Two or three times my father, displeased by my silences or my superior airs, observed in those family councils of which somehow children generally manage to catch scraps,
“That child is growing secretive.”
Mother, still somewhat uneasy about me, did not protest, but Aunt Deen, fertile in excuses, would authoritatively affirm that I would blossom out before long. Far from being grateful to this steadfast ally, I laughed in my sleeve at her fanatical loyalty, by way of proving my superior intelligence.
The circus and the elections stirred up the town at the same time. Every day as I crossed the market-place I would stop to watch the slow erection of the tent and the placing of the raised seats, necessary preliminaries of the show. At our house the conversation was more likely to turn upon the future of the country. I was not so ignorant of politics as they might have supposed, though my opinions vacillated. I knew that certain days, like the Fourth of September and the Sixteenth of May, were anniversaries variously celebrated, that all the monks except ours had been expelled, and that there was an expedition to China,—which as it happened, aroused only criticism at our house.
“Why can’t they let those folks alone!” grandfather would exclaim.
Father would shake his head:
“They are forgetting the past. A conquered people should never scatter its forces.”
I was not ignorant of his having taken part in the war—we used to speak of it simply as “the war”—and I could easily imagine him at the head of an army, whereas grandfather must always have preferred his violin and his telescope to swords, guns, pistols and other murderous engines. In vain had the Café des Navigateurs poured contempt upon all military glory: it still kept its prestige for me. Yet I could not easily understand how the French Guard and the grenadier in the drawing-room could have died, one for the King and the other for the Emperor, and yet both deserve the same praise, while the partisans of the Emperor were always exchanging opprobrious remarks with those of the King.
Father explained: “For the soldier, there is only France. There is no nobler death.”
Grandfather, being present, declared that in his opinion the noblest thing was to die for liberty. But he did not insist, and notwithstanding the silence which followed I saw that he had displeased my father.