Here's a fine business! It is my uncle who has got into trouble this

time! My aunt Eudoxia has found out everything, and I have just spent

two days in helping my aunt Van Cloth to pack up and get back to Holland

with my long string of cousins, the fat Dirkie, the cooking moulds, and

the barrel-organ following by goods' train.

It was a veritable thunderclap!

I have told you all about this Dutch household and its patriarchal

felicity, its sweetmeat and sausage pastries, and its inimitable

tarts--less appetizing, however, than my aunt's fine eyes. I have told

you about their quiet family evenings with my uncle's pipe and

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schiedam, in which domino-parties of three were varied by the delightful

treat of a symphony from one of the great masters, executed in a

masterly style by a pretty little plump hand covered with pink dimples.

Once or twice a week, as became a favourite and affectionate nephew, I

came into the midst of this idyll of the land of tulips; and always

quitted it full of sweetmeats and good advice.

However, the day before yesterday, Ernest, the second of my cousins, who

is five years old, suddenly caught a violent fever; he grew scarlet in

the face, and his stomach swelled up like a balloon.

My poor aunt, having exhausted all her arsenal of aperients and

astringents against what she reckoned to be an indigestion due to

preserved plums, quite lost her head. In the afternoon the child grew

worse. Where in Paris could she find a Dutch doctor? She could only

place confidence in a Dutchman. At the end of her wits with fear, she

thought she would go after my uncle or me; so, without thinking any more

about it, as she knew our address, she takes a cab and gets driven to

the Rue de Varennes, believing in her simplicity that this was where our

shops and offices were.

She arrives and asks for my uncle. Being seven o'clock, the hall-porter

tells her that the captain will soon be in, shows her to the staircase,

and rings the bell; one of the men-servants asks her for her name, and

then opens the folding doors, announcing-"Madame Barbassou!"

It is my aunt Eudoxia who receives her.

My aunt Van Cloth, who is distracted with anxiety, thinks that she sees

before her some lady of my family, and in order to excuse herself for

disturbing her, begins by saying that she has come to see Captain

Barbassou, her husband.

Imagine the stupefaction of my aunt Eudoxia! But being too astute to

betray herself, she lets the other speak, questions her and learns the

whole story. Then, like the good soul that she is, and feeling sorry for

poor Ernest and his swollen stomach, she rings and orders the carriage

to be ready, so that she may go as soon as possible to her own doctor;

upon which my aunt Van Cloth, who is of an effusive nature, embraces her

most affectionately, calling her her dearest friend.




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