He brandished his log of wood furiously, and cried out:
“I would rather see my daughter dead than living with only one eye! I shall kill her and myself afterwards!”
My mother tried in vain to hold him back. The gardener endeavoured to wrest the log from him. I suffered intensely. I was half blinded, and I, too, thought my eye was gone. I was not afraid of death; I was only afraid that my father would commit the crime of killing himself and me.
It was a horrible moment. I was paralysed, but, seeing that my father was on the point of escaping from my mother and the gardener, I rushed into the house, and with all my might held the door shut which separated my father from the crime he was about to commit.
My mother kept crying out to him that he would end on the scaffold and dishonour his family. Blattier, the gardener, besought him, saying: “Monsieur Lambert, as good as you are, you are surely not going to do such a dreadful thing!”
I mastered myself, and said to my father in calm tones, through the door:
“Very well, papa, you mean to kill me, but let me first go upstairs for a minute to wash my eye and see whether it is really gone.”
I let go the door—it did not open. My father, who was struggling against their terrified supplications, was dumfounded at the sound of my calm voice. He let fall his log of wood, and leaned against the wall, and, from my little room, where I was bathing my eye, I could hear his sobs and cries of grief.
My heart stood still when I turned up my eyelid. My eyebrow was cut open, but I could see. I folded a wet handkerchief over the wound with one hand, and ran to my father. I looked angrily at him. I was furious with him for not knowing how to master his violent temper, and I felt that but for my calmness, the presence of mind of a mere child, he would have killed me.
“You see,” I said, coldly, “my eye is not put out. It would have been useless to kill me. Only my eyebrow is cut, and I am going to Decaisne’s to have it dressed.”