My Memoirs. Marguerite Steinheil

see him bowing with easy grace whenever he met my mother, my sisters or me. Never did a vulgar or trivial word pass from his lips. He loved what he called, not "beautiful" French, but "good" French. He had for the most humble the same little attentions and the same gentle and old-time courteousness as for his peers. He addressed his aged sister, who resided near Beaucourt, as he would have a queen, for he believed that nowhere more than in the home were perfect manners and courteous speech more becoming, and that to no one more than to his own people did a man owe respect. He took off his hat when he met the women about the farm, and never kept it on in a shop. He spoke slowly and softly, and cultivated the mot propre (the exact word). It was a joy to hear him, as much to the ear as to the mind. As long as I remained under his influence, I tried to speak as he did; but destiny took me to Paris, where, alas! they speak Parisian, not French.

      My grandpapa from Russia seemed to know everything and to be able to do anything. He would, for instance, talk to me for an hour about a tragedy of Voltaire, which he afterwards compared with a tragedy of his beloved Racine; or perhaps a book by some little known Russian author, whom he placed far above the work of many celebrated writers—German, French or English. Then he would suddenly tell me the life of a plant at our feet or the story of the stone on which he sat. Afterwards, we would go to the kitchen, and there he taught me how to prepare some kind of soup or sweet dish à la Russe. When this was over we would go to the music-room and there I had to sing or play to him an air by Mozart, Glück, Lulli, or Rameau. He used to say: "You will play the music of Beethoven and Wagner (he, like my father, had already recognised Wagner's genius) when you are older. One must have suffered and loved to understand these geniuses." He taught me to sculpture, to bind books, to solder....

      My father joined us and said: "My dear Doriand, you are monopolising my daughter. You have had her to yourself the whole morning."

      "How dare you complain," the other retorted; "you have her the whole of the year."

      How delightfully they spoiled me, those two dear souls, and how coquettish they made me! I recall them sitting on an old rustic bench in the large avenue of chestnut-trees. I felt that they were talking about me, and I ran into the house to put on my most becoming dress, and then went out and walked up and down slowly, with a book in my hand, and not too far from them, and knowing all the while that their eyes were following me! There did not seem to be any harm in this, but one day, my mother catching me at my little game, scolded me and my father and his old friend much more.... As a rule, when my dear mother scolded them, my father went to the organ and improvised a war-march and M. Doriand, standing near him, turned imaginary pages. My mother could not help laughing and we guilty three did the same, of course.

      I had two sisters, Juliette, the eldest—who, when I was a little girl, became the wife of M. Herr, an engineer then residing in Bayonne, where, later, I met M. Steinheil—and Mimi, younger than I by four years, who was my mother's favourite, just as I was my father's. I had also a brother, Julien, who enlisted in an infantry regiment at Belfort and became there the friend of M. Sheffer, who was to be my fiancé of a few months.

      We rose early at Beaucourt. After a quick breakfast and an hour given to recreation in the park, or to the care of my flowers—like my parents, I had a passion for flowers, especially hydrangea and roses—I went to the schoolroom for my lessons. The afternoon was divided between study, games and household duties. In the evening, after dinner, we had music in the large salon, the very one which during the war, the Germans sacked and threw into confusion.... Ah! it was awe-inspiring to hear my father describe their stay at the "castle" and tell us how this splendid drawing-room had been turned by those "Prussians" into a kitchen, the grand piano into a larder and the precious curtains of antique red damask into horse blankets and dish-cloths....

      There was always a large number of guests at home. The three-storied house had forty rooms and they were more often occupied than empty. Our evening concerts were my father's great joy. He sat at the organ, the enormous and rubicund Mme. Koger, my piano teacher, settled down at the piano, I took my violin and three or four musicians from Belfort, violinists and 'cellists, completed our little orchestra.

      During the winter—and the winter is extremely sharp in that part of France—we used to skate on the Rhone-Rhine Canal, or we went for long rides in a sleigh, on the roads deep in snow. And then, we tobogganned. A "train" of tobogganners was formed at the top of a hill with a "captain" at its head; we rushed at break-neck speed down the hill-side, the train broke up, the toboggans overturned and hurled us into the snow, when a free fight ensued over the responsibility for the accident. I generally triumphed over my cousins, both boys and girls, and was rather proud of it!

      Had the examining magistrate in charge of my case known this detail, he would no doubt have come to the conclusion that, since, as a child, I was strong enough to be victorious, with snowballs, over my playmates, it was clear that, as a woman, I must have been strong enough to commit the horrible crimes of which he accused me!

      Winter also brought with it an increased number of visits, to the sick and poor, and as my mother never allowed me to give them anything that I had not worked at myself, not a day passed without our devoting at least one or two hours to preparing warm clothes for the needy. As for my father, he had a wonderful knack of saying and doing the right thing whenever he called on the people he looked after, and this made it one of my happiest occupations to accompany him on this round of mercy.

      Christmas was a great day to us. The Christmas tree, which my father always uprooted himself—it was almost a ceremony with him—was first lit up for the family, then for the servants and farmhands, and a third time for the poor people who came in crowds from the neighbouring villages, and whom my parents received one after another with a word of welcome and a pleasant personal remark which at once put them at their ease.

      On January 1 we paid "morning" calls until 2 P.M. In all the houses where we went, the hosts and hostesses wished to detain my father for "at least an hour," for he was gay and charming, good to look upon and his kindness was proverbial... but he refused: "No, no—I must go, my dear friends; I have still so many visits to pay—for instance, I must call on this rascal here (and he laughingly dealt a blow at a friend close to him) whom I have already passed three times on the road and met in five drawing-rooms this morning. But there you are, I must, mustn't I, you rogue, express my good wishes for a happy New Year to him in his own house—and to think that afterwards I shall meet him again in half a dozen places and that, to cap it all, I will have to go home to receive him, so that he may return my good wishes. Ah! the old traditions!..."

      Then came the family dinner, which lasted till the evening and the day ended with... music, of course. While we played, my mother slumbered peacefully in a fine old arm-chair, where once had sat my great-grandmother, the beautiful wife of the inventor.... But we went to bed early, for on the previous night we had hardly slept at all.

      In fact, a few minutes before midnight, on December 31, songs rose under the windows of the "castle"—beautiful songs, simple, broad-winged, with words which varied a little from year to year, but with music centuries old, and always the same, for it could not have been improved upon. Then, surrounded by their children and their servants, my parents received the singers on the threshold of their house. The singers shook the snow from their coats and their fur caps, took off their wooden shoes, shook hands with us all, and the feast began. My father distributed among them baskets of apples and walnuts, whole hams, strings of sausages, sacks of potatoes, and Alsatian cakes. And when the good people had gone and their voices could no longer be heard—my father wrapped me up in furs and we went together to look at the snow. And somehow, it always seemed more wonderful and more blue to us on New Year's night. My father told me marvellous tales and I did not feel sleepy at all. But an hour later, assuming a gruff voice, he exclaimed: "What does this mean, Mademoiselle? Still up at three in the morning at your age." When he had gently carried me in his arms to my room, he said: "Go quickly to sleep, 'Puppele' (an Alsatian expression meaning 'little doll'), mother would be angry if she knew."

      Mother knew perfectly well, for she had been waiting by the fireside in the dining-room and she never retired without having seen me in my bed and kissed me. But she was not angry on this occasion, and with her sweet, indulgent philosophy she said: "After all, there is but one First