“Madame, Mam’zelle, the ‘notary’ has got downstairs alone. He is at the foot of the staircase!”
Grandfather was obliged to get up and put it back in the garret, but he made Arthémise go with him carrying a light.
My grandfather—who would believe it?—had very poetical tastes and was fond of pigeons. We had hundreds of them, and he had made me share his passion for these pets, and every day after breakfast he and I would feed them. They flew all about us, just as later in life I have seen them do on the Piazza di San Marco at Venice. We slipped on large linen blouses with hoods, and the pigeons would cover us entirely, head and shoulders, arms and hands. They clung to us and picked at us. The flutter of their wings and their cooing delighted me, and seemed like music. When we moved, they followed us with their pretty, mincing steps.
Grandfather and I were very fond of our pigeons, but grandmother, finding that they multiplied too fast, had the young ones taken from their nests, while we were absent, by a man who sold them, which grieved us very much. I heard of it through a little schoolmate, whose mother had bought some, and who told me one day that she had eaten some of my pigeons.
I scolded grandmother, who asked me if I would rather have eaten them myself.
“Most certainly not!”
Grandfather calmed me by saying that we could not possibly keep all that were born, and that grandmother did quite right, provided she would only take the young ones, and leave us the fathers and mothers. She promised this, and kept her word, and the old ones became more and more tame.
X
A THREE WEEKS’ VISIT
ON October 4th, when I was eight years old, my father obtained grandmother’s approval to take me to Blérancourt for a three weeks’ visit, until All Saints’ Day, for she felt sure of having directed my ideas according to her way of thinking by that time. We had never before been separated for so long, and were much grieved—I less than I thought I should be, and she more than I feared.