return from school, so
that I lost my play-hours. There were a great many officers with their
wives located in the palace, and, of course, no want of playmates. The
girls used to go to the bosquet, which adjoined the gardens of the
palace, collect flowers, and make a garland, which they hung on a rope
stretched across the court-yard of the palace. As the day closed in,
the party from each house, or apartments rather, brought out a lantern,
and having thus illuminated our ballroom by subscription, the boys and
girls danced the "_ronde_," and other games, until it was bedtime. As
the window of my bedroom looked out upon the court, whenever I was put
into prison, I had the mortification of witnessing all these joyous
games, without being permitted to join in them.

To prove the effect of my grandmother's system of dreaming upon me, I
will narrate a circumstance which occurred. My grandfather had a landed
property about four miles from Luneville. A portion of this land was
let to a farmer, and the remainder he farmed on his own account, and the
produce was consumed in the house-keeping. From this farm we received
milk, butter, cheese, all kinds of fruit, and indeed everything which a
farm produces. In that part of France they have a method of melting
down and clarifying butter for winter use, instead of salting it. This
not only preserves it, but, to most people, makes it more palatable; at
all events I can answer for myself, for I was inordinately fond of it.
There were eighteen or twenty jars of it in the store-room, which were
used up in rotation. I dared not take any out of the jar in use, as I
should be certain to be discovered; so I went to the last jar, and by my
repeated assaults upon it, it was nearly empty before my grandmother
discovered it. As usual, she had a dream. She commenced with counting
over the number of jars of butter; and how she opened such a one, and it
was full; and then the next, and it was full; but before her dream was
half over, and while she was still a long way from the jar which I had
despoiled, I was on my knees, telling her the end of the dream, of my
own accord, for I could not bear the suspense of having all the jars
examined. From that time, I generally made a full confession before the
dream was ended.

But when I was about nine years old, I was guilty of a very heavy
offence, which I shall narrate, on account of the peculiar punishment
which I received, and which might b