No, I'm joking," he quickly added with a smile.
"There . . . there it was all children, and I was with children all the time, only with children.
They were the children of that village, a whole band, who went to school.
It wasn't I who taught them; oh, no, they had a schoolmaster there for that—Jules Thibaut; or perhaps I did teach them, but more just by being with them, and I spent all my four years that way.
I didn't need anything else.
I told them everything, I didn't hide anything from them.
Their fathers and relations all got angry with me, because the children finally couldn't do without me and kept gathering around me, and the schoolmaster finally even became my worst enemy.
I acquired many enemies there, and all because of the children.
Even Schneider scolded me.
And what were they so afraid of?
A child can be told everything—everything. I was always struck by the thought of how poorly grown-ups know children, even fathers and mothers their own children.
Nothing should be concealed from children on the pretext that they're little and it's too early for them to know.
What a sad and unfortunate idea!
And how well children themselves can see that their fathers consider them too little and unable to understand anything, while they understand everything.
Grown-ups don't know that a child can give extremely important advice even in the most difficult matters.
Oh, God! when this pretty little bird looks at you trustingly and happily, it's a shame for you to deceive it!
I call them little birds because nothing in the world is better than a little bird.
However, they all got angry with me in the village mainly for a certain occurrence . . . and Thibaut simply envied me. At first he kept shaking his head and wondering how it was that with me the children understood everything and with him almost nothing, and then he started laughing at me when I told him that neither of us would teach them anything, but they might still teach us.
And how could he be jealous of me and slander me, when he himself lived with children!
The soul is cured through children . . . There was a patient at Schneider's institution, a very unhappy man.
His unhappiness was so terrible, there could hardly be the like of it.
He was placed there to be treated for insanity. In my opinion, he wasn't insane, he just suffered terribly—that was the whole of his illness.
And if you knew what our children became for him in the end . . . But I'd better tell you about the patient later; now I'll tell you how it all started.
The children disliked me at first.
I was so big, I'm always so clumsy; I know I'm also bad-looking . . . finally, there was the fact that I was a foreigner.
The children laughed at me at first, and then even began throwing stones at me, when they spied me kissing Marie.
And I only kissed her once . . . No, don't laugh," the prince hastened to stop the smiles of his listeners. "There wasn't any love here.
If you knew what an unfortunate being she was, you'd pity her as I did.
She was from our village.
Her mother was an old woman, and in her tiny, completely decrepit house, one of the two windows was partitioned off, with the permission of the village authorities she was allowed to sell laces, thread, tobacco, and soap from this window, all at the lowest prices, and that was her subsistence.
She was ill, her legs were swollen, so she always sat in her place.
Marie was her daughter, about twenty, weak and thin; she had been consumptive for a long time, but she kept going from house to house, hiring herself out by the day to do heavy work—scrubbing floors, washing laundry, sweeping yards, tending cattle.
A French traveling salesman seduced her and took her away, but after a week he abandoned her on the road alone and quietly left.
She came home, begging on the way, all dirty, ragged, her shoes torn; she had walked for a week, slept in the fields, and caught a bad cold; her feet were covered with sores, her hands swollen and chapped.
She had never been pretty anyway; only her eyes were gentle, kind, innocent.
She was terribly taciturn.
Once, before then, she suddenly began to sing over her work, and I remember that everybody was surprised and started laughing:
'Marie's begun to sing!
What?
Marie's begun to sing!' And she was terribly abashed and kept silent forever after.
People were still nice to her then, but when she came back sick and worn out, there was no compassion for her in anyone!
How cruel they are about that! What harsh notions they have of it all!
Her mother was the first to greet her with spite and contempt: 'You've dishonored me now.'
She was the first to hold her up to disgrace: when they heard in the village that Marie had come back, everybody ran to look at her, and nearly the whole village came running to the old woman's cottage: old men, children, women, girls, everybody, in such a hustling, greedy crowd.
Marie was lying on the floor at the old woman's feet, hungry, ragged, weeping.
When they all rushed in, she covered herself with her disheveled hair and lay facedown on the floor like that.
Everybody around looked on her as if she were vermin; the old men denounced and abused her, the young ones even laughed, the women abused her, denounced her, looked at her with contempt, as at some sort of spider.
Her mother allowed it all; she herself sat there nodding her head and approving. Her mother was already very sick then and nearly dying; in fact, two months later she did die; she knew she was dying, but even so she never thought of being reconciled with her daughter till her dying day, never spoke a single word to her, chased her out to sleep in the front hall, gave her almost nothing to eat.
She often had to soak her ailing legs in warm water; Marie washed her legs every day and took care of her; the woman accepted all her services silently and never said a kind word to her.
Marie endured it all, and later, when I became acquainted with her, I noticed that she approved of it herself and considered herself the lowest sort of creature.