22 HOW THE AUTHOR WAS LED TO 
to a Protestant family, and after passing through 
many hands before it fell into ours, still retained the 
graves of its ancient owners—simple hillocks of turf, 
where the proscribed had enshrined their dead under a 
thick grove of oaks. I need hardly say, that these trees 
and these tombs, consecrated by their very oblivion, 
were religiously respected by my father. Each grave 
was marked out by rose-bushes, which his own hands 
had planted. These sweet odours, these bright blossoms, 
concealed the gloom of death, while suffering, neverthe- 
less, something of its melancholy to remain. Thither, 
then, we were drawn, and as it were in spite of our- 
selves, at evening time. Overcome by emotion, we 
often mourned over the departed; and, at each falling 
star, exclaimed, ‘It is a soul which passes!’ * 
“In this living country-side, among alternate joys 
and pains, I lived for ten years—from four to fourteen. 
myself, was the companion of my mother when I was 
still but a little girl My brothers, numerous enough 
to play among themselves without my help, often left 
. to the fields, I could only follow them with my eyes. 
I passed, then, many solitary hours in wandering near 
the house, and in the long garden alleys. There I 
acquired, in spite of a natural vivacity, habits of con- 
* Alluding to » popular superstition, which Béranger has made the 
subject of a fine lyric :— 
“What means the fall of yonder star, 
Which falls, falls, and fades away ?...... 
My son, whene’er a mortal dies, 
Earthward his star drops instantly."— Translator. 
I had no comrades. My sister, five years older than . ‘ < 
me all alone in the hours of recreation. If they ran off 
