“Well!” mother asked him in gentle triumph, “were you there this time?”
It appeared that in former years he had gone out for a walk and had not returned before evening. I had already perceived, from a thousand slight indications, that there was not absolute agreement in religious matters in our house and that the subject was usually avoided. Grandfather could not repress the little sardonic laugh which he seldom bestowed upon my mother:
“Superb, superb!” he said. “One might have thought oneself at the festival of the sun. The pagans could not have done it better.”
Mother’s face crimsoned. She turned and sent me away on some pretext of an errand. As I was going I heard my father’s clear voice:
“I beg you not to jest upon this subject before the children.”
And the sarcastic voice replying:
“But I am not jesting.”
In the street the nearest extemporised altar was already lying on the ground, like the useless shell of a firework. Everything had disappeared but the scaffoldings, crosses of flowers, moss. Candelabra had been hastily put under cover because of the threatening rain, for clouds had suddenly overspread the sky, and also because every one had gone home to dinner. My enthusiasm had fallen too, beneath a word of doubt.
At the Feast of the Epiphany every one had to imitate the acts of the king who had been designated by the bean. If he drank every one cried, “The king drinks,” and each one seized his glass. If the king began to laugh every one burst into laughter. Ought not a king to know when one should laugh and when he should keep his face straight?