The sheriffs were to walk into our house as into a mill! In an instant I pictured them under the guise of gigantic insects, enormous mole crickets swarming into the garden through the breach made by the chestnut tree, advancing in serried ranks to invest the house. I was particularly afraid of mole-crickets, which have a long clammy body and two antennae on the head, and enjoy a detestable reputation in agricultural circles: all sorts of misdeeds are attributed to them—they ravage whole garden beds. I had actually seen some crawling through the breach, and in the face of their invasion not all the arms manufactured by Tem Bossette sufficed to reassure me. I had turned tail, so to speak, upon my riding pole.
“It’s all Monsieur’s fault,” concluded the labourer, upon whose heart the affair hung heavy. “But what will you have? He doesn’t care for anything, and when one doesn’t care for anything nothing goes right. It’s lucky there’s Master Michael.”
Then, on one side there were the mole-crickets and on the other there was my father. A fearsome battle was to take place of which the house was the stake. And during the battle grandfather, indifferent, would be looking in the air, according to his custom, to see which way the wind blew. Up to that time I had supposed that, like the sluggard kings, he had nothing to do, but behold, he could bring about catastrophes! With one word he could close chapels, belittle ancestral portraits, and above all, it was quite the same to him to live in one house as in another! Why not in a roulotte, one of those waggon houses overflowing with bronzed gipsies, such as I had seen passing the gate, to the great terror of Aunt Deen, who used to call us in hastily, and give orders to bolt all the doors and look after the vegetables and fruits.
I was going in, greatly depressed by this conversation when I ran against Aunt Deen herself, whose assistance had been invoked by The Hanged for some arduous task requiring nerve and muscle.
“The lawsuit,” I cried, by way of relieving my mind. She stopped short.
“Who has been talking to you?”
“Tem Rossette.”
“That fellow must be sent away. Beatrix and Pachoux will have to do by themselves.”
She did not count herself. She simply called Beatrix by his right name.
Did she perceive from my tone or my face the inward tragedy through which I was passing? She shook me, laughing: