One of _bon papa's_ poetic works I can still remember, of a very different and more endearing character. I was taken ill one morning while we were living with him in Paris and had been given to console me by a cousin of ours staying with us, the Duchesse de M----, a delicious little purse in white, knitted silk, embroidered with pale blue forget-me-nots. I told _maman_ that I wished very much to show this purse to _bon papa_, and that he should be informed of my illness. So I wrote him a note, and it was taken, with the purse, to his room. Presently the little parcel, much heavier, was brought back to me, and on opening my purse, I found inside it a centime, a liard, a sou--every coin, in fact, up to and including a golden twenty-franc piece. And this is the poem that was sent with the purse: "Vous voulez jeune Princesse Que je me rends près de vous? Que je baise de votre altesse Les pieds, les mains, et les genoux? Dans un instant je vais me rendre A vos désirs et à vos voeux, Mais vous me permettrez de prendre Deux baisers sur vos beaux yeux bleus." Such a grandfather, it must be admitted, had advantages as well as charms, yet our memory of him was always clouded by the one or two acts of cruel severity we had witnessed and of which I could not trust myself to speak. CHAPTER VIII LE MARQUIS DE PLOEUC In the Château de Ker-Guélegaan, near Quimper, lived an old friend of my family's, the Marquis de Ploeuc. The château was one of the oldest in Finisterre, an immense weather-beaten pile with a moat, a drawbridge, a great crenellated tower, and a turret that, springing from the first story, seemed, with its high-pointed roof, to be suspended in the air. Tall, dark trees rose in ordered majesty about the château, and before it a wide band of lawn, called a _tapis vert_, ran to the lodge-gates that opened on the highroad. From the upper windows one saw the blue Brittany sea. Along the whole length of the front façade ran a stone terrace with seven wide steps; the windows of the _salle d'honneur_ opened upon this, and the windows of the _petit salon_ and the dining- and billiard-room. The furniture in the _salle d'honneur_ was of Louis XV white lacquer, court chairs, and _tabourets de cour_. There were tall mirrors all along the walls, and in the corners hung four great crystal chandeliers. The curtains and portières were of a heavy, white silk that had become gray with time; they were scattered with bouquets of faded flowers, and caught up and looped together with knots of ribbon that had once been rose-colored. This glacial and majestic room was seldom used; it was in the _petit salon_, leading from it, that guests usually sat. Here the chairs were carved along their tops with garlands of roses and ribbons so delicate that we children were specially forbidden to touch them. The walls were hung with tapestries, at which I used often to gaze with delight.