Silvere grew up, ever tete-a-tete with Adelaide.  With childish cajolery he used to call her aunt Dide, a name which ultimately clung to the old woman; the word “aunt” employed in this way is simply a term of endearment in Provence.  The child entertained singular affection, not unmixed with respectful terror, for his grandmother.  During her nervous fits, when he was quite a little boy, he ran away from her, crying, terrified by her disfigured countenance; and he came back very timidly after the attack, ready to run away again, as though the old woman were disposed to beat him.  Later on, however, when he was twelve years old, he would stop there bravely and watch in order that she might not hurt herself by falling off the bed.  He stood for hours holding her tightly in his arms to subdue the rude shocks which distorted her.  During intervals of calmness he would gaze with pity on her convulsed features and withered frame, over which her skirts lay like a shroud.  These hidden dramas, which recurred every month, this old woman as rigid as a corpse, this child bent over her, silently watching for the return of consciousness, made up amidst the darkness of the hovel a strange picture of mournful horror and broken-hearted tenderness.

When aunt Dide came round, she would get up with difficulty, and set about her work in the hovel without even questioning Silvere.  She remembered nothing, and the child, from a sort of instinctive prudence, avoided the least allusion to what had taken place.  These recurring fits, more than anything else, strengthened Silvere’s deep attachment for his grandmother.  In the same manner as she adored him without any garrulous effusiveness, he felt a secret, almost bashful, affection for her.  While he was really very grateful to her for having taken him in and brought him up, he could not help regarding her as an extraordinary creature, a prey to some strange malady, whom he ought to pity and respect.  No doubt there was not sufficient life left in Adelaide; she was too white and too stiff for Silvere to throw himself on her neck.  Thus they lived together amidst melancholy silence, in the depths of which they felt the tremor of boundless love.

The sad, solemn atmosphere, which he had breathed from childhood, gave Silvere a strong heart, in which gathered every form of enthusiasm.  He early became a serious, thoughtful little man, seeking instruction with a kind of stubbornness.  He only learnt a little spelling and arithmetic at the school of the Christian Brothers, which he was compelled to leave when he was but twelve years old, on account of his apprenticeship.  He never acquired the first rudiments of knowledge.  However, he read all the odd volumes which fell into his hands, and thus provided himself with strange equipment; he had some notions of a multitude of subjects, ill-digested notions, which he could never classify distinctly in his head.  When he was quite young, he had been in the habit of playing