But after this she never saw me going out with grandfather without fixing upon me that look, the anxiety of which I still feel. By some ingenious artifice she used to add Louise to our party, or even little Nicola, who would trot behind us, her seven year old legs finding some difficulty in keeping up with us. The whole troop would set forth, grandfather clearly showing his displeasure over the new recruits. “I don’t propose to drag the whole camp after me,” he would mutter. “I am not a child’s nurse.” “Come, come!” Aunt Deen would reply, “such pretty children! You are only too proud to show yourself in their company.” None the less I agreed with him that the presence of my sisters spoiled our walks. One can never talk about anything with women along. They don’t understand out-of-door things, and they get cross as soon as one touches upon religion. I was not very far--I who had shown such fervour at my first communion--from thinking that mother exaggerated the importance of our having missed that service. I thought myself free, because I had closed my mind against all teaching except what came to me from grandfather. Being free, one could do as he pleased. We were not hindering the others from going to church, and even to the communion, and vespers into the bargain. Vacation came and completely interrupted our walks by ourselves. After vacation school would begin, and I should resume my place among the little school boys of my own age, without so much as knowing that the previous three months had quite changed my heart. BOOK III I POLITICS AFTER my long convalescence I did indeed return to school. It was an ancient institution in which kindly monks imparted antiquated instruction. It was possible to work there, when one’s schoolfellows did not positively put obstacles in the way, but it was easier to devote oneself to clandestine industries, such as training flies and cockchafers, drawing caricatures, reading forbidden books, and even carrying on explorations through the passages. The discipline was no better than the teaching. Up to this time the idea had never occurred to me to view as a prison this great building with its numerous doors and windows where one came and went as one pleased under the paternal eye of a new porter, entirely absorbed in the care of his flowers and of a tortoise whose manners he was studying. But I was now new-born to the sentiment of liberty, and consequently to that of slavery. I made every effort therefore to discover that I was unhappy.