Needless to say, my mother believed I was setting my feet in the broad road that led not only to destruction in the next world, but to social ruin in this. I quickly saw by her wrathful face that she knew all, and did my best to slink out of her way, but it was useless. Trembling with rage and using “you” instead of the old familiar “thou,” she said:
“Hector, since your father countenances your folly I must speak and save you from this mortal sin. You shall not go; I forbid it. See, here I—your mother—kneel at your feet to beg you humbly to give up this mad design and——”
“Mother! mother!” I interrupted, “I cannot bear it! For pity’s sake don’t kneel to me.”
But she knelt on, looking up at me as I stood in miserable silence, and finally she said:
“You refuse, wretched boy? Then go! Drag our honoured name through the fetid mud of Paris; kill your parents with shame and disgrace. Curses on you! You are no more my son, and never again will I look upon your face.”
Could narrow-mindedness towards Art and provincial prejudice go farther? I truly believe that my hatred of these mediæval doctrines dates from that horrible day.
But that was not the end of the trial.
My mother hurried off to our little country house, Le Chuzeau, and when the time of my departure came my father begged me to make one final effort at reconciliation. We all went to Le Chuzeau, where we found her reading in the orchard. As we drew near she fled. We waited, we hunted, my father called her, my sisters and I cried bitterly, but all in vain. Without a kind word or look from my mother, with her curse upon my head, I started on my life’s career.
VII
PRIVATION
Once back in Paris, and fairly started in Lesueur’s class, I began to worry about my debt to de Pons.