is still
visible, among the other fantastical sketches, a pen-portrait of the
"Big Ape"; the ink has faded to a light yellow, but the drawing has
endured, and when I look at it I again feel a sort of deadly weariness,
and a sensation of suffocation chills me through and through--in short I
once more live over those dread school-days.

Aunt Claire was more than ever my resource during those hard times; she
always looked up words for me in the dictionary, and often she took upon
herself the task of writing for me, in an assumed hand, the exercises
exacted by the "Big Ape."

CHAPTER LIII.

Bring me, please, dear, the second . . . no, the third drawer of my
chiffonier.

It is mamma who is speaking; she is busying herself with the drawers
of the chiffonier which every day, for many years, she had asked me
to bring to her,--sometimes she pretends to need them merely for the
purpose of pleasing me by requiring my services. It was one of the
things that I was able to do for her when I was very little: to carry
to her one or another of those tiny drawers. It was an honored custom in
our household for a long time.

At the time of my life of which I am now writing it was in the evening,
at dusk, after my return from school, that I busied myself carrying
the little chiffonier drawers. I usually found mamma seated in her
accustomed place near the window chatting or embroidering, her work
basket was before her, and the bureau, whose different compartments
she required from time to time, was situated some distance away, in an
anteroom.

The Louis XVth chiffonier was very much revered, for it had belonged to
great-grandmothers. In it there were some very old and very tiny painted
boxes which had doubtless been handled every day by one or another of
our ancestresses. It goes without saying that I knew all the secrets of
these compartments that were kept in such exquisite order; there was
a special place for silks that was classified by being put into ribbon
bags; one for needles, another for braid, and still another for little
hooks. And these things were still arranged, I have no doubt, as they
had been in our grandmother's days, whose saintly activity my mother
imitated.

To bring the drawers of the chiffonier to mamma was the joy and pride
of my childhood, and there has been no change in my feelings for those
little compartments since that time. They have always inspired me with
the most tender respect; they are