saying to myself
as when I hammered out my pitiless steps: "I have lied, I have always
lied, I have lived only on the outskirts of my life...." The air was
still, the soul alone sounded, and the soul also was at peace. I went
down into the depths--to find the soul's sweet beginnings, I suppose.

There were no beginnings. Though my early memories came back obediently,
they were not illuminating. The catechism.... With outstretched hands
and rounded voice, the Abbe Daudret was telling of the wicked, those
whom the Almighty was waiting to punish in the hereafter. Crushed by the
word wicked, stifled by the heavy solemnity of the church, withdrawn
into my littleness, I comprehended, with dull, recurring pangs, that I
was among the damned, I, the model little girl. We went home again; I
was calm, unruffled, obedient, but if any one used the word sinful in my
hearing, if I came across it threatening in black and white, I felt as
if a brutal fist had struck my shoulder; I blushed, a swift remorse
flamed in my bowels; that word was meant for me, _I_ was the guilty one.

At last one day I found out why I was guilty. I had not known before.

I had been summoned to the small drawing-room; the shutters were closed;
my mother, a dim figure in the twilight, was saying good-bye to a lady
in deep mourning whose veil framed a face of alabaster. How beautiful
she was! The quivering shadows made a halo around her. I scarcely dared
to approach her because I remembered the whispers that buzzed about her
name and the envy that glittered in the eyes of the women. How beautiful
she was!... Her heavy lashes weighed down her lids.... I wanted to say
something to her, just one word. I could not, could not even repeat what
my mother, leaning towards me, told me to say.... As the lady was
leaving she turned in the doorway, fixed her great wide eyes on me and
said with an even sadder note in her velvety voice: "The child is going
to be beautiful."

I heard myself exclaim with joy. As soon as the door closed, I ran to
the glass, which seemed to be waiting for me. My whole being was aflame
as I raised myself on tiptoe to receive the first echo of her words from
the mirror.... But my mother was already coming back and saying
severely: "You know it isn't true...." I was still on tiptoe. "You are
ugly!" My spirits dropped and instantly were bottled up in me.
Everything was clear, I understood, I understood....

It was an epitome of my life. The season