As he went out again Raphael noticed a man half-way up the
crags, leaning on a hoe, and watching the house with interest.
"That's my man, sir," said the Auvergnate, unconsciously smiling in
peasant fashion; "he is at work up there."
"And that old man is your father?"
"Asking your pardon, sir, he is my man's grandfather. Such as you see
him, he is a hundred and two, and yet quite lately he walked over to
Clermont with our little chap! Oh, he has been a strong man in his
time; but he does nothing now but sleep and eat and drink. He amuses
himself with the little fellow. Sometimes the child trails him up the
hillsides, and he will just go up there along with him."
Valentin made up his mind immediately. He would live between this
child and old man, breathe the same air; eat their bread, drink the
same water, sleep with them, make the blood in his veins like theirs.
It was a dying man's fancy. For him the prime model, after which the
customary existence of the individual should be shaped, the real
formula for the life of a human being, the only true and possible
life, the life-ideal, was to become one of the oysters adhering to
this rock, to save his shell a day or two longer by paralyzing the
power of death.
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