I considered that he was too severe upon so polite and generous a man. We went again to visit Barbeau, and were received by his wife. She was an aged, grey, gnarled, blear-eyed woman, who found nothing better to offer us than a miserable crust of gruyère cheese, which greatly vexed us. She said nothing as to her husband’s occupation but pursed up her lips to confide to us the fine places that her sons enjoyed. The eldest was postman in town, the second an employe at the railway station, and as for the third, oho! he was earning thousands and hundreds. “Waiter in a hotel in Paris, Monsieur Rambert, waiter in a furnished hotel. He sends us money.” “Bad trade,” observed grandfather. “There is no bad trade,” insisted the old woman. “The one thing is to get money.” “And you have none left?” “Surely not,--there is none left. There is nobody any more who eats chestnuts and drinks cider, Monsieur Rambert. As for the land, see! I spit upon it!” And the old hag did in fact spit upon the growing grain, now a pale green about to change to gold, which grew close around her hovel. One would have said that she was banning all the country-side. It did not occur to me that this grain was the flour which at our house was blessed before being kneaded into dough, the bread which my father never cut before tracing upon the loaf the sign of the cross. All I saw was a disgusting act and involuntarily I laid down my share of the cheese which I had been eating without pleasure. “Let’s go,” said grandfather abruptly. Mother Barbeau’s remarks vexed him. At least I had no attack of nausea this time. After this conversation he abandoned agricultural life for a time and decided to take me to the lake which we had not yet explored. He led me thither with no enthusiasm. “It is a closed-in water,” he said contemptuously. Were there open waters then? Of course--there was the sea. Until now the word had not impressed me and I attributed no meaning to it. When the mist hid the opposite shore the lake used to seem endless, and I had heard people around me say, “it’s like the sea.” I had paid no attention. Grandfather’s disdainful description brought to my imagination by contrast a free immensity. Later, when at last I saw the sea--it was at Dieppe, from the top of the cliff--I felt no surprise. It was simply an open water. “Would you like a row?” grandfather asked one day. Would I! I desired it all the more because such an expedition represented to me in some sort a substitution of the individual life for the family life. My parents had forbidden me to go out in a boat, after the fall into the water which had brought on my pleurisy. They were afraid both of the dampness and of my awkwardness. Once again, then, _I was the fair child who had escaped from his mother’s arms_. The _maiden with golden wings_ who enticed me was my own good pleasure.