I felt neither happy nor unhappy; I had nothing to say.  I had neither fear nor hope, nor even a feeling of curiosity; I was neither cheerful nor sad.  The only thing which grated upon me was the face of the mistress of the house.  Although I had not the faintest idea either of beauty or of ugliness, her face, her countenance, her tone of voice, her language, everything in that woman was repulsive to me.  Her masculine features repelled me every time I lifted my eyes towards her face to listen to what she said to me.  She was tall and coarse like a trooper; her complexion was yellow, her hair black, her eyebrows long and thick, and her chin gloried in a respectable bristly beard:  to complete the picture, her hideous, half-naked bosom was hanging half-way down her long chest; she may have been about fifty.  The servant was a stout country girl, who did all the work of the house; the garden was a square of some thirty feet, which had no other beauty than its green appearance.

Towards noon my three companions came back from school, and they at once spoke to me as if we had been old acquaintances, naturally giving me credit for such intelligence as belonged to my age, but which I did not possess.  I did not answer them, but they were not baffled, and they at last prevailed upon me to share their innocent pleasures.  I had to run, to carry and be carried, to turn head over heels, and I allowed myself to be initiated into those arts with a pretty good grace until we were summoned to dinner.  I sat down to the table; but seeing before me a wooden spoon, I pushed it back, asking for my silver spoon and fork to which I was much attached, because they were a gift from my good old granny.  The servant answered that the mistress wished to maintain equality between the boys, and I had to submit, much to my disgust.  Having thus learned that equality in everything was the rule of the house, I went to work like the others and began to eat the soup out of the common dish, and if I did not complain of the rapidity with which my companions made it disappear, I could not help wondering at such inequality being allowed.  To follow this very poor soup, we had a small portion of dried cod and one apple each, and dinner was over:  it was in Lent.  We had neither glasses nor cups, and we all helped ourselves out of the same earthen pitcher to a miserable drink called graspia, which is made by boiling in water the stems of grapes stripped of their fruit.  From the following day I drank nothing but water.  This way of living surprised me, for I did not know whether I had a right to complain of it.  After dinner the servant took me to the school, kept by a young priest, Doctor Gozzi, with whom the Sclavonian woman had bargained for my schooling at the rate of forty sous a month, or the eleventh part of a sequin.

The first thing to do was to teach me writing, and I was placed amongst children of five and six years, who did not fail to turn me into ridicule on account of my age.