I told her boldly that nothing but the dread of disturbing her kept me from knocking every day. We had always walked into the lodges without knocking, and I dwelt on this as one of my new accomplishments.
"I am not studying night and day," she answered. "Sophie Saint-Michel and her mother were my teachers, and they are gone now, one to heaven and the other to Castorland."
Remembering what Annabel de Chaumont said about holy Sophie I inquired if she had been religious.
"The Saint-Michels were better than religious; both mother and daughter were eternally patient with the poor count, whose troubles unsettled his reason. They had no dear old Ernestine, and were reduced to the hardest labor. I was a little child when we came to America, yet even then the spirit of the Saint-Michels seemed to me divine."
"I wish I could remember when I was a little child."
"Can you not recall anything?"
"I have a dim knowledge of objects."
"What objects?"
"St. Regis church, and my taking first communion; and the hunting, the woods and water, boats, snowshoes, the kind of food I liked; Skenedonk and all my friends—but I scarcely knew them as persons until I awoke."
"What is your first distinct recollection?"