The household rushed to the steps to meet us. It was the usual proceeding, at the return of each absent one. Grandfather alone did not stir, and I heard his violin giving forth its plaintive melody from the tower chamber. Father told of the manifestations of which we had been victims.
“Oh, the wretches!” exclaimed Aunt Deen, who by reason of rheumatism in the leg limped a little, but whom years had robbed of none of her war-like virtue. “They came all the way here a while ago; they or some others. Fortunately the gate was closed.”
She had barricaded us against “them,” our enemies.
“Oh, my God!” murmured mother—“if only nothing happens to you, Michel!”
Father explained the recent incident. The municipality which had been elected three years previously had given orders for important aqueducts to be built to bring water to the public fountains. These works had been awarded to a somewhat unscrupulous and even disreputable contractor, who had been put forward by important political influences. It appeared that within a few days father had discovered two or three cases of typhus, both in the hospital and in the working people’s quarter, and he attributed them to the water recently introduced into the city, which must have been either contaminated or ill trapped. If he had been correct in his diagnosis of the origin of the disease he dreaded an epidemic. He had therefore at once laid before the mayor a request for the immediate closing of the suspected fountains, and had asked for a decree enjoining the use of boiled water only, with other precautionary measures. Whereupon the mayor, who was a grocer by the name of Baboulin, being advised by his deputy, Martinod, had refused the request out of deference to public sentiment. Our town, built like an amphitheatre above the lake, was a chosen summer resort of a large colony of strangers. If there should be any talk of contagion the season’s business would be ruined at a stroke. And besides, it would have been an avowal of the inadequacy of those famous improvements of which, according to custom, much had been made to add to the fame of the town. The quarrel had leaked out, and the public had violently taken the side against the prophet of evil.
I listened to the story with the indulgence of a traveller whose duty it is to share politely in the interests of his hosts. This was provincial gossip, quick to be born, soon to die; and I had come from Paris. Our friend Abbé Heurtevant dropped in at nightfall to lend strength to them. Since the decease of the Count de Chambord he had predicted nothing but plagues, wars, cyclones and catastrophes of all sorts. He was in his element now, and scented from afar an odour of cholera which would re-establish his blemished reputation and punish the Republic.
“I hear,” he said to my father, “that they are going to give you a tin pan serenade to-night.”
“A serenade,” repeated Aunt Deen. “I should like to see them! I’ll empty a boiler of boiling water on their heads, since they won’t have boiled water to drink.”
“Very well,” said my father. “I’ll wait.”
After dinner, mother, who was anxious, asked us to recite prayers in common. I hesitated to join in these invocations which I deemed puerile, and I only did repeat them with my lips, without heart, merely, I said to myself, to avoid sowing discord the first day. As for grandfather, he had valiantly mounted to his tower to direct his telescope upon I know not what planet.