“We sat down once more and the cake was cut up. I was king, and I chose Mademoiselle Perle as my queen, just as you did a little ago. She was all unconscious then of the honour that was done her.
“Well, the child was adopted and brought up as one of the family. She grew up, years passed on. She was a nice, gentle, obedient child. Every one loved her, and she would have been dreadfully spoiled, if my mother had not prevented that.
“My mother was a woman of order and hierarchy. She consented to treat little Claire as she did her own sons, but at the same time she took care that the distance between us was clearly marked, and the situation distinctly laid down.
“Therefore, as soon as the child was old enough to understand, she explained her story to her, and gently, indeed tenderly, impressed upon the little one’s mind that her relation to the Chantals was that of an adopted daughter, welcome, no doubt, but still a stranger.
“Claire grasped the situation with singular intelligence, and with surprising intuition. She learned to accept and keep the place assigned to her with such tact, grace, and delicacy that it moved my father to tears.
“My mother, too, was so touched by the passionate gratitude and the somewhat timid devotion of the darling, tender creature that she took to calling her ‛my daughter.’ Sometimes, when the little one had done something good or delicate, my mother would push her spectacles up on her brow, always a sign of emotion with her, and repeat, ‛Why, she’s a pearl, a regular pearl, the child!’ The name stuck to little Claire, who became and remained for us Mademoiselle Perle.”
IV
M. Chantal ceased speaking. He was seated on the billiard-table, dangling his feet, his left hand playing with a ball, while his right fiddled with a cloth which was used for wiping the chalk-marks off the scoring-slate, and which from its use we called the chalk-cloth. Rather red, his voice indistinct, he was speaking to himself now, lost in his recollections, going gently through the bygone things and the old events that were waking in his mind, as one strolls through the old gardens of the home where one was brought up, and where each tree, each path, each plant, the prickly hollies, the sweet-smelling laurels, the yews, whose fat red berries crush between one’s fingers, evoke at every step some little fact of our past life, one of those insignificant and delicious facts that make up the very foundation, the very warp of existence.
As for me, I stood there facing him, my back leaning against the wall, and my hands supported on my unused billiard-cue.
After a minute he resumed.