PREPARATION 3

tells of circumstances which happened when he was
still the only child of the family, whose second was
born two years after him. Lest anybody should be
tempted to ascribe these and other little occurrences to
a later period, this is what he himself says:

“Although I was born at Saint-Mars, my father
caused, after his marriage, a house to be built at
Oisseau, an important neighbouring parish, where he
then settled. Now my efforts at walking, in reality
mere gropings about the walls of an apartment, where I
remember things that were in my way, occurred in the
very house in which I was born before my parents
moved out, and the next incident now present to my
mind took place in our still unfinished home at Oisseau
before any of my brothers were born.”’

The dates of other circumstances connected with
his early childhood are just as easy to ascertain.
Adjoining the church of Oisseau,* between it and the
three sides of a square formed by as many rows of
houses, was the parish graveyard. In 1848,‘ as shown
by official documents and tombstones, its site was
moved to another place. Partly out of respect for
consecrated ground, partly with a view to levelling
down the soil which was sloping up to the church,
excavating on a large scale went on, and the earth
mixed with bones was daily carted away to the new
site, from September, 1858, to July, 1860, after which
some systematic levelling and sanding was done.

Despite the fact that the child was then scarcely
more than one year old, these last operations made on
him enough of an impression to have remained quite

8 Or Grand Oisseau, as it is officially known, to distinguish it from
another place of the same name but of less importance.

4 In reality, the land for the cemetery had been acquired in 1838,
but not utilized until five years later.