Grandmother could not contain her joy, and she committed the error of writing about it to my father, who also came to see her, very angry. The “family drama” assumed tragical proportions on this occasion. My father spoke of his rights, and said it was his place to watch over me and preserve me from my grandmother’s follies.
Was it possible that she had sent me to the theatre with a comparative stranger and with grandfather, whose eccentric habits, to speak mildly of them, forbade his assuming the rôle of chaperon? Was it not the most ridiculous absurdity to dress up a child not yet fourteen in a young woman’s cap? All the town must pity me and ridicule grandmother, he said, and if she acted in this manner I should never find a husband!
“You are mistaken, my dear Jean Louis, in this as in everything else,” grandmother replied angrily; “for not only has the demand of Juliette’s hand in marriage, that was made to me a year ago, been renewed, but just now, before you arrived, I received another.”
“You cannot say from whom?”
Grandmother showed my father a letter, and mentioned a person’s name.
“One and one make two,” she said.
My father was silent for an instant, and then replied in a vexed tone:
“So you wish to marry Juliette as you were married yourself, and as you married your daughter?”
“No,” she answered, cruelly; “I do not wish to make my grandson-in-law’s position for him. He must have one himself.”
“I shall take Juliette home with me; she belongs to me!” cried my father, in anger.