The poor old grandmother who sang so constantly was dying.  
We were all standing¹ about her bed at nightfall one spring evening. She had been ailing² scarcely more than forty-eight hours; but the doctor said that on account of her great age she could not rally, and he pronounced her end to be very near.
 
Her mind had become clear; she no longer mistook our names, and in a sweet calm voice she begged us to remain near her—it was doubtless the voice of other days, the one that I had never heard before.
 
As I stood close to my father's side I turned my eyes from my dying grandmother, and they wandered about the room with its old-fashioned furniture. I looked especially at the pictures of bouquets⁴ in vases that hung upon the wall. Oh! those poor little water colors in my grandmother's room, how ingenuous⁵ they were! They all bore this inscription⁶: “A Bouquet³ for my mother,” and under this there was a little verse of four lines dedicated⁷ to her which I could now read and understand. These works of art had been painted by my father in his early boyhood, and he had presented them to his mother upon each joyful⁸ anniversary. The poor, unpretentious little pictures bore testimony⁹ to the humble¹⁰ life of those early days, and they spoke¹¹ of the sacred intimacy¹² of mother and son,—they had been painted during the time which followed those great ordeals¹³, the wars, the English invasion and the burning over of the country by the enemy. For the first time I realized that my grandmother too had been young; that, without doubt, before the trouble with her head, my father had loved her as I loved my mamma, and I felt that he would sorrow greatly when he lost her; I felt sorry for him and I was also full of remorse¹⁴ because I had laughed at her singing, and had been amused when she spoke to her image reflected in the looking-glass.
 
They sent me down stairs. On different pretexts¹⁵, the reason for which I did not understand, they kept me away from the room until the day was over; then they took me to the house of our friends, the D——s, where I was to have dinner with Lucette.
 
When, at about half past eight, I returned home with my nurse, I insisted upon going straight to my grand............