Chapter IV: Book IV: I the Epidemic 337 (3)

How did our father and mother manage to realise at one time all the dreams of our excited imaginations and distribute to each one the paradisaical things that he longed for? How, above all, did they manage to diminish nothing from the divine generosity which they represented during the sorrowful times that we were soon to know? My wonder never ceases when I see, on Christmas day, in the quarters where the poor live, children running about with their hands full of gifts. They are only cheap little toys, but they bear in themselves the virtue of a miracle....

Of the secret consultations in the music room, notwithstanding its remarkable acoustic properties, I could hear nothing. Neither of the two spoke above a low murmur: they were always of one mind. Yet I divined that they were talking of the lawsuit. Something serious was lurking in the darkness. Preparations were being made to repel the enemy. And I wondered why the enemy did not make his appearance.

One morning--it was a Thursday--as we came home for the midday breakfast, my brothers and I, what was our stupefaction, our horror, on perceiving on one of the stone columns into which the entrance gates were set, an enormous bill, which bore the outrageous inscription:

VILLA FOR SALE

We looked at one another, all alike indignant.

“It’s an insult!” exclaimed Bernard, who already had a sense of military honour.

“No, it’s a mistake,” affirmed Stephen, with unbounded amazement.

Absent-minded and unobservant, he had not for one moment reflected upon the trifling incidents which Bernard and I had been observing, and which, inspiring us with a holy horror, had prepared us for this catastrophe.

We should not have felt more overcome with shame if we had all three been slapped in the face. Bernard, the boldest of us, tried to tear down the bill, but it was glued fast and resisted the attempt. Like a reinforcing army we rushed into the besieged house, which I expected to find full of mole-crickets. The first person we met was Aunt Deen, gesticulating and talking to herself. We had hardly opened our lips when she perceived our agitation and at once her fury put ours into the shade.

“Yes, _they_ want to rob us of everything! _They_ propose to take possession of our property. I would rather have died than live to see this.”

On her lips the word _property_ took on a solemn grandeur. Then they had passed through the breach; _they_ were advancing upon us in serried ranks. Beyond this assurance it was needless to expect anything more intelligible from Aunt Deen.

We turned for further explanation to grandfather, coming in from his walk. He waved us off with a gesture of superb indifference; he seemed to us to be soaring in a region far above our agitations. Had he not declared that it was all one to him whether he lived in one house or another? He had been out for a walk on this fine July morning, when the whole sunny country-side seemed swimming in light; he looked healthy, radiant; why should he permit us to spoil his pleasure by inopportune remarks? On the contrary he proposed to share some of his pleasure with us.

“I love this good summer sun,” he said. “And no one can rob us of it.”

His remark was not calculated to quiet our alarm. Its singularity struck me: in such a moment as this, when all our combative energies were not enough to resist the danger that hung over us, he would draw our attention to a simple source of happiness which had no lawful owner and was beyond attack. When one is a child one never thinks that the sun is something he may enjoy.

Mother was clasping my two elder sisters in her arms, trying to console them and not succeeding, for she shared their sorrow. At her feet the two little ones, Nicola and Jamie, were lamenting themselves indiscriminately. Imagine the effect upon us of this weeping group! Even Louise, the laughing Louise, was abandoning herself to tears.

“Here comes your father,” suddenly exclaimed mamma. “Stop crying, I beg of you. He has trouble enough already.”

She had been the first to hear his step. The effect of her words was instantaneous. We all controlled ourselves as quickly as we could, and went down to the dining-room with faces in good order.

At table The Father began to be absorbed in his thoughts, the course of which we followed. We used to call him _the father_ among ourselves, as we used to say _the house_. Did he see the anxiety in all those faces turned toward him? Did he read in our eyes the dishonouring inscription, _Villa for sale_? He looked us full in the face one by one and his frank smile reassured us. Come! He still had his air as of the chief who commands. We had the feeling that he could not consent to such a downfall. Peace and appetite returned to us at the same time, and seldom was luncheon more gay than this one. We enjoyed the relief to our strained nerves, under the shelter of that protecting strength.

After the meal, while my brothers, whose studies were already of importance, completed a task, I ran into the garden; the afternoon was mine. The figure of Tem Bossette emerged from the vines. I went to him. He was tying the too luxuriant branches to poles with bands of straw, but he asked nothing better than to interrupt his work which, to judge by the number of branches already tied, was not making much headway. An empty bottle at his feet bore witness to the obstinate struggle against the heat which he had maintained.

