“Come,” he said encouragingly, “run get your cap--make haste. The days are long--we can take a good walk.” There was no harshness in his sonorous voice, but rather that encouraging tone that always brought hope to his patients. In fact, neither when he took me home from the Café of the Navigators, nor in the tower chamber, had he treated me harshly. But his kindness had no softening effect upon me. I was not in the least grateful for it, but still considered him as a ruthless tyrant bent upon keeping me in fetters. As soon as he appeared I ceased to be free. Had he taken me to the wildest, most desolate place in the world, I should still have seen walls rising up around me. With grandfather it always seemed to me as if all enclosures disappeared, and the enfranchised earth belonged to every one--or to no one. Why did my father impose upon me this long walk with him, the mere prospect of which chilled me? Hadn’t Martinod’s revelations showed me what his preferences were? He was proud of Bernard and Stephen, he was always thinking of Mélanie. I had sometimes seen him looking at her with a strange earnestness, as if he had never seen her before, or as if he were imprinting her upon his memory; as for me, I didn’t count. With all the power of my will I was determined to be a misunderstood son, an unhappy, unjustly neglected child. It was necessary that I should play this rôle, to keep alive the love-sadness in which I found my chief pleasure. Therefore I set out reluctantly, and let him see that I did. He on the contrary made every effort to be gay. Perceiving that he desired to put me at my ease, I became all the more reserved, in a spirit of opposition. We were off at last, not with the slow pace of idlers who have no particular point in view, as grandfather and I were in the habit of walking, but with a light, quick step as if to military music. “If we walk fast,” he said, “we can do it in two or three hours.” Desiring him to understand that I was not in the least interested in the walk, I did not inquire where we were going. It would surely not be that secluded place where the ferns grew thick, where furze clung to the rocks, where, apart from the rest of the world, far from houses and cultivated fields, I had been introduced to wild nature by the soft music of a cascade. I remember that as we were passing through a village I gave a great kick to a fragment of an old drain tile that lay in the road. In an instant all the dogs were howling at our heels. Somewhat terrified by their wide open mouths and the great hubbub that I had aroused, I drew near to my companion. “Let them bark,” he said reassuringly. “You will see that it is just so in life. As soon as one makes a little noise in the world all the dogs rush upon you. If you turn against them you make yourself ridiculous. The best way is to take no notice, and just let the dogs bark.”