‘So you are going to be married,’ said his father, whose suspicions increased. ‘And who is the lady?’
‘The Duchess Padovani.’
‘You must have lost your senses! Why she is five-and-twenty years older than you, and besides—and besides—’ He hesitated, trying to find a respectful phrase, but at last blurted right out, ‘You can’t marry a woman who to every one’s knowledge has belonged to another for years.’
‘A fact, however, which has never prevented our dining with her regularly, and accepting from her all kinds of favours,’ hissed Madame Astier, rearing her little head as to strike. Without bestowing on her a word or a look, as holding her no judge in a question of honour, the man went up to his son, and said in earnest tones, the muscles of his big cheeks twitching with emotion, ‘Don’t do it, Paul. For the sake of the name you bear, don’t do it, my boy, I beg you.’ He grasped his son’s shoulder and shook him, voice and hand quivering together. But the young fellow moved away, not liking such demonstrations, and objected generally that ‘he didn’t see it; it was not his view.’ The father felt the impassable distance between himself and his son, saw the impenetrable face and the look askance, and instinctively lifted up his voice in appeal to his rights as head of the family. A smile which he caught passing between Paul and his mother, a fresh proof of their joint share in this discreditable business, completed his exasperation. He shouted and raved, threatening to make a public protest, to write to the papers, to brand them both, mother and son, ‘in his history.’ This last was his most appalling threat. When he had said of some historical character, ‘I have branded him in my history,’ he thought no punishment could be more severe. Madame Astier, almost as familiar with the threat of branding as with the dragging of his trunk about the passage, contented herself with saying as she buttoned her gloves: ‘You know every word can be heard in the next room.’ In spite of the curtains over the door, the murmur of conversation was audible from the drawing-room.
Then, repressing and swallowing his wrath, ‘Listen to me, Paul,’ said Léonard Astier, shaking his forefinger in the young man’s face, ‘if ever this thing you are talking of comes to pass, do not expect to look upon me again. I will not be present on your wedding day; I will not have you near me, not even at my death-bed; You are no longer a son of mine; and you go with my curse upon you.’ Moving away instinctively from the finger which almost touched him, Paul replied with great calmness, ‘Oh, you know, my dear father, that sort of thing is never done now-a-days! Even on the stage they have given up blessing and cursing.’
‘But not punishing, you scoundrel!’ growled the old man, lifting his hand. There was an angry cry of ‘Léonard!’ from the mother, as with the prompt parry of a boxer Paul turned the blow aside, quietly as if he had been in Keyser’s gymnasium, and without letting go the wrist he had twisted under, said beneath his breath, ‘No, no; I won’t have that.’
The tough old hillsman struggled violently, but, vigorous as he still was, he had found his master. At this terrible moment, while father and son stood face to face, breathing hate at one another, and exchanging murderous glances, the door of the drawing-room opened a little and showed the good-natured doll-like smile of a fat lady bedecked with feathers and flowers. ‘Excuse me, dear master, I want just to say a word—why, Adelaide is here, and M. Paul too. Charming! delightful! Quite a family group!’ Madame Ancelin was right. A family group it was, a picture of the modern family, spoilt by the crack which runs through European society from top to bottom, endangering its essential principles of authority and subordination, and nowhere more remarkable than here, under the stately dome of the Institute, where the traditional domestic virtues are judged and rewarded.