e blame, our governess, a
terrible Mademoiselle Caroline, worked upon my mother's fears,--told her
I had a horror of my home and would long ago have run away if she had
not watched me; that I was not stupid but sullen; and that in all her
experience of children she had never known one of so bad a disposition
as mine. She pretended to search for me. I answered as soon as I was
called, and she came to the fig-tree, where she very well knew I was.
"What are you doing there?" she asked. "Watching a star." "You were
not watching a star," said my mother, who was listening on her balcony;
"children of your age know nothing of astronomy." "Ah, madame," cried
Mademoiselle Caroline, "he has opened the faucet of the reservoir; the
garden is inundated!" Then there was a general excitement. The fact was
that my sisters had amused themselves by turning the cock to see the
water flow, but a sudden spurt wet them all over and frightened them
so much that they ran away without closing it. Accused and convicted
of this piece of mischief and told that I lied when I denied it, I was
severely punished. Worse than all, I was jeered at for my pretended love
of the stars and forbidden to stay in the garden after dark.

Such tyrannical restrains intensify a passion in the hearts of children
even more than in those of men; children think of nothing but the
forbidden thing, which then becomes irresistibly attractive to them. I
was often whipped for my star. Unable to confide in my kind, I told it
all my troubles in that delicious inward prattle with which we stammer
our first ideas, just as once we stammered our first words. At twelve
years of age, long after I was at school, I still watched that star
with indescribable delight,--so deep and lasting are the impressions we
receive in the dawn of life.

My brother Charles, five years older than I and as handsome a boy as he
now is a man, was the favorite of my father, the idol of my mother, and
consequently the sovereign of the house. He was robust and well-made,
and had a tutor. I, puny and even sickly, was sent at five years of age
as day pupil to a school in the town; taken in the morning and brought
back at night by my father's valet. I was sent with a scanty lunch,
while my school-fellows brought plenty of good food. This trifling
contrast between my privations and their prosperity made me suffer
deeply. The famous potted pork prepared at Tours and called "rillettes"
and "rillons" was the chi