Monsieur Parent
Little Georges, on all fours on the path, was making sand castles. He shovelled the sand together with both hands, heaped it up into a pyramid, and planted a chestnut leaf on the top.
His father, seated on an iron chair, was watching him with concentrated and loving attention, and had no eyes for anyone else in the small crowded park.
All along the circular path which runs past the lake, encircles the lawn, and comes back again by way of the Church of the Trinity, other children were thus busied, like young animals at their sport, while the bored nursemaids gazed into the air with their dull stupid eyes, or the mothers talked together, casting incessant, watchful glances on the troop of youngsters.
Nurses walked gravely up and down, two by two, trailing behind them the long bright ribbons of their caps, and carrying in their arms white objects wrapped in lace, while little girls in short dresses revealing their bare legs held grave conversations between two hoop races, and the keeper of the garden, in a green tunic, wandered through this crowd of children, constantly stepping aside lest he should demolish the earthworks and destroy the ant-like labours of these tiny human larvae.
The sun was sinking behind the roofs of the Rue Saint-Lazare, and throwing its great slanting rays upon the myriad-hued crowd of children. The chestnut-trees were lit up with gleams of yellow, and the three cascades in front of the lofty portals of the church looked as though they ran liquid silver.
Monsieur Parent watched his son squatting in the dust; he followed lovingly his slightest gestures, and seemed to throw kisses from his lips to Georges’s every movement.
But raising his eyes to the clock on the steeple, he discovered that he was five minutes slow. Thereupon he rose, took the little boy by the arm, shook his earthy garments, wiped his hands, and led him away towards the Rue Blanche. He hastened his steps, anxious not to reach home later than his wife, and the youngster, who could not keep up with him, trotted along at his side.
His father accordingly took him in his arms and, quickening his pace still more, began to pant with exhaustion as he mounted the sloping pavement. He was a man of forty, already grey, somewhat stout, and he bore uneasily before him the round jolly paunch of a gay bachelor rendered timid by circumstances.
Some years earlier he had married a young woman whom he had loved tenderly, and who was now treating him with the insolence and authority of an all-powerful despot. She was incessantly scolding him for everything he did, and everything he omitted to do, bitterly upbraiding him for his slightest actions, his habits, his simple pleasures, his tastes, his ways, his movements, the rotundity of his figure, and the placid tones of his voice.
He still loved her, however, but he loved yet more the child she had given him, Georges, now three years old, the greatest joy and the most precious burden of his heart. Possessed of a modest income, he lived on his twenty thousand francs a year without having to work, and his wife, who had had no marriage portion, lived in a state of perpetual fury at her husband’s inaction.
At last he reached his house and, setting the child down on the first step of the staircase, wiped his forehead and began to ascend.
At the second story, he rang the bell.
An old servant who had brought him up, one of those servant-mistresses who become family tyrants, came and opened the door.
“Has Madame come in yet?” he asked in an agony of fear.
The servant shrugged her shoulders.
“When has Monsieur ever known Madame to be in by half past six?” she answered.
He replied with some embarrassment:
“That’s good, so much the better: it gives me time to change my clothes, for I’m very hot.”
The servant stared at him with angry and contemptuous pity.
“Oh, yes, I can see that,” she grumbled; “Monsieur is streaming with perspiration; Monsieur has been running; carrying the little one, very likely, and all in order to wait for Madame till half past seven. As for me, no one will ever persuade me to be ready to time, now. I get dinner for eight o’clock, and if people have to wait, so much the worse for them; a joint must not be burnt!”
Monsieur Parent pretended not to listen.
“Very good, very good,” he murmured; “Georges’s hands must be washed; he’s been making sand castles. I will go and change. Tell the maid to give the little one a thorough cleaning.”
And he went to his room. Once there, he thrust home the bolt, so as to be alone, quite alone. He was so accustomed by now to seeing himself bullied and ill-used that he only judged himself safe when under the protection of a lock. He no longer even dared to think, to reflect, or to reason with himself, unless he felt secure against the eyes and imaginations of others by the turn of a key. He collapsed into a chair in order to get a little
