One reason
why she had so seldom written was that she knew she could not spell,
and Mademoiselle insisted on looking over her letters that they might
not be a disgrace. I doubted whether M. le Comte would have
discovered the errors, but when the Marquis praised some letters that
I had written to amuse him from Nancy and Mezieres, she was fired
with ambition to write such clever letters as might bewitch her
husband. Besides, if she could teach her daughter, the child need
not be banished to a convent.
I began to give her a few lessons in the morning, and to read to her.
And just then there came to Nid de Merle, to see me, the good Abbe
Bonchamp, the excellent tutor to whom my dear Philippe always said he
owed so much. The good man had since had another employment, and on
quitting it, could not help gratifying his desire to me and see the
wife and child of his dear pupil, as indeed I had begged him to do,
if ever it were in his power, when I fulfilled my husband's wishes by
writing his last greeting and final thanks to the good man.
I remember the dear quaint form riding up on a little hired mule,
which he almost concealed with his cassock. Above, his big hat
looked so strange that Gaspard, who was wonderfully forward for his
age, ran up to me crying: 'A droll beast, mamma! it had four legs and
a great hat!' while little Armantine fled crying from the monster.
All the servants were, however, coming out eagerly to receive the
blessing of the good man, who had mad himself much beloved in the
household.
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