Paris, leaving my mother, Aunt Rosine, and the surgeon with me.
Forty-two days later, mother took back in triumph to Paris the nurse,
the foster-father, and me, and installed us in a little house at
Neuilly, on the banks of the Seine. I had not even a scar, it appears.
My skin was rather too bright a pink, but that was all. My mother, happy
and trustful once more, began to travel again, leaving me in care of my
aunts.

Two years were spent in the little garden at Neuilly, which was full of
horrible dahlias growing close together and coloured like wooden balls.
My aunts never came there. My mother used to send money, bon-bons, and
toys. The foster-father died, and my nurse married a concierge, who used
to pull open the door at 65 Rue de Provence.

Not knowing where to find my mother, and not being able to write, my
nurse--without telling any of my friends--took me with her to her new
abode.

The change delighted me. I was five years old at the time, and I
remember the day as if it were yesterday. My nurse's abode was just over
the doorway of the house, and the window was framed in the heavy and
monumental door. From outside I thought it was beautiful, and I began to
clap my hands on reaching the house. It was towards five o'clock in the
evening, in the month of November, when everything looks grey. I was put
to bed, and no doubt I went to sleep at once, for there end my
recollections of that day.

The next morning there was terrible grief in store for me. There was no
window in the little room in which I slept, and I began to cry, and
escaped from the arms of my nurse, who was dressing me, so that I could