I stayed three weeks at my uncle’s, roaming about with my cousin and spending hours lying down flat, fishing for crayfish in the little stream that ran through the park. This park was immense and surrounded by a wide ditch. How many times I used to have bets with my cousins that I would jump that ditch! The bet was sometimes three sheets of paper, or five pins, or perhaps my two pancakes, for we used to have pancakes every Tuesday. And after the bet I jumped, more often than not falling into the ditch and splashing about in the green water, screaming because I was afraid of the frogs, and yelling with terror when my cousins pretended to rush away. When I returned to the house my aunt was always watching anxiously at the top of the stone steps for our arrival. What a lecture I had and what a cold look! “Go upstairs and change your clothes, mademoiselle,” she would say, “and thou stay in your room. Your dinner will be sent to you there without any dessert.” As I passed the big glass in the hall I would catch sight of myself, looking like a rotten tree stump, and see my cousin making signs that he would bring me some dessert, by putting his hand to his mouth. His sister used to go to his mother who fondled her and seemed to say: “Thank Heaven you are not like that little Bohemian!” This was my aunt’s stinging epithet for me in moments of anger. I used to go up to my room with a heavy heart, thoroughly ashamed and vexed, vowing to myself that I would never again jump the ditch, but on reaching my room I would find the gardener’s daughter there—a big, awkward, merry girl who used to wait on me. “Oh, how comic mademoiselle looks like that!” she would say, laughing so heartily that I was proud of looking comic and decided that when I jumped the ditch again I would get weeds and mud all over me. When I had undressed and washed I used to put on a flannel gown and wait in my room until my dinner came. Soup was sent up and then meat, bread, and water. I detested meat then, just as I do now, and threw it out of the window, after cutting off the fat, which I put on the rim of my plate, as my aunt used to come up unexpectedly. “Have you eaten your dinner, mademoiselle?” she would ask. “Yes, aunt,” I replied. “Are you still hungry?” “No, aunt.” “Write out ‘Our Father’ and the ‘Creed’ three times, you little heathen.” This was because I had not been baptized. A quarter of an hour later my uncle would come upstairs. “Have you had enough dinner?” he would ask. “Yes, uncle,” I replied. “Did you eat your meat?” “No, I threw it out of the window. I don’t like meat.” “You told your aunt an untruth, then.” “No, she asked me if I had eaten my dinner and I answered that I had, but I did not say that I had eaten my meat.” “What punishment has she given you?” “I am to write out ‘Our Father’ and the ‘Creed’ three times before going to bed.” “Do you know them by heart?” “No, not very well. I make mistakes always.”