Speaking of Limoise I will be vain enough to speak here of an act of mine that I consider as brave as it was obedient, for it fell in with a promise that I had given.
It happened a short time before my departure for the south, before that journey to the mountains with which my imagination was ever busy; it occurred in the month of July following my twelfth birthday.
One Wednesday, having started earlier than usual, so that I might arrive at Limoise before nightfall, I begged those accompanying me to go no farther than just beyond the town; I entreated1 them, for this once, to allow me to make the journey alone as if I were a grown boy.
As I was being ferried across the river I compelled myself to take from my pocket the white silk handkerchief that I had promised to wear about my neck to protect it from the cool breezes on the water; the old weather-beaten sailors were looking at me and I felt unspeakably ashamed as I tied the muffler around my neck.
And at Chaumes, in that shadeless spot, a place always baked by the sun, I fulfilled the pledge that had been exacted from me at my departure. I opened a large sunshade!—oh! how my cheeks reddened and how humiliated2 I felt when I was ridiculed3 by a little shepherd-boy who, with head bared to the sun's rays, guarded his sheep. And my agony increased when I arrived at the village and I saw four boys, who had doubtless just come from school, look at me with astonishment
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