Indelible! Yes, those two dates and only those have remained so, and when I retrace the past in fancy, I am always stopped by them. The two images--my father assassinated, my mother married again--weighed long upon my heart. Other children have restless and supple minds which yield easily to successive impressions; they surrender themselves entirely to the actual moment, pass from a pleasure to a childish trouble, and forget in the evening what they have felt during the day. But I? ah, no! From my two recollections I was never released. An ever present hallucination kept before my mind's eye the dead face on the pillow, and my mother kneeling at the bed's foot, or the sound in my ears of my aunt's voice announcing the other news. I could always see her sad face, her brown eyes, and the black bows on her cap shaking in the wind of the September afternoon. And still, even to-day, when I am endeavouring to reproduce the history of my mind's life, or the real and solitary André Cornélis, all other remembrances vanish before those two; not a phase of my youth but is pervaded by them and contained in them, as the cloud contains the lightning, and the fire it kindles, and the ruins of the homesteads which it strikes. Of all the images that crowd upon my memory, recalling what I was during my long years of childhood and youth, those two disastrous days are always the chief; they form the background of the picture of my life, the dark horizon of a more melancholy landscape. What are the other images? A large space, with old trees in it, some children playing late on an autumn day; while others, who are not playing, but only look on, lean against the old brown tree-stems, or wander about like forsaken creatures. This is the playground of the Lycée at Versailles. The scholars who are playing are the "old" boys, the others, the shy exiles, are the "new," and I am one of the latter. It is just four short weeks since my aunt told me of my mother's marriage, and already my life is entirely changed. On my return from the holidays it was decided that I should enter the school as a boarder. My mother and my stepfather were about to travel in Italy until the summer, and the question of their taking me with them was not even mooted. My mother proposed to allow me to remain as a day-pupil, under the care of my aunt, who would come up to Paris; but my stepfather negatived the proposition at once by quite reasonable arguments. Why should so great a sacrifice of all her habits be imposed upon the old lady, and what was there to dread in the rough life of a boarding-school, which is the best means of forming a boy's character? "And he needs that schooling," added my stepfather, directing the same cold glance towards me as on the day when he grasped my arm so roughly. In short, it was settled that I was to go to school, but not in Paris. "The air is bad," said my stepfather.