while I turned the pages, to dream of something quite different. And to
the gaps which this habit made in my knowledge of the story more were
added by the fact that when it was Mamma who was reading to me aloud she
left all the love-scenes out. And so all the odd changes which take place
in the relations between the miller's wife and the boy, changes which only
the birth and growth of love can explain, seemed to me plunged and steeped
in a mystery, the key to which (as I could readily believe) lay in that
strange and pleasant-sounding name of _Champi_, which draped the boy who
bore it, I knew not why, in its own bright colour, purpurate and charming.
If my mother was not a faithful reader, she was, none the less, admirable
when reading a work in which she found the note of true feeling by the
respectful simplicity of her interpretation and by the sound of her sweet
and gentle voice. It was the same in her daily life, when it was not works
of art but men and women whom she was moved to pity or admire: it was
touching to observe with what deference she would banish from her voice,
her gestures, from her whole conversation, now the note of joy which might
have distressed some mother who had long ago lost a child, now the
recollection of an event or anniversary which might have reminded some old
gentleman of the burden of his years, now the household topic which might
have bored some young man of letters. And so, when she read aloud the
prose of George Sand, prose which is everywhere redolent of that
generosity and moral distinction which Mamma had learned from my
grandmother to place above all other qualities in life, and which I was
not to teach her until much later to refrain from placing, in the same
way, above all other qualities in literature; taking pains to banish from
her voice any weakness or affectation which might have blocked its channel
for that powerful stream of language, she supplied all the natural
tenderness, all the lavish sweetness which they demanded to phrases which
seemed to have been composed for her voice, and which were all, so to
speak, within her compass. She came to them with the tone that they