I would fain have followed him, but father asked me to look out. I looked, without interest, at the confused mass whose surges were beating against the gate and the wall of enclosure. It might have been a long, enormous serpent, a long, enormous mole-cricket whose body filled the breadth of the street, and whose tail must have stretched far away, beyond the turn of the road. Suddenly the gate gave way, and the great beast, like the gipsies long ago, invaded the short avenue and the flower borders. In a moment it was assaulting the house. Aunt Deen, at my side, was torn between the joys of popularity and the instinctive defence of our garden. By way of checking the onrush of the multitude father opened the window. He was saluted with a tempest of applause, but easily commanded silence, his voice ringing out like a deep-toned church bell: “My friends,” he said, “we shall do all we can to check the progress of this scourge. Count upon me, go back home, and above all, invoke the help of God.” Invoke the help of God! But it was he whom they looked upon as Providence! In all that manifestation my mother had been the only one who had thought of praying. Aunt Deen was drinking in her nephew’s words, but their eloquence touched me not at all. I could have wished him to utter a few noble sentiments in praise of science, which alone was capable of dealing with epidemics and preventing contagions; but of science my father had said never a word. At that moment I noticed how large a number of good women were in the crowd, some of them brandishing their babies at arms’ length, as if offering them to my father. No doubt he had been talking for the good women. Nevertheless he had gained his point. Little by little the crowd was calming down and gradually dribbling away. They passed out of the gate, and the lovely summer night, but now torn with shoutings, slowly gained its empire over the last lingerers in the garden, over the roads and the fields, and gave them back to silence. Events began to hurry one upon another, the very next morning. The municipal council, responsible for the defective work upon the aqueducts, resigned under general obloquy and contempt. “There are your electors!” said our father at table. “First rejoicing in the triumph of the mayor and council over conservatism, and now demanding the disgrace of those very men and dragging them in the mud with shame.” In a flash I saw myself again in the Café des Navigateurs a few years before, drinking champagne with Martinod and his heelers, in honour of grandfather’s candidacy, and far from revolting me, the memory touched my heart. Then, a child, I had quaffed a sort of delicious recklessness, something like that love-languor that Nazzarena, passing out of my life, had left with me, listening to those fine theories which were not very clear to me but were preparing me for liberty nevertheless.