Mother was answering father.
“You are right. We must neglect nothing. Their faith and their union will be their only fortune.”
Far from being touched by this declaration of principles, I was imagining the little laugh with which grandfather would meet it, and one morning while combing my hair I practised my face in assuming a satirical expression.
In conversations which I accidentally overheard, the names of Parisian schools or lycées would recur, those especially that prepared boys for the great schools, Stanislas on Post-office Street, Louis-le-grand or Saint-Louis. My parents would have preferred a religious institution, and in this Aunt Deen emphatically acquiesced.
“No godless school,” she would exclaim. “All the rascals come out of the lycées.”
“Oho!” grandfather would protest, greatly amused at her vehemence. “I was educated in a lycée.”
He received his bouquet without a moment’s delay.
“And you are not worth so very much!”
It is true that to soften the severity of her retort, she went on,
“I must confess that you have become good for something, now that you take the boy out walking.”