e them in the straight path
lying between the extensive meadows that led to our house. I went at a
brisk pace in my eagerness to see mamma, my aunts and our dear home.

When we entered the town, by the old disused gate, it was always dusk,
the dusk of a spring or summer night; as we passed the barracks we
heard the familiar drums and bugles sounding the hour for the sailors'
all-too-early bed.

And when we arrived at the house I usually spied my beloved ones
(clothed in their black dresses) seated in the honeysuckle arbor at the
end of the yard, or they were sitting out under the stars.

Or, if the others had gone in, I was sure to find aunt Bertha there
alone; she was a very independent person, and she dared defy even the
dew and evening chill. After kissing and embracing me she pretended to
smell of my clothes, and after sniffing a minute, to make me laugh, she
would say: "Ah! you smell of Limoise, my darling."

And indeed I did have something of the fragrance of Limoise about me.
When I came from there I was always impregnated with the odor of
wild thyme and the other aromatic plants peculiar to that part of the
country.

CHAPTER XLI.

Speaking of Limoise I will be vain enough to speak here of an act of
mine that I consider as brave as it was obedient, for it fell in with a
promise that I had given.

It happened a short time before my departure for the south, before that
journey to the mountains with which my imagination was ever busy; it
occurred in the month of July following my twelfth birthday.

One Wednesday, having started earlier than usual, so that I might arrive
at Limoise before nightfall, I begged those accompanying me to go no
farther than just beyond the town; I entreated them, for this once, to
allow me to make the journey alone as if I were a grown boy.

As I was being ferried across the river I compelled myself to take from
my pocket the white silk handkerchief that I had promised to wear
about my neck to protect it from the cool breezes on the water; the old
weather-beaten sailors were looking at me and I felt unspeakably ashamed
as I tied the muffler around my neck.

And at Chaumes, in that shadeless spot, a place always baked by the sun,
I fulfilled the pledge that had been exacted from me at my departure. I
opened a large sunshade!--oh! how my cheeks reddened and how humiliated
I felt when I was ridiculed by a little shepherd-boy who, with head
bared to the sun's rays, guarde