“Very well, read this one.”
“No, thank you; I’m not interested.”
“Then I’ll read it to you.”
“If you insist upon it.”
I saw them go together into father’s consulting room, leaving the door open, and I had no notion of going away. Grandfather sat down resignedly in an easy chair, and father began to read at once. I felt ill rewarded for the curiosity which had kept me there, for I couldn’t understand a word of that dull, prosy and ill-worded article, which seemed to leave a bad taste in your mouth like grated cheese that melts in onion soup and turns into a sticky glue that clings to your gums. It was about the approaching elections, and a certain omnipotent and despotic personage, eager to rule the public with a rod of iron as he ruled his household. After this there was something about a garret full of rats, exposed to all the winds of heaven, yet good enough, it appeared, for the miserable old man who had been relegated to it, and who was expiating his social kindliness by being treated with contempt and forced into the meanest position in his own house. The article closed with a warm appeal to justice and sympathy. No name, no place, was mentioned. How could I have understood the illusions? It was too complicated an act of perfidy for a child to see through.
“Is that all?” asked grandfather when the indignant voice was silent.
“It seems to me that it is enough.”
“Oh, there isn’t enough there to whip a cat for—mere vague generalities.”
“Is that your opinion?” asked father. “Don’t you feel how venomous, and how dishonouring to me it all is? Have not you always been well treated here? Whose wish was it to sit at the end of the table? Who took possession of the tower chamber in spite of all we could say? Which of us has ever been lacking in respect to you? When has any one neglected to care for you most tenderly and deferentially? Of whom, of what, do you complain? Father, I entreat you,—tell me; this is a grave matter.”
Entreaty followed entreaty, hurrying one upon another, in a voice which gave them a pathetic intonation that thrilled me from head to foot. The obscure article suddenly became clear to me, and I grasped its entire significance. Some one was accusing my father of harshness to grandfather. The scene of the abdication rose up before me, and the morning in which I had borne a part by carrying the pile of Limping Messengers of Berne and Vevey.