they consider them too young tounderstand! Children are capable of giving advice in the most importantmatters. How can one deceive these dear little birds, when they lookat one so sweetly and confidingly? I call them birds because there isnothing in the world better than birds!
“However, most of the people were angry with me about one and the samething; but Thibaut simply was jealous of me. At first he had wagged hishead and wondered how it was that the children understood what I toldthem so well, and could not learn from him; and he laughed like anythingwhen I replied that neither he nor I could teach them very much, butthat _they_ might teach us a good deal.
“How he could hate me and tell scandalous stories about me, living amongchildren as he did, is what I cannot understand. Children soothe andheal the wounded heart. I remember there was one poor fellow at ourprofessor’s who was being treated for madness, and you have no idea whatthose children did for him, eventually. I don’t think he was mad, butonly terribly unhappy. But I’ll tell you all about him another day. NowI must get on with this story.
“The children did not love me at first; I was such a sickly, awkwardkind of a fellow then--and I know I am ugly. Besides, I was a foreigner.The children used to laugh at me, at first; and they even went so faras to throw stones at me, when they saw me kiss Marie. I only kissed heronce in my life--no, no, don’t laugh!” The prince hastened to suppressthe smiles of his audience at this point. “It was not a matter of _love_at all! If only you knew what a miserable creature she was, you wouldhave pitied her, just as I did. She belonged to our village. Her motherwas an old, old woman, and they used to sell string and thread, and soapand tobacco, out of the window of their little house, and lived on thepittance they gained by this trade. The old woman was ill and very old,and could hardly move. Marie was her daughter, a girl of twenty, weakand thin and consumptive; but still she did heavy work at the housesaround, day by day. Well, one fine day a commercial traveller betrayedher and carried her off; and a week later he deserted her. She came homedirty, draggled, and shoeless; she had walked for a whole week withoutshoes; she had slept in the fields, and caught a terrible cold; her feetwere swollen and sore, and her hands torn and scratched all over. Shenever had been pretty even before; but her eyes were quiet, innocent,kind eyes.
“She was very quiet always--and I remember once, when she had suddenlybegun singing at her work, everyone said, ‘Marie tried to sing today!’and she got so chaffed that she was silent for ever after. She had beentreated kindly in the place before; but when she came back now--ill andshunned and miserable--not one of them all had the slightest sympathyfor her. Cruel people! Oh, what hazy understandings they have on suchmatters! Her mother was the first to show the way. She received herwrathfully, unkindly, and with contempt. ‘You have disgraced me,’ shesaid. She was the first to cast her into ignominy; but when they allheard that Marie had returned to the village, they ran out to seeher and crowded into the little cottage--old men, children, women,girls--such a hurrying, stamping, greedy crowd. Marie was lying onthe floor at the old woman’s feet, hungry, torn, draggled, crying,miserable.
“When everyone crowded into the room she hid her face in her dishevelledhair and lay cowering on the floor. Everyone looked at her as though shewere a piece of dirt off the road. The old men scolded and condemned,and the young ones laughed at her. The women condemned her too, andlooked at her contemptuously, just as though she were some loathsomeinsect.
“Her mother allowed all this to go on, and nodded her head andencouraged them. The old woman was very ill at that time, and knew shewas dying (she really did die a couple of months later), and though shefelt the end approaching she never thought of forgiving her daughter, tothe very day of her death. She would not even speak to her. She madeher sleep on straw in a shed, and hardly gave her food enough to supportlife.
“Marie was very gentle to her mother, and nursed her, and did everythingfor her; but the old woman accepted all her services without a wordand never showed her the slightest kindness. Marie bore all this; andI could see when I got to know her that she thought it quite right andfitting, considering herself the lowest and meanest of creatures.
“When the old woman took to her bed finally, the other old women in thevillage sat with her by turns, as the custom is there; and then Mariewas quite driven out of the house. They gave her no food at all, and shecould not get any work in the village; none would employ her. The menseemed to consider her no longer a woman, they said such dreadful thingsto her. Sometimes on Sundays, if they were drunk enough, they used tothrow her a penny or two, into the mud, and Marie would silently pick upthe money. She had began to spit blood at that time.