He evidently saw my approach with satisfaction. I could hear from a distance his hoarse voice muttering to himself like Aunt Deen. At a later time I understood better the secret reason of his indignation. He was acknowledging to himself, not being as stupid as Mimi Pachoux, his rival, insisted, that his whims and his drink habits would make him of no use anywhere else; his destiny was closely allied with the destiny of the house. So he lost none of his rage and did not cease to lift up his head, his great pumpkin shaped head, against the reigning king, whose idleness, whose home and foreign politics and above all, whose financial condition he never ceased to deplore. As soon as I was near enough to hear him, he put into words the griefs which were obscurely struggling within him:

“You have read the bill, Master Francis?”

“To be sure I have read it.”

And I added, bitter with family pride,

“What is that to you?”

The question suffocated him. His eyes started from his head. “To me? To me?” he exclaimed, foaming at the mouth with fury.

The ancient habit of respect recalled him to himself, and in a lamentable tone he began to set forth his own claim to a part in the family sorrows.

“I have chopped wood here for forty years (he exaggerated everything). It was I who planted these vines and this garden.”

As a matter of fact there was not much to be proud of in that. Our garden sometimes looked like a field and sometimes like a forest, and the prematurely yellowed leaves of the vines revealed a chlorotic condition which would doubtless have been the better for a vigorous medication. But grandfather and his gardener were of one mind in distrusting medicines, as well for plants as for people.

“Where should I go if I left you?” Tem continued frankly. “I might as well throw myself into the water and done with it.”

It would have been his only opportunity to take a good drink of it. Would it then be necessary henceforth to watch him, too?--as if we hadn’t enough with the tiresome propensity of The Hanged? I confess, however, that I did not take this threat very seriously. I had indeed no difficulty in convincing Tem of the advantage of continuing to live. Then his lamentation took another turn.

“What need had Monsieur (that was grandfather) to plunge into all those schemes? Paving the town, and dealing in slates, and agricultural credit. Agricultural credit! As if any one ever paid when you gave them credit. What would be the use of credit, then, if you had to pay in the end like any one else? Not to speak of other bad luck here and there, when all he needs is the sun and the fresh air. Won’t do to undertake to manage things when the third or the quarter is all the same to one. The thing is to keep quiet in a corner with one’s income and let other folks work for you. If it were Monsieur Michel, that’s another pair of sleeves; Monsieur Michel, that’s all right, he’s one who understands governing things. With him there’s nothing to fear, everything goes as if on wheels. But what’s to be done when the other won’t see it?”

I began confusedly to understand that grandfather’s philanthropic enterprises and the unfortunate results of his administration were ending in the ruin of us all. Tem’s long harangue, uttered without interruption, had at once comforted him and made him thirsty. He gazed upon the empty bottle that lay at the foot of a vine and constituted his sole supply for the day. Taking advantage of the respite, I tried to understand more about our discomfiture.

“But why should the house be sold?”

“Why, it’s the lawsuit. When you lose a lawsuit they seize you, they arrest you, they strangle you, they turn you out of doors, they take possession of your house, and you are good for nothing but to throw to the dogs.”

This deplorable picture was not calculated to reassure me. And far from being sorry for us, Tem, perceiving my grandfather who was majestically coming down the garden walk, cheerful, erect, flourishing his cane, grew doubly irritated with him, as the cause of all the trouble.

“All right--all right! When one has got himself into a mess he is prosecuted, arrested, condemned. No good to embrace every one like a brother when one has good land to look after. One has bother enough with the land--there are plenty of folk to prowl about it. Just look at him! He doesn’t even see us--it’s all the same to him--everything’s all the same to him.”

As a general thing Tem had no desire to be observed. Now he was making a great racket to attract attention and not succeeding. This failure completed his disgust--his failure combined, I think, with the prospect of finishing the afternoon without a drink. He deliberately laid down the straw of which he made his ligatures, and deserting his post he abandoned me into the bargain.

“I won’t see it! I won’t see it!” he exclaimed as he went, irritated and discouraged.

See what? The invasion of the mole-crickets? Neither did I want to see it.

