Jean says
You say that, but you despise me all the same. No matter! One time I entered the garden of paradise -it was to weed the onion beds with my mother! Near the orchard stood a Turkish pavilion, shaded and overgrown with jessamine and honeysuckle. I didn’t know what it was used for and I had never seen anything so beautiful. People passed in and out and one day -the door was left open. I sneaked in and beheld walls covered with pictures of kings and emperors and there were red-fringed curtains at the windows -now you understand what I mean -I – I had never been in the castle and how my thoughts leaped -and there they returned ever after. Little little the longing came over me to experience for once the pleasure of -enfin, I sneaked in and was bewildered. But then I heard someone coming -there was only one exit for the great folk, but for me there was another, and I had to choose that. Once out I started to run, scrambled through a raspberry hedge, rushed over a strawberry bed and came to a stop on the rose terrace. For there I saw a figure in a white dress and white slippers and stockings -it was you! I hid under a heap of weeds, under, you understand, where the thistles pricked me, and lay on the damp, rank earth. I gazed at you walking among the roses. And I thought if it is true that the thief on the cross could enter heaven and dwell among the angels it was strange that a pauper child on God’s earth could not go into the castle park and play with the Countess’ daughter.