One day, as if in answer to my wish, there came a letter that created quite a stir in our house. It was from a first cousin of my father, who had at one time regarded my father with a brotherly love, but for thirty years, for some reason unknown to me, this cousin had not written or given any sign of life. At the time of my birth, all talk of him had ceased in our family, and I was ignorant of his existence. And now he wrote and begged that the old bond might be renewed; he was living, he said, in a little southern village in the heart of the Swiss Mountains. He announced that he had two sons and a daughter about the age of my brother and sister. His letter was very affectionate, and my father responded to it in like manner and told his cousin all about us, his three children. The correspondence having continued, it was arranged that I should spend my next vacation with my relatives; my sister was to take me there and play the part of mother as she had done during our visit to the Island. The south, the mountains, this sudden extension of my horizon, the cousins who seemed literally to have fallen from the sky, became the subject of my constant reveries until the month of August, the time set for our departure. CHAPTER XXXVII. Little Jeanne had come over to spend the day at our house; it was at the end of May during that spring in which my expectations were so great--I was twelve years old at the time. All the afternoon we rehearsed with our tiny jointed china dolls, and painted scenery, we had in fact been busy with the “Donkey's Skin,”--but with a revised and grand version of it, and we had about us a great confusion of paints, brushes, pieces of cardboard, gilt paper and bits of gauze. When it came time for us to go down into the dining-room we stored our precious work away in a large box that was consecrated to it from that day forth--the box was a new one made of pine, and it had a penetrating, resinous odor. After our dinner, at dusk, we were taken out for a walk. But, to my surprise and sorrow, we found it chilly and the sky was overcast, and every where there was a sort of mist that recalled winter to my mind. Instead of going beyond the town, to the places usually frequented by pedestrians, we went towards the Marine Garden, a much prettier and more suitable walk, but one usually deserted after sunset.