walk, one so regular and so consecrated to my use that to deprive me of it
was a clear breach of faith; or again, as he had done this evening, long
before the appointed hour he would snap out: "Run along up to bed now; no
excuses!" But then again, simply because he was devoid of principles (in
my grandmother's sense), so he could not, properly speaking, be called
inexorable. He looked at me for a moment with an air of annoyance and
surprise, and then when Mamma had told him, not without some
embarrassment, what had happened, said to her: "Go along with him, then;
you said just now that you didn't feel like sleep, so stay in his room for
a little. I don't need anything."

"But dear," my mother answered timidly, "whether or not I feel like sleep
is not the point; we must not make the child accustomed..."

"There's no question of making him accustomed," said my father, with a
shrug of the shoulders; "you can see quite well that the child is unhappy.
After all, we aren't gaolers. You'll end by making him ill, and a lot of
good that will do. There are two beds in his room; tell Francoise to make
up the big one for you, and stay beside him for the rest of the night. I'm
off to bed, anyhow; I'm not nervous like you. Good night."

It was impossible for me to thank my father; what he called my
sentimentality would have exasperated him. I stood there, not daring to
move; he was still confronting us, an immense figure in his white
nightshirt, crowned with the pink and violet scarf of Indian cashmere in
which, since he had begun to suffer from neuralgia, he used to tie up his
head, standing like Abraham in the engraving after Benozzo Gozzoli which
M. Swann had given me, telling Sarah that she must tear herself away from
Isaac. Many years have passed since that night. The wall of the staircase,
up which I had watched the light of his candle gradually climb, was long