The lack of organisation increased the evil. The municipality had resigned and the prefect was taking the waters in Germany. The electors were convoked on a call of urgency. Then came a rush for father. Every day there was a crowd before the gate crying, _Long live Rambert_! or _It’s Rambert we must have_. Aunt Deen was never surfeited with this refrain, which was music to her ears. Only he--there was no one but Michel. I did not see and I cannot describe the despairing town, the shops closed for fear of pillage, the inhabitants torn by party enmity, haunted by all sorts of suspicion, clinging to every superstition, ravaged by bitterness and poverty, and given over to terror. But I did see with my own eyes, at our very feet, there under our very windows, the town entreating one man, submitting to him, grovelling before him, whom formerly they would have none of. The multitude dragged itself in the dust, moaned, uttered howls of desire like an infuriated dog. And not comprehending its distress I despised it. My father had lost his authority over me, not from having abused it, notwithstanding that I had imagined tyranny in some of his acts, but perhaps--who can say?--for not having exerted it, that evening when he brought me back from the Café des Navigateurs, that day when in the tower chamber I had braved him in defence of grandfather. He had no suspicion either of my first experience of love, which had played havoc in my heart, nor of the intensity of those aspirations after liberty which had been slowly infiltrated into it by all those walks and conversations. Yet he had felt my detachment from the house, and had trusted to clemency to bring me back. And that clemency had belittled him in my eyes. His prestige had been made up of his never-failing victories, and had I not heard him in mother’s room, uttering the laments of one conquered? By his pain I had measured my own importance. The greater price he set upon the reconquest of myself, the stronger I felt to resist him. Perhaps he would have kept his empire over me had he not showed such an excess of paternal solicitude. Would it be dangerous for a sovereign to take too much pains in training his heir and fitting him to succeed to the throne? Must one put more confidence in words and acts than in the influence which one tries to exert over minds? Each generation differs from the former in the expression of its ideas if not in the ideas themselves. It thinks to create all things anew: life will teach it that nothing is created, and that everything goes on by the same processes. Now, in the time of danger, that authority from which I had withdrawn myself imposed itself upon every one else. My father had been in charge of the medical service. Now, elected almost unanimously, he was entrusted with the town. II THE ALPETTE