“That can be seen easily enough.”

“I’d rather you had a badge.”

Breathing damply and forcefully, she sniffs harder and quicker, and looks here and there for her handkerchief; she prowls with the lamp.  As my eyes follow her, the room awakens more and more.  My groping gaze discovers the tiled floor, the conference of chairs backed side by side against the wall, the motionless pallor of the window in the background above the low and swollen bed, which is like a heap of earth and plaster, the clothes lying on the floor like mole-hills, the protruding edges of tables and shelves, pots, bottles, kettles and hanging clouts, and that lock with the cotton-wool in its ear.

“I like orderliness so much,” says Mame as she tacks and worms her way through this accumulation of things, all covered with a downy layer of dust like the corners of pastel pictures.

According to habit, I stretch out my legs and put my feet on the stool, which long use has polished and glorified till it looks new.  My face turns this way and that towards the lean phantom of my aunt, and I lull myself with the sounds of her stirring and her endless murmur.

And now, suddenly, she has come near to me.  She is wearing her jacket of gray and white stripes which hangs from her acute shoulders, she puts her arm around my neck, and trembles as she says, “You can mount high, you can, with the gifts that you have.  Some day, perhaps, you will go and tell men everywhere the truth of things.  That has happened.  There have been men who were in the right, above everybody.  Why shouldn’t you be one of them, my lad, you one of these great apostles!”

And with her head gently nodding, and her face still tear-stained, she looks afar, and sees the streets attentive to my eloquence!

* * * * * *

Hardly has this strange imagining in the bosom of our kitchen passed away when Mame adds, with her eyes on mine, “My lad, mind you, never look higher than yourself.  You are already something of a home-bird; you have already serious and elderly habits.  That’s good.  Never try to be different from others.”

“No danger of that, Mame.”

No, there is no danger of that.  I should like to remain as I am.  Something holds me to the surroundings of my infancy and childhood, and I should like them to be eternal.  No doubt I hope for much from life.  I hope, I have hopes, as every one has.  I do not even know all that I hope for, but I should not like too great changes.  In my heart I should not like anything which changed the position of the stove, of the tap, of the chestnut wardrobe, nor the form of my evening rest, which faithfully returns.

* * * * * *

The fire alight, my aunt warms up the stew, stirring it with the wooden spoon.  Sometimes there spurts from the stove a mournful flame, which seems to illumine her with tatters of light.