About ten o’clock appeared the brotherhood of sailors, boat-builders, and workmen on the river. First came their players and the banner, and then they all passed by our windows arm in arm, dancing and singing, on their way to church, perhaps to the wineshop later. They saw me and stopped to cheer, so I stood up, and my patron saint and I exchanged salutations. Then I leaned down and shook as many of their black paws as I could reach, and poured a drop or two into each of the big mouths, though it was like trying to sprinkle a field.
My four sons came at twelve o’clock to offer me the compliments of the season, for no matter on what terms one lives for the rest of the year, a father’s name-day is sacred; the whole family life revolves around it as on a pivot; it is a bond which draws us all together, and I attach a great deal of importance to it. I don’t know that the four enjoyed themselves much when they were all there together, for in fact I am the only real tie between them, as they have but little love for each other.
It is a sign of our times, this relaxation of those ties between men, the home, family, and religion; each trusts in his own wisdom now, and wants to live for himself alone. I am not one of those old men who are always grumbling and complaining of the present day, and predicting disaster; I know that the world will outlast my time, and that the young know their own business as well as ever their fathers did. Yes, but the old have a hard part to play where all around them is change and renewal; they must alter too or there is no room for them, and that is precisely what I do not want to do. I prefer to sit here in my chair just as I am; the only thing I am willing to change is my mind, and only that when it is absolutely necessary. I can turn my ideas inside out, but they are the same thing after all, and meanwhile I can look on at the shifting scenes and the young people whom I admire, but none the less I lie in wait for the chance to guide them in the way I would have them go.
When we all gathered round the dinner table I had at my right hand John Francis, who is a bigoted Catholic; on my left, my son Anthony from Lyons, who is an equally bigoted Huguenot. They sat up stiffly on their chairs, staring straight before them, so as not to be obliged to look at one another.
John Francis is a smiling prosperous man with a hard shrewd eye; he talked interminably of his business, boasted of his money and of the fine linen that he sold by the special favor of Providence. Anthony’s lips are shaved but he wears a little beard on his chin; and is morose and cold in his manner. He also talked of his trade in books, his journeys to Geneva, his affairs generally, and attributed his prosperity to God, but it seemed to be a different Deity. Neither listened, but kept on monotonously repeating the same refrain, until at last they became annoyed and began to introduce topics of a controversial nature, one dwelling on the progress of The Religion, the other on the stability of The True Faith; all the time each ignored his antagonist, sat as if nailed to his seat, and spoke with the utmost contempt, and in a sharp rasping voice, of the enemies’ God.
In the middle of the table sat my son Michael, sergeant in the Sacermore regiment; he is called a rascal, but is not a bad fellow on the whole, and the behavior of his brothers diverted him extremely, sending him into fits of laughter. He kept turning from one to the other, like an animal in a cage, to stare into the angry faces of his elders, and at last interrupted them without ceremony, telling them that they were fat sheep of the same breed even if their fleece was marked with a different brand, and that he had seen plenty of their sort killed and eaten.
The youngest son Anisse sat and gazed at him with horror. His name was certainly well chosen, for he never could have invented gunpowder; discussions are his abhorrence, for he takes no real interest in anything on earth; his only joy is to yawn and dawdle throughout the livelong day. Politics and religion seem to him diabolical inventions to disturb the sleep of sensible men. “Good or bad,” he would say, “what I have is enough for me, so why change it? Why turn over the mattress when I made the hole in the middle myself?” Poor fellow! people will persist in shaking up his feather-bed whether he likes it or not, which angers him so much that, mild as he is, he would like to send his disturbers to instant execution. His brothers’ loud voices positively scared him, making him duck his head as if to avoid a blow.
I was all eyes and ears as I sat there taking them in, and it amused me to unravel the part of myself that was in each of my four sons, for mine they are beyond a doubt. If something in them came out of me, it must have gone into me at one time or another, but I do not find anywhere in my skin a trace of the preacher, the priest, or the sheep. (Perhaps I might discover the adventurer if I looked closely.) But the germs must have been there, and Nature has betrayed me. Yes, I can recognize my own gestures and ways of speaking, even of thinking. I can see myself in these men, but disguised, and that is what is rather confusing; but underneath it is the very same person, one and various. We each contain many personalities, good, bad and indifferent, the wolf, the lamb, the watch-dog, the honest man and the scamp, but one of the number is sure to be the strongest, and dominates all the rest, who escape as soon as they can by the first open door.
I am filled with self-reproach when I see these escaped sons of mine, so remote, yet so near to me. My little boys they must always be too, and even when they are most foolish, I feel that I ought to apologize to them, for is it not all my fault? Luckily enough they are perfectly contented and satisfied with themselves, and that is as it should be, but their intolerance is what I cannot bear. Why cannot they live, and let others live, in peace? There they were, all four, like so many fighting-cocks, ready to peck and jump at each other, but by this time I had had enough of it, and observed placidly, “Well, my lambs, I see that it would not be easy to pull the wool from your backs, and I am proud to see you show your good blood,—mine, I mean,—and make yourselves heard, but now be still, all of you, and let me have a chance to talk, for I have something I have been dying to say for the last half hour.”
Far from obeying me on the instant, some chance word excited them so that they broke into a perfect storm of rage; John Francis caught up a chair, Michael drew his long sword, and Anthony a dagger, while Anisse employed his only weapon by bleating, “Murder! Fire!” in a lamentable voice.