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 brothers' loud voices positively scared him, making him duck his head as if to avoid a blow.

I was all eyes and ears as I sat there taking them in, and it amused me to unravel the part of myself that was in each of my four sons, for mine they are beyond a doubt. If something in them came out of me, it must have gone into me at one time or another, but I do not find anywhere in my skin a trace of the preacher, the priest, or the sheep. (Perhaps I might discover the adventurer if I looked closely.) But the germs must have been there, and Nature has betrayed me. Yes, I can recognize my own gestures and ways of speaking, even of thinking. I can see myself in these men, but disguised, and that is what is rather confusing; but underneath it is the very same person, one and various. We each contain many personalities, good, bad and indifferent, the wolf, the lamb, the watch-dog, the honest man and the scamp, but one of the number is sure to be the strongest, and dominates all the rest, who escape as soon as they can by the first open door.

I am filled with self-reproach when I see these escaped sons of mine, so remote, yet so near to me. My little boys they must always be too, and even when they are most foolish, I feel that I ought to apologize to them, for is it not all my fault?