The subject soon became a theme for cheap pleasantries. Every one in the café began to talk of Father Rambert’s end of the table, Father Rambert’s garret. He would shrug his shoulders and take it all laughingly. “Really, isn’t all that true, Father Rambert?” asked Martinod one day. “Why, to be sure it is true in a sense. If you make a point of it, it is true. But what is it that is true?” As if everybody didn’t know what is true and what is not true! Grandfather was rather fond of dark sayings. That same afternoon we went home together, he gay and sprightly, I downcast because I had not, even at a distance (which I preferred), seen Nazzarena. At the top of the steps we met father, who was waiting for us, and who seemed much disturbed. He had a newspaper crumpled up in his hand, and handed it without a word to grandfather, who made no motion to take it. “Do you know who wrote _that_?” he asked. How contemptuously he pronounced the word _that_! I felt that he was controlling himself, but that something serious was going on at our house. “How should I know?” asked grandfather. “I never read the local papers.” “Very well, read this one.” “No, thank you; I’m not interested.” “Then I’ll read it to you.” “If you insist upon it.” I saw them go together into father’s consulting room, leaving the door open, and I had no notion of going away. Grandfather sat down resignedly in an easy chair, and father began to read at once. I felt ill rewarded for the curiosity which had kept me there, for I couldn’t understand a word of that dull, prosy and ill-worded article, which seemed to leave a bad taste in your mouth like grated cheese that melts in onion soup and turns into a sticky glue that clings to your gums. It was about the approaching elections, and a certain omnipotent and despotic personage, eager to rule the public with a rod of iron as he ruled his household. After this there was something about a garret full of rats, exposed to all the winds of heaven, yet good enough, it appeared, for the miserable old man who had been relegated to it, and who was expiating his social kindliness by being treated with contempt and forced into the meanest position in his own house. The article closed with a warm appeal to justice and sympathy. No name, no place, was mentioned. How could I have understood the illusions? It was too complicated an act of perfidy for a child to see through. “Is that all?” asked grandfather when the indignant voice was silent. “It seems to me that it is enough.” “Oh, there isn’t enough there to whip a cat for--mere vague generalities.”