I professed my grandmother’s ideas as if they were my own, and I upheld them without saying whence they came. This came from a double feeling of pride—for I gloried in thinking differently from my little schoolmates—and also, I recall, in order not to compromise my grandmother, or, rather, to avoid having her opinions either discussed or blamed. I spoke of her with a passionate admiration, which, willingly or unwillingly, people were obliged to submit to, under penalty of blows. I strongly denied that any other little girl could have a mother or grandmother comparable to mine. They could do what they liked with me by saying that from Chauny to Paris there was not another mother or grandmother who loved their daughter and granddaughter as I was loved. Then my generosity knew no bounds, and would flow abundantly over the flatterers; usually this generosity consisted in the offering of certain sugar-plums made of apples and cherries, red and yellow, which were delicious, and of which I bought a daily supply from a grocer on my way to school, thereby obliging him to renew his stock at least twice a week.
These sugar-plums became later a source of reproach to me, for through them I established my dominion over the girls I liked best, probably the most greedy ones, and really corrupted them. But my domination, it is true, was also built on more honourable foundations; for, although I directed the games, and although my companions obeyed me at recreations, it was not solely on account of the sugar-plums, quickly eaten up, but because I was always inventing new games. Being both tall and strong also helped me to head the ranks. It was dangerous to measure forces with me.
My budget of political opinions was consequently thus made up: Worship of Louis XI., “the Father of the Communes,” as grandmother called him; worship of Louis XIII., who had cut all the feudal towers in two; worship of Louis Philippe, “the Liberal King.”
Grandfather seized every occasion to try to convince me that the Emperor had carried the glory of France on the wings of Fame to the uttermost ends of the earth, that the whirling of his sword (he would make the movement with his two large arms, one after the other, inversely, which delighted me) had terrified not only the beheaders of “Lambert’s Jacobite Revolution” (this a shaft at my father), but had conquered the sovereigns of Europe as far as Africa and Asia.
How often I heard this speech! But, unfortunately for grandfather, it used to convulse grandmother and me with laughter.
“I have had the honour in person of serving the Emperor, and neither of you can say as much,” he would add with superb dignity (rising if he happened to be seated), “and I will not allow a word, a single word, to be spoken which might impair a hair’s-breadth his immortal, his eternal memory.”
Grandfather knew all of Béranger’s songs, especially and exclusively those that exalted his Emperor; but he made an exception of the “Old Vagabond,” which saddened him, and brought back the memory of his own misery—“the misery of my youth,” he would say—and his philosophy during that time.
I have already said what a colossally big man grandfather was, and that he drank copiously. Towards evening, speaking of the Emperor and the campaigns he had followed at Lützen and elsewhere, he usually made a mistake in the final triumphant phrase. There I had him.
“Take care, grandfather, not to upset your fine phrase.”
He would begin it, and, invariably being troubled by my interruption, would end it in an emphatic manner impossible to describe, and with an outburst of inimitable pride: