regulated by the various effects wrought upon her soul by
the intoxication of the storm, the force of hygiene, the stupidity of
my education and of symmetry in gardens, rather than by any anxiety (for
that was quite unknown to her) to save her plum-coloured skirt from the
spots of mud under which it would gradually disappear to a depth which
always provided her maid with a fresh problem and filled her with fresh
despair.

When these walks of my grandmother's took place after dinner there was
one thing which never failed to bring her back to the house: that was if
(at one of those points when the revolutions of her course brought her,
moth-like, in sight of the lamp in the little parlour where the liqueurs
were set out on the card-table) my great-aunt called out to her:
"Bathilde! Come in and stop your husband from drinking brandy!" For,
simply to tease her (she had brought so foreign a type of mind into my
father's family that everyone made a joke of it), my great-aunt used to
make my grandfather, who was forbidden liqueurs, take just a few drops.
My poor grandmother would come in and beg and implore her husband not to
taste the brandy; and he would become annoyed and swallow his few drops
all the same, and she would go out again sad and discouraged, but still
smiling, for she was so humble and so sweet that her gentleness towards
others, and her continual subordination of herself and of her own
troubles, appeared on her face blended in a smile which, unlike those
seen on the majority of human faces, had no trace in it of irony, save
for herself, while for all of us kisses seemed to spring from her eyes,
which could not look upon those she loved without yearning to bestow
upon them passionate caresses. The torments inflicted on her by my
great-aunt, the sight of my grandmother's vain entreaties, of her in
her weakness conquered before she began, but still making the futile
endeavour to wean my grandfather from his liqueur-glass--all these
were things of the sort to which, in later years, one can grow so well
accustomed as to smile at them, to take the tormentor's side with a.
happy determination which deludes one into the belief that it is not,
really, tormenting; but in those days they filled me with such horror
that I longed to strike my great-aunt. And yet, as soon as I heard her
"Bathilde! Come in and stop your husband from drinking brandy!" in my
cowardice I became at once a man, and did what all we grown men do whe