As she had just left the room above I tried to get at the truth of the case.
“Well, Aunt, is he—”
But I could not go on, and she caught up my inquiry, the impiety of which had burned my lips, as if I had spoken against the Holy Ark.
“Oh, no, no, no! God will protect us! What would become of us, my poor child, what would become of us! A man such as there are not two of in the world!”
Just then Louise, coming softly down, joined us, all in tears. Father was expecting me.
At the door of his room I paused, heavy of heart. By that oppression I saw clearly that he was the essential actor in the inner drama of my childhood and youth, my short but already so important life. I had lived by him but I was living in opposition to him. From the day when I had withdrawn myself from his influence, through all the exaltation which had transported me and yet left me in a state of uneasiness, I had felt myself free, but out of my frame. In what condition should I find him? I was afraid, and that is why I paused for a time before opening the door. On leaving home, after having seen him cheered by the whole town, I had carried away with me the picture of my father leaning against the house, assured victor over the pestilence as long ago he had been victor over those dreaded mole-crickets, cheerfully bearing the burden of a city in distress, counting upon the future as on the past, in a word, immortal,—one to whom in his authority I could therefore give pain without scruple,—and now, in a second, I should see him—how? He was there, on the other side of that door, motionless, laid low, humiliated, no longer leading every one like a flock, fighting on his own account against the insidious disease that was consuming him. I felt a sort of terror of this inevitable contrast, mingled, I have to confess, with a personal horror of the sight of humiliation.
Well, there was neither humiliation nor contrast. I went in and saw him. Stretched at full length upon the bed he seemed even taller than when standing—that was indisputable. His head was lying back upon the bolster and I was especially struck with the forehead, that broad forehead luminous with the light that sifted through the curtains. The unwonted thinness only emphasised the nobility of the features. There was no trace either of anxiety or fear, and as for suffering, if its mark was there it had brought with it no inferiority. His eyes were closed, but at times he opened them wide, almost startlingly. When had I thus seen them take on the imprint of the things at which he was gazing? Before Mélanie’s last farewell they used so to fix themselves upon my sister, upon my sister who was to go away for always, and whom he would never see again.
His whole attitude, his whole expression was gathering itself together, or rather was fixing itself in its highest character: he had not ceased to command. And my first word, my only word, was a consent to his command.
“Father,” I said, standing beside the bed.
I did not utter the word in the sense of filial piety, but because his ascendency subjugated me, overawed me. Yes, in this dimly lighted chamber, heavy with the odour of medicines, suffering and fever, that complex odour which is as it were the advance herald of death, I mechanically came back into subordination, as a soldier about to desert returns to his place in the ranks under the eye of his chief. I was aware of this change in myself. That mysticism in which I had so revelled and which isolated me from all the universe, melted away like clouds before the first rays of dawn. I recognised my dependence, and all the truth of my childish thoughts when they used to begin by making the tour of the house, and the antiquity and the justice of the power still held in those weakening hands, which clasped with pale rigid fingers a little crucifix which at first I had not observed.