I followed the deserter as far as the gate, where I read the bill three or four times over the better to understand the extent of our disaster, and then came slowly back. What could I do now? My horses--the poles--my wooden sword, my plays, were no longer anything to me. For the first time in my life, perhaps, I let my arms hang useless by my sides. By this feeling of the vanity of all things I was being born into grief. I was learning to separate myself from things. Since that moment I have always felt the pang of separation as soon as I see it coming and long before it actually reaches me.

I went back to the garden and threw myself down in the long grass which Tem had neglected to mow, and there I lay, face downward, I know not how long. All the garden enveloped me in perfume, and I breathed the garden. The house, from its open windows, looked at me across the grass, and I wept for the house. The strength of my love for the house had been as unknown to me as my own heart.

It was a warm, still summer afternoon, full of the hum of insects in the sunshine. Little by little I felt myself drowned in a soft sweetness, as a fly is drowned in honey. And little by little I became happy in spite of my pain. Later I came to know that debasing consolation that comes to us from the beauty of the day, when death has passed that way.

I fell asleep at last, like a baby in its tears. When I awoke evening had come into the garden, noiselessly, and was hiding under the trees. I got up and ran to seek it in the chestnut grove. The dinner bell rang and I turned back. A quantity of things that I had never noticed before impressed themselves upon my mind: the tone of the bell, the rosy tint of the sky between the branches, the long sprays of clematis drooping from the balcony, the lack of symmetry in the windows, and even the creaking of the door as I pushed it open, though it must always have creaked just so. With fierce ardour I was discovering all that I was about to lose.

We could never get used to seeing without indignation, on returning from school, the ill-omened bill that dishonoured the entrance. Tem Bossette had not returned; we learned that he was drinking himself drunk in all the wine-shops. Mimi Pachoux was working elsewhere; the ship was leaking at every joint and the crew was escaping. Only the long, woe-begone face of The Hanged occasionally showed itself here and there like a sign of distress, or an abhorrent symbol of the evil fate which was pursuing us.

“He is faithful,” Aunt Deen would say, overshadowing him with her protection and aiding him in his work.

More faithful than he, and keeping vigilant guard over the menaced home, she met us at the gate one day in an unusual state of agitation.

“I was watching for you, children,” she said, “to warn you.”

What was going on now? We were not kept long in ignorance.

“A wretch has come, a wretch from Paris (that was an aggravating circumstance, for nothing good could come out of that notorious Babylon, corrupt as it was and fit only for the flames), who has taken upon himself to go through every part of the house, from cellar to garret. Your father is going with him. I can’t imagine how he can keep from throwing him out of window. He must have a patience quite beyond me!”

We were thunderstruck. A stranger dared to come into our house! And our father,--The Father--consented to escort him through it! Aunt Deen might well be terrified: the laws of the universe were turned upside down. As we followed her dejectedly into the house, with hanging heads and shame-flushed cheeks, we came upon this visitor descending the stairs on his way to the kitchen. He was loudly criticising, laying his plans, estimating the size of the rooms, with manifold gesticulations, as if already building a house of his own on the ruins of ours.

“The stairs are too narrow. The kitchen is out of proportion to the other rooms; I shall convert it into a drawing-room.”

My father was showing him about politely, though without alacrity, preserving a calm and distant manner that checked the loquacity of the other when he turned to him, the better to set forth his plans. We went straight up to mother’s room as to our natural refuge. Our mother, who was kneeling at her faldstool, rose when she heard us coming. Her emotion appeared in her face.

“God will protect us,” she said.

When she uttered the name of God she was, as it were, illumined. At that moment I understood what it is to hate the foreigner--the invader. My father’s subordination, my mother’s tears, and our house trodden, judged, appraised, by a stranger--those are sights that I can never forget. Later, when I read in my History of France that the Allies had crossed the frontiers in 1814 and 1815, and had come and encamped in our capital, when I learned that the Prussians had torn Alsace and Lorraine from us, like a part of our very flesh, I had no difficulty in giving material form to those past woes; I could most distinctly see that gentleman who went from top to bottom of our house as if he were at home.

“Why did you bow to him?” Aunt Deen asked grandfather, who came in with his usual deliberate indifference.

“I am polite to every one.”

“One doesn’t compound with the enemy.”

