One day she noticed in me a certain predisposition to nervous fits, to a diseased contraction of muscles, and she became alarmed. When I was about one year old I had convulsions which came short of finishing me. The fits were so violent that my mouth, even long after the attack was over, remained twisted into an ugly grimace as if paralyzed. My mother would not admit that at periods of rapid growth the majority of children were subject to such fits. She saw in that something which she thought was characteristic of her and her ancestors, she saw in that the first symptoms of a hereditary illness, of a terrible disease which she thought was going to continue in her son. She battled hard, however, against these thoughts which came in hives; she used every bit of energy and vigor she could command to dissipate them, taking refuge in me as if in an inviolable asylum for protection against phantoms and evil spirits. She held me pressed against her bosom, covering me with kisses and saying: "My little Jean, it is not true, is it? You will live and be happy, won't you?... Answer me!... Alas! You can't talk, my poor little angel.... Oh, don't cry, never cry, Jean, my Jean, my dear little Jean!..." But question as she might, feel as she might my heart beating against her own, my awkward hands gripping her breasts, my legs dangling from under the loosed swaddling cloth--her confidence was gone, doubts gained the upper hand. An incident which was related to me time and again with a sort of religious terror served to bring consternation into my mother's soul. One day she was taking a bath. In the hall of the bathroom laid out with black and white square slabs, Marie, bent over me, was watching my first uncertain steps. Suddenly, fixing my gaze on a black square, I appeared to be very much frightened. I uttered a cry and, trembling all over as if I had seen something terrible, I hid my head in my nurse's apron. "What's the matter?" my mother anxiously asked. "I don't know," answered old Marie. It seemed as though Master Jean had been frightened by a paving block. She brought me to the spot where my countenance so suddenly changed its expression. But at the sight of the paving slab, I cried out again. My whole body shuddered. "There must be something!" cried my mother. "Marie, quick, quick, my underwear!... My God!--What did he see?" Having come out of the bathroom, she did not want to wait to be wiped, and scarcely covered by her peignoir she stooped over the stone and examined it. "That's strange," she murmured. "And yet he saw something....but what?... There isn't anything...."