218
PARTISAN
REVIEW
obliged to yield to it moderately, saying "I am taking my relaxation."
Thus for
him
pleasure, belonging also among the rights, lost its
aggressive futility. On the left, a little above his blue-grey hair, I
noticed some books on a shelf. The bindings were beautiful; they
were surely classics. Pacome undoubtedly read in the evening, before
retiring, a few pages of "his old Montaigne" or an ode of Horace
in the original Latin text. At some times, also, he must have read
a contemporary work in order to keep informed. In that way he
knew Barres and Bourget. After a moment he would put down the
book and smile.
His
expression, losing its admirable alertness, becom–
ing almost dreamy, he would say: "How much easier, and yet how
much more difficult, it is to do one's duty."
He would never return again to the subject of himself; here was
a leader.
There were other leaders hanging on the walls: there was
nothing else. Here was a leader, this grand old man, grey-green
against
his
armchair, his white shirt-front a happy touch echoing the
silver of his hair. (In these portraits, painted always with moral
instruction as their end and with an exactness verging on scrupulous–
ness, artistic considerations were not passed over.) His long slender
hand rested on the head of a little boy. On
his
knees, which were
wrapped in a blanket, lay an open book. But
his
gaze was far away.
He was all the things which are invisible to young people. His name
was written on a plaque of gilt wood beneath
his
portrait: it must
have been Pacome, or Parrottin, or Chairneau. I did not think of
looking: for his kin, for this child, for himself, he was simply Grand–
father; at the moment when he judged that the time had come to
reveal to his grandson the scope of his future duties, he would speak
of himself in the third person.
"You must promise your grandfather to be very good, my dear,
to work hard next year. Perhaps next year grandfather will no longer
be here."
In the evening of life, he extends to everyone his indulgent kind–
ness. Even I, if he saw me-but he gazed right through me-even
I would find pardon in
his
eyes: he would think that I had had grand–
parents once. He would demand nothing: one no longer has desires
at that age. Nothing, save that one should lower one's voice slightly
when he entered; save that there should be at his passing a shadow
of tenderness and respect in the smiles; nothing save that
his
daughter–
in-law should say sometimes: "Father is extraordinary; he is younger
than all of us"; save that he should be- the only one able to calm
