“Arthémise, do you love me?”
“My little one, do I love you!” she exclaimed, hugging me.
“Then Juliette wants to go to Caumenchon and you must obey her.”
She resisted. “They will say that I have stolen you and will put me in prison. I cannot, I cannot. But won’t I give a bit of my mind to your grandmother! Don’t you fear! for, if she has not killed you, it is not her fault.”
“Juliette will go to Caumenchon, then, all alone, at once,” I replied, and, as we left the school, I slipped down from her arms, escaping her, and climbed the steps of the ramparts. When I got to the top I ran as fast as I could. Arthémise caught me, took me in her arms, and besought me to return to my grandmother, but as I got angry again, she walked off very fast in the direction of the village, carrying me.
When she grew too tired she put me down, and I ran, holding her hand, to keep up with her fast walking. It seemed to me that I was doing something great, that I was in the right and my grandmother in the wrong. Running, or in Arthémise’s arms, I did not cease repeating the two words which seemed to me the most expressive: “It is execrable, it is a murder!”
“Yes, a murder,” said Arthémise, “and they will see what they’ll see!”
We walked in the mud; it was a very dark night, and I thought, if I had not been with Arthémise, how afraid I should have been of the deep ruts in which they lost cows.
I was very, very hungry, and I thought myself a very unhappy, cruelly abandoned, but very courageous little girl.
We arrived at Caumenchon, at my nurse’s house. The door was open. A large fire burned in the hearth. Arthémise’s mother and father looked older than my grandmother and grandfather, but I did not dare to say so.