Nothing in the world vexes me so much as to have people begin to whisper before me, glancing at me compassionately as they nod their heads. My ears are very acute, and I know perfectly well that they are talking of my poor mother and pitying me because my father married a shop-girl. I feel actually boiling with rage. Young as I was when I lost her, she still lives in my memory as the loveliest creature I have ever met in my life.
Tall and very slender, but always graceful, perfectly natural in manner, with tiny hands and feet, and large, melancholy, startled eyes, in a delicate, old-world face, she looked like an elf who could not quite comprehend why she was condemned to carry in her breast so large a human heart, well-nigh breaking with tenderness and melancholy. I know I look like her, and I am proud of it. Whenever I am presented to one of my couple of hundred aunts whose acquaintance I am condemned to make, she is sure to exclaim, "How very like Fritz she is!--all Fritz!" And I never fail to rejoin, "Oh, no, I am like my mother; every one who knew her says I am like mamma."
And then my aunts' faces grow long, and they think me pert.
Although I was scarcely six years old when Uncle Paul took us away from Paris, I can remember distinctly my home there. It was in a steep street in Montmartre, very high up on the fourth or fifth floor of a huge lodging-house. The sunlight shone in long broad streaks into our rooms through the high windows, outside of which extended an iron balcony. Our rooms were very pretty, very neat,--but very plain. Papa did not seem to belong to them; I don't know how I discovered this, but I found it out, little as I was. The ceilings looked low, when he rose from the rocking-chair, where he loved to sit, and stood at his full height. He always held his head gaily, high in the air, never bowing it humbly to suit his modest lodgings.
His circumstances, cramped for the time, as I learned later, by his imprudent marriage, contracted in spite of his father's disapproval, apparently struck him as a good joke, or, at the worst, as a passing annoyance. He always maintained the gay humour of a man of rank who, finding himself overtaken by a storm upon some party of pleasure, is obliged to take refuge in a wretched village inn.
Now and then he would stretch out his arms as if to measure the smallness of his house, and laugh. But mamma would cast down her large eyes sadly; then he would clasp her to his breast, kiss her, and call her the delight of his life; and I would creep out of the corner where I had been playing with my dolls, and pluck him by the sleeve, jealously desirous of my share of caresses.
In my recollection of my earliest childhood--a recollection without distinct outlines, and like some sweet, vague dream lingering in the most secret, cherished corner of my heart--everything is warm and bright; it is all light and love!
Papa is almost always with us in our sunny little nest. I see him still,--ah, how plainly!--leaning back in his rocking-chair, fair, with a rather haughty but yet kindly smile, his eyes sparkling with good-humoured raillery. He is smoking a cigarette, and reading the paper, apparently with nothing in the world to do but to enjoy life; all the light in the little room seems to come from him.
The first four years of my life blend together in my memory like one long summer day, without the smallest cloud in the blue skies above it.
I perfectly remember the moment in which my childish happiness was interrupted by the first disagreeable sensation. It was an emotion of dread. Until then I must have slept through all the hours of darkness, for, when once I suddenly wakened and found the light all gone, I was terrified at the blackness above and around me, and I screamed aloud. Then I noticed that mamma was kneeling, sobbing, beside my bed. Her sobs must have wakened me. She lighted a candle to soothe me, and told me a story. In the midst of my eager listening, I asked her, "Where is papa?"