Ronald Firbank

“ Then little Odette returned thoughtfully to the great grey chateau. And as she passed down the avenue of over-arching limes a thousand thrushes sang deliriously amidst the branches.
But Odette felt somehow changed since last she passed the castle gates. She felt older. For suddenly she realized that Life was not a dream; she realized for the first time that Life was cruel, that Life was sad, that beyond the beautiful garden in which she dwelt, many millions of people were struggling to live, and sometimes in the struggle for life one failed—like the poor woman by the river bank. ”

“ But the story that Odette found the most wonderful of all, was the account of the child Bernadette beholding the Holy Virgin in the mountains. This, for her, was the most perfect story in the world, and with her quick, imaginative mind she would picture the little peasant girl Bernadette returning to her parents’ distant dwelling, when suddenly in a ray of glorious light, the Holy Mary herself appeared on the lonely mountain path, like a beautiful dream. ”

“ For days after she hung between life and death, and then, when she at last got well again, she always seemed to be thinking of him, always seemed to be living in the past. Sometimes she would sit for hours in the garden staring in front of her, and smiling and talking to herself so that I used to feel afraid. Then, a few years later, when the father and mother of the little Odette were drowned on their way back from India, Madame seemed to wake up from her long dream, as it were, and went to Paris to fetch Mademoiselle Odette from the convent of the Holy Dove. ”