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her most gracious manner, reserving for this world alone the incessant irritability of her other moods.

Yet, in all this confusion, my mother always impressed everyone with the sense of her immense importance.  Perhaps this could be accounted for by her arrogance, unusual culture, and personal elegance.  The atmosphere she created was that of a court ruled over by a crazy queen; and before my brother showed definite and incurable signs of madness, she treated me either as one of royal blood - since I descended from her - or else as a page-in-waiting rather than a little girl.  There was even a time when she dressed me up in replicas of the clothes my brother had worn as a very small boy.  But she never failed to remind me that I was not good-looking like St. Amar, and indeed, my pale face and dark hair could in no way compare with his angelic blondness.

With all this she insisted on being treated with the greatest respect, and so to this day I am inclined to show to others a courtesy in no way consistent with my age or sex.