Page 59 - swanns-way

ness with me, was suddenly overcome by my tears and had
to struggle to keep back her own. Then, as she saw that I had
noticed this, she said to me, with a smile: ‘Why, my little
buttercup, my little canary-boy, he’s going to make Mamma
as silly as himself if this goes on. Look, since you can’t sleep,
and Mamma can’t either, we mustn’t go on in this stupid
way; we must do something; I’ll get one of your books.’ But
I had none there. ‘Would you like me to get out the books
now that your grandmother is going to give you for your
birthday? Just think it over first, and don’t be disappointed
if there is nothing new for you then.’
I was only too delighted, and Mamma went to find a par-
cel of books in which I could not distinguish, through the
paper in which it was wrapped, any more than its square-
ness and size, but which, even at this first glimpse, brief and
obscure as it was, bade fair to eclipse already the paint-box
of last New Year’s Day and the silkworms of the year before.
It contained La Mare au Diable, François le Champi, La Pe-
tite Fadette, and Les Maîtres Sonneurs. My grandmother, as
I learned afterwards, had at first chosen Mussel’s poems, a
volume of Rousseau, and Indiana; for while she considered
light reading as unwholesome as sweets and cakes, she did
not reflect that the strong breath of genius must have upon
the very soul of a child an influence at once more danger-
ous and less quickening than those of fresh air and country
breezes upon his body. But when my father had seemed al-
most to regard her as insane on learning the names of the
books she proposed to give me, she had journeyed back by
herself to Jouy-le-Vicomte to the bookseller’s, so that there

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