My mother, seeing that I had difficulty in keeping back my tears, said to me: “ ‘Regulus was in the habit, when things looked grave.⁠ ⁠…’ Besides, it isn’t nice for Mamma! What does Mme. de Sévigné say? Your grandmother will tell you: ‘I shall be obliged to draw upon all the courage that you lack.’ ” And remembering that affection for another distracts one’s selfish griefs, she endeavoured to beguile me by telling me that she expected the removal to Saint-Cloud to go without a hitch, that she liked the cab, which she had kept waiting, that the driver seemed civil and the seats comfortable. I made an effort to smile at these trifles, and bowed my head with an air of acquiescence and satisfaction. But they helped me only to depict to myself with more accuracy Mamma’s imminent departure, and it was with an agonised heart that I gazed at her as though she were already torn from me, beneath that wide-brimmed straw hat which she had bought to wear in the country, in a flimsy dress which she had put on in view of the long drive through the sweltering midday heat; hat and dress making her someone else, someone who belonged already to the Villa Montretout, in which I should not see her.