in to me, and say: "Go back to
your room. I will come."

Too late: my father was upon us. Instinctively I murmured, though no one
heard me, "I am done for!"

I was not, however. My father used constantly to refuse to let me do
things which were quite clearly allowed by the more liberal charters
granted me by my mother and grandmother, because he paid no heed to
'Principles,' and because in his sight there were no such things as
'Rights of Man.' For some quite irrelevant reason, or for no reason at
all, he would at the last moment prevent me from taking some particular
walk, one so regular and so consecrated to my use that to deprive me of
it was a clear breach of faith; or again, as he had done this evening,
long before the appointed hour he would snap out: "Run along up to
bed now; no excuses!" But then again, simply because he was devoid
of principles (in my grandmother's sense), so he could not, properly
speaking, be called inexorable. He looked at me for a moment with an air
of annoyance and surprise, and then when Mamma had told him, not without
some embarrassment, what had happened, said to her: "Go along with him,
then; you said just now that you didn't feel like sleep, so stay in his
room for a little. I don't need anything."

"But dear," my mother answered timidly, "whether or not I feel like
sleep is not the point; we must not make the child accustomed..."

"There's no question of making him accustomed," said my father, with
a shrug of the shoulders; "you can see quite well that the child is
unhappy. After all, we aren't gaolers. You'll end by making him ill,
and a lot of good that will do. There are two beds in his room; tell
Francoise to make up the big one for you, and stay beside him for the
rest of the night. I'm off to bed, anyhow; I'm not nervous like you.
Good night."

It was impossible for me to thank my father; what he called my
sentimentality would have exasperated him. I stood there, not daring
to move; he was still confronting us, an immense figure in his white
nightshirt, crowned with the pink and violet scarf of Indian cashmere
in which, since he had begun to suffer from neuralgia, he used to tie up
his head, standing like Abraham in the engraving after Benozzo Gozzoli
which M. Swann had given me, telling Sarah that she must tear herself
away from Isaac. Many years have passed since that night. The wall of
the staircase, up which I had watched the light of his candle gradually
climb, was