No; certainly I could not understand. The glimmer of truth which I had half seen died out. Our father, at table or in other conversations with us, had never failed to instil into our minds respect and love for the long line of kings who had ruled France, and whom nearly all the bad paintings in the drawing-room, save the grenadier and the latest portraits, had served. He used to talk as often of the power of nations as grandfather of their happiness. Napoleon the Great, whose epic story all school boys know by heart, had ruined the country, but all the same he was the greatest genius of modern times. As for Napoleon the Little, it was to him we owed defeat and the loss of territory. Curiously enough these events, when they were spoken of at our house, never seemed to me to have the slightest connection with those that figured in my history book. One never recognises in the plants of a herbarium those that are growing in the fields. And when father spoke in praise of the kings grandfather had never made any objection. He had neither approved nor disapproved. And here he was declaring in peremptory tones that all kings were tyrants! Why did he keep silence at table when he was so sure of his opinion? No doubt he did not wish to oppose any one. Thenceforth I accounted to myself for his self-effacement by delicacy, and was moved to consider him right. Once again he spoke to me of those mysterious days of June when people fought to break the chains that bound the proletariat. I had no distinct notion of what the proletariat was. Tem Bossette, Mimi Pachoux and The Hanged, for instance, were they proletaires? I pictured them to myself loaded with chains and shut up in a cellar full of empty wine casks--because if the casks had been full they would never have come out of their own accord. Grandfather had rushed to their aid. I learned from his own lips that he had taken part in the insurrection in Paris, and had carried a gun. “Did you fire it off, grandfather?” I asked in surprise and perhaps in admiration, for I should never have thought him capable of so vigorous an act. He modestly explained that he had never had an opportunity. Aunt Deen had shown me, in a cupboard, the sabre which my father had worn during the war. Why had no one ever showed me that gun? Was not it too a family trophy? Grandfather concluded his somewhat vague story with the familiar reflection: “Papa wasn’t pleased.” He seemed so old that I should never have had an idea of thinking of his parents, who were nothing but paintings in the drawing-room. And here he was saying _papa_, like little Jamie, not even _father_ like my elder brothers and me. Greatly amused I exclaimed, “Your papa, grandfather?” “To be sure, the man of roses and laws, the magistrate, the nurseryman.”