When we knew you were coming, your father and I, we used to laugh because you see, I had so many names and a title too--and I'd run away from everything just to be with Felix and I'd no way to get at what I owned without going back to Grandy. Besides it seemed to me that what I owned had made all of us unhappy. So we used to say all we'd give you would be the names and the titles but we'd keep you away from the rest of it--and that we were glad the days of princesses were gone for both our countries, America and France. But I think that when the time comes, for you to marry you will like to have all these papers that tell you who you are and I think too, that if you are wise, having the houses and the money that belongs to you cannot make you unhappy--I like to think you will find some way to be happier than the rest of us have been, for you have something that none of us had, something that was your legacy from your father. He was very poor, Felice, but everyone loved him because he never let himself be morose or unhappy. He taught me that you can't be happy yourself if you are making anyone else unhappy. He said the delightful thing about not possessing much was that one could be prodigal and extravagant about being happy. He said he had no obligation in this world except to be happy. He made a game of everything he did whether it was something he liked to do or something he hated to do. Toward the end he had to do many things he hated, that he wasn't strong enough to do. But he did them gaily. He made everyone around him laugh as he did. When the time comes for you to go out of this world you will have found that so little in it really matters and that everything in it matters so much! It is not until we are ready to go that we know how precious is the thing within us that men call--self. It is made up of all the loves and hates and good and bad of the men and women who went before us. It does not really belong to us. It belongs to all of the people who will come after us. There happened to be only a little of me left to give you, Felice, but the part that is left is the happy part--the rest of me was lost a long time ago. And the titles and the names that they called me were not any of them so dear as the one you gave me--that is MAMAN. Which think you Felicia Day loved more? That letter or the thick old parchments that told her that she was the great-great-granddaughter of a king? It was the end of June. If you wanted to get little Miss By-the-Day to sew for you the Disagreeable Walnut would tell you that she'd gone away without leaving an address. If you wanted to hear Mademoiselle Folly at the theaters you discovered that she wasn't playing.