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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pierre and Jean, by Guy de Maupassant
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Pierre and Jean
+
+Author: Guy de Maupassant
+
+Translator: Clara Bell
+
+Release Date: April 12, 2006 [EBook #3804]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PIERRE AND JEAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny; John Bickers
+
+
+
+
+
+PIERRE & JEAN
+
+By Guy De Maupassant
+
+
+Translated By Clara Bell
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+"Tschah!" exclaimed old Roland suddenly, after he had remained
+motionless for a quarter of an hour, his eyes fixed on the water, while
+now and again he very slightly lifted his line sunk in the sea.
+
+Mme. Roland, dozing in the stern by the side of Mme. Rosemilly, who had
+been invited to join the fishing-party, woke up, and turning her head to
+look at her husband, said:
+
+"Well, well! Gerome."
+
+And the old fellow replied in a fury:
+
+"They do not bite at all. I have taken nothing since noon. Only men
+should ever go fishing. Women always delay the start till it is too
+late."
+
+His two sons, Pierre and Jean, who each held a line twisted round his
+forefinger, one to port and one to starboard, both began to laugh, and
+Jean remarked:
+
+"You are not very polite to our guest, father."
+
+M. Roland was abashed, and apologized.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Mme. Rosemilly, but that is just like me. I invite
+ladies because I like to be with them, and then, as soon as I feel the
+water beneath me, I think of nothing but the fish."
+
+Mme. Roland was now quite awake, and gazing with a softened look at the
+wide horizon of cliff and sea.
+
+"You have had good sport, all the same," she murmured.
+
+But her husband shook his head in denial, though at the same time he
+glanced complacently at the basket where the fish caught by the three
+men were still breathing spasmodically, with a low rustle of clammy
+scales and struggling fins, and dull, ineffectual efforts, gasping in
+the fatal air. Old Roland took the basket between his knees and tilted
+it up, making the silver heap of creatures slide to the edge that he
+might see those lying at the bottom, and their death-throes became more
+convulsive, while the strong smell of their bodies, a wholesome reek
+of brine, came up from the full depths of the creel. The old fisherman
+sniffed it eagerly, as we smell at roses, and exclaimed:
+
+"Cristi! But they are fresh enough!" and he went on: "How many did you
+pull out, doctor?"
+
+His eldest son, Pierre, a man of thirty, with black whiskers trimmed
+square like a lawyer's, his mustache and beard shaved away, replied:
+
+"Oh, not many; three or four."
+
+The father turned to the younger. "And you, Jean?" said he.
+
+Jean, a tall fellow, much younger than his brother, fair, with a full
+beard, smiled and murmured:
+
+"Much the same as Pierre--four or five."
+
+Every time they told the same fib, which delighted father Roland. He had
+hitched his line round a row-lock, and folding his arms he announced:
+
+"I will never again try to fish after noon. After ten in the morning it
+is all over. The lazy brutes will not bite; they are taking their siesta
+in the sun." And he looked round at the sea on all sides, with the
+satisfied air of a proprietor.
+
+He was a retired jeweller who had been led by an inordinate love of
+seafaring and fishing to fly from the shop as soon as he had made enough
+money to live in modest comfort on the interest of his savings. He
+retired to le Havre, bought a boat, and became an amateur skipper.
+His two sons, Pierre and Jean, had remained at Paris to continue their
+studies, and came for the holidays from time to time to share their
+father's amusements.
+
+On leaving school, Pierre, the elder, five years older than Jean, had
+felt a vocation to various professions and had tried half a dozen in
+succession, but, soon disgusted with each in turn, he started afresh
+with new hopes. Medicine had been his last fancy, and he had set to work
+with so much ardour that he had just qualified after an unusually short
+course of study, by a special remission of time from the minister. He
+was enthusiastic, intelligent, fickle, but obstinate, full of Utopias
+and philosophical notions.
+
+Jean, who was as fair as his brother was dark, as deliberate as his
+brother was vehement, as gentle as his brother was unforgiving, had
+quietly gone through his studies for the law and had just taken his
+diploma as a licentiate, at the time when Pierre had taken his in
+medicine. So they were now having a little rest at home, and both looked
+forward to settling in Havre if they could find a satisfactory opening.
+
+But a vague jealousy, one of those dormant jealousies which grow up
+between brothers or sisters and slowly ripen till they burst, on the
+occasion of a marriage perhaps, or of some good fortune happening to
+one of them, kept them on the alert in a sort of brotherly and
+non-aggressive animosity. They were fond of each other, it is true, but
+they watched each other. Pierre, five years old when Jean was born,
+had looked with the eyes of a little petted animal at that other little
+animal which had suddenly come to lie in his father's and mother's arms
+and to be loved and fondled by them. Jean, from his birth, had always
+been a pattern of sweetness, gentleness, and good temper, and Pierre had
+by degrees begun to chafe at ever-lastingly hearing the praises of this
+great lad, whose sweetness in his eyes was indolence, whose gentleness
+was stupidity, and whose kindliness was blindness. His parents, whose
+dream for their sons was some respectable and undistinguished calling,
+blamed him for so often changing his mind, for his fits of enthusiasm,
+his abortive beginnings, and all his ineffectual impulses towards
+generous ideas and the liberal professions.
+
+Since he had grown to manhood they no longer said in so many words:
+"Look at Jean and follow his example," but every time he heard them say
+"Jean did this--Jean does that," he understood their meaning and the
+hint the words conveyed.
+
+Their mother, an orderly person, a thrifty and rather sentimental woman
+of the middle class, with the soul of a soft-hearted book-keeper, was
+constantly quenching the little rivalries between her two big sons
+to which the petty events of their life constantly gave rise. Another
+little circumstance, too, just now disturbed her peace of mind, and
+she was in fear of some complications; for in the course of the winter,
+while her boys were finishing their studies, each in his own line, she
+had made the acquaintance of a neighbour, Mme. Rosemilly, the widow of a
+captain of a merchantman who had died at sea two years before. The young
+widow--quite young, only three-and-twenty--a woman of strong intellect
+who knew life by instinct as the free animals do, as though she
+had seen, gone through, understood, and weighted every conceivable
+contingency, and judged them with a wholesome, strict, and benevolent
+mind, had fallen into the habit of calling to work or chat for an hour
+in the evening with these friendly neighbours, who would give her a cup
+of tea.
+
+Father Roland, always goaded on by his seafaring craze, would question
+their new friend about the departed captain; and she would talk of him,
+and his voyages, and his old-world tales, without hesitation, like a
+resigned and reasonable woman who loves life and respects death.
+
+The two sons on their return, finding the pretty widow quite at home in
+the house, forthwith began to court her, less from any wish to charm her
+than from the desire to cut each other out.
+
+Their mother, being practical and prudent, sincerely hoped that one of
+them might win the young widow, for she was rich; but then she would
+have liked that the other should not be grieved.
+
+Mme. Rosemilly was fair, with blue eyes, a mass of light waving hair,
+fluttering at the least breath of wind, and an alert, daring, pugnacious
+little way with her, which did not in the least answer to the sober
+method of her mind.
+
+She already seemed to like Jean best, attracted, no doubt, by an
+affinity of nature. This preference, however, she betrayed only by
+an almost imperceptible difference of voice and look and also by
+occasionally asking his opinion. She seemed to guess that Jean's
+views would support her own, while those of Pierre must inevitably
+be different. When she spoke of the doctor's ideas on politics, art,
+philosophy, or morals, she would sometimes say: "Your crotchets." Then
+he would look at her with the cold gleam of an accuser drawing up an
+indictment against women--all women, poor weak things.
+
+Never till his sons came home had M. Roland invited her to join his
+fishing expeditions, nor had he ever taken his wife; for he liked to put
+off before daybreak, with his ally, Captain Beausire, a master mariner
+retired, whom he had first met on the quay at high tides and with whom
+he had struck up an intimacy, and the old sailor Papagris, known as Jean
+Bart, in whose charge the boat was left.
+
+But one evening of the week before, Mme. Rosemilly, who had been dining
+with them, remarked, "It must be great fun to go out fishing." The
+jeweller, flattered by her interest and suddenly fired with the wish
+to share his favourite sport with her, and to make a convert after the
+manner of priests, exclaimed: "Would you like to come?"
+
+"To be sure I should."
+
+"Next Tuesday?"
+
+"Yes, next Tuesday."
+
+"Are you the woman to be ready to start at five in the morning?"
+
+She exclaimed in horror:
+
+"No, indeed: that is too much."
+
+He was disappointed and chilled, suddenly doubting her true vocation.
+However, he said:
+
+"At what hour can you be ready?"
+
+"Well--at nine?"
+
+"Not before?"
+
+"No, not before. Even that is very early."
+
+The old fellow hesitated; he certainly would catch nothing, for when the
+sun has warmed the sea the fish bite no more; but the two brothers had
+eagerly pressed the scheme, and organized and arranged everything there
+and then.
+
+So on the following Tuesday the Pearl had dropped anchor under the white
+rocks of Cape la Heve; they had fished till midday, then they had slept
+awhile, and then fished again without catching anything; and then it
+was that father Roland, perceiving, rather late, that all that Mme.
+Rosemilly really enjoyed and cared for was the sail on the sea, and
+seeing that his lines hung motionless, had uttered in a spirit of
+unreasonable annoyance, that vehement "Tschah!" which applied as much to
+the pathetic widow as to the creatures he could not catch.
+
+Now he contemplated the spoil--his fish--with the joyful thrill of a
+miser; seeing as he looked up at the sky that the sun was getting low:
+"Well, boys," said he, "suppose we turn homeward."
+
+The young men hauled in their lines, coiled them up, cleaned the hooks
+and stuck them into corks, and sat waiting.
+
+Roland stood up to look out like a captain.
+
+"No wind," said he. "You will have to pull, young 'uns."
+
+And suddenly extending one arm to the northward, he exclaimed:
+
+"Here comes the packet from Southampton."
+
+Away over the level sea, spread out like a blue sheet, vast and sheeny
+and shot with flame and gold, an inky cloud was visible against the rosy
+sky in the quarter to which he pointed, and below it they could make out
+the hull of the steamer, which looked tiny at such a distance. And to
+southward other wreaths of smoke, numbers of them, could be seen, all
+converging towards the Havre pier, now scarcely visible as a white
+streak with the lighthouse, upright, like a horn, at the end of it.
+
+Roland asked: "Is not the Normandie due to-day?" And Jean replied:
+
+"Yes, to-day."
+
+"Give me my glass. I fancy I see her out there."
+
+The father pulled out the copper tube, adjusted it to his eye, sought
+the speck, and then, delighted to have seen it, exclaimed:
+
+"Yes, yes, there she is. I know her two funnels. Would you like to look,
+Mme. Rosemilly?"
+
+She took the telescope and directed it towards the Atlantic horizon,
+without being able, however, to find the vessel, for she could
+distinguish nothing--nothing but blue, with a coloured halo round it, a
+circular rainbow--and then all manner of queer things, winking eclipses
+which made her feel sick.
+
+She said as she returned the glass:
+
+"I never could see with that thing. It used to put my husband in quite a
+rage; he would stand for hours at the windows watching the ships pass."
+
+Old Roland, much put out, retorted:
+
+"Then it must be some defect in your eye, for my glass is a very good
+one."
+
+Then he offered it to his wife.
+
+"Would you like to look?"
+
+"No, thank you. I know before hand that I could not see through it."
+
+Mme. Roland, a woman of eight-and-forty but who did not look it, seemed
+to be enjoying this excursion and this waning day more than any of the
+party.
+
+Her chestnut hair was only just beginning to show streaks of white. She
+had a calm, reasonable face, a kind and happy way with her which it
+was a pleasure to see. Her son Pierre was wont to say that she knew the
+value of money, but this did not hinder her from enjoying the delights
+of dreaming. She was fond of reading, of novels, and poetry, not for
+their value as works of art, but for the sake of the tender melancholy
+mood they would induce in her. A line of poetry, often but a poor one,
+often a bad one, would touch the little chord, as she expressed it, and
+give her the sense of some mysterious desire almost realized. And she
+delighted in these faint emotions which brought a little flutter to her
+soul, otherwise as strictly kept as a ledger.
+
+Since settling at Havre she had become perceptibly stouter, and her
+figure, which had been very supple and slight, had grown heavier.
+
+This day on the sea had been delightful to her. Her husband, without
+being brutal, was rough with her, as a man who is the despot of his
+shop is apt to be rough, without anger or hatred; to such men to give an
+order is to swear. He controlled himself in the presence of strangers,
+but in private he let loose and gave himself terrible vent, though he
+was himself afraid of every one. She, in sheer horror of the turmoil,
+of scenes, of useless explanations, always gave way and never asked for
+anything; for a very long time she had not ventured to ask Roland to
+take her out in the boat. So she had joyfully hailed this opportunity,
+and was keenly enjoying the rare and new pleasure.
+
+From the moment when they started she surrendered herself completely,
+body and soul, to the soft, gliding motion over the waves. She was not
+thinking; her mind was not wandering through either memories or hopes;
+it seemed to her as though her heart, like her body, was floating on
+something soft and liquid and delicious which rocked and lulled it.
+
+When their father gave the word to return, "Come, take your places at
+the oars!" she smiled to see her sons, her two great boys, take off
+their jackets and roll up their shirt-sleeves on their bare arms.
+
+Pierre, who was nearest to the two women, took the stroke oar, Jean the
+other, and they sat waiting till the skipper should say: "Give way!" For
+he insisted on everything being done according to strict rule.
+
+Simultaneously, as if by a single effort, they dipped the oars, and
+lying back, pulling with all their might, began a struggle to display
+their strength. They had come out easily, under sail, but the breeze
+had died away, and the masculine pride of the two brothers was suddenly
+aroused by the prospect of measuring their powers. When they went out
+alone with their father they plied the oars without any steering, for
+Roland would be busy getting the lines ready, while he kept a lookout in
+the boat's course, guiding it by a sign or a word: "Easy, Jean, and you,
+Pierre, put your back into it." Or he would say, "Now, then, number
+one; come, number two--a little elbow grease." Then the one who had been
+dreaming pulled harder, the one who had got excited eased down, and the
+boat's head came round.
+
+But to-day they meant to display their biceps. Pierre's arms were hairy,
+somewhat lean but sinewy; Jean's were round and white and rosy, and the
+knot of muscles moved under the skin.
+
+At first Pierre had the advantage. With his teeth set, his brow knit,
+his legs rigid, his hands clinched on the oar, he made it bend from
+end to end at every stroke, and the Pearl was veering landward. Father
+Roland, sitting in the bows, so as to leave the stern seat to the two
+women, wasted his breath shouting, "Easy, number one; pull harder,
+number two!" Pierre pulled harder in his frenzy, and "number two" could
+not keep time with his wild stroke.
+
+At last the skipper cried: "Stop her!" The two oars were lifted
+simultaneously, and then by his father's orders Jean pulled alone for
+a few minutes. But from that moment he had it all his own way; he grew
+eager and warmed to his work, while Pierre, out of breath and exhausted
+by his first vigorous spurt, was lax and panting. Four times running
+father Roland made them stop while the elder took breath, so as to get
+the boat into her right course again. Then the doctor, humiliated and
+fuming, his forehead dropping with sweat, his cheeks white, stammered
+out:
+
+"I cannot think what has come over me; I have a stitch in my side. I
+started very well, but it has pulled me up."
+
+Jean asked: "Shall I pull alone with both oars for a time?"
+
+"No, thanks, it will go off."
+
+And their mother, somewhat vexed, said:
+
+"Why, Pierre, what rhyme or reason is there in getting into such a
+state. You are not a child."
+
+And he shrugged his shoulders and set to once more.
+
+Mme. Rosemilly pretended not to see, not to understand, not to hear.
+Her fair head went back with an engaging little jerk every time the boat
+moved forward, making the fine wayward hairs flutter about her temples.
+
+But father Roland presently called out:
+
+"Look, the Prince Albert is catching us up!"
+
+They all looked round. Long and low in the water, with her two
+raking funnels and two yellow paddle-boxes like two round cheeks,
+the Southampton packet came ploughing on at full steam, crowded with
+passengers under open parasols. Its hurrying, noisy paddle-wheels
+beating up the water which fell again in foam, gave it an appearance of
+haste as of a courier pressed for time, and the upright stem cut through
+the water, throwing up two thin translucent waves which glided off along
+the hull.
+
+When it had come quite near the Pearl, father Roland lifted his hat,
+the ladies shook their handkerchiefs, and half a dozen parasols eagerly
+waved on board the steamboat responded to this salute as she went on her
+way, leaving behind her a few broad undulations on the still and glassy
+surface of the sea.
+
+There were other vessels, each with its smoky cap, coming in from every
+part of the horizon towards the short white jetty, which swallowed them
+up, one after another, like a mouth. And the fishing barks and lighter
+craft with broad sails and slender masts, stealing across the sky in tow
+of inconspicuous tugs, were coming in, faster and slower, towards the
+devouring ogre, who from time to time seemed to have had a surfeit, and
+spewed out to the open sea another fleet of steamers, brigs, schooners,
+and three-masted vessels with their tangled mass of rigging. The
+hurrying steamships flew off to the right and left over the smooth bosom
+of the ocean, while sailing vessels, cast off by the pilot-tugs which
+had hauled them out, lay motionless, dressing themselves from the
+main-mast to the fore-tops in canvas, white or brown, and ruddy in the
+setting sun.
+
+Mme. Roland, with her eyes half-shut, murmured: "Good heavens, how
+beautiful the sea is!"
+
+And Mme. Rosemilly replied with a long sigh, which, however, had no
+sadness in it:
+
+"Yes, but it is sometimes very cruel, all the same."
+
+Roland exclaimed:
+
+"Look, there is the Normandie just going in. A big ship, isn't she?"
+
+Then he described the coast opposite, far, far away, on the other side
+of the mouth of the Seine--that mouth extended over twenty kilometres,
+said he. He pointed out Villerville, Trouville, Houlgate, Luc,
+Arromanches, the little river of Caen, and the rocks of Calvados which
+make the coast unsafe as far as Cherbourg. Then he enlarged on the
+question of the sand-banks in the Seine, which shift at every tide so
+that even the pilots of Quilleboeuf are at fault if they do not survey
+the channel every day. He bid them notice how the town of Havre divided
+Upper from Lower Normandy. In Lower Normandy the shore sloped down
+to the sea in pasture-lands, fields, and meadows. The coast of Upper
+Normandy, on the contrary, was steep, a high cliff, ravined, cleft and
+towering, forming an immense white rampart all the way to Dunkirk,
+while in each hollow a village or a port lay hidden: Etretat, Fecamp,
+Saint-Valery, Treport, Dieppe, and the rest.
+
+The two women did not listen. Torpid with comfort and impressed by the
+sight of the ocean covered with vessels rushing to and fro like wild
+beasts about their den, they sat speechless, somewhat awed by the
+soothing and gorgeous sunset. Roland alone talked on without end; he
+was one of those whom nothing can disturb. Women, whose nerves are
+more sensitive, sometimes feel, without knowing why, that the sound of
+useless speech is as irritating as an insult.
+
+Pierre and Jean, who had calmed down, were rowing slowly, and the Pearl
+was making for the harbour, a tiny thing among those huge vessels.
+
+When they came alongside of the quay, Papagris, who was waiting there,
+gave his hand to the ladies to help them out, and they took the way into
+the town. A large crowd, the crowd which haunts the pier every day at
+high tide--was also drifting homeward. Mme. Roland and Mme. Rosemilly
+led the way, followed by the three men. As they went up the Rue de Paris
+they stopped now and then in front of a milliner's or a jeweller's shop,
+to look at a bonnet or an ornament; then after making their comments
+they went on again. In front of the Place de la Bourse Roland paused, as
+he did every day, to gaze at the docks full of vessels--the _Bassin du
+Commerce_, with other docks beyond, where the huge hulls lay side by
+side, closely packed in rows, four or five deep. And masts innumerable;
+along several kilometres of quays the endless masts, with their yards,
+poles, and rigging, gave this great gap in the heart of the town
+the look of a dead forest. Above this leafless forest the gulls were
+wheeling, and watching to pounce, like a falling stone, on any scraps
+flung overboard; a sailor boy, fixing a pulley to a cross-beam, looked
+as if he had gone up there bird's-nesting.
+
+"Will you dine with us without any sort of ceremony, just that we may
+end the day together?" said Mme. Roland to her friend.
+
+"To be sure I will, with pleasure; I accept equally without ceremony. It
+would be dismal to go home and be alone this evening."
+
+Pierre, who had heard, and who was beginning to be restless under the
+young woman's indifference, muttered to himself: "Well, the widow is
+taking root now, it would seem." For some days past he had spoken of her
+as "the widow." The word, harmless in itself, irritated Jean merely by
+the tone given to it, which to him seemed spiteful and offensive.
+
+The three men spoke not another word till they reached the threshold of
+their own house. It was a narrow one, consisting of a ground-floor and
+two floors above, in the Rue Belle-Normande. The maid, Josephine, a girl
+of nineteen, a rustic servant-of-all-work at low wages, gifted to excess
+with the startled animal expression of a peasant, opened the door, went
+up stairs at her master's heels to the drawing-room, which was on the
+first floor, and then said:
+
+"A gentleman called--three times."
+
+Old Roland, who never spoke to her without shouting and swearing, cried
+out:
+
+"Who do you say called, in the devil's name?"
