“Casenave ill!” he exclaimed. “He must have drunk too much.” At luncheon father announced to us that Casenave was dead. “I warned him,” he said. “He ought to have given up the bottle long ago.” “He chose for himself,” said grandfather. He chose for himself! That was enough to excuse and justify all actions, good or bad, and so I understood it. I saw a reply spring to my father’s lips, but he repressed it, and merely added: “I have warned Tem Bossette. He will come to the same end, if he does not take care. It is already pretty late for him.” “All of them drunkards,” summed up Aunt Deen, who liked to deal in generalities. Election Sunday came at last. I knew it by the multicoloured posters which decorated the fronts of buildings and the greater affluence of those that I had to wade through on the way to the School Mass. At the house no one had made the slightest allusion to it. After the spiritless luncheon grandfather put on his hat and grasped his cane. “Where are you going?” asked Aunt Deen. “Into the country.” “You have voted already?” “Indeed I have not.” “It’s a duty.” “That’s all the same to me.” “After all, so much the better,” my aunt added; “you would have been capable of voting for those scoundrels.” She deemed it useless to designate them more definitely. He had almost “solicited the suffrages of voters,” to quote from the posters, and he didn’t even vote. He chose for himself and I could see no reason to object. Every one had a right to do as he chose and to change as he fancied,--otherwise what would become of liberty? As he was going out he suddenly turned to me and proposed that I should go with him. “Just let me get my cap,” I cried, starting up, as if I had totally forgotten the scene in the tower. Father, who was observing us, checked my enthusiasm by saying: “Thank you. To-day I will take him for a walk. I am at leisure.” He very seldom allowed himself leisure. His patients were more and more absorbing him. His reputation must have extended far and wide, for he was sent for from great distances; his absences, his journeys multiplied. “I am no longer my own master,” he said to mother. “And life is passing.” “My dear,” she murmured. “I beg of you don’t overtire yourself so.” She was always devising ways of caring for him, of finding means for him to rest. To reassure her he would laugh, drawing himself up to full height, rounding out his chest. He never needed rest. His robust shoulders might have borne up the world; and in fact did he not carry the burden of the house and of our seven futures? By a strange complication of feeling, though inwardly I was always in a state of revolt against him, I never ceased to admire him. I could not imagine him beaten, or complaining. Life was for him one perpetual victory. I admired him only at a distance. The prospect of this walk with him appalled me, and I remained on the stairs, waiting for some unknown event to interpose an obstacle.