How could our father, who was not generally considered easy-going, have endured this outrage without faltering? He was in charge of our safety, and the exercise of power imposes obligations which irresponsible folk are apt to neglect. His good humour amazed us also on another occasion. One day at table he suddenly said to mamma:

“Do you know what news is going about the town?”

“I have seen no one.”

“They say we are leaving town; the house being sold, we shall disappear. Our pride would never endure a less conspicuous establishment. And who do you suppose has spread the report? I give you a thousand guesses. But no, you have too much faith in human goodness. It is my beloved colleagues. They have discovered a practical method of sharing my practice among them. One after another my patients ask, ‘Is it true that you are going away? Stay with us! What will become of us?’ It is very touching. But I have reassured them.”

He laughed,--the hearty laugh of a man accustomed to the fray. We were too young to perceive all the contempt and force that resounded in this victorious laugh, which in our indignation almost scandalised us. Especially Bernard and Louise, hasty and impressionable, protested vehemently against the odious implication, though indeed their opinion had not been asked. Our mother, even she, had blushed for the harm that had been devised against us, and which she herself would never have imagined. As for Aunt Deen, she doubled her fist at the enemy--“they” indeed had at last been discovered:

“Oh, the monsters! I’m not a bit surprised. It would be no more than they deserve if they were compelled to swallow all their own medicines.”

Her aspiration moved grandfather to hilarity. Till then he had been passive, but he was too much the enemy of doctors not to relish his sister’s prescription for vengeance.

It was she who, a few days later, told us of our deliverance. She had placed herself outside of the gate, like an advanced sentinel, and made to us from afar unintelligible signs, which as we drew near we interpreted unfavourably. Assuredly the invader had taken possession of the fortress. The house was sold. We had no longer a roof to shelter us. As Tem had prophesied, we were good for nothing but to be thrown to the dogs.

When we were within hearing distance she hailed us:

“Come quick, come quick! The house is ours! The house is ours!”

We rushed wildly forward.

“The bill isn’t there,” cried Bernard, who was ahead.

Only the marks of nails remained upon the pillar.

“Aha!” continued Aunt Deen’s voice, bursting out in a triumphant cadence. “_They_ thought they had it! But they won’t get it!”

_They_ were no longer the doctors, but the gentleman from Paris and other purchasers, who had appeared while we were in school. With uplifted arm she sketched the flight of the dispersed troop.

With a step that was rapid in spite of her years she led us to the music room where the family was assembled, with the exception of grandfather, who no doubt had made no change in his hour of walking, and who was probably ignorant of our salvation. Mariette followed us at a respectful distance. Her long service gave her the right to a place in the procession.

Our mother, deeply moved, was caressing the hair of my two elder sisters, whom joy, like grief, had moved to tears. But I attached no importance to the tears of my sisters, which used to flow for nothing at all. My father standing, his hand upon the back of my mother’s chair, was smiling. I had never seen his face so radiant, and through the window, behind the group, the sun was coming in like a distinguished guest.

“The bill isn’t there,” repeated Bernard without the usual greeting.

“Yes,” said our father; “we shall keep the house.”

And as our enthusiasm was about to burst forth, he added:

“You owe it to your mother and also to your Aunt Bernardine.”

The latter, whose parchment cheeks would crimson for no reason but that some one spoke of her, while she kept neither her thoughts nor her property for herself, and daily robbed herself as a matter of course, stoutly refused all praise.

“How you talk, Michel! For nothing but a signature! You mustn’t mislead these children.”

Mother at once approved:

“She is right; it is your father who has saved us all.”

And lowering her voice she turned to him, murmuring--but I heard her:

“Is not all that I have, yours?”

I paid little heed, I acknowledge, to this debate. Of course the saving of the house was due solely to our father. How could our mother and Aunt Been have helped? It had been necessary to throw out the gentleman from Paris and the other invaders, as Ulysses on his return to Ithaca had thrown out the lovers. That was an exercise of strength which belonged only to a man. My notions of life were simple: the man governed, the woman’s sole charge was of domestic matters. That Aunt Deen had her rights, however diminished, in the building that “they” were trying to get away from us I could never have understood, any more than I could understand what a dowry was, and how the consent of the wife was necessary to enable the husband to dispose of property.

Nevertheless I recalled the incident of the dressmaker. Mother had no doubt made some savings in the matter of clothes and turned them in. Does not every one make his contribution to the wars? I immediately slipped out of the room and came back bringing the savings bank in which I had been encouraged to drop such little sous as I received. I expected an ovation for the magnanimity of my sacrifice. Without a word I handed it to my father.