+
+She never winced at her master's roaring voice, and replied:
+
+"A gentleman from the lawyer's."
+
+"What lawyer?"
+
+"Why, M'sieu 'Canu--who else?"
+
+"And what did this gentleman say?"
+
+"That M'sieu 'Canu will call in himself in the course of the evening."
+
+Maitre Lecanu was M. Roland's lawyer, and in a way his friend, managing
+his business for him. For him to send word that he would call in the
+evening, something urgent and important must be in the wind; and the
+four Rolands looked at each other, disturbed by the announcement as
+folks of small fortune are wont to be at any intervention of a lawyer,
+with its suggestions of contracts, inheritance, lawsuits--all sorts of
+desirable or formidable contingencies. The father, after a few moments
+of silence, muttered:
+
+"What on earth can it mean?"
+
+Mme. Rosemilly began to laugh.
+
+"Why, a legacy, of course. I am sure of it. I bring good luck."
+
+But they did not expect the death of any one who might leave them
+anything.
+
+Mme. Roland, who had a good memory for relationships, began to think
+over all their connections on her husband's side and on her own, to
+trace up pedigrees and the ramifications of cousin-ship.
+
+Before even taking off her bonnet she said:
+
+"I say, father" (she called her husband "father" at home, and sometimes
+"Monsieur Roland" before strangers), "tell me, do you remember who it
+was that Joseph Lebru married for the second time?"
+
+"Yes--a little girl named Dumenil, a stationer's daughter."
+
+"Had they any children?"
+
+"I should think so! four or five at least."
+
+"Not from that quarter, then."
+
+She was quite eager already in her search; she caught at the hope of
+some added ease dropping from the sky. But Pierre, who was very fond of
+his mother, who knew her to be somewhat visionary and feared she might
+be disappointed, a little grieved, a little saddened if the news were
+bad instead of good, checked her:
+
+"Do not get excited, mother; there is no rich American uncle. For my
+part, I should sooner fancy that it is about a marriage for Jean."
+
+Every one was surprised at the suggestion, and Jean was a little ruffled
+by his brother's having spoken of it before Mme. Rosemilly.
+
+"And why for me rather than for you? The hypothesis is very disputable.
+You are the elder; you, therefore, would be the first to be thought of.
+Besides, I do not wish to marry."
+
+Pierre smiled sneeringly:
+
+"Are you in love, then?"
+
+And the other, much put out, retorted: "Is it necessary that a man
+should be in love because he does not care to marry yet?"
+
+"Ah, there you are! That 'yet' sets it right; you are waiting."
+
+"Granted that I am waiting, if you will have it so."
+
+But old Roland, who had been listening and cogitating, suddenly hit upon
+the most probable solution.
+
+"Bless me! what fools we are to be racking our brains. Maitre Lecanu is
+our very good friend; he knows that Pierre is looking out for a medical
+partnership and Jean for a lawyer's office, and he has found something
+to suit one of you."
+
+This was so obvious and likely that every one accepted it.
+
+"Dinner is ready," said the maid. And they all hurried off to their
+rooms to wash their hands before sitting down to table.
+
+Ten minutes later they were at dinner in the little dining-room on the
+ground-floor.
+
+At first they were silent; but presently Roland began again in amazement
+at this lawyer's visit.
+
+"For after all, why did he not write? Why should he have sent his clerk
+three times? Why is he coming himself?"
+
+Pierre thought it quite natural.
+
+"An immediate decision is required, no doubt; and perhaps there are
+certain confidential conditions which it does not do to put into
+writing."
+
+Still, they were all puzzled, and all four a little annoyed at having
+invited a stranger, who would be in the way of their discussing and
+deciding on what should be done.
+
+They had just gone upstairs again when the lawyer was announced. Roland
+flew to meet him.
+
+"Good-evening, my dear Maitre," said he, giving his visitor the title
+which in France is the official prefix to the name of every lawyer.
+
+Mme. Rosemilly rose.
+
+"I am going," she said. "I am very tired."
+
+A faint attempt was made to detain her; but she would not consent, and
+went home without either of the three men offering to escort her, as
+they always had done.
+
+Mme. Roland did the honours eagerly to their visitor.
+
+"A cup of coffee, monsieur?"
+
+"No, thank you. I have just had dinner."
+
+"A cup of tea, then?"
+
+"Thank you, I will accept one later. First we must attend to business."
+
+The deep silence which succeeded this remark was broken only by the
+regular ticking of the clock, and below stairs the clatter of saucepans
+which the girl was cleaning--too stupid even to listen at the door.
+
+The lawyer went on:
+
+"Did you, in Paris, know a certain M. Marechal--Leon Marechal?"
+
+M. and Mme. Roland both exclaimed at once: "I should think so!"
+
+"He was a friend of yours?"
+
+Roland replied: "Our best friend, monsieur, but a fanatic for Paris;
+never to be got away from the boulevard. He was a head clerk in the
+exchequer office. I have never seen him since I left the capital, and
+latterly we had ceased writing to each other. When people are far apart
+you know----"
+
+The lawyer gravely put in:
+
+"M. Marechal is deceased."
+
+Both man and wife responded with the little movement of pained surprise,
+genuine or false, but always ready, with which such news is received.
+
+Maitre Lecanu went on:
+
+"My colleague in Paris has just communicated to me the main item of his
+will, by which he makes your son Jean--Monsieur Jean Roland--his sole
+legatee."
+
+They were all too much amazed to utter a single word. Mme. Roland was
+the first to control her emotion and stammered out:
+
+"Good heavens! Poor Leon--our poor friend! Dear me! Dear me! Dead!"
+
+The tears started to her eyes, a woman's silent tears, drops of grief
+from her very soul, which trickle down her cheeks and seem so very sad,
+being so clear. But Roland was thinking less of the loss than of the
+prospect announced. Still, he dared not at once inquire into the clauses
+of the will and the amount of the fortune, so to work round to these
+interesting facts he asked:
+
+"And what did he die of, poor Marechal?"
+
+Maitre Lecanu did not know in the least.
+
+"All I know is," said he, "that dying without any direct heirs, he
+has left the whole of his fortune--about twenty thousand francs a year
+($3,840) in three per cents--to your second son, whom he has known from
+his birth up, and judges worthy of the legacy. If M. Jean should refuse
+the money, it is to go to the foundling hospitals."
+
+Old Roland could not conceal his delight and exclaimed:
+
+"Sacristi! It is the thought of a kind heart. And if I had had no heir I
+would not have forgotten him; he was a true friend."
+
+The lawyer smiled.
+
+"I was very glad," he said, "to announce the event to you myself. It is
+always a pleasure to be the bearer of good news."
+
+It had not struck him that this good news was that of the death of a
+friend, of Roland's best friend; and the old man himself had suddenly
+forgotten the intimacy he had but just spoken of with so much
+conviction.
+
+Only Mme. Roland and her sons still looked mournful. She, indeed, was
+still shedding a few tears, wiping her eyes with her handkerchief, which
+she then pressed to her lips to smother her deep sobs.
+
+The doctor murmured:
+
+"He was a good fellow, very affectionate. He often invited us to dine
+with him--my brother and me."
+
+Jean, with wide-open, glittering eyes, laid his hand on his handsome
+fair beard, a familiar gesture with him, and drew his fingers down it
+to the tip of the last hairs, as if to pull it longer and thinner. Twice
+his lips parted to utter some decent remark, but after long meditation
+he could only say this:
+
+"Yes, he was certainly fond of me. He would always embrace me when I
+went to see him."
+
+But his father's thoughts had set off at a gallop--galloping round this
+inheritance to come; nay, already in hand; this money lurking behind the
+door, which would walk in quite soon, to-morrow, at a word of consent.
+
+"And there is no possible difficulty in the way?" he asked. "No
+lawsuit--no one to dispute it?"
+
+Maitre Lecanu seemed quite easy.
+
+"No; my Paris correspondent states that everything is quite clear. M.
+Jean has only to sign his acceptance."
+
+"Good. Then--then the fortune is quite clear?"
+
+"Perfectly clear."
+
+"All the necessary formalities have been gone through?"
+
+"All."
+
+Suddenly the old jeweller had an impulse of shame--obscure, instinctive,
+and fleeting; shame of his eagerness to be informed, and he added:
+
+"You understand that I ask all these questions immediately so as to save
+my son unpleasant consequences which he might not foresee. Sometimes
+there are debts, embarrassing liabilities, what not! And a legatee finds
+himself in an inextricable thorn-bush. After all, I am not the heir--but
+I think first of the little 'un."
+
+They were accustomed to speak of Jean among themselves as the "little
+one," though he was much bigger than Pierre.
+
+Suddenly Mme. Roland seemed to wake from a dream, to recall some remote
+fact, a thing almost forgotten that she had heard long ago, and of which
+she was not altogether sure. She inquired doubtingly:
+
+"Were you not saying that our poor friend Marechal had left his fortune
+to my little Jean?"
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+And she went on simply:
+
+"I am much pleased to hear it; it proves that he was attached to us."
+
+Roland had risen.
+
+"And would you wish, my dear sir, that my son should at once sign his
+acceptance?"
+
+"No--no, M. Roland. To-morrow, at my office to-morrow, at two o'clock,
+if that suits you."
+
+"Yes, to be sure--yes, indeed. I should think so."
+
+Then Mme. Roland, who had also risen and who was smiling after her
+tears, went up to the lawyer, and laying her hand on the back of his
+chair while she looked at him with the pathetic eyes of a grateful
+mother, she said:
+
+"And now for that cup of tea, Monsieur Lecanu?"
+
+"Now I will accept it with pleasure, madame."
+
+The maid, on being summoned, brought in first some dry biscuits in deep
+tin boxes, those crisp, insipid English cakes which seem to have been
+made for a parrot's beak, and soldered into metal cases for a voyage
+round the world. Next she fetched some little gray linen doilies, folded
+square, those tea-napkins which in thrifty families never get washed. A
+third time she came in with the sugar-basin and cups; then she departed
+to heat the water. They sat waiting.
+
+No one could talk; they had too much to think about and nothing to
+say. Mme. Roland alone attempted a few commonplace remarks. She gave an
+account of the fishing excursion, and sang the praises of the Pearl and
+of Mme. Rosemilly.
+
+"Charming, charming!" the lawyer said again and again.
+
+Roland, leaning against the marble mantel-shelf as if it were winter and
+the fire burning, with his hands in his pockets and his lips puckered
+for a whistle, could not keep still, tortured by the invincible desire
+to give vent to his delight. The two brothers, in two arm-chairs that
+matched, one on each side of the centre-table, stared in front of them,
+in similar attitudes full of dissimilar expressions.
+
+At last the tea appeared. The lawyer took a cup, sugared it, and drank
+it, after having crumbled into it a little cake which was too hard to
+crunch. Then he rose, shook hands, and departed.
+
+"Then it is understood," repeated Roland. "To-morrow, at your place, at
+two?"
+
+"Quite so. To-morrow, at two."
+
+Jean had not spoken a word.
+
+When their guest had gone, silence fell again till father Roland clapped
+his two hands on his younger son's shoulders, crying:
+
+"Well, you devilish lucky dog! You don't embrace me!"
+
+Then Jean smiled. He embraced his father, saying:
+
+"It had not struck me as indispensable."
+
+The old man was beside himself with glee. He walked about the room,
+strummed on the furniture with his clumsy nails, turned about on his
+heels, and kept saying:
+
+"What luck! What luck! Now, that is really what I call luck!"
+
+Pierre asked:
+
+"Then you used to know this Marechal well?"
+
+And his father replied:
+
+"I believe! Why, he used to spend every evening at our house. Surely you
+remember he used to fetch you from school on half-holidays, and often
+took you back again after dinner. Why, the very day when Jean was born
+it was he who went for the doctor. He had been breakfasting with us when
+your mother was taken ill. Of course we knew at once what it meant, and
+he set off post-haste. In his hurry he took my hat instead of his own. I
+remember that because we had a good laugh over it afterward. It is very
+likely that he may have thought of that when he was dying, and as he had
+no heir he may have said to himself: 'I remember helping to bring that
+youngster into the world, so I will leave him my savings.'"
+
+Mme. Roland, sunk in a deep chair, seemed lost in reminiscences once
+more. She murmured, as though she were thinking aloud:
+
+"Ah, he was a good friend, very devoted, very faithful, a rare soul in
+these days."
+
+Jean got up.
+
+"I shall go out for a little walk," he said.
+
+His father was surprised and tried to keep him; they had much to talk
+about, plans to be made, decisions to be formed. But the young man
+insisted, declaring that he had an engagement. Besides, there would be
+time enough for settling everything before he came into possession of
+his inheritance. So he went away, for he wished to be alone to reflect.
+Pierre, on his part, said that he too was going out, and after a few
+minutes followed his brother.
+
+As soon as he was alone with his wife, father Roland took her in
+his arms, kissed her a dozen times on each cheek, and, replying to a
+reproach she had often brought against him, said:
+
+"You see, my dearest, that it would have been no good to stay any longer
+in Paris and work for the children till I dropped, instead of coming
+here to recruit my health, since fortune drops on us from the skies."
+
+She was quite serious.
+
+"It drops from the skies on Jean," she said. "But Pierre?"
+
+"Pierre? But he is a doctor; he will make plenty of money; besides, his
+brother will surely do something for him."
+
+"No, he would not take it. Besides, this legacy is for Jean, only for
+Jean. Pierre will find himself at a great disadvantage."
+
+The old fellow seemed perplexed: "Well, then, we will leave him rather
+more in our will."
+
+"No; that again would not be quite just."
+
+"Drat it all!" he exclaimed. "What do you want me to do in the matter?
+You always hit on a whole heap of disagreeable ideas. You must spoil all
+my pleasures. Well, I am going to bed. Good-night. All the same, I call
+it good luck, jolly good luck!"
+
+And he went off, delighted in spite of everything, and without a word of
+regret for the friend so generous in his death.
+
+Mme. Roland sat thinking again in front of the lamp which was burning
+out.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+As soon as he got out, Pierre made his way to the Rue de Paris, the
+high-street of Havre, brightly lighted up, lively and noisy. The rather
+sharp air of the seacoast kissed his face, and he walked slowly, his
+stick under his arm and his hands behind his back. He was ill at ease,
+oppressed, out of heart, as one is after hearing unpleasant tidings.
+He was not distressed by any definite thought, and he would have been
+puzzled to account, on the spur of the moment, for this dejection of
+spirit and heaviness of limb. He was hurt somewhere, without knowing
+where; somewhere within him there was a pin-point of pain--one of those
+almost imperceptible wounds which we cannot lay a finger on, but which
+incommode us, tire us, depress us, irritate us--a slight and occult
+pang, as it were a small seed of distress.
+
+When he reached the square in front of the theatre, he was attracted
+by the lights in the Cafe Tortoni, and slowly bent his steps to the
+dazzling facade; but just as he was going in he reflected that he would
+meet friends there and acquaintances--people he would be obliged to
+talk to; and fierce repugnance surged up in him for this commonplace
+good-fellowship over coffee cups and liqueur glasses. So, retracing his
+steps, he went back to the high-street leading to the harbour.
+
+"Where shall I go?" he asked himself, trying to think of a spot he liked
+which would agree with his frame of mind. He could not think of one, for
+being alone made him feel fractious, yet he could not bear to meet any
+one. As he came out on the Grand Quay he hesitated once more; then he
+turned towards the pier; he had chosen solitude.
+
+Going close by a bench on the breakwater he sat down, tired already of
+walking and out of humour with his stroll before he had taken it.
+
+He said to himself: "What is the matter with me this evening?" And he
+began to search in his memory for what vexation had crossed him, as we
+question a sick man to discover the cause of his fever.
+
+His mind was at once irritable and sober; he got excited, then he
+reasoned, approving or blaming his impulses; but in time primitive
+nature at last proved the stronger; the sensitive man always had the
+upper hand over the intellectual man. So he tried to discover what had
+induced this irascible mood, this craving to be moving without wanting
+anything, this desire to meet some one for the sake of differing from
+him, and at the same time this aversion for the people he might see and
+the things they might say to him.
+
+And then he put the question to himself, "Can it be Jean's inheritance?"
+
+Yes, it was certainly possible. When the lawyer had announced the news
+he had felt his heart beat a little faster. For, indeed, one is not
+always master of one's self; there are sudden and pertinacious emotions
+against which a man struggles in vain.
+
+He fell into meditation on the physiological problem of the impression
+produced on the instinctive element in man, and giving rise to a current
+of painful or pleasurable sensations diametrically opposed to those
+which the thinking man desires, aims at, and regards as right and
+wholesome, when he has risen superior to himself by the cultivation of
+his intellect. He tried to picture to himself the frame of mind of a son
+who had inherited a vast fortune, and who, thanks to that wealth, may
+now know many long-wished-for delights, which the avarice of his father
+had prohibited--a father, nevertheless, beloved and regretted.
+
+He got up and walked on to the end of the pier. He felt better, and
+glad to have understood, to have detected himself, to have unmasked _the
+other_ which lurks in us.
+
+"Then I was jealous of Jean," thought he. "That is really vilely mean.
+And I am sure of it now, for the first idea which came into my head was
+that he would marry Mme. Rosemilly. And yet I am not in love myself with
+that priggish little goose, who is just the woman to disgust a man with
+good sense and good conduct. So it is the most gratuitous jealousy, the
+very essence of jealousy, which is merely because it is! I must keep an
+eye on that!"
+
+By this time he was in front of the flag-staff, whence the depth of
+water in the harbour is signalled, and he struck a match to read the
+list of vessels signalled in the roadstead and coming in with the next
+high tide. Ships were due from Brazil, from La Plata, from Chili
+and Japan, two Danish brigs, a Norwegian schooner, and a Turkish
+steamship--which startled Pierre as much as if it had read a Swiss
+steamship; and in a whimsical vision he pictured a great vessel crowded
+with men in turbans climbing the shrouds in loose trousers.
+
+"How absurd!" thought he. "But the Turks are a maritime people, too."
+
+A few steps further on he stopped again, looking out at the roads. On
+the right, above Sainte-Adresse, the two electric lights of Cape la
+Heve, like monstrous twin Cyclops, shot their long and powerful beams
+across the sea. Starting from two neighbouring centres, the two parallel
+shafts of light, like the colossal tails of two comets, fell in a
+straight and endless slope from the top of the cliff to the uttermost
+horizon. Then, on the two piers, two more lights, the children of these
+giants, marked the entrance to the harbour; and far away on the other
+side of the Seine others were in sight, many others, steady or winking,
+flashing or revolving, opening and shutting like eyes--the eyes of the
+ports--yellow, red, and green, watching the night-wrapped sea covered
+with ships; the living eyes of the hospitable shore saying, merely by
+the mechanical and regular movement of their eye-lids: "I am here. I am
+Trouville; I am Honfleur; I am the Andemer River." And high above
+all the rest, so high that from this distance it might be taken for a
+planet, the airy lighthouse of Etouville showed the way to Rouen across
+the sand banks at the mouth of the great river.
+
+Out on the deep water, the limitless water, darker than the sky, stars
+seemed to have fallen here and there. They twinkled in the night haze,
+small, close to shore or far away--white, red, and green, too. Most of
+them were motionless; some, however, seemed to be scudding onward. These
+were the lights of the ships at anchor or moving about in search of
+moorings.
+
+Just at this moment the moon rose behind the town; and it, too, looked
+like some huge, divine pharos lighted up in the heavens to guide the
+countless fleet of stars in the sky. Pierre murmured, almost speaking
+aloud: "Look at that! And we let our bile rise for twopence!"
+
+On a sudden, close to him, in the wide, dark ditch between the two
+piers, a shadow stole up, a large shadow of fantastic shape. Leaning
+over the granite parapet, he saw that a fishing-boat had glided in,
+without the sound of a voice or the splash of a ripple, or the plunge
+of an oar, softly borne in by its broad, tawny sail spread to the breeze
+from the open sea.
+
+He thought to himself: "If one could but live on board that boat, what
+peace it would be--perhaps!"
+
+And then again a few steps beyond, he saw a man sitting at the very end
+of the breakwater.
+
+A dreamer, a lover, a sage--a happy or a desperate man? Who was it? He
+went forward, curious to see the face of this lonely individual, and he
+recognised his brother.
+
+"What, is it you, Jean?"
+
+"Pierre! You! What has brought you here?"
+
+"I came out to get some fresh air. And you?"
+
+Jean began to laugh.
+
+"I too came out for fresh air." And Pierre sat down by his brother's
+side.
+
+"Lovely--isn't it?"
+
+"Oh, yes, lovely."
+
+He understood from the tone of voice that Jean had not looked at
+anything. He went on:
+
+"For my part, whenever I come here I am seized with a wild desire to be
+off with all those boats, to the north or the south. Only to think that
+all those little sparks out there have just come from the uttermost ends
+of the earth, from the lands of great flowers and beautiful olive or
+copper coloured girls, the lands of humming-birds, of elephants,
+of roaming lions, of negro kings, from all the lands which are like
+fairy-tales to us who no longer believe in the White Cat or the Sleeping
+Beauty. It would be awfully jolly to be able to treat one's self to an
+excursion out there; but, then, it would cost a great deal of money, no
+end--"
+
+He broke off abruptly, remembering that his brother had that money now;
+and released from care, released from labouring for his daily bread,
+free, unfettered, happy, and light-hearted, he might go whither he
+listed, to find the fair-haired Swedes or the brown damsels of Havana.
