* * * * *

To return. Gradually, by practice and the concentration of our united
will, the old-time figures grew to gain substance and color, and their
voices became perceptible; till at length there arrived a day when we
could move among them, and hear them and see them as distinctly as we
could our own immediate progenitors close by--as Gogo and Mimsey, as
Monsieur le Major, and the rest.

The child who went about hand in hand with the white-haired lady (whose
hair was only powdered) and fed the pigeons was my grandmother, Jeanne
de Boismorinel (who married Francois Pasquier de la Mariere). It was her
father who wore red heels to his shoes, and made her believe she could
manufacture little cocked-hats in colored glass; she had lived again in
me whenever, as a child, I had dreamed that exquisite dream.

I could now evoke her at will; and, with her, many buried memories were
called out of nothingness into life.

Among other wonderful things, I heard the red-heeled gentleman, M. de
Boismorinel (my great-grandfather), sing beautiful old songs by Lulli
and others to the spinet, which he played charmingly a rare
accomplishment in those days. And lo! these tunes were tunes that had
risen oft and unbidden in my consciousness, and I had fondly imagined
that I had composed them myself--little impromptus of my own. And lo,
again! His voice, thin, high, nasal, but very sympathetic and musical,
was that never still small voice that has been singing unremittingly for
more than half a century in the unswept, ungarnished corner of my brain
where all the cobwebs are.