“What do you want me to do with it?” was all his response.

Somewhat abashed, being gazed upon by all present, I said, blushing furiously:

“It is for the house.”

This time my father drew me to him and publicly gave me the _accolade_ with the dazzling Order of the Day.

“This child will be our joy.”

Thus the Emperor rewarded his marshals on the field of battle; nothing in history is surprising to one who has had a childhood like mine.

Coming in while the bell was ringing, grandfather was the last one to learn what had happened. Aunt Deen informed him in a fiery harangue. He heard her with interest but without emotion, his serenity all undisturbed. And when the heroic story was finished he nodded his head, vouchsafing merely the words of faint admiration:

“Well, well! so much the better!”

Things had been arranged with no help from him.

V

THE ABDICATION

IN the days that followed I came to understand by all sorts of small tokens, not to speak of the remarks of servants, that the house no longer belonged to grandfather, but to my parents, and that only a simple formality remained to be accomplished for the treaty to be final. Grandfather no longer having the responsibility--though in truth the responsibility had never weighed heavily upon him--had no desire to keep the honours of headship. More than once I heard father speaking to him to the following effect:

“I do not want anything to be changed--I want everything to be as it has always been--I want to take from you nothing but your cares.”

“Oho!” grandfather would reply with his little laugh, “you are lucky if you know just what you want.”

And he would run his fingers carelessly through his beard, as if nothing were worth any trouble. Still, a plan was simmering in his mind, of which we were speedily advised. When once he had hold of an idea nothing, neither entreaties nor protests, would induce him to let it go. Aunt Deen’s tumultuous reproaches, father’s brief, clear-cut, unanswerable arguments, mother’s entreaties,--he received them all with equal tranquillity of temper and heeded none of them. From his amiable and detached air one would have deemed him easily amenable to persuasion, if it had not been for his wicked little laugh which upset everything.

One fine morning we were all informed of his decision to give up the room with two windows which he occupied in the very heart of the house, which was vast, comfortable and easy to keep warm, and to take possession of what?--no one could have guessed--the tower chamber! This room had long been unoccupied, and all the winds of heaven blew through it. No sooner had he made known his intention than the entire household, after fruitless attempts to make him abandon his purpose, must needs bend every nerve to help him move without delay. Without waiting for any of us he was already leading the way to the staircase laden with the most precious of his possessions.

“Wait at least until we sweep, clean and dust,” urged Aunt Deen, armed with the wolf’s head.

“It’s not worth while,” he assured her. “One can live very comfortably with spiders and dust.”

This scandal at least was avoided. Aunt Deen was ahead of him, and he was obliged to have a few minutes’ patience, little as he liked it; after which he resolutely laid hold of the bannister, bearing his barometer, violin case and pipes. Down he came again for his spy-glass. The rest of the removal did not interest him at all. His clothes, linen and furniture might follow him or not, as it happened. He showed his confidence in me by requesting me to carry a treatise on astronomy, a volume about cryptograms, the coloured illustrations of which I already knew, showing the principal species of mushrooms, and another work which from its title I believed to be a book of devotion: the “Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau”--I had almost forgotten the “Prophecies of Michel Nostradamus,” and a collection of the “True Limping Messenger of Berne and Vevey,” an almanac famous and precious from every point of view, but chiefly for its meteorological bulletins. For grandfather was greatly interested in the condition of the atmosphere. He would snuff it up, so to speak, from his window morning and night, at whatever risk of taking cold; and he was always observing the movements of the clouds and the shining of the stars. He loved to cite the authority of a certain Mathew de la Drôme, with whom he was in correspondence, and whom we children had come to believe to be a sorcerer or a mender of weather. He himself used to make forecasts--and if you wanted to flatter him, you would ask him to predict the weather. He was seldom mistaken, whether it was that luck was on his side or that he really had rightly interpreted the direction of the winds. This trivial reputation, which he enjoyed, seemed to make him one with the mysterious laws of nature, whose oracles he uttered.

As soon as he had moved his books and instruments thither he found himself at home in the tower chamber and declared himself pleased with it. It had a view of the sky and at the same time of all four quarters of the horizon; and would capture the slightest ray of the sun, from whatsoever direction it might come. As for the direction of the wind, that would be easily ascertained.