+And then one of those involuntary flashes which were common with him, so
+sudden and swift that he could neither anticipate them, nor stop them,
+nor qualify them, communicated, as it seemed to him, from some second,
+independent, and violent soul, shot through his brain.
+
+"Bah! He is too great a simpleton; he will marry that little Rosemilly."
+He was standing up now. "I will leave you to dream of the future. I want
+to be moving." He grasped his brother's hand and added in a heavy tone:
+
+"Well, my dear old boy, you are a rich man. I am very glad to have come
+upon you this evening to tell you how pleased I am about it, how truly I
+congratulate you, and how much I care for you."
+
+Jean, tender and soft-hearted, was deeply touched.
+
+"Thank you, my good brother--thank you!" he stammered.
+
+And Pierre turned away with his slow step, his stick under his arm, and
+his hands behind his back.
+
+Back in the town again, he once more wondered what he should do, being
+disappointed of his walk and deprived of the company of the sea by his
+brother's presence. He had an inspiration. "I will go and take a glass
+of liqueur with old Marowsko," and he went off towards the quarter of
+the town known as Ingouville.
+
+He had known old Marowsko-_le pere Marowsko_, he called him--in the
+hospitals in Paris. He was a Pole, an old refugee, it was said, who
+had gone through terrible things out there, and who had come to ply
+his calling as a chemist and druggist in France after passing a fresh
+examination. Nothing was known of his early life, and all sorts of
+legends had been current among the indoor and outdoor patients
+and afterward among his neighbours. This reputation as a terrible
+conspirator, a nihilist, a regicide, a patriot ready for anything and
+everything, who had escaped death by a miracle, had bewitched Pierre
+Roland's lively and bold imagination; he had made friends with the old
+Pole, without, however, having ever extracted from him any revelation as
+to his former career. It was owing to the young doctor that this worthy
+had come to settle at Havre, counting on the large custom which the
+rising practitioner would secure him. Meanwhile he lived very poorly in
+his little shop, selling medicines to the small tradesmen and workmen in
+his part of the town.
+
+Pierre often went to see him and chat with him for an hour after dinner,
+for he liked Marowsko's calm look and rare speech, and attributed great
+depth to his long spells of silence.
+
+A simple gas-burner was alight over the counter crowded with phials.
+Those in the window were not lighted, from motives of economy. Behind
+the counter, sitting on a chair with his legs stretched out and
+crossed, an old man, quite bald, with a large beak of a nose which, as a
+prolongation of his hairless forehead, gave him a melancholy likeness to
+a parrot, was sleeping soundly, his chin resting on his breast. He woke
+at the sound of the shop-bell, and recognising the doctor, came forward
+to meet him, holding out both hands.
+
+His black frock-coat, streaked with stains of acids and sirups, was
+much too wide for his lean little person, and looked like a shabby old
+cassock; and the man spoke with a strong Polish accent which gave the
+childlike character to his thin voice, the lisping note and intonations
+of a young thing learning to speak.
+
+Pierre sat down, and Marowsko asked him: "What news, dear doctor?"
+
+"None. Everything as usual, everywhere."
+
+"You do not look very gay this evening."
+
+"I am not often gay."
+
+"Come, come, you must shake that off. Will you try a glass of liqueur?"
+
+"Yes, I do not mind."
+
+"Then I will give you something new to try. For these two months I have
+been trying to extract something from currants, of which only a sirup
+has been made hitherto--well, and I have done it. I have invented a very
+good liqueur--very good indeed; very good."
+
+And quite delighted, he went to a cupboard, opened it, and picked out
+a bottle which he brought forth. He moved and did everything in jerky
+gestures, always incomplete; he never quite stretched out his arm, nor
+quite put out his legs; nor made any broad and definite movements. His
+ideas seemed to be like his actions; he suggested them, promised them,
+sketched them, hinted at them, but never fully uttered them.
+
+And, indeed, his great end in life seemed to be the concoction of
+sirups and liqueurs. "A good sirup or a good liqueur is enough to make a
+fortune," he would often say.
+
+He had compounded hundreds of these sweet mixtures without ever
+succeeding in floating one of them. Pierre declared that Marowsko always
+reminded him of Marat.
+
+Two little glasses were fetched out of the back shop and placed on the
+mixing-board. Then the two men scrutinized the colour of the fluid by
+holding it up to the gas.
+
+"A fine ruby," Pierre declared.
+
+"Isn't it?" Marowsko's old parrot-face beamed with satisfaction.
+
+The doctor tasted, smacked his lips, meditated, tasted again, meditated
+again, and spoke:
+
+"Very good--capital; and quite new in flavour. It is a find, my dear
+fellow."
+
+"Ah, really? Well, I am very glad."
+
+Then Marowsko took counsel as to baptizing the new liqueur. He wanted
+to call it "Extract of currants," or else "_Fine Groseille_" or
+"_Groselia_," or again "_Groseline_." Pierre did not approve of either
+of these names.
+
+Then the old man had an idea:
+
+"What you said just now would be very good, very good: 'Fine Ruby.'"
+But the doctor disputed the merit of this name, though it had originated
+with him. He recommended simply "Groseillette," which Marowsko thought
+admirable.
+
+Then they were silent, and sat for some minutes without a word under the
+solitary gas-lamp. At last Pierre began, almost in spite of himself:
+
+"A queer thing has happened at home this evening. A friend of my
+father's, who is lately dead, has left his fortune to my brother."
+
+The druggist did not at first seem to understand, but after thinking it
+over he hoped that the doctor had half the inheritance. When the matter
+was clearly explained to him he appeared surprised and vexed; and to
+express his dissatisfaction at finding that his young friend had been
+sacrificed, he said several times over:
+
+"It will not look well."
+
+Pierre, who was relapsing into nervous irritation, wanted to know what
+Marowsko meant by this phrase.
+
+Why would it not look well? What was there to look badly in the fact
+that his brother had come into the money of a friend of the family?
+
+But the cautious old man would not explain further.
+
+"In such a case the money is left equally to the two brothers, and I
+tell you, it will not look well."
+
+And the doctor, out of all patience, went away, returned to his father's
+house, and went to bed. For some time afterward he heard Jean moving
+softly about the adjoining room, and then, after drinking two glasses of
+water, he fell asleep.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The doctor awoke next morning firmly resolved to make his fortune.
+Several times already he had come to the same determination without
+following up the reality. At the outset of all his trials of some new
+career the hopes of rapidly acquired riches kept up his efforts and
+confidence, till the first obstacle, the first check, threw him into a
+fresh path. Snug in bed between the warm sheets, he lay meditating. How
+many medical men had become wealthy in quite a short time! All that was
+needed was a little knowledge of the world; for in the course of his
+studies he had learned to estimate the most famous physicians, and he
+judged them all to be asses. He was certainly as good as they, if not
+better. If by any means he could secure a practice among the wealth and
+fashion of Havre, he could easily make a hundred thousand francs a year.
+And he calculated with great exactitude what his certain profits must
+be. He would go out in the morning to visit his patients; at the very
+moderate average of ten a day, at twenty francs each, that would mount
+up to seventy-two thousand francs a year at least, or even seventy-five
+thousand; for ten patients was certainly below the mark. In the
+afternoon he would be at home to, say, another ten patients, at ten
+francs each--thirty-six thousand francs. Here, then, in round numbers
+was an income of twenty thousand francs. Old patients, or friends whom
+he would charge only ten francs for a visit, or see at home for
+five, would perhaps make a slight reduction on this sum total, but
+consultations with other physicians and various incidental fees would
+make up for that.
+
+Nothing could be easier than to achieve this by skilful advertising
+remarks in the Figaro to the effect that the scientific faculty of Paris
+had their eye on him, and were interested in the cures effected by the
+modest young practitioner of Havre! And he would be richer than his
+brother, richer and more famous; and satisfied with himself, for he
+would owe his fortune solely to his own exertions; and liberal to his
+old parents, who would be justly proud of his fame. He would not marry,
+would not burden his life with a wife who would be in his way, but he
+would choose his mistress from the most beautiful of his patients. He
+felt so sure of success that he sprang out of bed as though to grasp it
+on the spot, and he dressed to go and search through the town for rooms
+to suit him.
+
+Then, as he wandered about the streets, he reflected how slight are the
+causes which determine our actions. Any time these three weeks he might
+and ought to have come to this decision, which, beyond a doubt, the news
+of his brother's inheritance had abruptly given rise to.
+
+He stopped before every door where a placard proclaimed that "fine
+apartments" or "handsome rooms" were to be let; announcements without an
+adjective he turned from with scorn. Then he inspected them with a
+lofty air, measuring the height of the rooms, sketching the plan in his
+note-book, with the passages, the arrangement of the exits, explaining
+that he was a medical man and had many visitors. He must have a broad
+and well-kept stair-case; nor could he be any higher up than the first
+floor.
+
+After having written down seven or eight addresses and scribbled two
+hundred notes, he got home to breakfast a quarter of an hour too late.
+
+In the hall he heard the clatter of plates. Then they had begun without
+him! Why? They were never wont to be so punctual. He was nettled and put
+out, for he was somewhat thin-skinned. As he went in Roland said to him:
+
+"Come, Pierre, make haste, devil take you! You know we have to be at the
+lawyer's at two o'clock. This is not the day to be dawdling."
+
+Pierre sat down without replying, after kissing his mother and shaking
+hands with his father and brother; and he helped himself from the deep
+dish in the middle of the table to the cutlet which had been kept for
+him. It was cold and dry, probably the least tempting of them all. He
+thought that they might have left it on the hot plate till he came in,
+and not lose their heads so completely as to have forgotten their other
+son, their eldest.
+
+The conversation, which his entrance had interrupted, was taken up again
+at the point where it had ceased.
+
+"In your place," Mme. Roland was saying to Jean, "I will tell you what
+I should do at once. I should settle in handsome rooms so as to attract
+attention; I should ride on horseback and select one or two interesting
+cases to defend and make a mark in court. I would be a sort of amateur
+lawyer, and very select. Thank God you are out of all danger of want,
+and if you pursue a profession, it is, after all, only that you may not
+lose the benefit of your studies, and because a man ought never to sit
+idle."
+
+Old Roland, who was peeling a pear, exclaimed:
+
+"Christi! In your place I should buy a nice yacht, a cutter on the build
+of our pilot-boats. I would sail as far as Senegal in such a boat as
+that."
+
+Pierre, in his turn, spoke his views. After all, said he, it was not his
+wealth which made the moral worth, the intellectual worth of a man. To
+a man of inferior mind it was only a means of degradation, while in the
+hands of a strong man it was a powerful lever. They, to be sure, were
+rare. If Jean were a really superior man, now that he could never want
+he might prove it. But then he must work a hundred times harder than he
+would have done in other circumstances. His business now must be not to
+argue for or against the widow and the orphan, and pocket his fees for
+every case he gained, but to become a really eminent legal authority, a
+luminary of the law. And he added in conclusion:
+
+"If I were rich wouldn't I dissect no end of bodies!"
+
+Father Roland shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"That is all very fine," he said. "But the wisest way of life is to take
+it easy. We are not beasts of burden, but men. If you are born poor you
+must work; well, so much the worse; and you do work. But where you have
+dividends! You must be a flat if you grind yourself to death."
+
+Pierre replied haughtily:
+
+"Our notions differ. For my part, I respect nothing on earth but
+learning and intellect; everything else is beneath contempt."
+
+Mme. Roland always tried to deaden the constant shocks between father
+and son; she turned the conversation, and began talking of a murder
+committed the week before at Bolbec Nointot. Their minds were
+immediately full of the circumstances under which the crime had been
+committed, and absorbed by the interesting horror, the attractive
+mystery of crime, which, however commonplace, shameful, and disgusting,
+exercises a strange and universal fascination over the curiosity of
+mankind. Now and again, however, old Roland looked at his watch. "Come,"
+said he, "it is time to be going."
+
+Pierre sneered.
+
+"It is not yet one o'clock," he said. "It really was hardly worth while
+to condemn me to eat a cold cutlet."
+
+"Are you coming to the lawyer's?" his mother asked.
+
+"I? No. What for?" he replied dryly. "My presence is quite unnecessary."
+
+Jean sat silent, as though he had no concern in the matter. When they
+were discussing the murder at Bolbec he, as a legal authority, had
+put forward some opinions and uttered some reflections on crime and
+criminals. Now he spoke no more; but the sparkle in his eye, the bright
+colour in his cheeks, the very gloss of his beard seemed to proclaim his
+happiness.
+
+When the family had gone, Pierre, alone once more, resumed his
+investigations in the apartments to let. After two or three hours
+spent in going up and down stairs, he at last found, in the Boulevard
+Francois, a pretty set of rooms; a spacious entresol with two doors on
+two different streets, two drawing-rooms, a glass corridor, where his
+patients while they waited, might walk among flowers, and a delightful
+dining-room with a bow-window looking out over the sea.
+
+When it came to taking it, the terms--three thousand francs--pulled him
+up; the first quarter must be paid in advance, and he had nothing, not a
+penny to call his own.
+
+The little fortune his father had saved brought him in about eight
+thousand francs a year, and Pierre had often blamed himself for having
+placed his parents in difficulties by his long delay in deciding on a
+profession, by forfeiting his attempts and beginning fresh courses of
+study. So he went away, promising to send his answer within two days,
+and it occurred to him to ask Jean to lend him the amount of this
+quarter's rent, or even of a half-year, fifteen hundred francs, as soon
+as Jean should have come into possession.
+
+"It will be a loan for a few months at most," he thought. "I shall repay
+him, very likely before the end of the year. It is a simple matter, and
+he will be glad to do so much for me."
+
+As it was not yet four o'clock, and he had nothing to do, absolutely
+nothing, he went to sit in the public gardens; and he remained a long
+time on a bench, without an idea in his brain, his eyes fixed on the
+ground, crushed by weariness amounting to distress.
+
+And yet this was how he had been living all these days since his return
+home, without suffering so acutely from the vacuity of his existence and
+from inaction. How had he spent his time from rising in the morning till
+bed-time?
+
+He had loafed on the pier at high tide, loafed in the streets, loafed in
+the cafes, loafed at Marowsko's, loafed everywhere. And on a sudden this
+life, which he had endured till now, had become odious, intolerable. If
+he had had any pocket-money, he would have taken a carriage for a long
+drive in the country, along by the farm-ditches shaded by beech and elm
+trees; but he had to think twice of the cost of a glass of beer or a
+postage-stamp, and such an indulgence was out of his ken. It suddenly
+struck him how hard it was for a man of past thirty to be reduced to ask
+his mother, with a blush for a twenty-franc piece every now and then;
+and he muttered, as he scored the gravel with the ferule of his stick:
+
+"Christi, if I only had money!"
+
+And again the thought of his brother's legacy came into his head like
+the sting of a wasp; but he drove it out indignantly, not choosing to
+allow himself to slip down that descent to jealousy.
+
+Some children were playing about in the dusty paths. They were fair
+little things with long hair, and they were making little mounds of sand
+with the greatest gravity and careful attention, to crush them at once
+by stamping on them.
+
+It was one of those gloomy days with Pierre when we pry into every
+corner of our souls and shake out every crease.
+
+"All our endeavours are like the labours of those babies," thought he.
+And then he wondered whether the wisest thing in life were not to beget
+two or three of these little creatures and watch them grow up with
+complacent curiosity. A longing for marriage breathed on his soul. A
+man is not so lost when he is not alone. At any rate, he has some one
+stirring at his side in hours of trouble or of uncertainty; and it is
+something only to be able to speak on equal terms to a woman when one is
+suffering.
+
+Then he began thinking of women. He knew very little of them, never
+having had any but very transient connections as a medical student,
+broken off as soon as the month's allowance was spent, and renewed or
+replaced by another the following month. And yet there must be some very
+kind, gentle, and comforting creatures among them. Had not his mother
+been the good sense and saving grace of his own home? How glad he would
+be to know a woman, a true woman!
+
+He started up with a sudden determination to go and call on Mme.
+Rosemilly. But he promptly sat down again. He did not like that woman.
+Why not? She had too much vulgar and sordid common sense; besides,
+did she not seem to prefer Jean? Without confessing it to himself too
+bluntly, this preference had a great deal to do with his low opinion of
+the widow's intellect; for, though he loved his brother, he could not
+help thinking him somewhat mediocre and believing himself the superior.
+However, he was not going to sit there till nightfall; and as he had
+done on the previous evening, he anxiously asked himself: "What am I
+going to do?"
+
+At this moment he felt in his soul the need of a melting mood, of being
+embraced and comforted. Comforted--for what? He could not have put it
+into words; but he was in one of these hours of weakness and exhaustion
+when a woman's presence, a woman's kiss, the touch of a hand, the rustle
+of a petticoat, a soft look out of black or blue eyes, seem the one
+thing needful, there and then, to our heart. And the memory flashed upon
+him of a little barmaid at a beer-house, whom he had walked home with
+one evening, and seen again from time to time.
+
+So once more he rose, to go and drink a bock with the girl. What should
+he say to her? What would she say to him? Nothing, probably. But what
+did that matter? He would hold her hand for a few seconds. She seemed to
+have a fancy for him. Why, then, did he not go to see her oftener?
+
+He found her dozing on a chair in the beer-shop, which was almost
+deserted. Three men were drinking and smoking with their elbows on the
+oak tables; the book-keeper in her desk was reading a novel, while the
+master, in his shirt-sleeves, lay sound asleep on a bench.
+
+As soon as she saw him the girl rose eagerly, and coming to meet him,
+said:
+
+"Good-day, monsieur--how are you?"
+
+"Pretty well; and you?"
+
+"I--oh, very well. How scarce you make yourself!"
+
+"Yes. I have very little time to myself. I am a doctor, you know."
+
+"Indeed! You never told me. If I had known that--I was out of sorts last
+week and I would have sent for you. What will you take?"
+
+"A bock. And you?"
+
+"I will have a bock, too, since you are willing to treat me."
+
+She had addressed him with the familiar _tu_, and continued to use
+it, as if the offer of a drink had tacitly conveyed permission. Then,
+sitting down opposite each other, they talked for a while. Every now and
+then she took his hand with the light familiarity of girls whose kisses
+are for sale, and looking at him with inviting eyes she said:
+
+"Why don't you come here oftener? I like you very much, sweetheart."
+
+He was already disgusted with her; he saw how stupid she was, and
+common, smacking of low life. A woman, he told himself, should appear to
+us in dreams, or such a glory as may poetize her vulgarity.
+
+Next she asked him:
+
+"You went by the other morning with a handsome fair man, wearing a big
+beard. Is he your brother?"
+
+"Yes, he is my brother."
+
+"Awfully good-looking."
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"Yes, indeed; and he looks like a man who enjoys life, too."
+
+What strange craving impelled him on a sudden to tell this tavern-wench
+about Jean's legacy? Why should this thing, which he kept at arm's
+length when he was alone, which he drove from him for fear of the
+torment it brought upon his soul, rise to his lips at this moment? And
+why did he allow it to overflow them as if he needed once more to empty
+out his heart to some one, gorged as it was with bitterness?
+
+He crossed his legs and said:
+
+"He has wonderful luck, that brother of mine. He had just come into a
+legacy of twenty thousand francs a year."
+
+She opened those covetous blue eyes of hers very wide.
+
+"Oh! and who left him that? His grandmother or his aunt?"
+
+"No. An old friend of my parents'."
+
+"Only a friend! Impossible! And you--did he leave you nothing?"
+
+"No. I knew him very slightly."
+
+She sat thinking some minutes; then, with an odd smile on her lips, she
+said:
+
+"Well, he is a lucky dog, that brother of yours, to have friends of this
+pattern. My word! and no wonder he is so unlike you."
+
+He longed to slap her, without knowing why; and he asked with pinched
+lips: "And what do you mean by saying that?"
+
+She had put on a stolid, innocent face.
+
+"O--h, nothing. I mean he has better luck than you."
+
+He tossed a franc piece on the table and went out.
+
+Now he kept repeating the phrase: "No wonder he is so unlike you."
+
+What had her thought been, what had been her meaning under those words?
+There was certainly some malice, some spite, something shameful in it.
+Yes, that hussy must have fancied, no doubt, that Jean was Marechal's
+son. The agitation which came over him at the notion of this suspicion
+cast at his mother was so violent that he stood still, looking about
+him for some place where he might sit down. In front of him was another
+cafe. He went in, took a chair, and as the waiter came up, "A bock," he
+said.
+
+He felt his heart beating, his skin was gooseflesh. And then the
+recollection flashed upon him of what Marowsko had said the evening
+before. "It will not look well." Had he had the same thought, the same
+suspicion as this baggage? Hanging his head over the glass, he watched
+the white froth as the bubbles rose and burst, asking himself: "Is it
+possible that such a thing should be believed?"
+
+But the reasons which might give rise to this horrible doubt in other
+men's minds now struck him, one after another, as plain, obvious, and
+exasperating. That a childless old bachelor should leave his fortune to
+a friend's two sons was the most simple and natural thing in the world;
+but that he should leave the whole of it to one alone--of course people
+would wonder, and whisper, and end by smiling. How was it that he had
+not foreseen this, that his father had not felt it? How was it that
+his mother had not guessed it? No; they had been too delighted at this
+unhoped-for wealth for the idea to come near them. And besides, how
+should these worthy souls have ever dreamed of anything so ignominious?
