Everything succeeded marvellously well, and I was carried off at the rather young age of nine months old, and weaned in a diligence.
V
MY EARLY CHILDHOOD
I WAS pleased, it seems, with the voyage and with the nursing-bottle. Warmly wrapped up, I slept in my grandmother’s arms. In the morning everything I saw from the diligence windows amused me greatly. The movement delighted me and made me dance. Every time I asked, “Mamma?” my grandmother answered: “Yes, look, see, she is down there.” At the relays I walked a little, for I already walked at that early age, and was much taken with and curious about the dogs, the chickens, and people, and was instinctively drawn to my grandmother, whom I soon grew to love fondly.
My mother, informed by a letter which my grandmother had left for her, of my being carried off, did not hasten to join us, but grandmother knew by frequent letters from the hotel-keeper at Verberie that she was taking care of herself and did not suffer, and that, moreover, she had written several letters to her husband and had received no answers.
Finally my mother decided one day to take the diligence and come to us, after having borrowed a sum strictly necessary for her voyage.
The large drawing-room at Chauny, with its high chimney-place, where a great wood fire burned constantly, seemed more pleasant to me than the gloomy room of The Three Monarchs, and I expressed my admiration for all that it contained by throwing kisses to the fire, to the clock, and above all to my grandparents. I had room in which to trot and amuse myself, and I took an interest in everything in this large room where they received visitors, where they dined and lived. I heard a great many things which I repeated and understood. My mother did not cease to complain about the education my grandparents were giving me and on the airs of “a trained dog,” that I was assuming, but she did not succeed in troubling the cordial understanding between us four—my grandparents, my nurse Arthémise, and myself.
My father, very unhappy, repenting of his foolish act, ashamed of the blind faith he had placed in a cynical impostor, had returned without a cent to his parents at Pontoise. He begged by letter for my mother, humiliated and submissive, but my grandmother replied that she would not give him back his wife until the day when he should have made another position for himself and could prove that he had the means to support her. As to his daughter Juliette, she would never be given back to him.
“I adopt this child which you have abandoned and given over to dire poverty,” wrote my grandmother, “and she belongs to me as long as I live.”
It was at this time that my father went to live at the pretty borough of Blérancourt, three leagues from Chauny and two from Pontoise-sur-Oise, where his people dwelt. A year after he came and proved to my grandmother that he was in a position to support his wife and to fulfil the conditions she had imposed upon him before he should be allowed to take her back.