When I found an analogy between the Picardy patois—which I had acquired the habit of speaking with my maid Arthémise—and Latin, it pleased me so much, that aunt Sophie asked one of our relatives, a Raincourt of Saint-Quentin, to send her an almanac in the Picardy tongue, called The Plowman. She then devoted herself to a veritable monk’s work in adding to my stock all the Latin words to be found in Picardy patois. The Plowman, in speaking of work in the fields, enabled me to step over a new frontier in my comprehension of the bucolics.
My aunt Sophie’s marvellous aptitude for teaching made her derive profit from everything, and one could really say of her that she taught by amusing.
There was only one new thing in our order of life: My aunt Constance, who suffered from anæmia, had need of cold douches, and the doctor ordered her to go and take them by the side of the mill-wheel. Cold baths were excellent for me, and I took one every day in the pretty wash-house of the close, so my aunt Constance took me with her every afternoon. She was as gay and as much of a child as I, and we would amuse ourselves so much that we laughed till we cried. The bathing hour at the mill became a regular frolic, and aunt Anastasie, seduced by my descriptions of it, came with us once or twice and finally always accompanied us. Soon the miller’s wife joined our party, and then Marguerite. Aunt Sophie alone resisted. She had not left the house or the close for twenty years. Great-grandmother moved with difficulty from her arm-chair, so there was no hope of bringing her, and, besides, one of her daughters was always obliged to stay with her.
Roussot, therefore, alone remained to be asked to join us, and I invited him one day after breakfast, when he had his daily bread, by a well-turned speech intermingled with songs.
While we were laughing, Roussot answered, if not my speech at least my song, and we concluded he had accepted the invitation.
That afternoon Marguerite led him by the bridle into the little river. I was mounted on him and was going to take my plunge from his back; but the bath made him so merry that he threw me off disrespectfully into the water. He even dared to kick about and splashed us all over so much that we could not see clearly enough to drive him out of the water.
We laughed more that day than on any other, but we did not propose, however, to try again the experience of a bath in company with Roussot the next day, for he was really too free and easy in his manners.
The two months spent with my aunts seemed like two weeks. I had never until then fully realised how rapidly time can pass.
But my annual visit to Chivres was so dear to me, it had become such a joy in my life, that I should have thought myself wrong to have sorrowed over its short duration.
