More faithful than he, and keeping vigilant guard over the menaced home, she met us at the gate one day in an unusual state of agitation.
“I was watching for you, children,” she said, “to warn you.”
What was going on now? We were not kept long in ignorance.
“A wretch has come, a wretch from Paris (that was an aggravating circumstance, for nothing good could come out of that notorious Babylon, corrupt as it was and fit only for the flames), who has taken upon himself to go through every part of the house, from cellar to garret. Your father is going with him. I can’t imagine how he can keep from throwing him out of window. He must have a patience quite beyond me!”
We were thunderstruck. A stranger dared to come into our house! And our father,—The Father—consented to escort him through it! Aunt Deen might well be terrified: the laws of the universe were turned upside down. As we followed her dejectedly into the house, with hanging heads and shame-flushed cheeks, we came upon this visitor descending the stairs on his way to the kitchen. He was loudly criticising, laying his plans, estimating the size of the rooms, with manifold gesticulations, as if already building a house of his own on the ruins of ours.
“The stairs are too narrow. The kitchen is out of proportion to the other rooms; I shall convert it into a drawing-room.”
My father was showing him about politely, though without alacrity, preserving a calm and distant manner that checked the loquacity of the other when he turned to him, the better to set forth his plans. We went straight up to mother’s room as to our natural refuge. Our mother, who was kneeling at her faldstool, rose when she heard us coming. Her emotion appeared in her face.
“God will protect us,” she said.
When she uttered the name of God she was, as it were, illumined. At that moment I understood what it is to hate the foreigner—the invader. My father’s subordination, my mother’s tears, and our house trodden, judged, appraised, by a stranger—those are sights that I can never forget. Later, when I read in my History of France that the Allies had crossed the frontiers in 1814 and 1815, and had come and encamped in our capital, when I learned that the Prussians had torn Alsace and Lorraine from us, like a part of our very flesh, I had no difficulty in giving material form to those past woes; I could most distinctly see that gentleman who went from top to bottom of our house as if he were at home.
“Why did you bow to him?” Aunt Deen asked grandfather, who came in with his usual deliberate indifference.