My Life: The Story of a Provincial

MP3 Audio CD. My Life: The Story of a Provincial

THE director said to me: "I only keep you out of respect for your worthy father, or you would have gone long since." I replied: " You flatter me, your Excellency, but I suppose I am in a position to go." And then I heard him saying: "Take the fellow away, he is getting on my nerves." Two days later I was dismissed. Ever since I had been grown up, to the great sorrow of my father, the municipal architect, I had changed my position nine times, going from one department to another, but all the Departments) were as like each other as drops of water; I had to sit and write, listen to inane and rude remarks, and just wait until I was dismissed. When I told my father, he was sitting back in his chair with his eyes shut. His thin, dry face, with a dove-coloured tinge where he shaved (his face was like that of an old Catholic organist), wore an expres sion of meek submission. Without answering my greeting or opening his eyes, he said : "If my dear wife, your mother, were alive, your life would be a constant grief to her. I can see the hand of Providence in her untimely death. Tell me, you un happy boy," he went on, opening his eyes, " what am I to do with you? " When I was younger my relations and friends knew what to do with me; some advised me to go into the army as a volunteer, others were for pharmacy, others for the telegraph service; but now that I was twenty-four and was going grey at the temples and had already tried the army and pharmacy and the tele graph service, and every possibility seemed to be ex- hausted, they gave me no more advice, but only sighed and shook their heads. " What do you think of yourself? " my father went on. " At your age other young men have a good social position, and just look at yourself : a lazy lout, a beggar, living on your father! ' And, as usual, he went on to say that young men were going to the dogs through wan