My childhood was passed almost entirely alone; first with my nurse as sole companion; afterward with my governess, a perfect angel, knowing no more of the things of earth than angels do. For instance--of botany she simply knew nothing. If I asked her what was larkspur in French, she would answer, “_C’est le coucou bleu_”; a buttercup was “_le coucou jaune_”; eyebright, “_le coucou blanc_.” All flowers, that is all wild and field flowers, to her were various colored _coucous_. But I must do her the justice to say that she was fully authorized not to go too thoroughly into my education, my dear good father having engaged her on the express stipulation that what he required for his daughter was a good “superficial” education. And that was what I certainly obtained. Thus for a long time I thought I knew the history of the world from beginning to end; when suddenly I found that Mme. Duphot, at mamma’s request, had quietly suppressed the whole of one century--that of the Reformation. They desired that I should know nothing of Luther. But I discovered him--in the eleventh volume of Schlosser’s “History of the World,” accidentally forgotten and left behind when it had been decided to turn out my brother’s old books and pack them off to a second-hand dealer. Heaven forgive me if I am a bad Catholic, but, honestly, Dr. Luther does not seem to me such a terrible creature that one dare not even know of his existence. Of course I did not venture to express so heterodox an opinion to my devout Duphot; it would have destroyed her peace of mind forever, and she would henceforth have been spending all her poor little savings on the reading of masses for the restoration of my endangered faith. But I did tell the chaplain when next I went to confession. He merely imposed an extra penitential prayer--nothing more; nor did he in any way alter his customary admonition, nor the sentence with which it always closed--“And then say, ‘Dear God, I thank thee for all the mercies which thou dost vouchsafe to me, and to my noble family.’” I always used to think it strangely worded, and not exactly in accordance with the manner in which we should address the Divine Being, who takes no account of “noble” families, we being all equal in his sight. And this was not the only thing in which the reverend chaplain gave me ground for astonishment. Upon learned subjects he held views shared by no one save, perhaps, Mme. Duphot and myself--and myself only up to a certain period. For example: he used to give me my geography lessons, we beginning with physiography as being the most difficult, and, once mastered, the rest being bound to follow as a matter of course. Among other things the reverend chaplain informed us: “At the North Pole it is cold, and at the South Pole” (Siedpol, he called it) “hot, I suppose.”