+
+But the public--their neighbours, the shopkeepers, their own tradesmen,
+all who knew them--would not they repeat the abominable thing, laugh at
+it, enjoy it, make game of his father and despise his mother?
+
+And the barmaid's remark that Jean was fair and he dark, that they were
+not in the least alike in face, manner, figure, or intelligence, would
+now strike every eye and every mind. When any one spoke of Roland's son,
+the question would be: "Which, the real or the false?"
+
+He rose, firmly resolved to warn Jean, and put him on his guard against
+the frightful danger which threatened their mother's honour.
+
+But what could Jean do? The simplest thing no doubt, would be to refuse
+the inheritance, which would then go to the poor, and to tell all
+friends or acquaintances who had heard of the bequest that the will
+contained clauses and conditions impossible to subscribe to, which would
+have made Jean not inheritor but merely a trustee.
+
+As he made his way home he was thinking that he must see his brother
+alone, so as not to speak of such a matter in the presence of his
+parents. On reaching the door he heard a great noise of voices and
+laughter in the drawing-room, and when he went in he found Captain
+Beausire and Mme. Rosemilly, whom his father had brought home and
+engaged to dine with them in honour of the good news. Vermouth and
+absinthe had been served to whet their appetites, and every one had been
+at once put into good spirits. Captain Beausire, a funny little man who
+had become quite round by dint of being rolled about at sea, and whose
+ideas also seemed to have been worn round, like the pebbles of a beach,
+while he laughed with his throat full of _r_'s, looked upon life as a
+capital thing, in which everything that might turn up was good to take.
+He clinked his glass against father Roland's, while Jean was offering
+two freshly filled glasses to the ladies. Mme. Rosemilly refused, till
+Captain Beausire, who had known her husband, cried:
+
+"Come, come, madame, _bis repetita placent_, as we say in the lingo,
+which is as much as to say two glasses of vermouth never hurt any one.
+Look at me; since I have left the sea, in this way I give myself an
+artificial roll or two every day before dinner; I add a little pitching
+after my coffee, and that keeps things lively for the rest of the
+evening. I never rise to a hurricane, mind you, never, never. I am too
+much afraid of damage."
+
+Roland, whose nautical mania was humoured by the old mariner, laughed
+heartily, his face flushed already and his eye watery from the absinthe.
+He had a burly shop-keeping stomach--nothing but stomach--in which the
+rest of his body seemed to have got stowed away; the flabby paunch of
+men who spend their lives sitting, and who have neither thighs, nor
+chest, nor arms, nor neck; the seat of their chairs having accumulated
+all their substance in one spot. Beausire, on the contrary, though short
+and stout, was as tight as an egg and as hard as a cannon-ball.
+
+Mme. Roland had not emptied her glass and was gazing at her son Jean
+with sparkling eyes; happiness had brought a colour to her cheeks.
+
+In him, too, the fulness of joy had now blazed out. It was a settled
+thing, signed and sealed; he had twenty thousand francs a year. In the
+sound of his laugh, in the fuller voice with which he spoke, in his
+way of looking at the others, his more positive manners, his greater
+confidence, the assurance given by money was at once perceptible.
+
+Dinner was announced, and as the old man was about to offer his arm to
+Mme. Rosemilly, his wife exclaimed:
+
+"No, no, father. Everything is for Jean to-day."
+
+Unwonted luxury graced the table. In front of Jean, who sat in his
+father's place, an enormous bouquet of flowers--a bouquet for a really
+great occasion--stood up like a cupola dressed with flags, and was
+flanked by four high dishes, one containing a pyramid of splendid
+peaches; the second, a monumental cake gorged with whipped cream and
+covered with pinnacles of sugar--a cathedral in confectionery;
+the third, slices of pine-apple floating in clear sirup; and the
+fourth--unheard-of lavishness--black grapes brought from the warmer
+south.
+
+"The devil!" exclaimed Pierre as he sat down. "We are celebrating the
+accession of Jean the rich."
+
+After the soup, Madeira was passed round, and already every one was
+talking at once. Beausire was giving the history of a dinner he had
+eaten at San Domingo at the table of a negro general. Old Roland was
+listening, and at the same time trying to get in, between the sentences,
+his account of another dinner, given by a friend of his at Mendon, after
+which every guest was ill for a fortnight. Mme. Rosemilly, Jean, and
+his mother were planning an excursion to breakfast at Saint Jouin, from
+which they promised themselves the greatest pleasure; and Pierre was
+only sorry that he had not dined alone in some pot-house by the sea, so
+as to escape all this noise and laughter and glee which fretted him. He
+was wondering how he could now set to work to confide his fears to his
+brother, and induce him to renounce the fortune he had already accepted
+and of which he was enjoying the intoxicating foretaste. It would be
+hard on him, no doubt; but it must be done; he could not hesitate; their
+mother's reputation was at stake.
+
+The appearance of an enormous shade-fish threw Roland back on fishing
+stories. Beausire told some wonderful tales of adventure on the Gaboon,
+at Sainte-Marie, in Madagascar, and above all, off the coasts of China
+and Japan, where the fish are as queer-looking as the natives. And he
+described the appearance of these fishes--their goggle gold eyes, their
+blue or red bellies, their fantastic fins like fans, their eccentric
+crescent-shaped tails--with such droll gesticulation that they all
+laughed till they cried as they listened.
+
+Pierre alone seemed incredulous, muttering to himself: "True enough, the
+Normans are the Gascons of the north!"
+
+After the fish came a vol-au-vent, then a roast fowl, a salad, French
+beans with a Pithiviers lark-pie. Mme. Rosemilly's maid helped to wait
+on them, and the fun rose with the number of glasses of wine they drank.
+When the cork of the first champagne-bottle was drawn with a pop, father
+Roland, highly excited, imitated the noise with his tongue and then
+declared: "I like that noise better than a pistol-shot."
+
+Pierre, more and more fractious every moment, retorted with a sneer:
+
+"And yet it is perhaps a greater danger for you."
+
+Roland, who was on the point of drinking, set his full glass down on the
+table again, and asked:
+
+"Why?"
+
+He had for some time been complaining of his health, of heaviness,
+giddiness, frequent and unaccountable discomfort. The doctor replied:
+
+"Because the bullet might very possibly miss you, while the glass of
+wine is dead certain to hit you in the stomach."
+
+"And what then?"
+
+"Then it scorches your inside, upsets your nervous system, makes the
+circulation sluggish, and leads the way to the apoplectic fit which
+always threatens a man of your build."
+
+The jeweller's incipient intoxication had vanished like smoke before the
+wind. He looked at his son with fixed, uneasy eyes, trying to discover
+whether he was making game of him.
+
+But Beausire exclaimed:
+
+"Oh, these confounded doctors! They all sing the same tune--eat nothing,
+drink nothing, never make love or enjoy yourself; it all plays the devil
+with your precious health. Well, all I can say is, I have done all these
+things, sir, in every quarter of the globe, wherever and as often as I
+have had the chance, and I am none the worse."
+
+Pierre answered with some asperity:
+
+"In the first place, captain, you are a stronger man than my father; and
+in the next, all free livers talk as you do till the day when--when they
+come back no more to say to the cautious doctor: 'You were right.' When
+I see my father doing what is worst and most dangerous for him, it
+is but natural that I should warn him. I should be a bad son if I did
+otherwise."
+
+Mme. Roland, much distressed, now put in her word: "Come, Pierre, what
+ails you? For once it cannot hurt him. Think of what an occasion it
+is for him, for all of us. You will spoil his pleasure and make us all
+unhappy. It is too bad of you to do such a thing."
+
+He muttered, as he shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"He can do as he pleases. I have warned him."
+
+But father Roland did not drink. He sat looking at his glass full of the
+clear and luminous liquor while its light soul, its intoxicating soul,
+flew off in tiny bubbles mounting from its depths in hurried succession
+to die on the surface. He looked at it with the suspicious eye of a fox
+smelling at a dead hen and suspecting a trap. He asked doubtfully: "Do
+you think it will really do me much harm?" Pierre had a pang of remorse
+and blamed himself for letting his ill-humour punish the rest.
+
+"No," said he. "Just for once you may drink it; but do not take too
+much, or get into the habit of it."
+
+Then old Roland raised his glass, but still he could not make up his
+mind to put it to his lips. He contemplated it regretfully, with longing
+and with fear; then he smelt it, tasted it, drank it in sips, swallowing
+them slowly, his heart full of terrors, of weakness and greediness; and
+then, when he had drained the last drop, of regret.
+
+Pierre's eye suddenly met that of Mme. Rosemilly; it rested on him clear
+and blue, far-seeing and hard. And he read, he knew, the precise thought
+which lurked in that look, the indignant thought of this simple and
+right-minded little woman; for the look said: "You are jealous--that is
+what you are. Shameful!"
+
+He bent his head and went on with his dinner.
+
+He was not hungry and found nothing nice. A longing to be off harassed
+him, a craving to be away from these people, to hear no more of their
+talking, jests, and laughter.
+
+Father Roland meanwhile, to whose head the fumes of the wine were rising
+once more, had already forgotten his son's advice and was eyeing a
+champagne-bottle with a tender leer as it stood, still nearly full, by
+the side of his plate. He dared not touch it for fear of being lectured
+again, and he was wondering by what device or trick he could possess
+himself of it without exciting Pierre's remark. A ruse occurred to
+him, the simplest possible. He took up the bottle with an air of
+indifference, and holding it by the neck, stretched his arm across the
+table to fill the doctor's glass, which was empty; then he filled up
+all the other glasses, and when he came to his own he began talking very
+loud, so that if he poured anything into it they might have sworn it was
+done inadvertently. And in fact no one took any notice.
+
+Pierre, without observing it, was drinking a good deal. Nervous and
+fretted, he every minute raised to his lips the tall crystal funnel
+where the bubbles were dancing in the living, translucent fluid. He let
+the wine slip very slowly over his tongue, that he might feel the little
+sugary sting of the fixed air as it evaporated.
+
+Gradually a pleasant warmth glowed in his frame. Starting from the
+stomach as a centre, it spread to his chest, took possession of his
+limbs, and diffused itself throughout his flesh, like a warm and
+comforting tide, bringing pleasure with it. He felt better now, less
+impatient, less annoyed, and his determination to speak to his brother
+that very evening faded away; not that he thought for a moment of
+giving it up, but simply not to disturb the happy mood in which he found
+himself.
+
+Beausire presently rose to propose a toast. Having bowed to the company,
+he began:
+
+"Most gracious ladies and gentlemen, we have met to do honour to a happy
+event which has befallen one of our friends. It used to be said that
+Fortune was blind, but I believe that she is only short-sighted or
+tricksy, and that she has lately bought a good pair of glasses which
+enabled her to discover in the town of Havre the son of our worthy
+friend Roland, skipper of the Pearl."
+
+Every one cried bravo and clapped their hands, and the elder Roland rose
+to reply. After clearing his throat, for it felt thick and his tongue
+was heavy, he stammered out:
+
+"Thank you, captain, thank you--for myself and my son. I shall never
+forget your behaviour on this occasion. Here's good luck to you!"
+
+His eyes and nose were full of tears, and he sat down, finding nothing
+more to say.
+
+Jean, who was laughing, spoke in his turn:
+
+"It is I," said he, "who ought to thank my friends here, my excellent
+friends," and he glanced at Mme. Rosemilly, "who have given me such a
+touching evidence of their affection. But it is not by words that I can
+prove my gratitude. I will prove it to-morrow, every hour of my life,
+always, for our friendship is not one of those which fade away."
+
+His mother, deeply moved, murmured: "Well said, my boy."
+
+But Beausire cried out:
+
+"Come, Mme. Rosemilly, speak on behalf of the fair sex."
+
+She raised her glass, and in a pretty voice, slightly touched with
+sadness, she said: "I will pledge you to the memory of M. Marechal."
+
+There was a few moments' lull, a pause for decent meditation, as after
+prayer. Beausire, who always had a flow of compliment, remarked:
+
+"Only a woman ever thinks of these refinements." Then turning to Father
+Roland: "And who was this Marechal, after all? You must have been very
+intimate with him."
+
+The old man, emotional with drink, began to whimper, and in a broken
+voice he said:
+
+"Like a brother, you know. Such a friend as one does not make twice--we
+were always together--he dined with us every evening--and would treat us
+to the play--I need say no more--no more--no more. A true friend--a real
+true friend--wasn't he, Louise?"
+
+His wife merely answered: "Yes; he was a faithful friend."
+
+Pierre looked at his father and then at his mother, then, as the subject
+changed he drank some more wine. He scarcely remembered the remainder of
+the evening. They had coffee, then liqueurs, and they laughed and joked
+a great deal. At about midnight he went to bed, his mind confused and
+his head heavy; and he slept like a brute till nine next morning.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+These slumbers, lapped in Champagne and Chartreuse, had soothed and
+calmed him, no doubt, for he awoke in a very benevolent frame of
+mind. While he was dressing he appraised, weighed, and summed up the
+agitations of the past day, trying to bring out quite clearly and fully
+their real and occult causes, those personal to himself as well as those
+from outside.
+
+It was, in fact, possible that the girl at the beer-shop had had an evil
+suspicion--a suspicion worthy of such a hussy--on hearing that only one
+of the Roland brothers had been made heir to a stranger; but have
+not such natures as she always similar notions, without a shadow of
+foundation, about every honest woman? Do they not, whenever they speak,
+vilify, calumniate, and abuse all whom they believe to be blameless?
+Whenever a woman who is above imputation is mentioned in their presence,
+they are as angry as if they were being insulted, and exclaim: "Ah, yes,
+I know your married women; a pretty sort they are! Why, they have
+more lovers than we have, only they conceal it because they are such
+hypocrites. Oh, yes, a pretty sort, indeed!"
+
+Under any other circumstances he would certainly not have understood,
+not have imagined the possibility of such an insinuation against his
+poor mother, who was so kind, so simple, so excellent. But his spirit
+seethed with the leaven of jealousy that was fermenting within him. His
+own excited mind, on the scent, as it were, in spite of himself, for all
+that could damage his brother, had even perhaps attributed to the tavern
+barmaid an odious intention of which she was innocent. It was possible
+that his imagination had, unaided, invented this dreadful doubt--his
+imagination, which he never controlled, which constantly evaded his will
+and went off, unfettered, audacious, adventurous, and stealthy, into
+the infinite world of ideas, bringing back now and then some which were
+shameless and repulsive, and which it buried in him, in the depths of
+his soul, in its most fathomless recesses, like something stolen. His
+heart, most certainly, his own heart had secrets from him; and had
+not that wounded heart discerned in this atrocious doubt a means of
+depriving his brother of the inheritance of which he was jealous? He
+suspected himself now, cross-examining all the mysteries of his mind as
+bigots search their consciences.
+
+Mme. Rosemilly, though her intelligence was limited, had certainly a
+woman's instinct, scent, and subtle intuitions. And this notion had
+never entered her head, since she had, with perfect simplicity, drunk
+to the blessed memory of the deceased Marechal. She was not the woman to
+have done this if she had had the faintest suspicion. Now he doubted no
+longer; his involuntary displeasure at his brother's windfall of
+fortune and his religious affection for his mother had magnified his
+scruples--very pious and respectable scruples, but exaggerated. As he
+put this conclusion into words in his own mind he felt happy, as at
+the doing of a good action; and he resolved to be nice to every one,
+beginning with his father, whose manias, and silly statements, and
+vulgar opinions, and too conspicuous mediocrity were a constant
+irritation to him.
+
+He came in not late for breakfast, and amused all the family by his fun
+and good humour.
+
+His mother, quite delighted, said to him:
+
+"My little Pierre, you have no notion how humorous and clever you can be
+when you choose."
+
+And he talked, putting things in a witty way, and making them laugh
+by ingenious hits at their friends. Beausire was his butt, and Mme.
+Rosemilly a little, but in a very judicious way, not too spiteful. And
+he thought as he looked at his brother: "Stand up for her, you muff. You
+may be as rich as you please, I can always eclipse you when I take the
+trouble."
+
+As they drank their coffee he said to his father:
+
+"Are you going out in the Pearl to-day?"
+
+"No, my boy."
+
+"May I have her with Jean Bart?"
+
+"To be sure, as long as you like."
+
+He bought a good cigar at the first tobacconist's and went down to the
+quay with a light step. He glanced up at the sky, which was clear and
+luminous, of a pale blue, freshly swept by the sea-breeze.
+
+Papagris, the boatman, commonly called Jean Bart, was dozing in the
+bottom of the boat, which he was required to have in readiness every day
+at noon when they had not been out fishing in the morning.
+
+"You and I together, mate," cried Pierre. He went down the iron ladder
+of the quay and leaped into the vessel.
+
+"Which way is the wind?" he asked.
+
+"Due east still, M'sieu Pierre. A fine breeze out at sea."
+
+"Well, then, old man, off we go!"
+
+They hoisted the foresail and weighed anchor; and the boat, feeling
+herself free, glided slowly down towards the jetty on the still water
+of the harbour. The breath of wind that came down the streets caught the
+top of the sail so lightly as to be imperceptible, and the Pearl seemed
+endowed with life--the life of a vessel driven on by a mysterious latent
+power. Pierre took the tiller, and, holding his cigar between his teeth,
+he stretched his legs on the bunk, and with his eyes half-shut in the
+blinding sunshine, he watched the great tarred timbers of the breakwater
+as they glided past.
+
+When they reached the open sea, round the nose of the north pier which
+had sheltered them, the fresher breeze puffed in the doctor's face and
+on his hands, like a somewhat icy caress, filled his chest, which rose
+with a long sigh to drink it in, and swelling the tawny sail, tilted the
+Pearl on her beam and made her more lively. Jean Bart hastily hauled up
+the jib, and the triangle of canvas, full of wind, looked like a wing;
+then, with two strides to the stern, he let out the spinnaker, which was
+close-reefed against his mast.
+
+Then, along the hull of the boat, which suddenly heeled over and was
+running at top speed, there was a soft, crisp sound of water hissing and
+rushing past. The prow ripped up the sea like the share of a plough gone
+mad, and the yielding water it turned up curled over and fell white with
+foam, as the ploughed soil, heavy and brown, rolls and falls in a ridge.
+At each wave they met--and there was a short, chopping sea--the Pearl
+shivered from the point of the bowsprit to the rudder, which trembled
+under Pierre's hand; when the wind blew harder in gusts, the swell rose
+to the gunwale as if it would overflow into the boat. A coal brig from
+Liverpool was lying at anchor, waiting for the tide; they made a sweep
+round her stern and went to look at each of the vessels in the roads one
+after another; then they put further out to look at the unfolding line
+of coast.
+
+For three hours Pierre, easy, calm, and happy, wandered to and fro over
+the dancing waters, guiding the thing of wood and canvas, which came and
+went at his will, under the pressure of his hand, as if it were a swift
+and docile winged creature.
+
+He was lost in day-dreams, the dreams one has on horseback or on the
+deck of a boat; thinking of his future, which should be brilliant, and
+the joys of living intelligently. On the morrow he would ask his brother
+to lend him fifteen hundred francs for three months, that he might
+settle at once in the pretty rooms on the Boulevard Francois.
+
+Suddenly the sailor said: "The fog is coming up, M'sieu Pierre. We must
+go in."
+
+He looked up and saw to the northward a gray shade, filmy but dense,
+blotting out the sky and covering the sea; it was sweeping down on them
+like a cloud fallen from above. He tacked for land and made for the
+pier, scudding before the wind and followed by the flying fog, which
+gained upon them. When it reached the Pearl, wrapping her in its
+intangible density, a cold shudder ran over Pierre's limbs, and a smell
+of smoke and mould, the peculiar smell of a sea-fog, made him close his
+mouth that he might not taste the cold, wet vapour. By the time the boat
+was at her usual moorings in the harbour the whole town was buried in
+this fine mist, which did not fall but yet wetted everything like rain,
+and glided and rolled along the roofs and streets like the flow of a
+river. Pierre, with his hands and feet frozen, made haste home and threw
+himself on his bed to take a nap till dinner-time. When he made his
+appearance in the dining-room his mother was saying to Jean:
+
+"The glass corridor will be lovely. We will fill it with flowers. You
+will see. I will undertake to care for them and renew them. When you
+give a party the effect will be quite fairy-like."
+
+"What in the world are you talking about?" the doctor asked.
+
+"Of a delightful apartment I have just taken for your brother. It is
+quite a find; an entresol looking out on two streets. There are two
+drawing-rooms, a glass passage, and a little circular dining-room,
+perfectly charming for a bachelor's quarters."
+
+Pierre turned pale. His anger seemed to press on his heart.
+
+"Where is it?" he asked.
+
+"Boulevard Francois."
+
+There was no possibility for doubt. He took his seat in such a state
+of exasperation that he longed to exclaim: "This is really too much! Is
+there nothing for any one but him?"
+
+His mother, beaming, went on talking: "And only fancy, I got it for two
+thousand eight hundred francs a year. They asked three thousand, but I
+got a reduction of two hundred francs on taking for three, six, or nine
+years. Your brother will be delightfully housed there. An elegant home
+is enough to make the fortune of a lawyer. It attracts clients, charms
+them, holds them fast, commands respect, and shows them that a man who
+lives in such good style expects a good price for his words."
