She received hers each evening in her large drawing room with
cold dignity. Before kissing them she recapitulated all the faults they
had committed during the day, which she had learned from the governess,
and her reproofs were reinforced with punishments. Honore never
approached her without fear, repressing all his feelings and his need
of affection. He suffered in secret. Then he would take refuge with his
sister Laure, his only friend and comforter.
Before he was five years old he was sent to a day-school in Tours known
as the Leguay Institution. He had a taste for reading, indeed it was
more than a taste, it was a sort of mental starvation which made him
throw himself hungrily upon every book he encountered. Otherwise,
Honore was frankly a mediocre and negligent. But concentrated in
himself and deprived of the caresses which would have meant so much to
him, he created a whole world out of his readings and sometimes gave
glimpses of it to Laure by acting out before her dramas and comedies of
his own manufacture and of which he was the hero.
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