It was in the course of one of these hunts that my mother was thrown from her horse.  She was hardly in her seventh month when I came into the world.  She escaped death, but I was born as large as—­a mouse! and with one shoulder much higher than the other.

I must have died had not the happy thought come to the woman-in-waiting to procure Catharine, the wife of the gardener, Guillaume Carpentier, to be my nurse; and it is to her care, to her rubbings, and above all to her good milk, that I owe the capability to amuse you, my dear girls and friends, with the account of my life—­that life whose continuance I truly owe to my mother Catharine.

When my actual mother had recovered she returned to Paris; and as my nurse, who had four boys, could not follow her, it was decided that I should remain at the chateau and that my mother Catharine should stay there with me.

Her cottage was situated among the gardens.  Her husband, father Guillaume, was the head gardener, and his four sons were Joseph, aged six years; next Matthieu, who was four; then Jerome, two; and my foster-brother Bastien, a big lubber of three months.

My father and mother did not at all forget me.  They sent me playthings of all sorts, sweetmeats, silken frocks adorned with embroideries and laces, and all sorts of presents for mother Catharine and her children.  I was happy, very happy, for I was worshiped by all who surrounded me.  Mother Catharine preferred me above her own children.  Father Guillaume would go down upon his knees before me to get a smile [risette], and Joseph often tells me he swooned when they let him hold me in his arms.  It was a happy time, I assure you; yes, very happy.

I was two years old when my parents returned, and as they had brought a great company with them the true mother instructed my nurse to take me back to her cottage and keep me there, that I might not be disturbed by noise.  Mother Catharine has often said to me that my mother could not bear to look at my crippled shoulder, and that she called me a hunchback.  But after all it was the truth, and my nurse-mother was wrong to lay that reproach upon my mother Aurelie.

Seven years passed.  I had lived during that time the life of my foster-brothers, flitting everywhere with them over the flowery grass like the veritable lark that I was.  Two or three times during that period my parents came to see me, but without company, quite alone.  They brought me a lot of beautiful things; but really I was afraid of them, particularly of my mother, who was so beautiful and wore a grand air full of dignity and self-regard.  She would kiss me, but in a way very different from mother Catharine’s way—­squarely on the forehead, a kiss that seemed made of ice.

One fine day she arrived at the cottage with a tall, slender lady who wore blue spectacles on a singularly long nose.  She frightened me, especially when my mother told me that this was my governess, and that I must return to the chateau with her and live there to learn a host of fine things of which even the names were to me unknown; for I had never seen a book except my picture books.