would, I am sure, have been very much afraid in the guest chamber,
which was on the ground floor of the great, isolated house; but until my
twelfth year I slept on the floor above, in the spacious room occupied
by Lucette's mother;--with the aid of screens they had made for me a
little room of my own. In this retreat there was a book-case with glass
doors that belonged to the time of Louis XIV; this was filled with
treatises, a century old, upon navigation, and with sailors' log-books
that had not been opened for a hundred years. Tiny, scarce visible
butterflies, that entered by the open windows, were to be found here all
summer long, sleeping with extended wings upon the whitewashed walls.
And often the most exciting incident of the day happened just as I was
falling asleep; sometimes then an unwelcome bat found his way into the
room and circled wildly about the lighted candles; or an enormous moth
buzzed in and we would chase him with a cobweb-broom. Or again a storm
descended upon us and the great trees lashed their branches against the
house, and the old shutters slammed back and forth, and we waked with a
start.




CHAPTER XXXV.



Now comes the apparition of another little friend who stood very high in
my childish favor. As nearly as I can remember I became acquainted with
her when I was eleven; Antoinette had left the country; Veronica was
forgotten.