Aunt Claire enjoyed helping us with the "Donkey's Skin"; she worked
enthusiastically over the costumes and each day I gave her some task.
She was especially skilful in devising hair for the fairies and nymphs;
she managed to fix upon their tiny heads, about as big as the end of
a little finger, blond wigs made of light silk thread, this thread she
twined upon the finest wires and thus she was able to twist it into
beautiful ringlets.

Then when it became absolutely necessary for me to study my lessons, in
the feverish haste of the last half hour that I reserved for my task,
after having wasted my time in idleness of every sort, it was aunt
Claire who came to my rescue; she would open the large dictionary and
hunt up for me the unfamiliar words in the exercises and lessons. She
also took up the study of Greek in order to assist me with my lessons
in that language. When I studied my Greek I always led my aunt Claire to
the stairway and I sprawled there upon the steps, my feet higher than
my head; for two or three years that was the classic pose I took for the
study of the Iliad, or Xenophon's Cyropedia.




CHAPTER XXXIX.



Thursday evening was a time of great rejoicing with me whenever a
terrible storm descended upon Limoise, and thus made it impossible for
me to return home that night.