We got on very well for Melle. Allamand bore with my caprices, which were many, I must confess. But though she was always in a good temper we had little quarrels sometimes, which we soon made up. I studied my piano with Melle. Allamand and learned English, which soon became a second mother-tongue to me. When we went out walking, my governess’s soft heart was full of pity for the poor starving homeless dogs which she picked up in the streets and brought home to be fed; the ugliest and shabbiest had her tenderest care. Melle. Allamand was called back to England and my parents had to get another governess. An English young lady was engaged, named Miss Emily Puddan. My brothers made her rage awfully in calling her Miss Pudding. She had no authority over me whatever, being in fact rather silly, but she was a very pleasant companion—so well up in all games. We were enthusiastic croquet-players and had sometimes desperate quarrels, being very near scratching each other’s eyes out. “I tell you I hit your ball!”—“You didn’t!”—“I did!” etc., our arguments becoming very hot and uncivil; soon we dropped our mallets and ran and complained to mamma, both governess and pupil. When I was past my twelfth year I grew very fond of reading the books of the “Bibliothèque Rose.” I pitied mamma because she read deadly uninteresting English Tauchnitz novels, when there existed such enrapturing books as _Les petites filles modéles_, _les malheurs de Sophie_, etc. But this childish literature did not hinder me from flirtation. I used to long for adventures; and here I was having one, notwithstanding that I had only just grown out of pinafores. My parents took me sometimes to the Italian opera and I conceived a romantic admiration for the tenor of the troop, who was, as I thought adorable beyond words. I raved about him. When out walking with my governess, I dragged her in the direction I knew the tenor would take, in the hope of meeting him. I began to knit a prosaic cache-nez for the object of my dreams, which mamma confiscated, happily, in time. From my earliest years I had a great love for acting; we gave, from time to time, little theatrical entertainments; we dressed up and played fragments of Shakespeare’s dramas, and I was the leading-lady in these rehearsals. When I took up the high tragic part of “Desdemona,” Nicolas, the brother of my little friend Sophy Annenkoff, was the personator of “Othello,” he sacrificed his appearance so far as to blacken his face. During the murder scene, when the situation grew particularly tragic, Nicolas displayed such a realism of the Shakespearian meaning, that I began to fear being choked in reality.