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and not just Swiss. ("The Republic of Geneva is allied to various Swiss cantons, but beyond that we have nothing in common with those people.") In her eyes, the inhabitants of Fribourg ("Ugh! Papists!"), the Vaud, Neuchatel, Berne and the rest of the Confederation were all as much foreigners as the Chinese. Fourth, you had to be connected with the "good families", that is to say, families like ours with ancestors who were members of the Little Council before 1790. Exceptions to this rule were ministers, though only serious ministers "and not these beardless young liberal flibbertigibbets who have the impertinence to go around, saying that Our Lord was simply the greatest of the prophets!" Fifth, you should not be "worldly". This word had a very particular meaning for my aunt. For example, she viewed as worldly any minister who was cheerful or wore a soft collar or sporty clothes or light-coloured shoes, which she loathed. ("Tsk! I ask you! Brown boots!") Also worldly were any Genevans, however well-connected they might be, who went to the theatre. ("Plays are made up. I do not care to listen to lies.")
    'Tantlérie had a regular subscription to the Journal de Geneve because it was a family tradition and because, moreover, she "believed" she owned shares in it. Yet she never read this highly respectable paper and left it unopened in its wrapper because she disapproved not of its political views, of course, but of what she called its "unsuitable" bits, which included: the women's fashion page, the serialized novel at the bottom of page two, the offers of marriage, and the space given to Catholic affairs and meetings of the Salvation Army. ("Tsk! I ask you! Religion with trombones!") Also unsuitable were advertisements for corsets and "places of entertainment", an expression she used as a generic term for any suspect establishments such as music-halls, Palais de Danse, cinemas and even cafes. While I'm on this subject, in case I forget: her snooty disapproval the day she found out that Uncle Agrippa, who was dying of thirst, had on one occasion gone inside a cafe for the first time in his life and, taking his courage in both hands, had ordered tea. Oh, the scandal! An Auble in a place of entertainment! And while I'm still on this subject, say somewhere in my novel that as long as she lived Tantlérie never told the weeniest lie. "Live in truth!" was her motto.
    'Being a very thrifty person, though she was also quite generous, she never sold any of her stocks and shares, not because she was attached to worldly goods but because she considered herself to be no more than the steward of her wealth. ("Everything which came down to me from my father must be handed on intact to his grandchildren.") I said earlier that she "believed" she owned shares in the Journal de Geneue. In reality, not having much of a clue about financial affairs, she regarded her shares and debentures as necessary but base matters which should be mentioned as little as possible and considered them unsuitable subjects for her attention. She deferred blindly to Messrs Saladin, de Chapeaurouge & Co., bankers to the Auble family since the winding-up of the Auble Bank, an impeccably respectable firm, though she did suspect them of reading the Journal de Geneue. ("But tolerance is my middle name: I quite understand that the gentlemen at the bank have to. They must Keep Abreast.")
    'Naturally, we only saw people of our own kind, and all of them were madly pious. Within the "crime de la crime" of the Protestant tribe in Geneva, my aunt and her cronies formed a small clan of die-hards. It was quite out of the question for us ever to have anything to do with Catholics. I have a memory of when I was eleven: Uncle Gri took Éliane and me for the first time on a trip to Annemasse, a small town in France not far from Geneva. In Tantlérie's two-horse open carriage driven by our coachman, Moses — also a strict Calvinist, despite his name - we two little girls were greatly