XIII
And I see myself again at Neuilly, with the sisters of Our Lady of Thirty-Six Sorrows, a sort of house of refuge, and also an employment-bureau for housemaids. My! but it is a fine establishment, with a white front, and at the rear of a large garden. In the garden, which is ornamented, at intervals of fifty steps, with statues of the Virgin, there is a little chapel, very new and sumptuous, built from the proceeds of the collections. Large trees surround it. And every hour one hears the tolling of the bells. It is so nice to hear the bells toll. It stirs in one's heart memories of things so old and long forgotten. When the bells toll, I close my eyes and listen, and I see again landscapes which perhaps I never saw before, and which I recognize all the same,—very peaceful landscapes, imbued with all the transformed recollections of childhood and youth, . . . and bagpipes, . . . and, on the moor bordering on the beaches, the slowly-moving panorama of holiday crowds. Ding . . . dinn . . . dong! It is not very gay; it is not the same thing as gaiety; it is even sad at bottom, -sad, like love. But I like it. In Paris one never hears anything but the fountaineer's horn, and the deafening trumpet of the tramway.
