Now, I was in perfect health because I worked in the fields for hours every day; because I went to bed and got up early, and because I slept alone in a large room, where a distant window, protected by a screen, was left open all night; whereas at Chauny I slept in grandmother’s room, and she had the habit of reading in her bed, by the light of a great lamp, which she often forgot to blow out, and which many times smoked all night.
I had recovered all my strength; my recent “growing” fever had left no trace whatever, except a slight increase added to my height. I looked fully ten years old, and was exceedingly pleased at the fact.
I was almost perfectly happy. To the success of my mission this pleasure was added: that, although I had been sent to please my aunts, it was they who had pleased me.
My mind was more at work during the time I spent with my beloved relatives than at any other moment of my life, insomuch that I asked questions on every subject, and that I pondered over all the “whys and wherefores,” and all the answers given me. What a happy holiday, and what perfect rest as well!
Ah! if only grandmother and my father were living at Chivres with my aunts and great-grandmother and Marguerite, not forgetting Roussot, the cow and the calf, etc., etc., I should then be perfectly happy!
I was certainly very fond of grandfather, and my mother’s beauty, as I looked at her, effaced any trace of unjust scoldings and of the sadness I felt at seeing her so frequently pain both my father and grandmother; but I could not but think that my mother and grandfather could very well live at Chauny quite contentedly, while my four aunts, my great-grandmother, Marguerite, father, grandmother and I would be so unspeakably happy living at Chivres.
The time for departure, however, drew near. I had only a few days left. Grandfather had written (grandmother not being as yet in harmony with her sisters) that he would come for me on the following Monday, at the same place where he had given me into Marguerite’s care. This was Friday.
Neither my aunts nor myself dreamt of prolonging my stay. We felt that it might compromise the possibility of any future visits.
At my age, a year seemed a century. With their gentle philosophy and their equal tempers, my aunts told me that July and August would come quickly around again, and that now that they knew me, they could both think of and talk of me.
“You will leave us with perhaps more pain than we shall feel at losing you, Juliette,” said my teasing aunt Constance, when I was lamenting our separation, “but you will as certainly sooner forget the pleasure of our society than we shall forget the pleasure of yours.”