“Oh, how comic Mademoiselle looks like that!” she would say, laughing so heartily that I was proud of looking comic, and I 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.” And the adorable man would then dictate to me “Our Father” and the “Creed,” and I copied it in the most devoted way, as he used to dictate with deep feeling and emotion. He was religious, very religious indeed, this uncle of mine, and after the death of my aunt he became a Carthusian monk. As I write these lines, ill and aged as he is, and bent with pain, I know he is digging his own grave, weak with the weight of the spade, imploring God to take him, and thinking sometimes of me, of his little Bohemian. Ah, the dear, good man, it is to him that I owe all that is best in me. I love him devotedly and have the greatest respect for him. How many times in the difficult phases of my life I have thought of him and consulted his ideas, for I never saw him again, as my aunt quarrelled purposely with my mother and me. He was always fond of me, though, and has told his friends to assure me of this. Occasionally, too, he has sent me his advice, which has always been very straightforward and full of indulgence and common sense. Recently I went to the country where the Carthusians have taken refuge. A friend of mine went to see my uncle, and I wept on hearing the words he had dictated to be repeated to me.