The high-tide of the year, to the cook, was October, the vintage season. What comings and goings through the kitchen of vintagers at work in the wine-press! How important that their strength should be kept up by large reinforcements of boiled beef and potatoes, and how warm and savoury the steam that filled the kitchen from the great kettles! We children used to make the most of the confusion to settle ourselves upon the fire-dogs, our pockets full of nuts which the wind had scattered over the farm lane, or which we had ourselves surreptitiously knocked off with switches. A bit of flint served to crack them upon the hearth-stone. If they were still in their green husk a juice would squirt out, staining our hands and clothes with a pigment of which not the best soap could obliterate the tell-tale tokens. But the kernels, white as a fowl well dressed for a doll’s dinner, would crunch most deliciously between our teeth. Or we would stealthily pop our chestnuts on a corner of the stove, revelling in the warmth after coming in, chilled through, from kicking dead leaves before us in the face of the autumn winds; for in my country the winds are harsh and rude. Many a time, too, have I curiously watched Mariette’s movements as she killed a fowl. Her dexterity and her indifference were alike extreme. Like the most experienced headsman she would decapitate ducks that continued to run around, headless, to my great admiration. One day she asked me to hold a reluctant victim during the operation. I indignantly refused my co-operation, whereupon she exclaimed, with the contempt which she often affected: “Ho! how squeamish we are! You are ready enough to eat them!” I am not going to conduct you through the whole house. It would take too long, for there are two stories above the ground floor, the second being much less ancient than the first, and above that a garret and the tower. The tower, which you reach by a winding stair, has four windows commanding the four quarters of the horizon. This diversified view, too extensive for my taste, never interested me much. I suppose that children care little for things that extend indefinitely, things that do nothing, clouds, vague landscapes. On stormy days the wind made an infernal hubbub around the tower; one might have fancied it a living creature, ill-mannered and strong, heaping insults upon the walls before throwing them down. The staircase was none too light; at nightfall it was easy to get frightened there, and as the steps were very narrow on the side of the supporting pillar, you were likely to get a fine _carabosse_ if you hurried. _Carabosse_ was a word which Aunt Deen had invented for severe falls occasioned by hurrying; falls from which one picked oneself up lame, bruised and swollen; the word no doubt came from the wicked fairy Carabosse.