First Evening Second Evening Third Evening Fourth Evening Fifth Evening Sixth Evening Seventh Evening Eighth Evening Ninth Evening Tenth Evening Eleventh Evening Twelfth Evening Thirteenth Evening Fourteenth Evening Fifteenth Evening Sixteenth Evening Seventeenth Evening Eighteenth Evening Nineteenth Evening Twentieth Evening Twenty-First Evening Twenty-Second Evening Twenty-Third Evening Twenty-Fourth Evening Twenty-Fifth Evening Twenty-Sixth Evening Twenty-Seventh Evening Twenty-Eighth Evening Twenty-Ninth Evening Thirtieth Evening Thirty-First Evening Thirty-Second Evening THE BAGPIPERS. FIRST EVENING. I was not born yesterday, said Père Étienne in 1828. I came into the world, as near as I can make out, in the year 54 or 55 of the last century. But not remembering much of my earlier years, I shall only tell you about myself from the time of my first communion, which took place in '70 in the parish church of Saint-Chartier, then in charge of the Abbé Montpéron, who is now very deaf and broken down. This was not because our own parish of Nohant was suppressed in those days; but our curate having died, the two churches were united for a time under the ministry of the priest of Saint-Chartier, and we went every day to be catechised,--that is, I and my little cousin and a lad named Joseph, who lived in the same house with my uncle, with a dozen other children of the neighborhood. I say "my uncle" for short, but he was really my great-uncle, the brother of my grandmother, and was named Brulet; hence his little granddaughter and only heir was called Brulette, without any mention whatever of her Christian name, which was Catherine. Now, to tell you at once about things as they were, I soon felt that I loved Brulette better than I was obliged to do as a cousin; and I was jealous because Joseph lived in the same house, which stood about a stone's throw distant from the last houses in the village and rather more than three quarters of a mile from mine,--so that he could see her at all times, while I saw her only now and then, till the time when we met to be catechised. I will tell you how it happened that Brulette's grandfather and Joseph's mother lived under the same roof. The house belonged to the old man, and he let a small part of it to the woman, who was a widow with only one child. Her name was Marie Picot, and she was still marriageable, being little over thirty, and bearing traces in her face and figure of having been in her day a very pretty woman. She was still called by some people "handsome Mariton,"--which pleased her very much, for she would have liked to marry again. But possessing nothing except her bright eyes and her honest tongue, she thought herself lucky to pay a low price for her lodging and get a worthy and helpful old man for a landlord and neighbor,--one too who wouldn't worry her, but might sometimes help her.