My mother frowned; she adored music, and I hated the piano. She was so fond of music that although she was then nearly thirty, she took lessons herself in order to encourage me to practise. What horrible torture it was! I used, very wickedly, to do my utmost to set my mother and my music mistress at variance. They were both of them as short-sighted as possible. When my mother had practised a new piece three or four days, she knew it by heart and played it fairly well, to the astonishment of Mlle. Clarisse, my insufferable old teacher, who held the music in her hand and read every note with her nose nearly touching the page. One day I heard, with joy, a quarrel beginning between mamma and this disagreeable Mlle. Clarisse. “There, that’s a quaver!” “No, there’s no quaver!” “This is a flat!” “No, you forget the sharp! How absurd you are, Mademoiselle!” added my mother, perfectly furious. A few minutes later my mother went to her room, and Mlle. Clarisse departed, muttering as she left. As for me, I was choking with laughter in my bedroom, for one of my cousins, who was a good musician, had helped me to add sharps, flats, and quavers, and we had done it with such care that even a trained eye would have had difficulty in discerning the fraud immediately. As Mlle. Clarisse had been sent off, I had no lesson that day. Mamma gazed at me a long time with her mysterious eyes, the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen in my life, and then she said, speaking very slowly: “After luncheon there is to be a family council.” I felt myself turning pale. “All right,” I answered. “What frock am I to put on, Mamma?” I said this merely for the sake of saying something, and to keep myself from crying. “Put your blue silk on; you look more staid in that.” Just at this moment my sister Jeanne opened the door boisterously, and with a burst of laughter jumped on to my bed and, slipping under the sheets, called out, “I’m there!” Marguerite had followed her into the room, panting and scolding. The child had escaped from her just as she was about to bathe her, and had announced, “I’m going into my sister’s bed.” Jeanne’s mirth at this moment, which I felt was a very serious one for me, made me burst out crying and sobbing. My mother, not understanding the reason of this grief, shrugged her shoulders, told Marguerite to fetch Jeanne’s slippers, and taking the little bare feet in her hands, kissed them tenderly. I sobbed more bitterly than ever. It was very evident that mamma loved my sister more than me, and this preference, which did not trouble me in an ordinary way, hurt me sorely now.