CHAPTER XVII.
The poor old grandmother who sang so constantly was dying.
We were all standing about her bed at nightfall one spring evening. She had been ailing scarcely more than forty-eight hours; but the doctor said that on account of her great age she could not rally, and he pronounced her end to be very near.
Her mind had become clear; she no longer mistook our names, and in a sweet calm voice she begged us to remain near her—it was doubtless the voice of other days, the one that I had never heard before.
As I stood close to my father's side I turned my eyes from my dying grandmother, and they wandered about the room with its old-fashioned furniture. I looked especially at the pictures of bouquets in vases that hung upon the wall. Oh! those poor little water colors in my grandmother's room, how ingenuous they were! They all bore this inscription: “A Bouquet for my mother,” and under this there was a little verse of four lines dedicated to her which I could now read and understand. These works of art had been painted by my father in his early boyhood, and he had presented them to his mother upon each joyful anniversary. The poor, unpretentious little pictures bore testimony to the humble life of those early days, and they spoke of the sacred intimacy of mother and son,—they had been painted during the time which followed those great ordeals, the wars, the English invasion and the burning over of the country by the enemy. For the first time I realized that my grandmother too had been young; that, without doubt, before the trouble with her head, my father had loved her as I loved my mamma, and I felt that he would sorrow greatly when he lost her; I felt sorry for him and I was also full of remorse because I had laughed at her singing, and had been amused when she spoke to her image reflected in the looking-glass.
They sent me down stairs. On different pretexts, the reason for which I did not understand, they kept me away from the room until the day was over; then they took me to the house of our friends, the D——s, where I was to have dinner with Lucette.
When, at about half past eight, I returned home with my nurse, I insisted upon going straight to my grandmother's room.
When I entered I was struck with the order and the air of profound peace that pervaded the room. My father was sitting motionless at the head of the bed—he was in the shadow, the open curtains were draped with great precision, and on the pillow, just in its middle, was the head of my sleeping grandmother; her whole position had about it something very regular—something that suggested eternal rest.
My mother and sister were seated beside a chiffonier near the door, from which place they had kept watch over my grandmother during her illness. As soon as I entered they signalled to me with their hands as if to say: “Softly, softly, make no noise; she is asleep.” The shade of their lamp threw a vivid light upon the material they were busied with, a number of little silk squares, brown, yellow, gray, etc., that I recognized as pieces of their old dresses and hat ribbons.