+
+She was silent for a few seconds and then went on:
+
+"We must look out for something suitable for you; much less pretentious,
+since you have nothing, but nice and pretty all the same. I assure you
+it will be to your advantage."
+
+Pierre replied contemptuously:
+
+"For me! Oh, I shall make my way by hard work and learning."
+
+But his mother insisted: "Yes, but I assure you that to be well lodged
+will be of use to you nevertheless."
+
+About half-way through the meal he suddenly asked:
+
+"How did you first come to know this man Marechal?"
+
+Old Roland looked up and racked his memory:
+
+"Wait a bit; I scarcely recollect. It is such an old story now. Ah, yes,
+I remember. It was your mother who made the acquaintance with him in the
+shop, was it not, Louise? He first came to order something, and then
+he called frequently. We knew him as a customer before we knew him as a
+friend."
+
+Pierre, who was eating beans, sticking his fork into them one by one as
+if he were spitting them, went on:
+
+"And when was it that you made his acquaintance?"
+
+Again Roland sat thinking, but he could remember no more and appealed to
+his wife's better memory.
+
+"In what year was it, Louise? You surely have not forgotten, you
+who remember everything. Let me see--it was in--in--in fifty-five or
+fifty-six? Try to remember. You ought to know better than I."
+
+She did in fact think it over for some minutes, and then replied in a
+steady voice and with calm decision:
+
+"It was in fifty-eight, old man. Pierre was three years old. I am quite
+sure that I am not mistaken, for it was in that year that the child had
+scarlet fever, and Marechal, whom we knew then but very little, was of
+the greatest service to us."
+
+Roland exclaimed:
+
+"To be sure--very true; he was really invaluable. When your mother was
+half-dead with fatigue and I had to attend to the shop, he would go to
+the chemist's to fetch your medicine. He really had the kindest heart!
+And when you were well again, you cannot think how glad he was and how
+he petted you. It was from that time that we became such great friends."
+
+And this thought rushed into Pierre's soul, as abrupt and violent as a
+cannon-ball rending and piercing it: "Since he knew me first, since he
+was so devoted to me, since he was so fond of me and petted me so much,
+since I--_I_ was the cause of his great intimacy with my parents, why
+did he leave all his money to my brother and nothing to me?"
+
+He asked no more questions and remained gloomy; absent-minded rather
+than thoughtful, feeling in his soul a new anxiety as yet undefined, the
+secret germ of a new pain.
+
+He went out early, wandering about the streets once more. They were
+shrouded in the fog which made the night heavy, opaque, and nauseous.
+It was like a pestilential cloud dropped on the earth. It could be seen
+swirling past the gas-lights, which it seemed to put out at intervals.
+The pavement was as slippery as on a frosty night after rain, and
+all sorts of evil smells seemed to come up from the bowels of the
+houses--the stench of cellars, drains, sewers, squalid kitchens--to
+mingle with the horrible savour of this wandering fog.
+
+Pierre, with his shoulders up and his hands in his pockets, not caring
+to remain out of doors in the cold, turned into Marowsko's. The
+druggist was asleep as usual under the gas-light, which kept watch. On
+recognising Pierre for whom he had the affection of a faithful dog,
+he shook off his drowsiness, went for two glasses, and brought out the
+_Groseillette_.
+
+"Well," said the doctor, "how is the liqueur getting on?"
+
+The Pole explained that four of the chief cafes in the town had agreed
+to have it on sale, and that two papers, the _Northcoast Pharos_ and the
+_Havre Semaphore_, would advertise it, in return for certain chemical
+preparations to be supplied to the editors.
+
+After a long silence Marowsko asked whether Jean had come definitely
+into possession of his fortune; and then he put two or three other
+questions vaguely referring to the same subject. His jealous devotion
+to Pierre rebelled against this preference. And Pierre felt as though he
+could hear him thinking; he guessed and understood, read in his averted
+eyes and in the hesitancy of his tone, the words which rose to his lips
+but were not spoken--which the druggist was too timid or too prudent and
+cautious to utter.
+
+At this moment, he felt sure, the old man was thinking: "You ought not
+to have suffered him to accept this inheritance which will make people
+speak ill of your mother."
+
+Perhaps, indeed, Marowsko believed that Jean was Marechal's son. Of
+course he believed it! How could he help believing it when the thing
+must seem so possible, so probable, self-evident? Why, he himself,
+Pierre, her son--had not he been for these three days past fighting with
+all the subtlety at his command to cheat his reason, fighting against
+this hideous suspicion?
+
+And suddenly the need to be alone, to reflect, to discuss the matter
+with himself--to face boldly, without scruple or weakness, this possible
+but monstrous thing--came upon him anew, and so imperative that he rose
+without even drinking his glass of _Groseillette_, shook hands with the
+astounded druggist, and plunged out into the foggy streets again.
+
+He asked himself: "What made this Marechal leave all his fortune to
+Jean?"
+
+It was not jealousy now which made him dwell on this question, not the
+rather mean but natural envy which he knew lurked within him, and with
+which he had been struggling these three days, but the dread of an
+overpowering horror; the dread that he himself should believe that Jean,
+his brother, was that man's son.
+
+No. He did not believe it, he could not even ask himself the question
+which was a crime! Meanwhile he must get rid of this faint suspicion,
+improbable as it was, utterly and forever. He craved for light, for
+certainty--he must win absolute security in his heart, for he loved no
+one in the world but his mother. And as he wandered alone through the
+darkness he would rack his memory and his reason with a minute search
+that should bring out the blazing truth. Then there would be an end
+to the matter; he would not think of it again--never. He would go and
+sleep.
+
+He argued thus: "Let me see: first to examine the facts; then I will
+recall all I know about him, his behaviour to my brother and to me. I
+will seek out the causes which might have given rise to the preference.
+He knew Jean from his birth? Yes, but he had known me first. If he had
+loved my mother silently, unselfishly, he would surely have chosen me,
+since it was through me, through my scarlet fever, that he became so
+intimate with my parents. Logically, then, he ought to have preferred
+me, to have had a keener affection for me--unless it were that he felt
+an instinctive attraction and predilection for my brother as he watched
+him grow up."
+
+Then, with desperate tension of brain and of all the powers of his
+intellect, he strove to reconstitute from memory the image of this
+Marechal, to see him, to know him, to penetrate the man whom he had seen
+pass by him, indifferent to his heart during all those years in Paris.
+
+But he perceived that the slight exertion of walking somewhat disturbed
+his ideas, dislocated their continuity, weakened their precision,
+clouded his recollection. To enable him to look at the past and at
+unknown events with so keen an eye that nothing should escape it, he
+must be motionless in a vast and empty space. And he made up his mind
+to go and sit on the jetty as he had done that other night. As he
+approached the harbour he heard, out at sea, a lugubrious and sinister
+wail like the bellowing of a bull, but more long-drawn and steady. It
+was the roar of a fog-horn, the cry of a ship lost in the fog. A shiver
+ran through him, chilling his heart; so deeply did this cry of distress
+thrill his soul and nerves that he felt as if he had uttered it himself.
+Another and a similar voice answered with such another moan, but farther
+away; then, close by, the fog-horn on the pier gave out a fearful sound
+in answer. Pierre made for the jetty with long steps, thinking no
+more of anything, content to walk on into this ominous and bellowing
+darkness.
+
+When he had seated himself at the end of the breakwater he closed his
+eyes, that he might not see the two electric lights, now blurred by the
+fog, which make the harbour accessible at night, and the red glare
+of the light on the south pier, which was, however, scarcely visible.
+Turning half-round, he rested his elbows on the granite and hid his face
+in his hands.
+
+Though he did not pronounce the words with his lips, his mind kept
+repeating: "Marechal--Marechal," as if to raise and challenge the shade.
+And on the black background of his closed eyelids, he suddenly saw him
+as he had known him: a man of about sixty, with a white beard cut in
+a point and very thick eyebrows, also white. He was neither tall nor
+short, his manner was pleasant, his eyes gray and soft, his movements
+gentle, his whole appearance that of a good fellow, simple and kindly.
+He called Pierre and Jean "my dear children," and had never seemed to
+prefer either, asking them both together to dine with him. And then
+Pierre, with the pertinacity of a dog seeking a lost scent, tried to
+recall the words, gestures, tones, looks, of this man who had vanished
+from the world. By degrees he saw him quite clearly in his rooms in the
+Rue Tronchet, where he received his brother and himself at dinner.
+
+He was waited on by two maids, both old women who had been in the
+habit--a very old one, no doubt--of saying "Monsieur Pierre" and
+"Monsieur Jean." Marechal would hold out both hands, the right hand to
+one of the young men, the left to the other, as they happened to come
+in.
+
+"How are you, my children?" he would say. "Have you any news of your
+parents? As for me, they never write to me."
+
+The talk was quiet and intimate, of commonplace matters. There was
+nothing remarkable in the man's mind, but much that was winning,
+charming, and gracious. He had certainly been a good friend to them, one
+of those good friends of whom we think the less because we feel sure of
+them.
+
+Now, reminiscences came readily to Pierre's mind. Having seen him
+anxious from time to time, and suspecting his student's impecuniousness,
+Marechal had of his own accord offered and lent him money, a few hundred
+francs perhaps, forgotten by both, and never repaid. Then this man must
+always have been fond of him, always have taken an interest in him,
+since he thought of his needs. Well then--well then--why leave his whole
+fortune to Jean? No, he had never shown more marked affection for the
+younger than for the elder, had never been more interested in one than
+in the other, or seemed to care more tenderly for this one or that one.
+Well then--well then--he must have had some strong secret reason for
+leaving everything to Jean--everything--and nothing to Pierre.
+
+The more he thought, the more he recalled the past few years, the more
+extraordinary, the more incredible was it that he should have made such
+a difference between them. And an agonizing pang of unspeakable anguish
+piercing his bosom made his heart beat like a fluttering rag. Its
+springs seemed broken, and the blood rushed through in a flood,
+unchecked, tossing it with wild surges.
+
+Then in an undertone, as a man speaks in a nightmare, he muttered: "I
+must know. My God! I must know."
+
+He looked further back now, to an earlier time, when his parents
+had lived in Paris. But the faces escaped him, and this confused his
+recollections. He struggled above all to see Marechal, with light, or
+brown, or black hair. But he could not; the later image, his face as an
+old man, blotted out all others. However, he remembered that he had been
+slighter, and had a soft hand, and that he often brought flowers. Very
+often--for his father would constantly say: "What, another bouquet! But
+this is madness, my dear fellow; you will ruin yourself in roses." And
+Marechal would say: "No matter; I like it."
+
+And suddenly his mother's voice and accent, his mother's as she smiled
+and said: "Thank you, my kind friend," flashed on his brain, so clearly
+that he could have believed he heard her. She must have spoken those
+words very often that they should remain thus graven on her son's
+memory.
+
+So Marechal brought flowers; he, the gentleman, the rich man, the
+customer, to the humble shop-keeper, the jeweller's wife. Had he loved
+her? Why should he have made friends with these tradespeople if he had
+not been in love with the wife? He was a man of education and fairly
+refined tastes. How many a time had he discussed poets and poetry with
+Pierre. He did not appreciate these writers from an artistic point of
+view, but with sympathetic and responsive feeling. The doctor had often
+smiled at his emotions which had struck him as rather silly, now he
+plainly saw that this sentimental soul could never, never have been the
+friend of his father, who was so matter-of-fact, so narrow, so heavy, to
+whom the word "Poetry" meant idiocy.
+
+This Marechal then, being young, free, rich, ready for any form of
+tenderness, went by chance into the shop one day, having perhaps
+observed its pretty mistress. He had bought something, had come again,
+had chatted, more intimately each time, paying by frequent purchases
+for the right of a seat in the family, of smiling at the young wife and
+shaking hands with the husband.
+
+And what next--what next--good God--what next?
+
+He had loved and petted the first child, the jeweller's child, till the
+second was born; then, till death, he had remained impenetrable; and
+when his grave was closed, his flesh dust, his name erased from the
+list of the living, when he himself was quiet and forever gone, having
+nothing to scheme for, to dread or to hide, he had given his whole
+fortune to the second child! Why?
+
+The man had all his wits; he must have understood and foreseen that he
+might, that he almost infallibly must, give grounds for the supposition
+that the child was his. He was casting obloquy on a woman. How could he
+have done this if Jean were not his son?
+
+And suddenly a clear and fearful recollection shot through his brain.
+Marechal was fair--fair like Jean. He now remembered a little
+miniature portrait he had seen formerly in Paris, on the drawing-room
+chimney-shelf, and which had since disappeared. Where was it? Lost, or
+hidden away? Oh, if he could but have it in his hand for one minute! His
+mother kept it perhaps in the unconfessed drawer where love-tokens were
+treasured.
+
+His misery in this thought was so intense that he uttered a groan, one
+of those brief moans wrung from the breast by a too intolerable pang.
+And immediately, as if it had heard him, as if it had understood and
+answered him, the fog-horn on the pier bellowed out close to him. Its
+voice, like that of a fiendish monster, more resonant than thunder--a
+savage and appalling roar contrived to drown the clamour of the wind and
+waves--spread through the darkness, across the sea, which was invisible
+under its shroud of fog. And again, through the mist, far and near,
+responsive cries went up to the night. They were terrifying, these calls
+given forth by the great blind steam-ships.
+
+Then all was silent once more.
+
+Pierre had opened his eyes and was looking about him, startled to find
+himself here, roused from his nightmare.
+
+"I am mad," thought he, "I suspect my mother." And a surge of love and
+emotion, of repentance, and prayer, and grief, welled up in his heart.
+His mother! Knowing her as he knew her, how could he ever have suspected
+her? Was not the soul, was not the life of this simple-minded, chaste,
+and loyal woman clearer than water? Could any one who had seen and
+known her ever think of her but as above suspicion? And he, her son,
+had doubted her! Oh, if he could but have taken her in his arms at that
+moment, how he would have kissed and caressed her, and gone on his knees
+to crave pardon.
+
+Would she have deceived his father--she?
+
+His father!--A very worthy man, no doubt, upright and honest in
+business, but with a mind which had never gone beyond the horizon of his
+shop. How was it that this woman, who must have been very pretty--as he
+knew, and it could still be seen--gifted, too, with a delicate, tender
+emotional soul, could have accepted a man so unlike herself as a suitor
+and a husband? Why inquire? She had married, as young French girls
+do marry, the youth with a little fortune proposed to her by their
+relations. They had settled at once in their shop in the Rue Montmartre;
+and the young wife, ruling over the desk, inspired by the feeling of a
+new home, and the subtle and sacred sense of interests in common which
+fills the place of love, and even of regard, by the domestic hearth of
+most of the commercial houses of Paris, had set to work, with all her
+superior and active intelligence, to make the fortune they hoped for.
+And so her life had flowed on, uniform, peaceful and respectable, but
+loveless.
+
+Loveless?--was it possible then that a woman should not love? That
+a young and pretty woman, living in Paris, reading books, applauding
+actresses for dying of passion on the stage, could live from youth to
+old age without once feeling her heart touched? He would not believe it
+of any one else; why should she be different from all others, though she
+was his mother?
+
+She had been young, with all the poetic weaknesses which agitate the
+heart of a young creature. Shut up, imprisoned in the shop, by the
+side of a vulgar husband who always talked of trade, she had dreamed
+of moonlight nights, of voyages, of kisses exchanged in the shades of
+evening. And then, one day a man had come in, as lovers do in books, and
+had talked as they talk.
+
+She had loved him. Why not? She was his mother. What then? Must a man be
+blind and stupid to the point of rejecting evidence because it concerns
+his mother? But did she give herself to him? Why yes, since this man had
+had no other love, since he had remained faithful to her when she was
+far away and growing old. Why yes, since he had left all his fortune to
+his son--their son!
+
+And Pierre started to his feet, quivering with such rage that he longed
+to kill some one. With his arm outstretched, his hand wide open, he
+wanted to hit, to bruise, to smash, to strangle! Whom? Every one; his
+father, his brother, the dead man, his mother!
+
+He hurried off homeward. What was he going to do?
+
+As he passed a turret close to the signal mast the strident howl of the
+fog-horn went off in his very face. He was so startled that he nearly
+fell and shrank back as far as the granite parapet. He sat down
+half-stunned by the sudden shock. The steamer which was the first to
+reply seemed to be quite near and was already at the entrance, the tide
+having risen.
+
+Pierre turned round and could discern its red eye dim through the fog.
+Then, in the broad light of the electric lanterns, a huge black shadow
+crept up between the piers. Behind him the voice of the look-out man,
+the hoarse voice of an old retired sea-captain, shouted:
+
+"What ship?" And out of the fog the voice of the pilot standing on
+deck--not less hoarse--replied:
+
+"The Santa Lucia."
+
+"Where from?"
+
+"Italy."
+
+"What port?"
+
+"Naples."
+
+And before Pierre's bewildered eyes rose, as he fancied, the fiery
+pennon of Vesuvius, while, at the foot of the volcano, fire-flies danced
+in the orange-groves of Sorrento or Castellamare. How often had he
+dreamed of these familiar names as if he knew the scenery. Oh, if he
+might but go away, now at once, never mind whither, and never come back,
+never write, never let any one know what had become of him! But no, he
+must go home--home to his father's house, and go to bed.
+
+He would not. Come what might he would not go in; he would stay there
+till daybreak. He liked the roar of the fog-horns. He pulled himself
+together and began to walk up and down like an officer on watch.
+
+Another vessel was coming in behind the other, huge and mysterious. An
+English India-man, homeward bound.
+
+He saw several more come in, one after another, out of the impenetrable
+vapour. Then, as the damp became quite intolerable, Pierre set out
+towards the town. He was so cold that he went into a sailors' tavern to
+drink a glass of grog, and when the hot and pungent liquor had scorched
+his mouth and throat he felt a hope revive within him.
+
+Perhaps he was mistaken. He knew his own vagabond unreason so well! No
+doubt he was mistaken. He had piled up the evidence as a charge is drawn
+up against an innocent person, whom it is always so easy to convict when
+we wish to think him guilty. When he should have slept he would think
+differently.
+
+Then he went in and to bed, and by sheer force of will he at last
+dropped asleep.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+But the doctor's frame lay scarcely more than an hour or two in the
+torpor of troubled slumbers. When he awoke in the darkness of his warm,
+closed room he was aware, even before thought was awake in him, of the
+painful oppression, the sickness of heart which the sorrow we have slept
+on leaves behind it. It is as though the disaster of which the shock
+merely jarred us at first, had, during sleep, stolen into our very
+flesh, bruising and exhausting it like a fever. Memory returned to him
+like a blow, and he sat up in bed. Then slowly, one by one, he again
+went through all the arguments which had wrung his heart on the jetty
+while the fog-horns were bellowing. The more he thought the less he
+doubted. He felt himself dragged along by his logic to the inevitable
+certainty, as by a clutching, strangling hand.
+
+He was thirsty and hot, his heart beat wildly. He got up to open his
+window and breathe the fresh air, and as he stood there a low sound fell
+on his ear through the wall. Jean was sleeping peacefully, and gently
+snoring. He could sleep! He had no presentiment, no suspicions! A man
+who had known their mother had left him all his fortune; he took the
+money and thought it quite fair and natural! He was sleeping, rich and
+contented, not knowing that his brother was gasping with anguish and
+distress. And rage boiled up in him against this heedless and happy
+sleeper.
+
+Only yesterday he would have knocked at his door, have gone in, and
+sitting by the bed, would have said to Jean, scared by the sudden
+waking:
+
+"Jean you must not keep this legacy which by to-morrow may have brought
+suspicion and dishonour on our mother."
+
+But to-day he could say nothing; he could not tell Jean that he did not
+believe him to be their father's son. Now he must guard, must bury the
+shame he had discovered, hide from every eye the stain which he
+had detected and which no one must perceive, not even his
+brother--especially not his brother.
+
+He no longer thought about the vain respect of public opinion. He would
+have been glad that all the world should accuse his mother if only he,
+he alone, knew her to be innocent! How could he bear to live with her
+every day, believing as he looked at her that his brother was the child
+of a stranger's love?
+
+And how calm and serene she was, nevertheless, how sure of herself she
+always seemed! Was it possible that such a woman as she, pure of soul
+and upright in heart, should fall, dragged astray by passion, and
+yet nothing ever appear afterward of her remorse and the stings of a
+troubled conscience? Ah, but remorse must have tortured her, long ago in
+the earlier days, and then have faded out, as everything fades. She
+had surely bewailed her sin, and then, little by little, had almost
+forgotten it. Have not all women, all, this fault of prodigious
+forgetfulness which enables them, after a few years, hardly to recognise
+the man to whose kisses they have given their lips? The kiss strikes
+like a thunderbolt, the love passes away like a storm, and then life,
+like the sky, is calm once more, and begins again as it was before. Do
+we ever remember a cloud?
+
+Pierre could no longer endure to stay in the room! This house, his
+father's house, crushed him. He felt the roof weigh on his head, and the
+walls suffocate him. And as he was very thirsty he lighted his candle to
+go to drink a glass of fresh water from the filter in the kitchen.
+
+He went down the two flights of stairs; then, as he was coming up again
+with the water-bottle filled, he sat down, in his night-shirt, on a step
+of the stairs where there was a draught, and drank, without a tumbler,
+in long pulls like a runner who is out of breath. When he ceased to
+move the silence of the house touched his feelings; then, one by one,
+he could distinguish the faintest sounds. First there was the ticking of
+the clock in the dining-room which seemed to grow louder every second.
