The ancient habit of respect recalled him to himself, and in a lamentable tone he began to set forth his own claim to a part in the family sorrows.
“I have chopped wood here for forty years (he exaggerated everything). It was I who planted these vines and this garden.”
As a matter of fact there was not much to be proud of in that. Our garden sometimes looked like a field and sometimes like a forest, and the prematurely yellowed leaves of the vines revealed a chlorotic condition which would doubtless have been the better for a vigorous medication. But grandfather and his gardener were of one mind in distrusting medicines, as well for plants as for people.
“Where should I go if I left you?” Tem continued frankly. “I might as well throw myself into the water and done with it.”
It would have been his only opportunity to take a good drink of it. Would it then be necessary henceforth to watch him, too?—as if we hadn’t enough with the tiresome propensity of The Hanged? I confess, however, that I did not take this threat very seriously. I had indeed no difficulty in convincing Tem of the advantage of continuing to live. Then his lamentation took another turn.
“What need had Monsieur (that was grandfather) to plunge into all those schemes? Paving the town, and dealing in slates, and agricultural credit. Agricultural credit! As if any one ever paid when you gave them credit. What would be the use of credit, then, if you had to pay in the end like any one else? Not to speak of other bad luck here and there, when all he needs is the sun and the fresh air. Won’t do to undertake to manage things when the third or the quarter is all the same to one. The thing is to keep quiet in a corner with one’s income and let other folks work for you. If it were Monsieur Michel, that’s another pair of sleeves; Monsieur Michel, that’s all right, he’s one who understands governing things. With him there’s nothing to fear, everything goes as if on wheels. But what’s to be done when the other won’t see it?”
I began confusedly to understand that grandfather’s philanthropic enterprises and the unfortunate results of his administration were ending in the ruin of us all. Tem’s long harangue, uttered without interruption, had at once comforted him and made him thirsty. He gazed upon the empty bottle that lay at the foot of a vine and constituted his sole supply for the day. Taking advantage of the respite, I tried to understand more about our discomfiture.
“But why should the house be sold?”
“Why, it’s the lawsuit. When you lose a lawsuit they seize you, they arrest you, they strangle you, they turn you out of doors, they take possession of your house, and you are good for nothing but to throw to the dogs.”
This deplorable picture was not calculated to reassure me. And far from being sorry for us, Tem, perceiving my grandfather who was majestically coming down the garden walk, cheerful, erect, flourishing his cane, grew doubly irritated with him, as the cause of all the trouble.