Then began a scene which is easy to me to recall, because it was renewed three or four times every year during my childhood. They dragged me first to one side, then to the other, they kissed me with faces wet with tears, they grew very angry with one another, and they almost made me crazy by asking and repeating: “Don’t you want to come with your papa and mamma?”—“Don’t you want to stay with your grandfather and grandmother?”
I would answer sobbing, not realising my cruelty to my father, who adored me:
“I want Arthémise, my grandmother and grandfather.”
My father was very unhappy. My mother, who was jealous of everything and everybody, suffered less, however, from my grandmother’s passion for me than for my father’s; but she naturally took her husband’s part against her parents.
On that day, as on many subsequent days, my parents from Blérancourt yielded and grew calm. My grandmother, by much show of affection and by all manner of promises, succeeded in making them leave me at Chauny.
My father said a hundred times to me: “You love your papa, don’t you?”
“Yes, yes, yes!”
And it was true. I loved my papa, but not as I loved grandmother.
“Juliette must begin her education,” added grandmother, “and she can do so only at Chauny. As soon as the vacations are over she must go to school.”
The next morning they woke me very early. I was sleepy and rebelled. What grandfather called “the family drama” had fatigued me. Arthémise took me in her arms, half asleep, for me to say good-bye to my parents. My mother was putting on her bonnet as I entered the drawing-room, my father was wrapping her shawls about her. They got into the carriage and I waved kisses to them for good-bye.