“Who, grandfather?”
“She lived there. It was under the Empire.”
“You saw her, grandfather?”
“Oh, I; no! That’s too long ago. I am speaking of the first Emperor. Those who had seen her were old when I was young. Those who had seen her were bursting with pride merely at mentioning her name.”
These brief evocations of the past threw for me a lovely veil of romance over our walks, which had “happened” like history.
He never said more about either, as I expected him to do. He never supposed that I was watching his slightest words, and exaggerating their importance. Save the white lady with the cherries in her hat, who perhaps resembled, who doubtless resembled, some far-away picture of his past, he greeted women the most frankly in the world and never made any remark about them. When, several years later, one evening at school, I read the famous passage of the Iliad about the old men of Troy being disposed to forgive Helen because of her beauty, like that of the immortal goddesses, while my comrades were dozing over their Homer, I was seeing myself once more at my grandfather’s side on the road by which the lady in white came to us. And ever since I have called that unknown one Helen.
Grandfather, who began to enjoy our friendship, consented to receive me in the tower chamber. He took no notice of my presence, however, now enveloping me with the smoke of his pipe, and again playing upon his violin, the notes of which mingled in my mind with the forest, the lake and all our secret retreats. That room was to me a continuation of my free out-of-door life. On stormy days, very rare in the course of that bright summer predicted by Mathieu de la Drôme, I used to watch the falling rain and the changing skies, lulled and softened by this spectacle of the uselessness of things. When the west was clear I could see the sun shooting into the waters of the lake a pillar of fire, which by degrees was changed into a sword and finally was reduced to a golden point, the reflection of the star resting upon the shoulder of the mountain, which was what the sun became for one second before it disappeared. In the evenings, after dinner, I used to obtain the favour of looking at the constellations through the telescope. As his former room had faced the south, grandfather, as I have said, was acquainted with only half the heavens, and refused to puzzle out the other half. Therefore I knew only Altair and Vega, Arcturus and the Virgin’s sheaf, which may be seen in the south in July. I was obliged to lean out to distinguish Antares on the edge of the roof. The other months all is confused to my eyes, and the same if I look toward the north.
The household was pleased with my new regimen. More than once father asked of grandfather:
“Truly, the boy doesn’t inconvenience you?”
“Oh, not at all,” grandfather would invariably reply.