Not knowing where to find my mother, and not being able to write, my nurse—without telling any of my friends took me with her to her new abode.
The change delighted me. I was five years old at the time, and I remember the day as if it were yesterday. My nurse's abode was just over the doorway of the house, and the window was framed in the heavy and monumental door. From outside I thought it was beautiful, and I began to clap my hands on reaching the house. It was towards five o'clock in the evening in the month of November, when everything looks grey. I was put to bed, and no doubt I went to sleep at once, for there end my souvenirs of that day.
The next morning there was terrible grief in store for me. There was no window in the little room in which I slept, and I began to cry, and escaped from the arms of my nurse, who was dressing me, so that I could go into the adjoining room. I ran to the round window, which was an immense "bull's-eye" above the doorway, I pressed my stubborn brow against the glass and began to scream with rage on seeing no trees; no box-wood, no leaves falling, nothing, nothing but stone—cold, grey, ugly stone, and panes of glass opposite me. "I want to go away. I don't want to stay here. It is all black, black! It is ugly! I want to see the ceiling of the street!" and I burst into tears. My poor nurse took me up in her arms and, folding me in a rug, took me down into the courtyard. "Lift up your head, Milk Blossom, and look! See, there is the ceiling of the street!"
It comforted me somewhat to see that there was some sky in this ugly place, but my little soul was very sad. I could not eat, and I grew pale and became anæmic, and I should certainly have died of consumption if it had not been for a mere chance, a most unexpected incident. One day I was playing in the courtyard with a little girl named Titine, who lived on the second floor, and whose face or real name I cannot recall. I saw my nurse's husband walking across the courtyard with two ladies, one of whom was most fashionably attired. I could only see their backs, but the voice of the fashionably-attired lady caused my heart to stop beating. My poor little body trembled with nervous excitement.
"Do any of the windows look on to the courtyard?" she asked.
"Yes, madame, those four," he replied, pointing to four open ones on the first floor.
The lady turned to look at them, and I uttered a cry of joy.
"Aunt Rosine! Aunt Rosine!" I exclaimed, clinging to the skirts of the pretty visitor. I buried my face in her furs, stamping, sobbing, laughing, and tearing her wide lace sleeves in my frenzy of delight. She took me in her arms and tried to calm me, and, questioning the concierge, she stammered out to her friend, "I can't understand what it all means! This is little Sarah! My sister Youle's child!"
The noise I made had attracted attention, and people opened their windows. My aunt decided to take refuge in the concierge's lodge, in order to come to an explanation. My poor nurse told her all that had taken place—her husband's death and her second marriage. I do not remember what she said to excuse herself. I clung to my aunt, who was deliciously perfumed, and I would not let go of her.
She promised to come the following day to fetch me, but I did not want to stay any longer in that dark place. I asked to start at once with my nurse. My aunt stroked my hair gently, and spoke to her friend in a language I did not understand. She tried in vain to explain something to me—I do not know what it was—but I insisted that I wanted to go away with her at once. In a gentle, tender, caressing voice, but without any real affection, she said all kinds of pretty things, stroked me with her gloved hands, patted my frock, which was turned up, and made any amount of charming, frivolous little gestures, but all without any real feeling. She then went away, at her friend's entreaty, after emptying her purse in my nurse's hands. I rushed towards the door, but the husband of my nurse, who had opened it for her, now closed it again. My nurse was crying, and, taking me in her arms, she opened the window, saying to me: "Don't cry, Milk Blossom; look at your pretty aunt. She will come back again, and then you can go away with her."