing to and fro before me, sneering, as she spread about a fantastic story concerning my coming as a boarder. My red eyes, my discomposed face, gave credence to her tale, which was circulated about during the mid-day recreation. They said that my grandmother loved me no longer, that she did not wish to see me any more, that I had done all manner of disobedient things; and, of course, I was at once informed of all this gossip.