ecret finger traced a first wrinkle upon her soul and made the first
white hair shew upon her head. This thought redoubled my sobs, and then
I saw that Mamma, who had never allowed herself to go to any length
of tenderness with me, was suddenly overcome by my tears and had to
struggle to keep back her own. Then, as she saw that I had noticed
this, she said to me, with a smile: "Why, my little buttercup, my little
canary-boy, he's going to make Mamma as silly as himself if this goes
on. Look, since you can't sleep, and Mamma can't either, we mustn't
go on in this stupid way; we must do something; I'll get one of your
books." But I had none there. "Would you like me to get out the books
now that your grandmother is going to give you for your birthday? Just
think it over first, and don't be disappointed if there is nothing new
for you then."

I was only too delighted, and Mamma went to find a parcel of books
in which I could not distinguish, through the paper in which it was
wrapped, any more than its squareness and size, but which, even at this
first glimpse, brief and obscure as it was, bade fair to eclipse already
the paint-box of last New Year's Day and the silkworms of the year
before. It contained _La Mare au Diable_, _Francois le Champi_, _La
Petite Fadette_, and _Les Maitres Sonneurs_. My grandmother, as I
learned afterwards, had at first chosen Mussel's poems, a volume of
Rousseau, and _Indiana_; for while she considered light reading as
unwholesome as sweets and cakes, she did not reflect that the strong
breath of genius must have upon the very soul of a child an influence
at once more dangerous and less quickening than those of fresh air and
country breezes upon his body. But when my father had seemed almost to
regard her as insane on learning the names of the books she proposed
to give me, she had journeyed back by herself to Jouy-le-Vicomte to
the bookseller's, so that there should be no fear of my not having my
present in time (it was a burning hot day, and she had come home so
unwell that the doctor had warned my mother not to allow her again
to tire herself in that way), and had there fallen back upon the four
pastoral novels of George Sand.

"My dear," she had said to Mamma, "I could not allow myself to give the
child anything that was not well written."

The truth was that she could never make up her mind to purchase anything
from which no intellectual profit was to be derived, and, above all,
that pro