The Comtesse d’Aucourt, lady-in-waiting to the Princess Adelaide, the new King’s aunt, had been a friend of Madame de Château-Foix since convent days. If she were able to leave her post at Court she paid the Marquise a visit every year. It was by her that intimate news of Versailles came to the Château, and she had this year a budget of more interest than usual—all the particulars of the old King’s death in May. The two boys, quick to realise that she came from a world other than theirs, would demand to be told again how the beautiful Austrian Dauphine looked now that she was Queen of France, or how M. d’Aucourt, at present away as envoy at one of the smaller German courts, had escaped from the Indians when as a young man he fought in Canada with Vaudreuil and Montcalm. The Comtesse became in some sort installed as a story-teller to them, in the September evenings, round the fire, with Louis cross-legged on the floor and Gilbert leaning against his mother’s chair; or under the mulberry tree in the afternoon, when Louis would be flat on the grass at her feet, his own kicking occasionally in the air and his lips black with mulberries. The faint, rather wearied air that always clung to her, the little gestures of her beautiful hands, her clear, delicate enunciation with its undertone of fatigue, remained for years with Gilbert as a kind of embodiment of a life that seemed so far away and at times so attractive. Then the Comtesse left, and it was winter, with fresh delights; when the execrable, lane-like roads of Vendée were impassable, and with the coming of the snow one could play, with much semblance of reality, at being besieged. Then the days began to get longer, and the birds sang again, and it would soon be summer once more, the best time of all. And the days were like the year: the morning, when one did one’s lessons, was the Spring, because, though it was pleasant, there were more agreeable things to come; and those things happened in Summer, which was the afternoon; and the evening was the Autumn, because, though warded off with stories, bed-time was approaching; and bed, which meant night, was Winter. And the morning was Spring again. . . . But who can compile the almanac of a happy childhood? Day followed day, week fled after week; where the fields had been crowned with rippling yellow they stood shorn, were brown to the ploughshare, were white with frost, were green again with young life. Then, suddenly as it seemed, it all came to an end, for Gilbert was sixteen, and it was high time for him to begin the military education usual to his age and rank.