+Then he heard another snore, an old man's snore, short, laboured, and
+hard, his father beyond doubt; and he writhed at the idea, as if it had
+but this moment sprung upon him, that these two men, sleeping under the
+same room--father and son--were nothing to each other! Not a tie, not
+the very slightest, bound them together, and they did not know it!
+They spoke to each other affectionately, they embraced each other, they
+rejoiced and lamented together over the same things, just as if the same
+blood flowed in their veins. And two men born at opposite ends of the
+earth could not be more alien to each other than this father and son.
+They believed they loved each other, because a lie had grown up between
+them. This paternal love, this filial love, were the outcome of a lie--a
+lie which could not be unmasked, and which no one would ever know but
+he, the true son.
+
+But yet, but yet--if he were mistaken? How could he make sure? Oh, if
+only some likeness, however slight, could be traced between his father
+and Jean, one of those mysterious resemblances which run from an
+ancestor to the great-great-grandson, showing that the whole race are
+the offspring of the same embrace. To him, a medical man, so little
+would suffice to enable him to discern this--the curve of a nostril, the
+space between the eyes, the character of the teeth or hair; nay less--a
+gesture, a trick, a habit, an inherited taste, any mark or token which a
+practised eye might recognise as characteristic.
+
+He thought long, but could remember nothing; no, nothing. But he had
+looked carelessly, observed badly, having no reason for spying such
+imperceptible indications.
+
+He got up to go back to his room and mounted the stairs with a slow
+step, still lost in thought. As he passed the door of his brother's room
+he stood stock still, his hand put out to open it. An imperative need
+had just come over him to see Jean at once, to look at him at his
+leisure, to surprise him in his sleep, while the calm countenance and
+relaxed features were at rest and all the grimace of life put off.
+Thus he might catch the dormant secret of his physiognomy, and if any
+appreciable likeness existed it would not escape him.
+
+But supposing Jean were to wake, what could he say? How could he explain
+this intrusion?
+
+He stood still, his fingers clinched on the door-handle, trying to
+devise a reason, an excuse. Then he remembered that a week ago he had
+lent his brother a phial of laudanum to relieve a fit of toothache. He
+might himself have been in pain this night and have come to find the
+drug. So he went in with a stealthy step, like a robber. Jean, his mouth
+open, was sunk in deep, animal slumbers. His beard and fair hair made a
+golden patch on the white linen; he did not wake, but he ceased snoring.
+
+Pierre, leaning over him, gazed at him with hungry eagerness. No, this
+youngster was not in the least like Roland; and for the second time the
+recollection of the little portrait of Marechal, which had vanished,
+recurred to his mind. He must find it! When he should see it perhaps he
+should cease to doubt!
+
+His brother stirred, conscious no doubt of a presence, or disturbed by
+the light of the taper on his eyelids. The doctor retired on tip-toe to
+the door which he noiselessly closed; then he went back to his room, but
+not to bed again.
+
+Day was long in coming. The hours struck one after another on the
+dining-room clock, and its tone was a deep and solemn one, as though the
+little piece of clockwork had swallowed a cathedral-bell. The sound rose
+through the empty staircase, penetrating through walls and doors, and
+dying away in the rooms where it fell on the torpid ears of the sleeping
+household. Pierre had taken to walking to and fro between his bed and
+the window. What was he going to do? He was too much upset to spend this
+day at home. He wanted still to be alone, at any rate till the next day,
+to reflect, to compose himself, to strengthen himself for the common
+every-day life which he must take up again.
+
+Well, he would go over to Trouville to see the swarming crowd on the
+sands. That would amuse him, change the air of his thoughts, and give
+him time to inure himself to the horrible thing he had discovered.
+As soon as morning dawned he made his toilet and dressed. The fog had
+vanished and it was fine, very fine. As the boat for Trouville did not
+start till nine, it struck the doctor that he must greet his mother
+before starting.
+
+He waited till the hour at which she was accustomed to get up, and then
+went downstairs. His heart beat so violently as he touched her door
+that he paused for breath. His hand as it lay on the lock was limp and
+tremulous, almost incapable of the slight effort of turning the handle
+to open it. He knocked. His mother's voice inquired:
+
+"Who is there?"
+
+"I--Pierre."
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+"Only to say good-morning, because I am going to spend the day at
+Trouville with some friends."
+
+"But I am still in bed."
+
+"Very well, do not disturb yourself. I shall see you this evening, when
+I come in."
+
+He hoped to get off without seeing her, without pressing on her cheek
+the false kiss which it made his heart sick to think of. But she
+replied:
+
+"No. Wait a moment. I will let you in. Wait till I get into bed again."
+
+He heard her bare feet on the floor and the sound of the bolt drawn
+back. Then she called out:
+
+"Come in."
+
+He went in. She was sitting up in bed, while, by her side, Roland, with
+a silk handkerchief by way of night-cap and his face to the wall, still
+lay sleeping. Nothing ever woke him but a shaking hard enough to pull
+his arm off. On the days when he went fishing it was Josephine, rung up
+by Papagris at the hour fixed, who roused her master from his stubborn
+slumbers.
+
+Pierre, as he went towards his mother, looked at her with a sudden sense
+of never having seen her before. She held up her face, he kissed each
+cheek, and then sat down in a low chair.
+
+"It was last evening that you decided on this excursion?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, last evening."
+
+"Will you return to dinner?"
+
+"I do not know. At any rate do not wait for me."
+
+He looked at her with stupefied curiosity. This woman was his mother!
+All those features, seen daily from childhood, from the time when his
+eye could first distinguish things, that smile, that voice--so well
+known, so familiar--abruptly struck him as new, different from what they
+had always been to him hitherto. He understood now that, loving her,
+he had never looked at her. All the same it was very really she, and he
+knew every little detail of her face; still, it was the first time he
+clearly identified them all. His anxious attention, scrutinizing her
+face which he loved, recalled a difference, a physiognomy he had never
+before discerned.
+
+He rose to go; then, suddenly yielding to the invincible longing to know
+which had been gnawing at him since yesterday, he said:
+
+"By the way, I fancy I remember that you used to have, in Paris, a
+little portrait of Marechal, in the drawing-room."
+
+She hesitated for a second or two, or at least he fancied she hesitated;
+then she said:
+
+"To be sure."
+
+"What has become of the portrait?"
+
+She might have replied more readily:
+
+"That portrait--stay; I don't exactly know--perhaps it is in my desk."
+
+"It would be kind of you to find it."
+
+"Yes, I will look for it. What do you want it for?"
+
+"Oh, it is not for myself. I thought it would be a natural thing to give
+it to Jean, and that he would be pleased to have it."
+
+"Yes, you are right; that is a good idea. I will look for it, as soon as
+I am up."
+
+And he went out.
+
+It was a blue day without a breath of wind. The folks in the streets
+seemed in good spirits, the merchants going to business, the clerks
+going to their office, the girls going to their shop. Some sang as they
+went, exhilarated by the bright weather.
+
+The passengers were already going on board the Trouville boat; Pierre
+took a seat aft on a wooden bench.
+
+He asked himself:
+
+"Now was she uneasy at my asking for the portrait or only surprised? Has
+she mislaid it, or has she hidden it? Does she know where it is, or does
+she not? If she had hidden it--why?"
+
+And his mind, still following up the same line of thought from one
+deduction to another, came to this conclusion:
+
+That portrait--of a friend, of a lover, had remained in the drawing-room
+in a conspicuous place, till one day when the wife and mother perceived,
+first of all and before any one else, that it bore a likeness to her
+son. Without doubt she had for a long time been on the watch for this
+resemblance; then, having detected it, having noticed its beginnings,
+and understanding that any one might, any day, observe it too, she had
+one evening removed the perilous little picture and had hidden it, not
+daring to destroy it.
+
+Pierre recollected quite clearly now that it was long, long before
+they left Paris that the miniature had vanished. It had disappeared, he
+thought, about the time that Jean's beard was beginning to grow, which
+had made him suddenly and wonderfully like the fair young man who smiled
+from the picture-frame.
+
+The motion of the boat as it put off disturbed and dissipated his
+meditations. He stood up and looked at the sea. The little steamer,
+once outside the piers, turned to the left, and puffing and snorting and
+quivering, made for a distant point visible through the morning haze.
+The red sail of a heavy fishing-bark, lying motionless on the level
+waters, looked like a large rock standing up out of the sea. And
+the Seine, rolling down from Rouen, seemed a wide inlet dividing two
+neighbouring lands. They reached the harbour of Trouville in less than
+an hour, and as it was the time of day when the world was bathing,
+Pierre went to the shore.
+
+From a distance it looked like a garden full of gaudy flowers. All along
+the stretch of yellow sand, from the pier as far as the Roches Noires,
+sun-shades of every hue, hats of every shape, dresses of every colour,
+in groups outside the bathing huts, in long rows by the margin of the
+waves, or scattered here and there, really looked like immense bouquets
+on a vast meadow. And the Babel of sounds--voices near and far ringing
+thin in the light atmosphere, shouts and cries of children being bathed,
+clear laughter of women--all made a pleasant, continuous din, mingling
+with the unheeding breeze, and breathed with the air itself.
+
+Pierre walked among all this throng, more lost, more remote from them,
+more isolated, more drowned in his torturing thoughts, than if he had
+been flung overboard from the deck of a ship a hundred miles from shore.
+He passed by them and heard a few sentences without listening; and he
+saw, without looking, how the men spoke to the women, and the women
+smiled at the men. Then, suddenly, as if he had awoke, he perceived them
+all; and hatred of them all surged up in his soul, for they seemed happy
+and content.
+
+Now, as he went, he studied the groups, wandering round them full of a
+fresh set of ideas. All these many-hued dresses which covered the sands
+like nosegays, these pretty stuffs, those showy parasols, the fictitious
+grace of tightened waists, all the ingenious devices of fashion from
+the smart little shoe to the extravagant hat, the seductive charm of
+gesture, voice, and smile, all the coquettish airs in short displayed
+on this seashore, suddenly struck him as stupendous efflorescences
+of female depravity. All these bedizened women aimed at pleasing,
+bewitching, and deluding some man. They had dressed themselves out for
+men--for all men--all excepting the husband whom they no longer needed
+to conquer. They had dressed themselves out for the lover of yesterday
+and the lover of to-morrow, for the stranger they might meet and notice
+or were perhaps on the lookout for.
+
+And these men sitting close to them, eye to eye and mouth to mouth,
+invited them, desired them, hunted them like game, coy and elusive
+notwithstanding that it seemed so near and so easy to capture. This wide
+shore was, then, no more than a love-market where some sold, others
+gave themselves--some drove a hard bargain for their kisses while others
+promised them for love. All these women thought only of one thing, to
+make their bodies desirable--bodies already given, sold, or promised
+to other men. And he reflected that it was everywhere the same, all the
+world over.
+
+His mother had done what others did--that was all. Others? These women
+he saw about him, rich, giddy, love-seeking, belonged on the whole to
+the class of fashionable and showy women of the world, some indeed to
+the less respectable sisterhood, for on these sands, trampled by the
+legion of idlers, the tribe of virtuous, home-keeping women were not to
+be seen.
+
+The tide was rising, driving the foremost rank of visitors gradually
+landward. He saw the various groups jump up and fly, carrying their
+chairs with them, before the yellow waves as they rolled up edged with
+a lace-like frill of foam. The bathing-machines too were being pulled up
+by horses, and along the planked way which formed the promenade running
+along the shore from end to end, there was now an increasing flow, slow
+and dense, of well-dressed people in two opposite streams elbowing and
+mingling. Pierre, made nervous and exasperated by this bustle, made his
+escape into the town, and went to get his breakfast at a modest tavern
+on the skirts of the fields.
+
+When he had finished with coffee, he stretched his legs on a couple of
+chairs under a lime-tree in front of the house, and as he had hardly
+slept the night before, he presently fell into a doze. After resting for
+some hours he shook himself, and finding that it was time to go on board
+again he set out, tormented by a sudden stiffness which had come upon
+him during his long nap. Now he was eager to be at home again; to know
+whether his mother had found the portrait of Marechal. Would she be the
+first to speak of it, or would he be obliged to ask for it again? If she
+waited to be questioned further it must be because she had some secret
+reason for not showing the miniature.
+
+But when he was at home again, and in his room, he hesitated about going
+down to dinner. He was too wretched. His revolted soul had not yet time
+to calm down. However, he made up his mind to it, and appeared in the
+dining-room just as they were sitting down.
+
+All their faces were beaming.
+
+"Well," said Roland, "are you getting on with your purchases? I do not
+want to see anything till it is all in its place."
+
+And his wife replied: "Oh, yes. We are getting on. But it takes much
+consideration to avoid buying things that do not match. The furniture
+question is an absorbing one."
+
+She had spent the day in going with Jean to cabinet-makers and
+upholsterers. Her fancy was for rich materials, rather splendid to
+strike the eye at once. Her son, on the contrary, wished for something
+simple and elegant. So in front of everything put before them they had
+each repeated their arguments. She declared that a client, a defendant,
+must be impressed; that as soon as he is shown into his counsel's
+waiting-room he should have a sense of wealth.
+
+Jean, on the other hand, wishing to attract only an elegant and opulent
+class, was anxious to captivate persons of refinement by his quiet and
+perfect taste.
+
+And this discussion, which had gone on all day, began again with the
+soup.
+
+Roland had no opinion. He repeated: "I do not want to hear anything
+about it. I will go and see it when it is all finished."
+
+Mme. Roland appealed to the judgment of her elder son.
+
+"And you, Pierre, what do you think of the matter?"
+
+His nerves were in a state of such intense excitement that he would have
+liked to reply with an oath. However, he only answered in a dry tone
+quivering with annoyance.
+
+"Oh, I am quite of Jean's mind. I like nothing so well as simplicity,
+which, in matters of taste, is equivalent to rectitude in matters of
+conduct."
+
+His mother went on:
+
+"You must remember that we live in a city of commercial men, where good
+taste is not to be met with at every turn."
+
+Pierre replied:
+
+"What does that matter? Is that a reason for living as fools do? If my
+fellow-townsmen are stupid and ill-bred, need I follow their example? A
+woman does not misconduct herself because her neighbour has a lover."
+
+Jean began to laugh.
+
+"You argue by comparisons which seem to have been borrowed from the
+maxims of a moralist."
+
+Pierre made no reply. His mother and his brother reverted to the
+question of stuffs and arm-chairs.
+
+He sat looking at them as he had looked at his mother in the morning
+before starting for Trouville; looking at them as a stranger who would
+study them, and he felt as though he had really suddenly come into a
+family of which he knew nothing.
+
+His father, above all, amazed his eyes and his mind. That flabby, burly
+man, happy and besotted, was his own father! No, no; Jean was not in the
+least like him.
+
+His family!
+
+Within these two days an unknown and malignant hand, the hand of a dead
+man, had torn asunder and broken, one by one, all the ties which had
+held these four human beings together. It was all over, all ruined. He
+had now no mother--for he could no longer love her now that he could not
+revere her with that perfect, tender, and pious respect which a son's
+love demands; no brother--since his brother was the child of a stranger;
+nothing was left him but his father, that coarse man whom he could not
+love in spite of himself.
+
+And he suddenly broke out:
+
+"I say, mother, have you found that portrait?"
+
+She opened her eyes in surprise.
+
+"What portrait?"
+
+"The portrait of Marechal."
+
+"No--that is to say--yes--I have not found it, but I think I know where
+it is."
+
+"What is that?" asked Roland. And Pierre answered:
+
+"A little likeness of Marechal which used to be in the dining-room in
+Paris. I thought that Jean might be glad to have it."
+
+Roland exclaimed:
+
+"Why, yes, to be sure; I remember it perfectly. I saw it again last
+week. Your mother found it in her desk when she was tidying the papers.
+It was on Thursday or Friday. Do you remember, Louise? I was shaving
+myself when you took it out and laid in on a chair by your side with a
+pile of letters of which you burned half. Strange, isn't it, that you
+should have come across the portrait only two or three days before Jean
+heard of his legacy? If I believed in presentiments I should think that
+this was one."
+
+Mme. Roland calmly replied:
+
+"Yes, I know where it is. I will fetch it presently."
+
+Then she had lied! When she had said that very morning to her son
+who had asked her what had become of the miniature: "I don't exactly
+know--perhaps it is in my desk"--it was a lie! She had seen it, touched
+it, handled it, gazed at it but a few days since; and then she had
+hidden it away again in the secret drawer with those letters--his
+letters.
+
+Pierre looked at the mother who had lied to him; looked at her with
+the concentrated fury of a son who had been cheated, robbed of his most
+sacred affection, and with the jealous wrath of a man who, after long
+being blind, at last discovers a disgraceful betrayal. If he had been
+that woman's husband--and not her child--he would have gripped her by
+the wrists, seized her by the shoulders or the hair, have flung her
+on the ground, have hit her, hurt her, crushed her! And he might say
+nothing, do nothing, show nothing, reveal nothing. He was her son; he
+had no vengeance to take. And he had not been deceived.
+
+Nay, but she had deceived his tenderness, his pious respect. She owed to
+him to be without reproach, as all mothers owe it to their children. If
+the fury that boiled within him verged on hatred it was that he felt her
+to be even more guilty towards him than toward his father.
+
+The love of man and wife is a voluntary compact in which the one who
+proves weak is guilty only of perfidy; but when the wife is a mother her
+duty is a higher one, since nature has intrusted her with a race. If she
+fails, then she is cowardly, worthless, infamous.
+
+"I do not care," said Roland suddenly, stretching out his legs under
+the table, as he did every evening while he sipped his glass of
+black-currant brandy. "You may do worse than live idle when you have
+a snug little income. I hope Jean will have us to dinner in style now.
+Hang it all! If I have indigestion now and then I cannot help it."
+
+Then turning to his wife he added:
+
+"Go and fetch that portrait, little woman, as you have done your dinner.
+I should like to see it again myself."
+
+She rose, took a taper, and went. Then, after an absence which Pierre
+thought long, though she was not away more than three minutes, Mme.
+Roland returned smiling, and holding an old-fashioned gilt frame by the
+ring.
+
+"Here it is," said she, "I found it at once."
+
+The doctor was the first to put forth his hand; he took the picture,
+and holding it a little away from him, he examined it. Then, fully aware
+that his mother was looking at him, he slowly raised his eyes and fixed
+them on his brother to compare the faces. He could hardly refrain, in
+his violence, from saying: "Dear me! How like Jean!" And though he dared
+not utter the terrible words, he betrayed his thought by his manner of
+comparing the living face with the painted one.
+
+They had, no doubt, details in common; the same beard, the same brow;
+but nothing sufficiently marked to justify the assertion: "This is
+the father and that the son." It was rather a family likeness, a
+relationship of physiognomies in which the same blood courses. But what
+to Pierre was far more decisive than the common aspect of the faces, was
+that his mother had risen, had turned her back, and was pretending, too
+deliberately, to be putting the sugar basin and the liqueur bottle
+away in a cupboard. She understood that he knew, or at any rate had his
+suspicions.
+
+"Hand it on to me," said Roland.
+
+Pierre held out the miniature and his father drew the candle towards him
+to see it better; then, he murmured in a pathetic tone:
+
+"Poor fellow! To think that he was like that when we first knew him!
+Cristi! How time flies! He was a good-looking man, too, in those days,
+and with such a pleasant manner--was not he, Louise?"
+
+As his wife made no answer he went on:
+
+"And what an even temper! I never saw him put out. And now it is all at
+an end--nothing left of him--but what he bequeathed to Jean. Well, at
+any rate you may take your oath that that man was a good and faithful
+friend to the last. Even on his death-bed he did not forget us."
+
+Jean, in his turn, held out his hand for the picture. He gazed at it for
+a few minutes and then said regretfully:
+
+"I do not recognise it at all. I only remember him with white hair."
+
+He returned the miniature to his mother. She cast a hasty glance at
+it, looking away as if she were frightened; then in her usual voice she
+said:
+
+"It belongs to you now, my little Jean, as you are his heir. We will
+take it to your new rooms." And when they went into the drawing-room
+she placed the picture on the chimney-shelf by the clock, where it had
+formerly stood.
+
+Roland filled his pipe; Pierre and Jean lighted cigarettes. They
+commonly smoked them, Pierre while he paced the room, Jean, sunk in a
+deep arm-chair, with his legs crossed. Their father always sat astride a
+chair and spat from afar into the fire-place.
+
+Mme. Roland, on a low seat by a little table on which the lamp stood,
+embroidered, or knitted, or marked linen.
+
+This evening she was beginning a piece of worsted work, intended
+for Jean's lodgings. It was a difficult and complicated pattern, and
+required all her attention. Still, now and again, her eye, which was
+counting the stitches, glanced up swiftly and furtively at the little
+portrait of the dead as it leaned against the clock. And the doctor, who
+was striding to and fro across the little room in four or five steps,
+met his mother's look at each turn.
+
+It was as though they were spying on each other; and acute uneasiness,
+intolerable to be borne, clutched at Pierre's heart. He was saying to
+himself--at once tortured and glad:
+
+"She must be in misery at this moment if she knows that I guess!" And
+each time he reached the fire-place he stopped for a few seconds to look
+at Marechal's fair hair, and show quite plainly that he was haunted by
+a fixed idea. So that this little portrait, smaller than an opened palm,
+was like a living being, malignant and threatening, suddenly brought
+into this house and this family.
