Her name was Jeanne, and she was the youngest member of a naval
officer's family, that like the D-----s had been bound up in friendship
with ours for more than a century. As she was two or three years younger
than I, I had at first taken but little notice of her--probably I
thought her too babyish.

Her face was as droll as a little kitten's, and it was impossible to
tell from the pinched up features whether she would become pretty or
ugly; but she had a certain grace, and when she was eight or nine years
old her face became very sweet and charming. She was very roguish,
and as friendly as I was diffident; and as she darted about in those
childish dances we sometimes had in the evenings, and from which I
held myself aloof, she seemed to me the extreme of worldly elegance and
coquetry.

But in spite of the great intimacy between our families, it was evident
that her parents looked upon our friendship with disfavor, they probably
thought it unseemly that she had chosen a boy for her companion. This
knowledge caused me much suffering, and the impressions of my childhood
were so vivid and persistent that I did not, until many years had
passed, until I became quite a grown youth, pardon her father and mother
the humiliation they had caused me.

It therefore resulted that my desire to play with her increased greatly.
And she, knowing this, was as perverse as a princess in a fairy tale;
she laughed mercilessly at my timid ways, at my awkward manners and my
ungraceful fashion of entering the parlor; there was kept up between us
a constant interchange of playful raillery, an oral stream of inimitable
pleasantry.