THERE was one Saturday evening, I remember....
I can not fix the precise date, but I know it must have been a Saturday because on coming home from school I met at the door Oui-oui, shaking his head, and Zeez Million counting the amount of her interest, on her open palm.
Saturday was the day for the poor. We usually watched the procession under shelter of a closed window, for Aunt Deen, who was a stickler for class distinctions, prudently kept us shielded from their verminous contact. Zeez, or Louise, was a crazy woman to whom was regularly given every week the modest subsidy of fifty centimes, which she called her interest. Insanity did not affect her exactions: a new servant, not sufficiently instructed having insulted her by doling out two sous, had received back the inadequate money in her face. Her reason had been affected by the expectation of a large prize in the lottery. She now spoke only of millions and the name had stuck by her.
As for Yes-yes, he owed the soubriquet to his nodding head, the weight of which he could ill sustain, and which incessantly wagged up and down like those articulated animals exhibited at bazars, their motions extolled by artful merchants by way of increasing their price. My sister Mélanie and I had incurred his wrath, under memorable circumstances. Mélanie having read in the gospels that a glass of water given to the poor would be paid back a hundred fold, conceived the idea of offering one to Oui-oui. In the goodness of her heart, she was even willing to let me participate in her beneficence. I held the caraffe, ready to offer a second draught. But he considered our gift an insult. Grandfather, when he heard of our ill-starred effort, completed our discomfiture:
“Offering water to that drunkard! He would rather never wash again than touch water.”
And in our presence he tendered to Oui-oui a glass of red wine, which was swallowed at a draught, followed by a second and a third till the entire bottle was gone. If grandfather was to receive back his offering a hundred fold, his thirst would be copiously quenched in the celestial kingdom.
Whenever grandfather, going out for his daily walk, met beggars at the door, he would desire that bread and not money should be given them.
“Money is immoral,” he would insist. “Let us share our bread with these good folk.”
I could not understand how money could be immoral. And we always found at the foot of the stone columns, broken into bits, all the bread that had been given, the poor having received it with contempt.
It must have been a Saturday in June. It was still broad day, though it was past seven o’clock when I came back to the house, and on the edge of the garden there was still a haycock which Tem Bossette must have mown, taking plenty of time. I just muttered, “How d’ye do, Yes-yes; how d’ye do, Zeez,” without so much as waiting for their reply; did not close the door which they had left open, and slipped into the passage that led to the kitchen, for I had lingered on the way home from school to play with some schoolmates in a narrow street that we called “behind the walls,” because it bordered a row of houses shut in like fortresses. I had no quarrel with this unsocial way of shutting every one out, though I preferred such fences or hedges as permit one to satisfy his curiosity, and do not so abruptly shut off the view; but grandfather, when he passed that way, never concealed his disgust. “The earth is for everybody, and they mew her up as if they feared she would run away!”