IN THE WOOD
MARTINE
ALL OVER
THE PARROT
A PIECE OF STRING



CLOCHETTE

How strange those old recollections are which haunt us, without our being
able to get rid of them.

This one is so very old that I cannot understand how it has clung so
vividly and tenaciously to my memory. Since then I have seen so many
sinister things, which were either affecting or terrible, that I am
astonished at not being able to pass a single day without the face of
Mother Bellflower recurring to my mind's eye, just as I knew her
formerly, now so long ago, when I was ten or twelve years old.

She was an old seamstress who came to my parents' house once a week,
every Thursday, to mend the linen. My parents lived in one of those
country houses called chateaux, which are merely old houses with gable
roofs, to which are attached three or four farms lying around them.

The village, a large village, almost a market town, was a few hundred
yards away, closely circling the church, a red brick church, black with
age.

Well, every Thursday Mother Clochette came between half-past six and