I evoked the image of my father as he lived, just as I had seen him for the last time; I heard him replying to M.Termonde's question in the dining-room of the Rue Tronchet, and speaking of the man who awaited him to kill him: "A singular man whom I shall not be sorry to observe more closely." And then he had gone out and was walking towards his death while I was playing in the little salon, and my mother was talking to the friend who was one day to be her master and mine.What a happy home-picture, while in that hotel room--Ah! was I never to find the key of the terrible enigma? Where was I to go? What was I to do? At what door was I to knock?
At the same time that a sense of the responsibility of my task disheartened me, the novel facilities of my new way of life contributed to relax the tension of my will.During my school days, the sufferings I underwent from jealousy of my stepfather, the disappointment of my repressed affections, the meanness and penury of my surroundings, many grievous influences, had maintained the restless ardor of my feelings; but this also had undergone a change.No doubt I still continued to love my mother deeply and painfully, but I now no longer asked her for what I knew she would not give me, my unshared place, a separate shrine in her heart.Iaccepted her nature instead of rebelling against it.
Neither had I ceased to regard my stepfather with morose antipathy;but I no longer hated him with the old vehemence.His conduct to me after I had left school was irreproachable.Just as in my childhood, he had made it a point of honor never to raise his voice in speaking to me, so he now seemed to pique himself upon an entire absence of interference in my life as a young man.When, having passed my baccalaureate, I announced that I did not wish to adopt any profession, but without a reason--the true one was my resolution to devote myself entirely to the fulfillment of my task of justice--he had not a word to say against that strange decision;nay, more, he brought my mother to consent to it.