Babet chants these words in a singsong voice as she bounces a ball against the garden wall. The garden is decked out in its summer colors: azure, tender green, and pink. I watch her from a shallow tiled balcony on the second floor where I like to sit before dinner with my knitting while there is still some light. Her silhouetted frizzy hair, which the town hairdresser has never been able to tame, looks like a crown of thorns. My youngest daughter is like a little savage; she disappears for hours and likes nothing better than to roll around in the fields with the town children. The local policeman has dragged her home by the ear several times when she was cutting school. I think back on her older sister’s pampered upbringing—too pampered, perhaps. I can remember when Michel scolded the director of the Lycée Victor Duruy after Denise grazed her knee on the first day of school. We had registered her in the school with some reservations; up to then she had always studied at home, under the mentorship of Miss Matthews.
