I realised anew the difference in our two natures—not without regret! I should never have ventured, I thought, to allow him even a glimpse of the surprising evolution which had made a new man of me. It would have revolted him to learn from what depths I had started, and all that had been needed to bring me to this state of grace in which he had maintained himself without an effort, for more than forty years.
Jeannine, everything brought back the longing for your beloved presence! You alone knew me, such as I had been and such as I was. What pride, just think, for us two, to ascertain how, little by little, at the seat of my love for you, all these virtues had blossomed in my soul. You would persuade me, perhaps, that I bore the germs in my heart, but that they could never have flowered in the etiolating atmosphere in which my life had been spent.
Stirred by such thoughts, I suddenly became more sensible to the paternal affection. What nurse would have set her wits to work in such a touching fashion? He tried to remember how my mother used to treat me during my long illnesses in former days.
One morning, he put a pack of cards on my table and timidly proposed a game of piquet.
"A good idea!" I said. "Let's draw!"
He puckered his forehead and played attentively, and won. And I could see myself again as a child—a child playing like this with my mother, caressing her beautiful white hands. I could have seized and kissed this old man's wrinkled hands. The unique tenderness of parents, which one must hasten to enjoy! My mother had passed away years and years ago—and as for him, the last on earth of the beings whom I perpetuated, how much time would slip away before they left him, having lived his life, between four planks? I was harrowed in advance. I made a vow to do all that was in my power to sweeten the days—restricted, alas, in number—which still remained to him.