A great clatter informed him that his furniture was following him upstairs. Aunt Deen was presiding over the removal in person, not without mutterings and grumblings. With the bedside steps under one arm, a bolster under the other, and a candle-stick in each hand, she preceded, with stimulating remarks, a squad which followed in Indian file, but without much team work in their manœuvres. Tem Bossette came first with an easy chair on his head (he had consented to a reconciliation, sealed by a bottle of red wine). Then appeared a wardrobe oscillating on four legs, which on reaching the top of the stairs were revealed as half belonging to The Hanged and half (the smaller half) to Mimi Pachoux, whom also victory had recalled to the fold.

“Upon my word,” said Aunt Deen to her brother during the defiling of her troops, “I’d like to know why you couldn’t stay downstairs! Hoisting all your things up this narrow staircase!”

And as grandfather indifferently acknowledged her remark merely by a vague gesture she resorted next to sarcasm:

“Of course, that doesn’t distress Monsieur! Monsieur would never put himself out for a trifle like that! Comfortably seated in the easy chair that poor Tem has drenched with sweat, Monsieur will observe the progress of events! And meanwhile, I shall have to come up and down a hundred times a day. And the maids likewise. But you don’t care what trouble you make us: you’ll always find everything you need ready at your hand.”

The attack was direct and severe. Before replying grandfather cast a startled glance upon the seat which Tem had transported, fearful of the reported deluge. When he perceived it to be dry and intact he recovered his serenity and replied with the utmost calmness:

“I ask nothing of any one.”

“Because you never lack for anything; you live like a pig in clover.”

They were both right. Grandfather never made any demands, but every one was eager to anticipate his slightest wish. Thus he uttered no complaint against the piercing winds that besieged his tower; but the day after his removal all the chinks around the doors and windows were carefully stopped up.

Aunt Deen’s dissatisfaction had given voice to the general opinion. This unexpected exodus, utterly without necessity, cast a shadow over our father and mother, who vainly sought for its reason.

“Why must you be up so high?”

“Altitude has always agreed with me.”

I admit that on this occasion I sided with grandfather. The tower chamber with its four views, its isolation, its special odour (it had never been opened except when some one went for apples, which used to ripen there all winter long) had long had an irresistible attraction for me. Since it was henceforth to be inhabited I promised myself to visit it frequently.

This episode was soon put into the shade by another, much more important and of a character to make a much deeper impression upon my imagination. Coming home from school one morning, I learned from my usual source of information, Aunt Deen, that this time it was settled. She imparted this news with an air of great mystery, but mystery itself with her was noisy in its manifestation. The word settled assumed upon her lips a formidable importance. What was settled?

“The deed is signed. Just now. I am very glad.”

What deed? I didn’t understand a word of it all.

“Well, we are to remain in our house. _They_ can never trouble us again.”

Didn’t I already know that _they_ had been utterly routed, dispersed, chastised, overcome, beaten, reduced to nothingness, like the Persians in my ancient history whom a handful of Greeks had chased into the sea? How should she think to surprise me by telling me a secret already several days old, perhaps several weeks old, and about which every one had been talking freely? A child does not enter the region of preparations, delays, formalities and judicial scribblings. But a capital event shortly illustrated Aunt Deen’s declaration.

Grandfather returned earlier than usual from his walk, and as one of us remarked upon his abnormal punctuality he took himself off without a word. When, after the second bell, we entered the dining-room with empty stomachs and ravenous appetites, what was our surprise to find him already there, sitting at table, but not in his official place, the place of honour in the centre opposite our mother, as is fitting for the head of the family, the reigning king. Without confiding his intention to any one, he had changed the napkin rings and had taken his place at the end of the table, opposite the window. It is true that he had chosen a very good place whence he could see the trees in the garden and even a bit of sky between their branches. To a lover of sunshine the view was not unimportant. But all the same it was a revolution in the family life and the entire domestic economy. Or rather, I was not mistaken, it was an abdication.

