n
face to face with suffering and injustice; I preferred not to see them;
I ran up to the top of the house to cry by myself in a little room
beside the schoolroom and beneath the roof, which smelt of orris-root,
and was scented also by a wild currant-bush which had climbed up between
the stones of the outer wall and thrust a flowering branch in through
the half-opened window. Intended for a more special and a baser use,
this room, from which, in the daytime, I could see as far as the keep of
Roussainville-le-Pin, was for a long time my place of refuge, doubtless
because it was the only room whose door I was allowed to lock, whenever
my occupation was such as required an inviolable solitude; reading or
dreaming, secret tears or paroxysms of desire. Alas! I little knew
that my own lack of will-power, my delicate health, and the consequent
uncertainty as to my future weighed far more heavily on my grandmother's
mind than any little breach of the rules by her husband, during those
endless perambulations, afternoon and evening, in which we used to see
passing up and down, obliquely raised towards the heavens, her handsome
face with its brown and wrinkled cheeks, which with age had acquired
almost the purple hue of tilled fields in autumn, covered, if she were
walking abroad, by a half-lifted veil, while upon them either the
cold or some sad reflection invariably left the drying traces of an
involuntary tear.

My sole consolation when I went upstairs for the night was that Mamma
would come in and kiss me after I was in bed. But this good night lasted
for so short a time: she went down again so soon that the moment in
which I heard her climb the stairs, and then caught the sound of her
garden dress of blue muslin, from which hung little tassels of plaited
straw, rustling along the double-doored corridor, was for me a moment
of the keenest sorrow. So much did I love that good night that I reached
the stage of hoping that it would come as late as possible, so as
to prolong the time of respite during which Mamma would not yet have
appeared. Sometimes when, after kissing me, she opened the door to go, I
longed to call her back, to say to her "Kiss me just once again," but
I knew that then she would at once look displeased, for the concession
which she made to my wretchedness and agitation in coming up to me with
this kiss of peace always annoyed my father, who thought such ceremonies
absurd, and she would have liked to try to indu