the loosed swaddling cloth—her confidence was gone, doubts gained the upper hand. An incident which was related to me time and again with a sort of religious terror served to bring consternation into my mother's soul.
One day she was taking a bath. In the hall of the bath room laid out with black and white square slabs, Marie, bent over me, was watching my first uncertain steps. Suddenly, fixing my gaze on a black square, I appeared to be very much frightened. I uttered a cry and, trembling all over as if I had seen something terrible, I hid my head in my nurse's apron.
"What's the matter?" my mother anxiously asked.
"I don't know," answered old Marie. It seemed as though Master Jean had been frightened by a paving block.
She brought me to the spot where my countenance so suddenly changed its expression. But at the sight of the paving slab, I cried out again. My whole body shuddered.
"There must be something!" cried my mother. Marie, quick, quick, my underwear! . . . My God!—What did he see?"
Having come out of the bath room, she did not want to wait to be wiped, and scarcely covered by her peignoir she stooped over the stone and examined it.
"That's strange," she murmured. "And yet he saw something. . . . but what? . . . There isn't anything. . . ."
She took me in her arms, swayed me. I smiled now, uttering inarticulate sounds and playing with the ribbons of her peignoir. She put me down on the floor. Moving with short, unsteady steps, both arms outstretched, I purred like a kitten. None of the blocks before which I stopped frightened me in the least. Arrived at the fatal block, my face again assumed the expression of horror, and frightened and crying I returned quickly to my mother.
