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116 a turn in the country. I find myself a little tired. I am going to take a little vacation."

His penetrating eyes were on me; he certainly could not believe me, he must be guessing the true cause of my coming. But he would take care not to show it. Driving away the importunate thought with a gesture of his hand, moving it across his face as if he were brushing off a fly, he murmured:

"Good, good, good."

Then I observed that he was not eating; he would put a morsel on his plate, cut it up with his knife, taste it with a grimace, and scold Josette, who defended her cooking by grumbling:

"It is certainly because monsieur has no appetite!"

"I tell you that your butter was not fresh—and what a sauce!—a tasty sauce, indeed, and with a confoundedly bad taste!"

And I thought of his former scoldings that used to frighten me so, when I was little; then he had a big voice, an abundant vocabulary energetic gestures; now he scolded gently, without authority, a little like a wayward child. It did not frighten his old servant, who bent to let the storm pass over her, and answered even when he commanded her to be silent. And, finally, he ended by smiling himself at his vain anger. I do not know why this little scene filled me with melancholy. I felt suddenly different, alien, lost