Some one took me by the hand, and said to me as he kissed me on both cheeks:
“Iorgu, Iorgu, cry, Iorgu, for those who will never return!”
It was he! The uncle of the promissory notes!
Just when my eyes ought to have been full of tears, I caught sight of him, and when I looked round me and saw the other people, when I met so many pairs of eyes, then—I was ashamed and could not cry. Oh, it is a terrible thing to feel ashamed to cry when one is sorrowing!
Do you see how shy I am? Have you grasped it? It is difficult to understand. It is difficult, because you, readers, are different. Not one of you are the same as I am.
I was so good and timid that, when I completed my twenty-first year, I did not want to leave the guardianship of my eldest uncle, my mother’s brother, a very gentle man like myself, and very shy like my mother.
It makes me laugh. Is it likely I shall tell you an untruth? Why should I? I don’t ask you anything, you don’t ask me anything. Why should I lie?
But it is true that I have not told you quite openly why I did not ask for an account of my minority, and why I stayed in that house, which was as white as milk—especially on moonlight nights—with its balcony, its oak staircase, its pillars with flowered capitals and wreaths round their centres.
Did I like the house? Yes.
Did I love my uncle who had managed my affairs? Yes. Was I ashamed, directly I came of age, to demand an account as though I doubted his honesty? Yes. Anything besides? Was there anything else that kept me in bondage?