+
+Presently the street-door bell rang. Mme. Roland, always so
+self-possessed, started violently, betraying to her doctor son the
+anguish of her nerves. Then she said: "It must be Mme. Rosemilly;" and
+her eye again anxiously turned to the mantel-shelf.
+
+Pierre understood, or thought he understood, her fears and misery.
+A woman's eye is keen, a woman's wit is nimble, and her instincts
+suspicious. When this woman who was coming in should see the miniature
+of a man she did not know, she might perhaps at the first glance
+discover the likeness between this face and Jean. Then she would know
+and understand everything.
+
+He was seized with dread, a sudden and horrible dread of this shame
+being unveiled, and, turning about just as the door opened, he took the
+little painting and slipped it under the clock without being seen by his
+father and brother.
+
+When he met his mother's eyes again they seemed to him altered, dim, and
+haggard.
+
+"Good evening," said Mme. Rosemilly. "I have come to ask you for a cup
+of tea."
+
+But while they were bustling about her and asking after her health,
+Pierre made off, the door having been left open.
+
+When his absence was perceived they were all surprised. Jean, annoyed
+for the young widow, who, he thought, would be hurt, muttered: "What a
+bear!"
+
+Mme. Roland replied: "You must not be vexed with him; he is not very
+well to-day and tired with his excursion to Trouville."
+
+"Never mind," said Roland, "that is no reason for taking himself off
+like a savage."
+
+Mme. Rosemilly tried to smooth matters by saying: "Not at all, not at
+all. He has gone away in the English fashion; people always disappear in
+that way in fashionable circles if they want to leave early."
+
+"Oh, in fashionable circles, I dare say," replied Jean. "But a man does
+not treat his family _a l'Anglaise_, and my brother has done nothing
+else for some time past."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+For a week or two nothing occurred. The father went fishing; Jean, with
+his mother's help, was furnishing and settling himself; Pierre, very
+gloomy, never was seen excepting at meal-times.
+
+His father having asked him one evening: "Why the deuce do you always
+come in with a face as cheerful as a funeral? This is not the first time
+I have remarked it."
+
+The doctor replied: "The fact is I am terribly conscious of the burden
+of life."
+
+The old man did not have a notion what he meant, and with an aggrieved
+look he went on: "It really is too bad. Ever since we had the good luck
+to come into this legacy, every one seems unhappy. It is as though some
+accident had befallen us, as if we were in mourning for some one."
+
+"I am in mourning for some one," said Pierre.
+
+"You are? For whom?"
+
+"For some one you never knew, and of whom I was too fond."
+
+Roland imagined that his son alluded to some girl with whom he had had
+some love passages, and he said:
+
+"A woman, I suppose."
+
+"Yes, a woman."
+
+"Dead?"
+
+"No. Worse. Ruined!"
+
+"Ah!"
+
+Though he was startled by this unexpected confidence, in his wife's
+presence too, and by his son's strange tone about it, the old man made
+no further inquiries, for in his opinion such affairs did not concern a
+third person.
+
+Mme. Roland affected not to hear; she seemed ill and was very pale.
+Several times already her husband, surprised to see her sit down as if
+she were dropping into her chair, and to hear her gasp as if she could
+not draw her breath, had said:
+
+"Really, Louise, you look very ill; you tire yourself too much with
+helping Jean. Give yourself a little rest. Sacristi! The rascal is in no
+hurry, as he is a rich man."
+
+She shook her head without a word.
+
+But to-day her pallor was so great that Roland remarked on it again.
+
+"Come, come," said he, "this will not do at all, my dear old woman. You
+must take care of yourself." Then, addressing his son, "You surely must
+see that your mother is ill. Have you questioned her, at any rate?"
+
+Pierre replied: "No; I had not noticed that there was anything the
+matter with her."
+
+At this Roland was angry.
+
+"But it stares you in the face, confound you! What on earth is the good
+of your being a doctor if you cannot even see that your mother is out of
+sorts? Why, look at her, just look at her. Really, a man might die under
+his very eyes and this doctor would never think there was anything the
+matter!"
+
+Mme. Roland was panting for breath, and so white that her husband
+exclaimed:
+
+"She is going to faint."
+
+"No, no, it is nothing--I shall get better directly--it is nothing."
+
+Pierre had gone up to her and was looking at her steadily.
+
+"What ails you?" he said. And she repeated in an undertone:
+
+"Nothing, nothing--I assure you, nothing."
+
+Roland had gone to fetch some vinegar; he now returned, and handing the
+bottle to his son he said:
+
+"Here--do something to ease her. Have you felt her heart?"
+
+As Pierre bent over her to feel her pulse she pulled away her hand so
+vehemently that she struck it against a chair which was standing by.
+
+"Come," said he in icy tones, "let me see what I can do for you, as you
+are ill."
+
+Then she raised her arm and held it out to him. Her skin was burning,
+the blood throbbing in short irregular leaps.
+
+"You are certainly ill," he murmured. "You must take something to quiet
+you. I will write you a prescription." And as he wrote, stooping over
+the paper, a low sound of choked sighs, smothered, quick breathing and
+suppressed sobs made him suddenly look round at her. She was weeping,
+her hands covering her face.
+
+Roland, quite distracted, asked her:
+
+"Louise, Louise, what is the mater with you? What on earth ails you?"
+
+She did not answer, but seemed racked by some deep and dreadful grief.
+Her husband tried to take her hands from her face, but she resisted him,
+repeating:
+
+"No, no, no."
+
+He appealed to his son.
+
+"But what is the matter with her? I never saw her like this."
+
+"It is nothing," said Pierre, "she is a little hysterical."
+
+And he felt as if it were a comfort to him to see her suffering thus,
+as if this anguish mitigated his resentment and diminished his mother's
+load of opprobrium. He looked at her as a judge satisfied with his day's
+work.
+
+Suddenly she rose, rushed to the door with such a swift impulse that it
+was impossible to forestall or to stop her, and ran off to lock herself
+into her room.
+
+Roland and the doctor were left face to face.
+
+"Can you make head or tail of it?" said the father.
+
+"Oh, yes," said the other. "It is a little nervous disturbance, not
+alarming or surprising; such attacks may very likely recur from time to
+time."
+
+They did in fact recur, almost every day; and Pierre seemed to bring
+them on with a word, as if he had the clew to her strange and new
+disorder. He would discern in her face a lucid interval of peace and
+with the willingness of a torturer would, with a word, revive the
+anguish that had been lulled for a moment.
+
+But he, too, was suffering as cruelly as she. It was dreadful pain to
+him that he could no longer love her nor respect her, that he must put
+her on the rack. When he had laid bare the bleeding wound which he had
+opened in her woman's, her mother's heart, when he felt how wretched and
+desperate she was, he would go out alone, wander about the town, so torn
+by remorse, so broken by pity, so grieved to have thus hammered her with
+his scorn as her son, that he longed to fling himself into the sea and
+put an end to it all by drowning himself.
+
+Ah! How gladly now would he have forgiven her. But he could not, for he
+was incapable of forgetting. If only he could have desisted from making
+her suffer; but this again he could not, suffering as he did himself. He
+went home to his meals, full of relenting resolutions; then, as soon as
+he saw her, as soon as he met her eye--formerly so clear and frank, now
+so evasive, frightened, and bewildered--he struck at her in spite of
+himself, unable to suppress the treacherous words which would rise to
+his lips.
+
+This disgraceful secret, known to them alone, goaded him up against her.
+It was as a poison flowing in his veins and giving him an impulse to
+bite like a mad dog.
+
+And there was no one in the way now to hinder his reading her; Jean
+lived almost entirely in his new apartments, and only came home to
+dinner and to sleep every night at his father's.
+
+He frequently observed his brother's bitterness and violence, and
+attributed them to jealousy. He promised himself that some day he would
+teach him his place and give him a lesson, for life at home was becoming
+very painful as a result of these constant scenes. But as he now lived
+apart he suffered less from this brutal conduct, and his love of peace
+prompted him to patience. His good fortune, too, had turned his head,
+and he scarcely paused to think of anything which had no direct interest
+for himself. He would come in full of fresh little anxieties, full of
+the cut of a morning-coat, of the shape of a felt hat, of the proper
+size for his visiting-cards. And he talked incessantly of all the
+details of his house--the shelves fixed in his bed-room cupboard to keep
+linen on, the pegs to be put up in the entrance hall, the electric bells
+contrived to prevent illicit visitors to his lodgings.
+
+It had been settled that on the day when he should take up his abode
+there they should make an excursion to Saint Jouin, and return after
+dining there, to drink tea in his rooms. Roland wanted to go by water,
+but the distance and the uncertainty of reaching it in a sailing boat if
+there should be a head-wind, made them reject his plan, and a break was
+hired for the day.
+
+They set out at ten to get there to breakfast. The dusty high road lay
+across the plain of Normandy, which, by its gentle undulations, dotted
+with farms embowered in trees, wears the aspect of an endless park. In
+the vehicle, as it jogged on at the slow trot of a pair of heavy horses,
+sat the four Rolands, Mme. Rosemilly, and Captain Beausire, all silent,
+deafened by the rumble of the wheels, and with their eyes shut to keep
+out the clouds of dust.
+
+It was harvest-time. Alternating with the dark hue of clover and the raw
+green of beet-root, the yellow corn lighted up the landscape with gleams
+of pale gold; the fields looked as if they had drunk in the sunshine
+which poured down on them. Here and there the reapers were at work,
+and in the plots where the scythe had been put in the men might be seen
+see-sawing as they swept the level soil with the broad, wing-shaped
+blade.
+
+After a two-hours' drive the break turned off to the left, past a
+windmill at work--a melancholy, gray wreck, half rotten and doomed, the
+last survivor of its ancient race; then it went into a pretty inn yard,
+and drew up at the door of a smart little house, a hostelry famous in
+those parts.
+
+The mistress, well known as "La belle Alphonsine," came smiling to the
+threshold, and held out her hand to the two ladies who hesitated to take
+the high step.
+
+Some strangers were already at breakfast under a tent by a grass-plot
+shaded by apple trees--Parisians, who had come from Etretat; and from
+the house came sounds of voices, laughter, and the clatter of plates and
+pans.
+
+They were to eat in a room, as the outer dining-halls were all full.
+Roland suddenly caught sight of some shrimping nets hanging against the
+wall.
+
+"Ah! ha!" cried he, "you catch prawns here?"
+
+"Yes," replied Beausire. "Indeed it is the place on all the coast where
+most are taken."
+
+"First-rate! Suppose we try to catch some after breakfast."
+
+As it happened it would be low tide at three o'clock, so it was settled
+that they should all spend the afternoon among the rocks, hunting
+prawns.
+
+They made a light breakfast, as a precaution against the tendency of
+blood to the head when they should have their feet in the water. They
+also wished to reserve an appetite for dinner, which had been ordered on
+a grand scale and to be ready at six o'clock when they came in.
+
+Roland could not sit still for impatience. He wanted to buy the nets
+specially constructed for fishing prawns, not unlike those used for
+catching butterflies in the country. Their name on the French coast is
+_lanets_; they are netted bags on a circular wooden frame, at the end of
+a long pole. Alphonsine, still smiling, was happy to lend them. Then she
+helped the two ladies to make an impromptu change of toilet, so as
+not to spoil their dresses. She offered them skirts, coarse worsted
+stockings and hemp shoes. The men took off their socks and went to the
+shoemaker's to buy wooden shoes instead.
+
+Then they set out, the nets over their shoulders and creels on their
+backs. Mme. Rosemilly was very sweet in this costume, with an unexpected
+charm of countrified audacity. The skirt which Alphonsine had lent her,
+coquettishly tucked up and firmly stitched so as to allow of her running
+and jumping fearlessly on the rocks, displayed her ankle and lower
+calf--the firm calf of a strong and agile little woman. Her dress was
+loose to give freedom to her movements, and to cover her head she
+had found an enormous garden hat of coarse yellow straw with an
+extravagantly broad brim; and to this, a bunch of tamarisk pinned in to
+cock it on one side, gave a very dashing and military effect.
+
+Jean, since he had come into his fortune, had asked himself every day
+whether or no he should marry her. Each time he saw her he made up his
+mind to ask her to be his wife, and then, as soon as he was alone again,
+he considered that by waiting he would have time to reflect. She was now
+less rich than he, for she had but twelve thousand francs a year; but it
+was in real estate, in farms and lands near the docks in Havre; and
+this by-and-bye might be worth a great deal. Their fortunes were
+thus approximately equal, and certainly the young widow attracted him
+greatly.
+
+As he watched her walking in front of him that day he said to himself:
+
+"I must really decide; I cannot do better, I am sure."
+
+They went down a little ravine, sloping from the village to the cliff,
+and the cliff, at the end of this comb, rose about eighty metres above
+the sea. Framed between the green slopes to the right and left, a great
+triangle of silvery blue water could be seen in the distance, and a
+sail, scarcely visible, looked like an insect out there. The sky, pale
+with light, was so merged into one with the water that it was impossible
+to see where one ended and the other began; and the two women, walking
+in front of the men, stood out against the bright background, their
+shapes clearly defined in their closely-fitting dresses.
+
+Jean, with a sparkle in his eye, watched the smart ankle, the neat leg,
+the supple waist, and the coquettish broad hat of Mme. Rosemilly as they
+fled away from him. And this flight fired his ardour, urging him on to
+the sudden determination which comes to hesitating and timid natures.
+The warm air, fragrant with sea-coast odours--gorse, clover, and thyme,
+mingling with the salt smell of the rocks at low tide--excited him still
+more, mounting to his brain; and every moment he felt a little more
+determined, at every step, at every glance he cast at the alert figure;
+he made up his mind to delay no longer, to tell her that he loved her
+and hoped to marry her. The prawn-fishing would favour him by affording
+him an opportunity; and it would be a pretty scene too, a pretty spot
+for love-making--their feet in a pool of limpid water while they watched
+the long feelers of the shrimps lurking under the wrack.
+
+When they had reached the end of the comb and the edge of the cliff,
+they saw a little footpath slanting down the face of it; and below them,
+about half-way between the sea and the foot of the precipice, an amazing
+chaos of enormous boulders tumbled over and piled one above the other
+on a sort of grassy and undulating plain which extended as far as they
+could see to the southward, formed by an ancient landslip. On this long
+shelf of brushwood and grass, disrupted, as it seemed, by the shocks
+of a volcano, the fallen rocks seemed the wreck of a great ruined city
+which had once looked out on the ocean, sheltered by the long white wall
+of the overhanging cliff.
+
+"That is fine!" exclaimed Mme. Rosemilly, standing still. Jean had come
+up with her, and with a beating heart offered his hand to help her down
+the narrow steps cut in the rock.
+
+They went on in front, while Beausire, squaring himself on his little
+legs, gave his arm to Mme. Roland, who felt giddy at the gulf before
+her.
+
+Roland and Pierre came last, and the doctor had to drag his father down,
+for his brain reeled so that he could only slip down sitting, from step
+to step.
+
+The two young people who led the way went fast till on a sudden they
+saw, by the side of a wooden bench which afforded a resting-place about
+half-way down the slope, a thread of clear water, springing from a
+crevice in the cliff. It fell into a hollow as large as a washing basin
+which it had worn in the stone; then, falling in a cascade, hardly two
+feet high, it trickled across the footpath which it had carpeted with
+cresses, and was lost among the briers and grass on the raised shelf
+where the boulders were piled.
+
+"Oh, I am so thirsty!" cried Mme. Rosemilly.
+
+But how could she drink? She tried to catch the water in her hand, but
+it slipped away between her fingers. Jean had an idea; he placed a stone
+on the path and on this she knelt down to put her lips to the spring
+itself, which was thus on the same level.
+
+When she raised her head, covered with myriads of tiny drops, sprinkled
+all over her face, her hair, her eye-lashes, and her dress, Jean bent
+over her and murmured: "How pretty you look!"
+
+She answered in the tone in which she might have scolded a child:
+
+"Will you be quiet?"
+
+These were the first words of flirtation they had ever exchanged.
+
+"Come," said Jean, much agitated. "Let us go on before they come up with
+us."
+
+For in fact they could see quite near them now Captain Beausire as
+he came down, backward, so as to give both hands to Mme. Roland; and
+further up, further off, Roland still letting himself slip, lowering
+himself on his hams and clinging on with his hands and elbows at
+the speed of a tortoise, Pierre keeping in front of him to watch his
+movements.
+
+The path, now less steep, was here almost a road, zigzagging between the
+huge rocks which had at some former time rolled from the hill-top. Mme.
+Rosemilly and Jean set off at a run and they were soon on the beach.
+They crossed it and reached the rocks, which stretched in a long and
+flat expanse covered with sea-weed, and broken by endless gleaming
+pools. The ebbed waters lay beyond, very far away, across this plain of
+slimy weed, of a black and shining olive green.
+
+Jean rolled up his trousers above his calf, and his sleeves to his
+elbows, that he might get wet without caring; then saying: "Forward!" he
+leaped boldly into the first tide-pool they came to.
+
+The lady, more cautious, though fully intending to go in too, presently,
+made her way round the little pond, stepping timidly, for she slipped on
+the grassy weed.
+
+"Do you see anything?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, I see your face reflected in the water."
+
+"If that is all you see, you will not have good fishing."
+
+He murmured tenderly in reply:
+
+"Of all fishing it is that I should like best to succeed in."
+
+She laughed: "Try; you will see how it will slip through your net."
+
+"But yet--if you will?"
+
+"I will see you catch prawns--and nothing else--for the moment."
+
+"You are cruel--let us go a little farther, there are none here."
+
+He gave her his hand to steady her on the slippery rocks. She leaned on
+him rather timidly, and he suddenly felt himself overpowered by love and
+insurgent with passion, as if the fever that had been incubating in him
+had waited till to-day to declare its presence.
+
+They soon came to a deeper rift, in which long slender weeds,
+fantastically tinted, like floating green and rose-coloured hair, were
+swaying under the quivering water as it trickled off to the distant sea
+through some invisible crevice.
+
+Mme. Rosemilly cried out: "Look, look, I see one, a big one. A very
+big one, just there!" He saw it too, and stepped boldly into the pool,
+though he got wet up to the waist. But the creature, waving its long
+whiskers, gently retired in front of the net. Jean drove it towards the
+sea-weed, making sure of his prey. When it found itself blockaded it
+rose with a dart over the net, shot across the mere, and was gone. The
+young woman, who was watching the chase in great excitement, could not
+help exclaiming: "Oh! Clumsy!"
+
+He was vexed, and without a moment's thought dragged his net over a hole
+full of weed. As he brought it to the surface again he saw in it three
+large transparent prawns, caught blindfold in their hiding-place.
+
+He offered them in triumph to Mme. Rosemilly, who was afraid to touch
+them, for fear of the sharp, serrated crest which arms their heads.
+However, she made up her mind to it, and taking them up by the tip of
+their long whiskers she dropped them one by one into her creel, with a
+little seaweed to keep them alive. Then, having found a shallower pool
+of water, she stepped in with some hesitation, for the cold plunge of
+her feet took her breath away, and began to fish on her own account. She
+was dextrous and artful, with the light hand and the hunter's instinct
+which are indispensable. At almost every dip she brought up some prawns,
+beguiled and surprised by her ingeniously gentle pursuit.
+
+Jean now caught nothing; but he followed her, step by step, touched
+her now and again, bent over her, pretended great distress at his own
+awkwardness, and besought her to teach him.
+
+"Show me," he kept saying. "Show me how."
+
+And then, as their two faces were reflected side by side in water so
+clear that the black weeds at the bottom made a mirror, Jean smiled at
+the face which looked up at him from the depth, and now and then from
+his finger-tips blew it a kiss which seemed to light upon it.
+
+"Oh! how tiresome you are!" she exclaimed. "My dear fellow, you should
+never do two things at once."
+
+He replied: "I am only doing one--loving you."
+
+She drew herself up and said gravely:
+
+"What has come over you these ten minutes; have you lost your wits?"
+
+"No, I have not lost my wits. I love you, and at last I dare to tell you
+so."
+
+They were at this moment both standing in the salt pool wet half-way up
+to their knees and with dripping hands, holding their nets. They looked
+into each other's eyes.
+
+She went on in a tone of amused annoyance.
+
+"How very ill-advised to tell me here and now! Could you not wait till
+another day instead of spoiling my fishing?"
+
+"Forgive me," he murmured, "but I could not longer hold my peace. I
+have loved you a long time. To-day you have intoxicated me and I lost my
+reason."
+
+Then suddenly she seemed to have resigned herself to talk business and
+think no more of pleasure.
+
+"Let us sit down on that stone," said she, "we can talk more
+comfortably." They scrambled up a rather high boulder, and when they had
+settled themselves side by side in the bright sunshine, she began again:
+
+"My good friend, you are no longer a child, and I am not a young girl.
+we both know perfectly well what we are about and we can weigh the
+consequences of our actions. If you have made up your mind to make love
+to me to-day I must naturally infer that you wish to marry me."
+
+He was not prepared for this matter-of-fact statement of the case, and
+he answered blandly:
+
+"Why, yes."
+
+"Have you mentioned it to your father and mother?"
+
+"No, I wanted to know first whether you would accept me."
+
+She held out her hand, which was still wet, and as he eagerly clasped
+it:
+
+"I am ready and willing," she said. "I believe you to be kind and
+true-hearted. But remember, I should not like to displease your
+parents."