I was well up in abdications. Had I not been obliged to study in my history book those of the sluggard kings, whose hair they cut off before immuring them in a cloister?--and in spite of myself I gazed at grandfather’s slightly curling white hair. Above all I had heard my brother Bernard reciting the story of Charles V, by which I had been strongly impressed. That master of the world, laying aside his grandeur, had retired to a monastery of Estramadura, where he mended clocks, and to give himself a foretaste of death had had his funeral celebrated while he was still alive. Historians that dote upon truth have since then assured me that these details are fabulous. I am sorry, for I have not forgotten them, whereas an innumerable number of demonstrated facts have dropped out of my memory. But at that time I believed with iron conviction in the retirement of Charles V, the false obsequies and the clocks. Grandfather also knew how to mend clocks, and I at once established relations between the two sovereigns.

Aunt Deen, punctual for once, and our mother, who was not far behind us, shared our astonishment. Then all eyes were fixed upon our father, who was just then entering the room. At a glance he took in the situation, and with him decision was never slow to follow. He came forward with rapid steps.

“No, no,” he said, “I will not have this. Nothing should be changed here. Father, take your own place, I beg.”

Assuredly not one of us would have resisted an entreaty which was also a command. But our father’s energetic regulating force had before our very faces come in contact with another force the power of which I had never dreamed of, that of immovability. Grandfather did not stir. He had resolved not to stir.

Father, receiving no reply, repeated his request more gently,--I can not say more humbly, for at all times, in spite of himself, he wore an air of pride. He received in the face an outburst of that eternal little laugh, with the added accompaniment of the words:

“Oho! what a fuss about nothing.”

“Father, give me this proof of your affection!”

“One place or another, what’s the odds? I am very comfortable here, and here I stay,” he said, adding in a tone of superb disdain, “if you only knew, my poor Michel, how little I care!”

He cared for nothing: Tem Bossette had told me so; everything was all one to him; one seat or another, one house or another. Such words as these, uttered before us children, were enough to exasperate our father, but he controlled himself.

“There must be a headship in the family,” he urged.

“Bah! We live under a republic, and I believe in liberty.”

Father saw that it was perfectly useless to insist, and he merely added:

“Then you do really refuse to come back to your own place?”

“I shall not move.”

Philomena, the waitress, offered the platter. Father signed to her to offer it to grandfather, after which there was nothing for him but to take the seat of honour. It was a relief to us all; we all felt that the place belonged to him by right and that he alone deserved to occupy it. He and no one else had long been the head of the family. At the slightest difficulty or vexation every one turned to him, every one appealed to him. Now the disquietude which had weighed upon the house for so long a time would be ended. Now we should be directed. No more sluggard kings! The reins of government, as my history book expressed it, would be held in strong hands. And it was right that the head of the house should have all the insignia of authority. A king does not occupy the second place, and evidently my father would not have crowned himself of his own accord.

Thus the transferrence of power had taken place in our presence.

I should not have anticipated the change of feeling which took place within me, almost suddenly. Grandfather’s government had always seemed to me precarious and derisory. But as soon as he refused to exercise it I began to admire his disinterestedness and to discover the poetry of abdication. His sovereign disdain of material things appeared to me full of grandeur, and I even went so far as to interpret to myself the expression which had once seemed sacrilegious to me--“whether one lives in one house or another.” If he had done nothing to protect our house, perhaps it was because he cared for higher and more distant things. From his tower chamber he was entering into communication with the winds and the stars, predicting the future. The weather and the universe were absorbing him; he could no longer devote himself to common tasks. There was another mode of interpreting life, which I vaguely felt without understanding it, and which attracted me by its unusualness, and its enigma. The deposed king, clothed in the mystery which was conferred upon him by an unimaginable learning, was recovering his prestige and even assuming, all unaware to himself, a degree of ascendancy over my spirit.

I gazed by turns at father and grandfather: father in his normal place, thinking of each of us, diffusing peace and order about him; the light of his marvellous aptitude at command shining from his clear cut features and especially from his piercing eyes; grandfather, the delicate lines of his face, almost feminine notwithstanding his long white beard, his eyes always slightly clouded, often abstracted, indifferent to all around him, and more interested in the trees of the garden or the bit of sky that he saw through the window than in us. For the first time I was astonished to find such a difference between the two men. I had never observed it before, or had not thought about it. Now it struck me so strongly that I almost uttered my surprise aloud. It doubtless would have escaped me had I not felt the unseemliness of the fact. A son ought to resemble his father--there could be no doubt upon the subject. Or else it wasn’t worth while to be the son of some one. And whom was I like?