§15
After dinner my father generally lay down for an hour and a half, and the servants at once made off to the taverns and tea-shops. Tea was served at seven, and we sometimes had a visitor at that hour, especially my uncle, the Senator. This was a respite for us; for he generally brought a budget of news with him and produced it with much vivacity. Meanwhile my father put on an air of absolute indifference, keeping perfectly grave over the most comic stories, and questioning the narrator, as if he could not see the point, when he was told of any striking fact.
The Senator came off much worse, when he occasionally contradicted or disagreed with his younger brother, and sometimes even without contradicting him, if my father happened to be specially out of humour. In these serio-comic scenes, the most comic feature was the contrast between my uncle’s natural vehemence and my father’s artificial composure. “Oh, you’re not well to-day,” my uncle would say at last, and then snatch his hat and go off in a hurry. One day he was unable in his anger to open the door. “Damn that door!” he said, and kicked it with all his might. My father walked slowly up to the door, opened it, and said with perfect calmness, “The door works perfectly: but it opens outwards, and you try to open it inwards and get angry with it.” I may mention that the Senator, being two years older than my father, always addressed him as “thou,” while my father said “you” as a mark of respect for seniority.
When my uncle had gone, my father went to his bedroom; but first he always enquired whether the gates of the court were shut, and expressed some doubt when he was told they were, though he never took any steps to ascertain the facts. And now began the long business of undressing: face and hands were washed, fomentations applied and medicines swallowed; the valet placed on the table near the bed a whole arsenal of phials, nightlights, and pill-boxes. For about an hour the old man read memoirs of some kind, very often Bourrienne’s Memorial de St. Hélène. And so the day ended.