Chapter 1

One day a number of people came to the house. The men came in as though they were going into church, and the women made the sign of the cross as they went out.

I slipped into my parents' bedroom and was surprised to see that my mother had a big lighted candle by her bedside. My father was leaning over the foot of the bed looking at my mother. She was asleep with her hands crossed on her breast.

Our neighbour, la mère Colas, kept us with her all day. As the women went out again she said to them, "No, she would not kiss her children good-bye." The women blew their noses, looked at us, and la mère Colas added, "That sort of illness makes one unkind, I suppose." A few days afterwards we were given new dresses with big black and white checks.

La mère Colas used to give us our meals and send us out to play in the fields. My sister, who was a big girl, scrambled into the hedges, climbed the trees, messed about in the ponds, and used to come home at night with her pockets full of creatures of all kinds, which frightened me and made la mère Colas furiously angry.

What I hated most were the earthworms. The red elastic things made me shiver with horror, and if I happened to step on one it made me quite