Aunt Deen possessed another marvellous faculty--that of inventing words. I have already told you of _carabosser_, but she invented them by the hundred, so well adapted to their purpose that we understood them at once. I can not transcribe them--they lose their value when written down. Indeed I don’t know how to spell them; spoken language is not the same as written language, and her picturesque words had all the savour and crispness of popular speech. Aunt Deen also used rare words--where she found them is a mystery for she seldom read--strange and sonorous words and phrases that seemed her special property, and which since then, to my surprise and amusement, I have discovered in the dictionary, where I should never have thought of looking for them. Thus, to call down my pride, she one day called me a hospodar, and another day, “the purveyor in chief of mustard to the Pope.” I did not know that the hospodars were the tyrants of Wallachia, and that to believe oneself purveyor of mustard to the Pope meant to have a high opinion of oneself. These strange titles with which she invested me used to make me think of some big man, all in red, issuing commands in a loud voice, and I did not enjoy being likened to him. Dear great-aunt Deen, let me apostrophise you after the manner of poor Father Gregory! If my early childhood rings musically in my memory, as if it were mounted upon one of those mules all bedight with sleigh-bells, that can not move without giving forth a multitudinous jingle from far away as if to announce the approach of a great train, I owe it to your stories and your songs. As soon as thought summons it, and that is daily, here it comes, loudly ringing its joy-bells, because of which I shall never have reason to complain of fate. Before I see it, I hear it--that merry procession of memory; and when, at some turn of the road that leads from the past to the present, it suddenly comes upon me, it bears in its arms all the flowers of the springtide. You well deserve the bouquet of them that I pick for you, even a bouquet of poppies, as a guerdon for all the stories that you added to your care and prayers. For you were always praying audibly, on the stairs or in church or even under the banner of the wolf’s head itself. Silence was painful to you. That is why, dear Aunt Deen, I break it this evening and talk to you.