Standing behind his armchair, as if they were defending him against me, two young women, two plump women, regarded me with the bold stare of their kind. Bare-armed, hair black as the devil down their necks, clad in petticoats and peignoirs, wearing gold-embroidered oriental slippers, they looked, standing round the dying man, like figures of evil in a symbolic painting. Between the armchair and the bed a little table covered with a cloth and set with two plates, two glasses, two forks and two knives, awaited the cheese omelette just ordered from Mélanie.
My uncle spoke in a faint, muffled voice, but clearly:
“How do you do, my boy? You are very late coming to see me. Our acquaintance will not be a long one.”
“It is not my fault, Uncle,” I stammered.
“No,” he answered, “I know. It is more your father’s and your mother’s fault than yours … How are they?”
“Fairly well, thanks. When they heard you were ill, they sent me for news of you.”
“Ah, why didn’t they come themselves?”
I glanced at the two young women and said softly: “It’s not their fault they can’t come, Uncle. It would be difficult for my father, and impossible for my mother to come here …”
The old man said nothing, but lifted his hand to mine. I took the pale cold hand and held it.
The door opened: Mélanie came in with the omelette and put it on the table. The two women sat down in their places at once and began to eat without even glancing at me.
I said: “Uncle, it would make my mother very happy to come and see you.”
“I too,” he murmured, “I would like …” He fell silent. I could think of no suggestions to make him and nothing was heard but the scraping of forks on china and the faint sound of moving jaws.
But the abbé, who was listening behind the door, seeing our embarrassment and thinking the position carried, judged the time ripe for intervention, and revealed himself.
My uncle was so thunderstruck by this apparition that he sat perfectly still for a moment; then he opened his mouth as if he were going to swallow the priest; then, in a loud, deep, angry voice, he shouted:
“What do you want here?”
The abbé, at home in delicate situations, continued to advance, murmuring:
“I come on behalf of your sister, sir: she sends me. … She would, sir, be so happy …”
But the Marquis was not listening. Lifting his hand, he pointed to the door with a magnificent and tragic gesture, and said savagely, gasping for breath:
“Get out of here … get out of here … robber of souls.—Get out of here, violator of consciences. Get out of here, picker of dying men’s locks!”
The abbé recoiled, and I with him recoiled to the door, beating a retreat with my ecclesiastical reserves; and avenged, the two little women got to their feet, leaving the omelette half eaten, and stationed themselves on each side of my uncle’s armchair, placing their hands on his arms to calm him and protect him against the criminal enterprises of the Family and the Church.
The abbé and I rejoined mamma in the kitchen. Again Mélanie offered us chairs.
“I was sure you couldn’t pull it off like that,” she said. “We’ll have to think of something else or he’ll slip between our fingers.”
We took counsel again. Mamma had one plan; the abbé favoured another. I contributed a third.
We had been carrying on a low-voiced discussion for half an hour perhaps when a terrific noise of overturned furniture and my uncle’s voice shouting more furiously and dreadfully than ever, brought us all four to our feet.
Through doors and partitions we heard: “Out … out … mountebanks … hedge parsons … out, scoundrels … out … out.”
Mélanie rushed out, and came back immediately to summon me to help her. I ran in. My uncle, galvanised by anger, was almost standing up and shouting at the top of his voice, and two men, one behind the other, were staring at him with the apparent intention of waiting until he died of rage.
By his absurd long-skirted coat, his long square shoes, his general air of an out-of-work schoolmaster, his stiff collar, white tie, sleek hair, and his meek face, face of the sham priest of a bastard religion, I recognised the first at once for a Protestant clergyman.
The second was the house porter, who belonged to the reformed faith, had followed us, seen our defeat, and run to fetch his own priest, hoping for better luck.
My uncle seemed to have gone mad with rage. If the sight of a Catholic priest, the priest of his father’s faith, had irritated the freethinking Marquis de Fumerol, the appearance of his porter’s minister drove him beside himself.
I seized both men by the arms and threw them out so roughly that they cannoned violently into each other twice on their way through the two doors that led to the staircase.
Then I withdrew myself and returned to the kitchen, our headquarters, to take counsel with my mother and the abbé.
But a distracted Mélanie ran in wailing. … “He’s dying … he’s dying … come at once … he’s dying.”
My mother rushed out. My uncle had fallen down, and lay stretched out to his full height upon the floor. I was sure he was already dead.
In the crisis, mamma was magnificent. She walked straight up to the two wenches who were kneeling beside the body and trying to raise it. And showing them the door with an authority, a dignity and a majesty that were quite irresistible, she said carefully:
“And now you will go.”
And they went, unprotesting, mute. I should add that I was prepared to expel them as joyfully as I had expelled the pastor and the porter.
Then Father Poivron administered all the proper