“At last her rags became so tattered and torn that she was ashamed ofappearing in the village any longer. The children used to pelt her withmud; so she begged to be taken on as assistant cowherd, but the cowherdwould not have her. Then she took to helping him without leave; and hesaw how valuable her assistance was to him, and did not drive her awayagain; on the contrary, he occasionally gave her the remnants of hisdinner, bread and cheese. He considered that he was being very kind.When the mother died, the village parson was not ashamed to hold Marieup to public derision and shame. Marie was standing at the coffin’shead, in all her rags, crying.
“A crowd of people had collected to see how she would cry. The parson,a young fellow ambitious of becoming a great preacher, began his sermonand pointed to Marie. ‘There,’ he said, ‘there is the cause of the deathof this venerable woman’--(which was a lie, because she had been ill forat least two years)--‘there she stands before you, and dares not lifther eyes from the ground, because she knows that the finger of God isupon her. Look at her tatters and rags--the badge of those who losetheir virtue. Who is she? her daughter!’ and so on to the end.
“And just fancy, this infamy pleased them, all of them, nearly. Only thechildren had altered--for then they were all on my side and had learnedto love Marie.
“This is how it was: I had wished to do something for Marie; I longed togive her some money, but I never had a farthing while I was there. ButI had a little diamond pin, and this I sold to a travelling pedlar; hegave me eight francs for it--it was worth at least forty.
“I long sought to meet Marie alone; and at last I did meet her, on thehillside beyond the village. I gave her the eight francs and asked herto take care of the money because I could get no more; and then I kissedher and said that she was not to suppose I kissed her with any evilmotives or because I was in love with her, for that I did so solely outof pity for her, and because from the first I had not accounted her asguilty so much as unfortunate. I longed to console and encourage hersomehow, and to assure her that she was not the low, base thing whichshe and others strove to make out; but I don’t think she understood me.She stood before me, dreadfully ashamed of herself, and with downcasteyes; and when I had finished she kissed my hand. I would have kissedhers, but she drew it away. Just at this moment the whole troop ofchildren saw us. (I found out afterwards that they had long kept awatch upon me.) They all began whistling and clapping their hands, andlaughing at us. Marie ran away at once; and when I tried to talk tothem, they threw stones at me. All the village heard of it the same day,and Marie’s position became worse than ever. The children would not lether pass now in the streets, but annoyed her and threw dirt at her morethan before. They used to run after her--she racing away with her poorfeeble lungs panting and gasping, and they pelting her and shoutingabuse at her.
“Once I had to interfere by force; and after that I took to speakingto them every day and whenever I could. Occasionally they stopped andlistened; but they teased Marie all the same.
“I told them how unhappy Marie was, and after a while they stopped theirabuse of her, and let her go by silently. Little by little we got intothe way of conversing together, the children and I. I concealed nothingfrom them, I told them all. They listened very attentively and soonbegan to be sorry for Marie. At last some of them took to saying‘Good-morning’ to her, kindly, when they met he
r. It is the custom thereto salute anyone you meet with ‘Good-morning’ whether acquainted or not.I can imagine how astonished Marie was at these first greetings from thechildren.
“Once two little girls got hold of some food and took it to her, andcame back and told me. They said she had burst into tears, and that theyloved her very much now. Very soon after that they all became fond ofMarie, and at the same time they began to develop the greatest affectionfor myself. They often came to me and begged me to tell them stories. Ithink I must have told stories well, for they did so love to hear them.At last I took to reading up interesting things on purpose to pass themon to the little ones, and this went on for all the rest of my timethere, three years. Later, when everyone--even Schneider--was angry withme for hiding nothing from the children, I pointed out how foolish itwas, for they always knew things, only they learnt them in a way thatsoiled their minds but not so from me. One has only to remember one’sown childhood to admit the truth of this. But
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