It was my uncle Lerne. But life had laid hand on him, had made him much older, and turned him into this wild unkempt individual whose straggling gray hair covered his shabby clothes with dirty grease. He seemed smitten with premature old age, and there was an unfriendly gleam in the evil eyes which he fixed on me, from under their knitted eyebrows.
“What do you want?” he asked me rudely.
He pronounced the words like a German.
I had a moment of hesitation. The fact was that his face could no longer be compared to that of a kind old woman; it was a Sioux visage, hairless and cruel, and at the sight of it I experienced the contradictory sensations of recognizing it and not recognizing it.
“But, Uncle,” I stuttered finally, “it’s I.... I have come to see you—according to leave given by you. I wrote to you; but my letter ... here it is! my letter and I arrive together. Excuse my carelessness.”
“Ah, you should have told me. It is I that ask pardon of you, my dear nephew.”
A sudden change this! Lerne showed eagerness to welcome me! he blushed and seemed confused and almost servile. This embarrassment, misplaced with regard to me, shocked me.
“Ha ha! you’ve come with a mechanical carriage,” he added. “Hum, there’s a place to put it in, isn’t there?”
He opened both folding-doors.
“Here one has often to be one’s own servant,” he said, while the old hinges creaked.