I was still too unsophisticated to know that hate can flatter and smile, look pleasant, appear sympathetic or compassionate, and enwrap its object in fine phrases as bandits bind ropes about the man they would render powerless. Hatred of this sort, which with affected sympathy addresses itself to the friends and relations of the man it pursues, certain of wounding him on the rebound, can not always be denounced even later. There are few sentinels like Aunt Deen to keep guard over the sacred ark of the family.
It has been said that circumstances conspired to further Martinod’s plan. One Sunday afternoon, as I was idling at the window instead of finishing a task—I usually preferred grandfather’s tower chamber, but he was absent—I suddenly beheld a wonderful, a terrifying sight! The circus troop was invading our garden! They had come through the gate, which, notwithstanding Aunt Deen’s vigilance, had been left open because of the more frequent comings and goings of a holiday. The whole company was swarming over the grass plats and shamelessly trampling the flower borders. There were ragged women with babies in their arms, there were the two clowns whom I had in time come to identify, there was the grey-headed rope dancer and there—oh, woe! there was Nazzarena herself! Nazzarena without a hat, her hair unbound and her dress in rags. For the first time I realised that she was poor. In our garden, in the carefully tended alley, one might have taken her for a poor country girl.
Dumb with amazement, I dared neither hide nor lean out of the window. Terror at what was sure to happen paralysed me. Why had they come? What did they want? What ill wind had brought them? Our garden was not a place for wandering folk, bohemians, people whose only knowledge of land was to walk upon it. If only it had been the old-time garden, overgrown with weeds, never pruned nor watered! Or if only grandfather had been there to receive these suspicious guests! Nazzarena, Nazzarena, hasten back to your roulotte and the white tent in which you reign! I assure you that this is no place for you!
I was actually undergoing martyrdom on seeing them thus shamelessly making merry over our grass and flowers. I longed at heart to cry out, to warn them, but I could not. And in infinite agony I measured the distance which separated the house from my love.
One of the clowns was already ringing the door bell. My God! what would happen next? They had hardly begun to parley with Mariette, whose uncompromising humours I knew, when the catastrophe fell upon us. Aunt Deen came flying to the rescue and stoutly made head against the whole band. The dialogue was distinctly audible at my window:
“What do you people want?”
A chirping voice replied:
“This is Father Rambert’s house, isn’t it?”
“What do you want with Father Rambert? Go about your business. Get out!”
What abominable injustice! All the beggars of our town were always kindly treated by us; they even had their days, like society ladies, and Zeeze Million, who was crazy, and that drunkard Yes-Yes received a regular allowance at our door. Then why not give these honourable acrobats a chance to explain? Aunt Deen, always so charitable and ready to help, was turning them out with harsh words merely because they were strangers!