The clerk spoke to him and the officer told him he would show him the way.... We followed the policeman down more narrow streets. At last we stopped at a yard in the middle of which was a little pond. "This is Red Lion Court," said the officer. Why were we stopping there? Could it be possible that my parents lived in this place? The policeman knocked at the door of a wooden hut and our guide thanked him. So we had arrived. Mattia took my hand and gently pressed it. I pressed his. We understood one another. I was as in a dream when the door was opened and we found ourselves in a room with a big fire burning in the grate. Before the fire in a large cane chair sat an old man with a white beard, and his head covered with a black skull cap. At a table sat a man of about forty and a woman about six years his junior. She must have been very pretty once but now her eyes had a glassy stare and her manners were listless. Then there were four children--two boys and two girls--all very fair like their mother. The eldest boy was about eleven, the youngest girl, scarcely three. I did not know what the clerk was saying to the man, I only caught the name "Driscoll," my name, so the lawyer had said. All eyes were turned on Mattia and me, only the baby girl paid attention to Capi. "Which one is Remi?" asked the man in French. "I am," I said, taking a step forward. "Then come and kiss your father, my boy." When I had thought of this moment I had imagined that I should be overwhelmed with happiness and spring into my father's arms, but I felt nothing of the kind. I went up and kissed my father. "Now," he said, "there's your grandfather, your mother, your brothers and sisters." I went up to my mother first and put my arms about her. She let me kiss her but she did not return my caress; she only said two or three words which I did not understand. "Shake hands with your grandfather," said my father, "and go gently; he's paralyzed."