In vain might young Morel seek to divest himself of his lowly origin, one felt that the shade of my uncle Adolphe, venerable and gigantic in the eyes of the old servant, had never ceased to hover, almost a holy vision, over the childhood and boyhood of the son. While I was turning over the photographs Charles Morel examined my room. And as I was looking for some place in which I might keep them, “How is it,” he asked me (in a tone in which the reproach had no need to find expression, so implicit was it in the words themselves), “that I don’t see a single photograph of your uncle in your room?” I felt the blood rise to my cheeks and stammered: “Why, I don’t believe I have such a thing.” “What, you haven’t one photograph of your uncle Adolphe, who was so devoted to you! I will send you one of my governor’s⁠—he has quantities of them⁠—and I hope you will set it up in the place of honour above that chest of drawers, which came to you from your uncle.” It is true that, as I had not even a photograph of my father or mother in my room, there was nothing so very shocking in there not being one of my uncle Adolphe.