Young as I was I understood that my mother was shaken by filial respect: yet a more imperious obligation constrained her to speak, and she spoke:
“We did not entrust this child to you, father, to withdraw him from his religious duties. You should not have forgotten this, for the sake both of his soul and of us.”
She spoke with mingled firmness and gentleness, and her face, already pale when we arrived, became so white from the effort she was making, as to seem absolutely bloodless.
... Long, very long after this, when I was a young man, I was getting ready to go out to meet a woman. The woman whom I loved—for how long?—had promised to betray her husband for my pleasure, but I was thinking only of her beauty. My mother came into my room. She had not the courage to say a word; as so long ago she was trembling, this time with that other sort of respect which is respect for oneself. I did not know why she had come, and I felt uneasy at being detained. She laid her hand on my shoulder:
“Francis,” she said, “listen; one must never take what belongs to another.”
I protested my innocent intentions, and as I went my way I shook off the importunate words, which however met me again on the road and went with me. By what clairvoyance of love had my mother divined where I was going? She had looked at me with those same eyes, faintly shadowed by mist. Grief, rather than years, had already made her almost an old woman. And I distinctly saw the evil of the light love to which I was hastening with a song upon my lips....
Grandfather made no attempt to defend himself. He did not call to his aid the little dry laugh which usually served him so conveniently in shaking off his opponent without argument. He only murmured, somewhat weakly, “Oh! goodness, what a fuss about nothing,” and hastened toward the staircase, to go up to his tower where, at least, he would be sheltered from reproach. But my father, who was coming down, seemed to close the way. A conflict appeared to be imminent. And by the natural inclination of my childish logic I suddenly recalled that return from the procession which had first revealed to me this same antagonism:—my parents all a-thrill from the ceremony which grandfather compared to the festival of the sun, and my suddenly chilled enthusiasm. But I was in a mood to take this recollection lightly; without knowing it, I had changed sides.
Grandfather appeared to me all the more embarrassed on hearing steps upon the stairs. He could not avoid the meeting. But as a matter of fact it passed off the most quietly in the world. A few words were exchanged about the weather, the crops, our walk. Generosity, deference, the desire to avoid a domestic dispute, or to spare my father an anxiety, kept my mother silent as to our late return.
But after this she never saw me going out with grandfather without fixing upon me that look, the anxiety of which I still feel. By some ingenious artifice she used to add Louise to our party, or even little Nicola, who would trot behind us, her seven year old legs finding some difficulty in keeping up with us. The whole troop would set forth, grandfather clearly showing his displeasure over the new recruits.
“I don’t propose to drag the whole camp after me,” he would mutter. “I am not a child’s nurse.”