My mother, the one person I might really have loved, had died just as I attained my fourteenth birthday. I had finished growing up under the paternal tutelage. For a long time I succeeded in persuading myself that the Colonel felt heaven knows what secret fondness for me. Then with the audacity of youth, intoxicated by the first lucid glance I had cast on life, I admitted to myself that I had been duped. I was of very little account in this old man's eyes. Let him content himself with my deference, as I did with his correction!
There was no intimacy between us. As I grew up, our relations came to be stamped with rather a cold courtesy, like that between strangers thrown together by chance, for the space of a voyage. My father never asked me about my ambitions, once only about my immediate prospects; it was after I had taken my second degree. He neither approved nor found fault with my intentions.
Having been placed on the retired list just at this point he came to live in Paris. I never knew if it was to facilitate my studies.
Three years went by, then my year of military service. On leaving the regiment I felt the need of a separate establishment. No objections were raised. My share of my mother's fortune already enabled me to support myself, and my post in the Abyssinian Railway Company soon brought me affluence. I dined with my father every Sunday, as I said before. We exchanged opinions on the events of the week, without in any way committing ourselves. He gave me news of Victor's household.
On leaving St. Cyr, my brother, having chosen to go into the Colonial infantry, had been sent to Rochefort to await his commission; and then he went and fell in love with a girl he met at the "Cercle Militaire" ball. At the request of her family, he had obtained leave to exchange into the home forces. He had got married. My father had not blamed him in the least for giving up a life of warlike adventure.
Full of his one idea, the old soldier preferred to see his son on the frontier ready for the day, which he always hoped was close at hand, when war would break out.
My brother! To think that when we were brought up together, before he left for La Flêche, we were fond of each other!... Little by little had come detachment and loss of affection.... To-day we were strangers to each other. Our intercourse was confined to the exchange of a few post cards at New Year and Easter. My sister-in-law, Geneviève, a pleasant, insignificant little creature, had been friendly to me at the beginning; I had spent three days with them at St. Mihiel not long ago, at her request. I was bored to tears. In future it would be quite enough for me to see them during the short stays they made in the Rue des Beaux-Arts, twice a year. I went when invited. My father seemed to have grown young again. He cheered up and chatted, and played with his grandchildren whom he was mad about. He adored his daughter-in-law too, and paid her endless little attentions. It caused me no embarrassment or jealousy to be present during these effusions.
My father got up from his chair and came to meet me. He was drawn up to his full height. His face beamed as I had expected.
"You're pleased?" I said.