I suffered greatly in not having a room to myself and being obliged to share grandmother’s. I tried to keep it neat and clean, but grandmother upset it as soon as it was tidy. She cared nothing for the elegance of the frame, although she was so particular about the portrait, that is, herself.
When I was kept indoors by rain or bad weather, I tried to put a little order into the arrangement of the house. I ransacked certain drawers and cupboards, and left them more orderly than they had ever been before. To the rag-bag with all the rubbish! to the poor all that we could no longer use! Neither grandfather nor grandmother made any objections, for they were convinced that my active life at Chivres had benefited me much, and that, provided I could create for myself a field of physical activity, they could all the better, and with scarcely any danger, set my head to work.
My grandparents’ house underwent a complete change in a fortnight. Fresh air, which was never allowed to enter the hermetically closed rooms, now blew in abundantly, and even broke a few windows. Arthémise and I scrubbed and rubbed and beat from top to bottom. I discovered in the garret some old vases and china, rather soiled by our dear pigeons, which I filled with prettily arranged flowers, and placed about the rooms.
Grandmother at last took some interest in the beautifying of our house. She would sometimes help us—not to clean, for that would have spoiled her beautiful hands, but to arrange.
She opened a cupboard for me on the first floor, and we found it full of beautiful gowns of dead grandmothers. Out of these I made table and bureau covers, to which grandmother added embroidery.
Grandfather enjoyed this luxury. The house seemed much more attractive to him. I owed it to his influence that grandmother allowed me to have a room to myself on the first floor, next to Arthémise. A communicating door was made between the two rooms.
I selected from the garret, which was full of furniture, the pieces that I liked. I stole from grandfather a pretty Louis XV. chiffonier, in which I had always kept my dolls and their clothes. So far as I was able, I copied the arrangement of aunt Sophie’s room.
I discovered a large table on which I set out my school books and papers, and many times grandmother left her beloved drawing-room and brought her embroidery to my room while she gave me my lesson.
I would sometimes send her away, saying, “Grandmother, I want to collect my thoughts.”
This made her smile and she would sometimes tease me by staying; at other times she would go, saying to herself that, after all, for a child to think, even of nothing as it were, was still thinking, and that in my father’s mind and her own, their chief desire, as they had said when I was away, was to create in me an individuality, even supposing that individuality might be contrary to their own ideals.