s, softly, smoothly,--ah, my dear, you have heard only
me play, all your life; if you could have heard my mother! As I see her
and hear her, this day of my babyhood, the song she plays is the little
French song that you love. If you could have heard her sing!

"A la claire fontaine As I went walking, walking,
M'en allant promener, Beside the fountain fair,
Jai trouve l'eau si belle I found its waves so lovely,
Que je m'y suis baigne. I stayed to bathe me there.
Il y a longtemps que je 'Tis long and long I have
t'aime, loved thee,
Jamais je ne t'oublierai!" I'll ne'er forget thee more.

It is the song of my life, Melody; I never told you that before, but it
has always pleased me well that you cared for it.

As my mother sings the last words, she bends and kisses the violin,
which was always a living personage to her. Her head moves like a bird's
head, quickly and softly. I see her face all brightness, as I have told
you; then suddenly a shadow falls on it. My back is towards the door,
but she stands facing it. I feel myself snatched up by hands like
quivering steel; I am set down--not roughly--on the floor. My father
turns a terrible face on my mother.

"Mary!" he cried. "He was on the Bible! You--you set the child on the
Holy Bible!"

I am too frightened to cry out or move, but my mother Marie lays down
her violin in its box--as tenderly as she would lay me in my cradle--and
goes to my father, and puts her arm round his neck, and speaks to him
low and gently, stroking back his short, fair hair. Presently the
frightful look goes out of his face; it softens into love and sadness;
they go hand-in-hand into the inner room, and I hear their voices
together speaking gravely, slowly. I do not know that they are
praying,--I have known it since. I watch the flies on the window, and
wish my father had not come.

That, Melody, is the first thing I remember. It must have been after
that, that my father made me a little chair, and my mother made a gay
cushion for it, with scarlet frills, and I sat always in that. Our
kitchen was a sunny room, full of bright things; Mother Marie kept
everything shining. The floor was painted yellow, and the rugs were
scarlet and blue; she dyed the cloth herself, and made them beautifully.
There was always a fire--or so it seems now--in the great black gulf of
a fir