Meanwhile Tiburtsi had quickly opened the door of the room, and now stood on the threshold embracing us both with his piercing, lynx-like glance. I can remember to this day the smallest details of the scene. For a moment a flash of cold, malevolent mockery gleamed in the greenish eyes and passed over the wide, uncouth face of this gutter orator, but it was only a flash. Then he shook his head, and there was more of sorrow than of his accustomed irony in his voice as he said:
“Oho, I see that my young friend is in an awkward situation.”
My father received him with a gloomy, threatening look, but Tiburtsi endured it calmly. He had grown serious now, and his mockery had ceased. There was a striking look of sadness in his eyes.
“My Lord Judge,” he said gently. “You are a just man; let the child go! The boy has been ‘in bad company,’ but God knows he has done no bad deeds, and if his little heart is drawn toward my unfortunate people, I swear to the Queen of Heaven that you may hang me if you wish, but I will not allow the boy to suffer for that. Here is your doll, my lad.”
He untied a little bundle, and took out the doll.
The hands that had been gripping my shoulder relaxed. My father looked surprised.
“What does this mean?” he asked at last.
“Let the boy go!” Tiburtsi repeated, stroking my bowed head lovingly with his broad palm. “You will get nothing out of him with your threats, and besides, I will gladly tell you everything you want to know. Come, Your Honour, let us go into another room.”
My father consented, with his eyes fixed in surprise on Tiburtsi’s face. They went out together, and I stayed rooted to the spot, overwhelmed with the emotions with which my heart was bursting. At that moment I was unconscious of what was going on around me, and if, in calling to mind the details of this scene, I remember that sparrows were twittering outside the window and that the rhythmic splash of the water-wheel came to me from the river, why that is only the mechanical action of my memory. Nothing external existed for me then; there existed only a little boy in whose breast two separate emotions were seething: anger and love; seething so fiercely that my heart was troubled as a glass of water is dimmed when two different liquids are poured into it at the same time. Such a little boy existed, and that boy was I; I was even sorry, in a way, for myself. There existed also two voices, that came to me from the next room in a confused but animated conversation.
I was still standing on the same spot when the study door opened, and both talkers came into the room. Once more I felt a hand on my head, and trembled.