Landolin kept his wrath down, and thought: "Just wait till we get home, then I'll talk to you differently."
Father and son spoke not a word after this. A wagon was waiting at the depot in the city; and Landolin asked his wife, who with tears in her eyes came to meet him: "Where is Thoma?" He was told that she would not come.
Landolin thought to himself: "I am acquitted, but my children----. My son wants to depose me, and my daughter will not even come to meet me."
In the meadow near the station was an unfinished platform, and though it was twilight, the men were still hammering busily.
"What are they doing?" asked Landolin; and before an answer could be given, he continued: "I remember, when I was a child, that a scaffold was built there, and a man beheaded on it. Beheading is not the worst thing in the world."
"Oh! husband!" replied his wife. "What strange thoughts! Peter, don't you know what they are doing?"
"Certainly; certainly. Next Sunday the soldiers have their celebration."
As the wagon drove past the garden of the Sword inn, a number of ladies and gentlemen were looking down from the veranda. Landolin raised his hat and bowed, but no one returned the salutation; and, for the first time in his life, he tasted the bitter experience of stretching out his hand in greeting, and of finding no hand ready to take it.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
No one had returned Landolin's greeting from the veranda of the inn. To be sure the judge's wife, who sat near the railing, looked an acknowledgment, but that could not be seen at the distance. More she dared not do, for they were having a full meeting of the members of the "Casino," a society or association of the people of rank in the city, which met the first Wednesday after each full moon. Several members from a distance were there; the Catholic priest; and the only Protestant pastor of the district, with his wife.