"Now for a week's sulk! His temper is really insufferable."His remark had one advantage, for I made it a point of honor to give the lie to it, and did not sulk; but the scene had hurt me too deeply for me to forget it, and now my resentment was fully revived, and grew stronger and stronger while I was telling the story to my aunt.Alas! my almost unconscious second-sight, that of a too sensitive child, was not in error.That puerile but painful scene symbolized the whole history of my youth, my invincible antipathy to the man who was about to take my father's place, and the blind partiality in his favor of her who ought to have defended me from the first and always.
"He detests me!" I said through my tears; "what have I done to him?""Calm yourself," said the kind woman."You are just like your poor father, making the worst of all your little troubles.And now you must try to be nice to him on account of your mother, and not to give way to this violent feeling, which frightens me.Do not make an enemy of him," she added.
It was quite natural that she should speak to me in this way, and yet her earnestness appeared strange to me from that moment out.Ido not know why she also seemed surprised at my answer to her question, "What do you know?" She wanted to quiet me, and she increased the apprehension with which I regarded the usurper--so Icalled him ever afterwards--by the slight faltering of her voice when she spoke to him.
"You will have to write to them this evening," said she at length.
Write to them! The words sickened me.They were united; never, nevermore should I be able to think of the one without thinking of the other.
"And you?"
"I have already written."
"When are they to be married?"
"They were married yesterday," she answered, in so low a tone that I hardly heard the words.
"And where?" I asked, after a pause.
"In the country, at the house of some friends." Then she added quickly: "They preferred that you should not be there on account of the interruption of your holidays.They have gone away for three weeks; then they will go to see you in Paris before they start for Italy.You know I am not well enough to travel.I will keep you here until then.Be a good boy, and go now and write."I had many other questions to put to her, and many more tears to weep, but I restrained myself, and a quarter of an hour later, Iwas seated at my dear good aunt's writing-table in her salon.
How I loved that room on the ground floor, with its glass door opening on the garden.It was filled with remembrance for me.On the wall at the side of the old-fashioned "secretary" hung the portraits, in frames of all shapes and sizes, of those whom the good and pious soul had loved and lost.This funereal little corner spoke strongly to my fancy.One of the portraits was a colored miniature, representing my great-grandmother in the costume of the Directory, with a short waist, and her hair dressed a la Proudhon.There was also a miniature of my great-uncle, her son.
What an amiable, self-important visage was that of the staunch admirer of Louis Philippe and M.Thiers! Then came my paternal grandfather, with his strong parvenu physiognomy, and my father at all ages.Underneath these works of art was a bookcase, in which Ifound all my father's school prizes, piously preserved.What a feeling of protection I derived from the portieres in green velvet, with long bands of needlework, my aunt's masterpieces, which hung in wide folds over the doors! With what admiration I regarded the faded carpet, with its impossible flowers, which I had so often tried to gather in my babyhood! This was one of the legends of my earliest years, one of those anecdotes which are told of a beloved son, and which make him feel that the smallest details of his existence have been observed, understood, and loved.In later days I have been frozen by the ice of indifference.And my aunt, she whose life had been lived among these old-fashioned things, how Iloved her, with that face in which I read nothing but supreme tenderness for me, those eyes whose gaze did me good in some mysterious part of my soul! I felt her so near to me, only through her likeness to my father, that I rose from my task four or five times to kiss her, during the time it took me to write my letter of congratulation to the worst enemy I had, to my knowledge, in the world.
And this was the second indelible date in my life.