+
+"Oh, do you think that my mother has never foreseen it, or that she
+would not be as fond of you as she is if she did not hope that you and I
+should marry?"
+
+"That is true. I am a little disturbed."
+
+They said no more. He, for his part, was amazed at her being so little
+disturbed, so rational. He had expected pretty little flirting ways,
+refusals which meant yes, a whole coquettish comedy of love chequered
+by prawn-fishing in the splashing water. And it was all over; he was
+pledged, married with twenty words. They had no more to say about it
+since they were agreed, and they now sat, both somewhat embarrassed by
+what had so swiftly passed between them; a little perplexed, indeed, not
+daring to speak, not daring to fish, not knowing what to do.
+
+Roland's voice rescued them.
+
+"This way, this way, children. Come and watch Beausire. The fellow is
+positively clearing out the sea!"
+
+The captain had, in fact, had a wonderful haul. Wet above his hips he
+waded from pool to pool, recognizing the likeliest spots at a glance,
+and searching all the hollows hidden under sea-weed, with a steady
+slow sweep of his net. And the beautiful transparent, sandy-gray prawns
+skipped in his palm as he picked them out of the net with a dry jerk
+and put them into his creel. Mme. Rosemilly, surprised and delighted,
+remained at his side, almost forgetful of her promise to Jean, who
+followed them in a dream, giving herself up entirely to the childish
+enjoyment of pulling the creatures out from among the waving
+sea-grasses.
+
+Roland suddenly exclaimed:
+
+"Ah, here comes Mme. Roland to join us."
+
+She had remained at first on the beach with Pierre, for they had neither
+of them any wish to play at running about among the rocks and paddling
+in the tide-pools; and yet they had felt doubtful about staying
+together. She was afraid of him, and her son was afraid of her and of
+himself; afraid of his own cruelty which he could not control. But they
+sat down side by side on the stones. And both of them, under the heat of
+the sun, mitigated by the sea-breeze, gazing at the wide, fair horizon
+of blue water streaked and shot with silver, thought as if in unison:
+"How delightful this would have been--once."
+
+She did not venture to speak to Pierre, knowing that he would return
+some hard answer; and he dared not address his mother, knowing that
+in spite of himself he should speak violently. He sat twitching the
+water-worn pebbles with the end of his cane, switching them and turning
+them over. She, with a vague look in her eyes, had picked up three or
+four little stones and was slowly and mechanically dropping them from
+one hand into the other. Then her unsettled gaze, wandering over the
+scene before her, discerned, among the weedy rocks, her son Jean fishing
+with Mme. Rosemilly. She looked at them, watching their movements, dimly
+understanding, with motherly instinct, that they were talking as they
+did not talk every day. She saw them leaning over side by side when they
+looked into the water, standing face to face when they questioned their
+hearts, then scrambled up the rock and seated themselves to come to an
+understanding. Their figures stood out very sharply, looking as if they
+were alone in the middle of the wide horizon, and assuming a sort of
+symbolic dignity in that vast expanse of sky and sea and cliff.
+
+Pierre, too, was looking at them, and a harsh laugh suddenly broke form
+his lips. Without turning to him Mme. Roland said:
+
+"What is it?"
+
+He spoke with a sneer.
+
+"I am learning. Learning how a man lays himself out to be cozened by his
+wife."
+
+She flushed with rage, exasperated by the insinuation she believed was
+intended.
+
+"In whose name do you say that?"
+
+"In Jean's, by Heaven! It is immensely funny to see those two."
+
+She murmured in a low voice, tremulous with feeling: "O Pierre, how
+cruel you are! That woman is honesty itself. Your brother could not find
+a better."
+
+He laughed aloud, a hard, satirical laugh:
+
+"Ha! hah! Hah! Honesty itself! All wives are honesty itself--and all
+husbands are--betrayed." And he shouted with laughter.
+
+She made no reply, but rose, hastily went down the sloping beach, and
+at the risk of tumbling into one of the rifts hidden by the sea-weed, of
+breaking a leg or an arm, she hastened, almost running, plunging through
+the pools without looking, straight to her other son.
+
+Seeing her approach, Jean called out:
+
+"Well, mother? So you have made the effort?"
+
+Without a word she seized him by the arm, as if to say: "Save me,
+protect me!"
+
+He saw her agitation, and greatly surprised he said:
+
+"How pale you are! What is the matter?"
+
+She stammered out:
+
+"I was nearly falling; I was frightened at the rocks."
+
+So then Jean guided her, supported her, explained the sport to her that
+she might take an interest in it. But as she scarcely heeded him, and as
+he was bursting with the desire to confide in some one, he led her away
+and in a low voice said to her:
+
+"Guess what I have done!"
+
+"But--what--I don't know."
+
+"Guess."
+
+"I cannot. I don't know."
+
+"Well, I have told Mme. Rosemilly that I wish to marry her."
+
+She did not answer, for her brain was buzzing, her mind in such distress
+that she could scarcely take it in. She echoed: "Marry her?"
+
+"Yes. Have I done well? She is charming, do not you think?"
+
+"Yes, charming. You have done very well."
+
+"Then you approve?"
+
+"Yes, I approve."
+
+"But how strangely you say so! I could fancy that--that you were not
+glad."
+
+"Yes, indeed, I am--very glad."
+
+"Really and truly?"
+
+"Really and truly."
+
+And to prove it she threw her arms round him and kissed him heartily,
+with warm motherly kisses. Then, when she had wiped her eyes, which
+were full of tears, she observed upon the beach a man lying flat at full
+length like a dead body, his face hidden against the stones; it was the
+other one, Pierre, sunk in thought and desperation.
+
+At this she led her little Jean farther away, quite to the edge of the
+waves, and there they talked for a long time of this marriage on which
+he had set his heart.
+
+The rising tide drove them back to rejoin the fishers, and then they
+all made their way to the shore. They roused Pierre, who pretended to
+be sleeping; and then came a long dinner washed down with many kinds of
+wine.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+In the break, on their way home, all the men dozed excepting Jean.
+Beausire and Roland dropped every five minutes on to a neighbour's
+shoulder which repelled them with a shove. Then they sat up, ceased
+to snore, opened their eyes, muttered, "A lovely evening!" and almost
+immediately fell over on the other side.
+
+By the time they reached Havre their drowsiness was so heavy that they
+had great difficulty in shaking it off, and Beausire even refused to go
+to Jean's rooms where tea was waiting for them. He had to be set down at
+his own door.
+
+The young lawyer was to sleep in his new abode for the first time; and
+he was full of rather puerile glee which had suddenly come over him, at
+being able, that very evening, to show his betrothed the rooms she was
+so soon to inhabit.
+
+The maid had gone to bed, Mme. Roland having declared that she herself
+would boil the water and make the tea, for she did not like the servants
+to be kept up for fear of fire.
+
+No one had yet been into the lodgings but herself, Jean, and the
+workmen, that the surprise might be the greater at their being so
+pretty.
+
+Jean begged them all to wait a moment in the ante-room. He wanted to
+light the lamps and candles, and he left Mme. Rosemilly in the dark with
+his father and brother; then he cried: "Come in!" opening the double
+door to its full width.
+
+The glass gallery, lighted by a chandelier and little coloured lamps
+hidden among palms, india-rubber plants, and flowers, was first seen
+like a scene on the stage. There was a spasm of surprise. Roland,
+dazzled by such luxury, muttered an oath, and felt inclined to clap his
+hands as if it were a pantomime scene. They then went into the first
+drawing-room, a small room hung with dead gold and furnished to match.
+The larger drawing-room--the lawyer's consulting-room, very simple, hung
+with light salmon-colour--was dignified in style.
+
+Jean sat down in his arm-chair in front of his writing-table loaded with
+books, and in a solemn, rather stilted tone, he began:
+
+"Yes, madame, the letter of the law is explicit, and, assuming the
+consent I promised you, it affords me absolute certainty that the matter
+we discussed will come to a happy conclusion within three months."
+
+He looked at Mme. Rosemilly, who began to smile and glanced at Mme.
+Roland. Mme. Roland took her hand and pressed it. Jean, in high spirits,
+cut a caper like a school-boy, exclaiming: "Hah! How well the voice
+carries in this room; it would be capital for speaking in."
+
+And he declaimed:
+
+"If humanity alone, if the instinct of natural benevolence which we feel
+towards all who suffer, were the motive of the acquittal we expect of
+you, I should appeal to your compassion, gentlemen of the jury, to your
+hearts as fathers and as men; but we have law on our side, and it is the
+point of law only which we shall submit to your judgment."
+
+Pierre was looking at this home which might have been his, and he was
+restive under his brother's frolics, thinking him really too silly and
+witless.
+
+Mme. Roland opened a door on the right.
+
+"This is the bed-room," said she.
+
+She had devoted herself to its decoration with all her mother's love.
+The hangings were of Rouen cretonne imitating old Normandy chintz, and
+the Louis XV. design--a shepherdess, in a medallion held in the beaks
+of a pair of doves--gave the walls, curtains, bed, and arm-chairs a
+festive, rustic style that was extremely pretty!
+
+"Oh, how charming!" Mme. Rosemilly exclaimed, becoming a little serious
+as they entered the room.
+
+"Do you like it?" asked Jean.
+
+"Immensely."
+
+"You cannot imagine how glad I am."
+
+They looked at each other for a second, with confiding tenderness in the
+depths of their eyes.
+
+She had felt a little awkward, however, a little abashed, in this room
+which was to be hers. She noticed as she went in that the bed was a
+large one, quite a family bed, chosen by Mme. Roland, who had no doubt
+foreseen and hoped that her son should soon marry; and this motherly
+foresight pleased her, for it seemed to tell her that she was expected
+in the family.
+
+When they had returned to the drawing-room Jean abruptly threw open the
+door to the left, showing the circular dining-room with three windows,
+and decorated to imitate a Chinese lantern. Mother and son had here
+lavished all the fancy of which they were capable, and the room, with
+its bamboo furniture, its mandarins, jars, silk hangings glistening
+with gold, transparent blinds threaded with beads looking like drops
+of water, fans nailed to the wall to drape the hangings on, screens,
+swords, masks, cranes made of real feathers, and a myriad trifles
+in china, wood, paper, ivory, mother-of-pearl, and bronze, had
+the pretentious and extravagant aspect which unpractised hands and
+uneducated eyes inevitably stamp on things which need the utmost tact,
+taste, and artistic education. Nevertheless it was the most admired;
+only Pierre made some observations with rather bitter irony which hurt
+his brother's feelings.
+
+Pyramids of fruit stood on the table and monuments of cakes. No one was
+hungry; they picked at the fruit and nibbled at the cakes rather than
+ate them. Then, at the end of about an hour, Mme. Rosemilly begged to
+take leave. It was decided that old Roland should accompany her home and
+set out with her forthwith; while Mme. Roland, in the maid's absence,
+should cast a maternal eye over the house and see that her son had all
+he needed.
+
+"Shall I come back for you?" asked Roland.
+
+She hesitated a moment and then said: "No, dear old man; go to bed.
+Pierre will see me home."
+
+As soon as they were gone she blew out the candles, locked up the cakes,
+the sugar, and liqueurs in a cupboard of which she gave the key to Jean;
+then she went into the bed-room, turned down the bed, saw that there
+was fresh water in the water-bottle, and that the window was properly
+closed.
+
+Pierre and Jean had remained in the little outer drawing-room; the
+younger still sore under the criticism passed on his taste, and the
+elder chafing more and more at seeing his brother in this abode. They
+both sat smoking without a word. Pierre suddenly started to his feet.
+
+"Cristi!" he exclaimed. "The widow looked very jaded this evening. Long
+excursions do not improve her."
+
+Jean felt his spirit rising with one of those sudden and furious rages
+which boil up in easy-going natures when they are wounded to the quick.
+He could hardly find breath to speak, so fierce was his excitement, and
+he stammered out:
+
+"I forbid you ever again to say 'the widow' when you speak of Mme.
+Rosemilly."
+
+Pierre turned on him haughtily:
+
+"You are giving me an order, I believe. Are you gone mad by any chance?"
+
+Jean had pulled himself up.
+
+"I am not gone mad, but I have had enough of your manners to me."
+
+Pierre sneered: "To you? And are you any part of Mme. Rosemilly?"
+
+"You are to know that Mme. Rosemilly is about to become my wife."
+
+Pierre laughed the louder.
+
+"Ah! ha! very good. I understand now why I should no longer speak of
+her as 'the widow.' But you have taken a strange way of announcing your
+engagement."
+
+"I forbid any jesting about it. Do you hear? I forbid it."
+
+Jean had come close up to him, pale, and his voice quivering with
+exasperation at this irony levelled at the woman he loved and had
+chosen.
+
+But on a sudden Pierre turned equally furious. All the accumulation of
+impotent rage, of suppressed malignity, of rebellion choked down for so
+long past, all his unspoken despair mounted to his brain, bewildering it
+like a fit.
+
+"How dare you? How dare you? I order you to hold your tongue--do you
+hear? I order you."
+
+Jean, startled by his violence, was silent for a few seconds, trying
+in the confusion of mind which comes of rage to hit on the thing, the
+phrase, the word, which might stab his brother to the heart. He went on,
+with an effort to control himself that he might aim true, and to speak
+slowly that the words might hit more keenly:
+
+"I have known for a long time that you were jealous of me, ever since
+the day when you first began to talk of 'the widow' because you knew it
+annoyed me."
+
+Pierre broke into one of those strident and scornful laughs which were
+common with him.
+
+"Ah! ah! Good Heavens! Jealous of you! I? I? And of what? Good God! Of
+your person or your mind?"
+
+But Jean knew full well that he had touched the wound in his soul.
+
+"Yes, jealous of me--jealous from your childhood up. And it became fury
+when you saw that this woman liked me best and would have nothing to say
+to you."
+
+Pierre, stung to the quick by this assumption, stuttered out:
+
+"I? I? Jealous of you? And for the sake of that goose, that gaby, that
+simpleton?"
+
+Jean, seeing that he was aiming true, went on:
+
+"And how about the day when you tried to pull me round in the Pearl?
+And all you said in her presence to show off? Why, you are bursting
+with jealousy! And when this money was left to me you were maddened, you
+hated me, you showed it in every possible way, and made every one suffer
+for it; not an hour passes that you do not spit out the bile that is
+choking you."
+
+Pierre clenched his fist in his fury with an almost irresistible impulse
+to fly at his brother and seize him by the throat.
+
+"Hold your tongue," he cried. "At least say nothing about that money."
+
+Jean went on:
+
+"Why your jealousy oozes out at every pore. You never say a word to my
+father, my mother, or me that does not declare it plainly. You pretend
+to despise me because you are jealous. You try to pick a quarrel with
+every one because you are jealous. And now that I am rich you can no
+longer contain yourself; you have become venomous, you torture our poor
+mother as if she were to blame!"
+
+Pierre had retired step by step as far as the fire-place, his mouth half
+open, his eyes glaring, a prey to one of those mad fits of passion in
+which a crime is committed.
+
+He said again in a lower tone, gasping for breath: "Hold your
+tongue--for God's sake hold your tongue!"
+
+"No! For a long time I have been wanting to give you my whole mind! You
+have given me an opening--so much the worse for you. I love the woman;
+you know it, and laugh her to scorn in my presence--so much the worse
+for you. But I will break your viper's fangs, I tell you. I will make
+you treat me with respect."
+
+"With respect--you?"
+
+"Yes--me."
+
+"Respect you? You who have brought shame on us all by your greed."
+
+"You say--? Say it again--again."
+
+"I say that it does not do to accept one man's fortune when another is
+reputed to be your father."
+
+Jean stood rigid, not understanding, dazed by the insinuation he
+scented.
+
+"What? Repeat that once more."
+
+"I say--what everybody is muttering, what every gossip is blabbing--that
+you are the son of the man who left you his fortune. Well, then--a
+decent man does not take the money which brings dishonour on his
+mother."
+
+"Pierre! Pierre! Pierre! Think what you are saying. You? Is it you who
+give utterance to this infamous thing?"
+
+"Yes, I. It is I. Have you not seen me crushed with woe this month past,
+spending my nights without sleep and my days in lurking out of sight
+like an animal? I hardly know what I am doing or what will become of
+me, so miserable am I, so crazed with shame and grief; for first I
+guessed--and now I know it."
+
+"Pierre! Be silent. Mother is in the next room. Remember she may
+hear--she must hear."
+
+But Pierre felt that he must unburden his heart. He told Jean all his
+suspicions, his arguments, his struggles, his assurance, and the history
+of the portrait--which had again disappeared. He spoke in short broken
+sentences almost without coherence--the language of a sleep-walker.
+
+He seemed to have quite forgotten Jean, and his mother in the adjoining
+room. He talked as if no one were listening, because he must talk,
+because he had suffered too much and smothered and closed the wound
+too tightly. It had festered like an abscess and the abscess had burst,
+splashing every one. He was pacing the room in the way he almost always
+did, his eyes fixed on vacancy, gesticulating in a frenzy of despair,
+his voice choked with tearless sobs and revulsions of self-loathing; he
+spoke as if he were making a confession of his own misery and that
+of his nearest kin, as though he were casting his woes to the deaf,
+invisible winds which bore away his words.
+
+Jean, distracted and almost convinced on a sudden by his brother's blind
+vehemence, was leaning against the door behind which, as he guessed,
+their mother had heard them.
+
+She could not get out, she must come through his room. She had not come;
+then it was because she dare not.
+
+Suddenly Pierre stamped his foot.
+
+"I am a brute," he cried, "to have told you this."
+
+And he fled, bare-headed, down the stairs.
+
+The noise of the front-door closing with a slam roused Jean from the
+deep stupor into which he had fallen. Some seconds had elapsed, longer
+than hours, and his spirit had sunk into the numb torpor of idiocy.
+He was conscious, indeed, that he must presently think and act, but he
+would wait, refusing to understand, to know, to remember, out of
+fear, weakness, cowardice. He was one of those procrastinators who put
+everything off till to-morrow; and when he was compelled to come to
+a decision then and there, still he instinctively tried to gain a few
+minutes.
+
+But the perfect silence which now reigned, after Pierre's vociferations,
+the sudden stillness of walls and furniture, with the bright light of
+six wax candles and two lamps, terrified him so greatly that he suddenly
+longed to make his escape too.
+
+Then he roused his brain, roused his heart, and tried to reflect.
+
+Never in his life had he had to face a difficulty. There are men who let
+themselves glide onward like running water. He had been duteous over his
+tasks for fear of punishment, and had got through his legal studies
+with credit because his existence was tranquil. Everything in the world
+seemed to him quite natural and never aroused his particular attention.
+He loved order, steadiness, and peace, by temperament, his nature having
+no complications; and face to face with this catastrophe, he found
+himself like a man who has fallen into the water and cannot swim.
+
+At first he tried to be incredulous. His brother had told a lie, out of
+hatred and jealousy. But yet, how could he have been so vile as to say
+such a thing of their mother if he had not himself been distraught by
+despair? Besides, stamped on Jean's ear, on his sight, on his nerves,
+on the inmost fibres of his flesh, were certain words, certain tones of
+anguish, certain gestures of Pierre's, so full of suffering that they
+were irresistibly convincing; as incontrovertible as certainty itself.
+
+He was too much crushed to stir or even to will. His distress became
+unbearable; and he knew that behind the door was his mother who had
+heard everything and was waiting.
+
+What was she doing? Not a movement, not a shudder, not a breath, not a
+sigh revealed the presence of a living creature behind that panel. Could
+she have run away? But how? If she had run away--she must have jumped
+out of the window into the street. A shock of terror roused him--so
+violent and imperious that he drove the door in rather than opened it,
+and flung himself into the bed-room.
+
+It was apparently empty, lighted by a single candle standing on the
+chest of drawers.
+
+Jean flew to the window; it was shut and the shutters bolted. He looked
+about him, peering into the dark corners with anxious eyes, and he then
+noticed that the bed-curtains were drawn. He ran forward and opened
+them. His mother was lying on the bed, her face buried in the pillow
+which she had pulled up over her ears that she might hear no more.
+
+At first he thought she had smothered herself. Then, taking her by the
+shoulders, he turned her over without her leaving go of the pillow,
+which covered her face, and in which she had set her teeth to keep
+herself from crying out.
+
+But the mere touch of this rigid form, of those arms so convulsively
+clinched, communicated to him the shock of her unspeakable torture. The
+strength and determination with which she clutched the linen case full
+of feathers with her hands and teeth, over her mouth and eyes and ears,
+that he might neither see her nor speak to her, gave him an idea, by the
+turmoil it roused in him, of the pitch suffering may rise to, and his
+heart, his simple heart, was torn with pity. He was no judge, not he;
+not even a merciful judge; he was a man full of weakness and a son full
+of love. He remembered nothing of what his brother had told him;
+he neither reasoned nor argued, he merely laid his two hands on his
+mother's inert body, and not being able to pull the pillow away, he
+exclaimed, kissing her dress:
+
+"Mother, mother, my poor mother, look at me!"
+
+She would have seemed to be dead but that an almost imperceptible
+shudder ran through all her limbs, the vibration of a strained cord. And
+he repeated:
+
+"Mother, mother, listen to me. It is not true. I know that it is not
+true."
+
+A spasm seemed to come over her, a fit of suffocation; then she suddenly
+began to sob into the pillow. Her sinews relaxed, her rigid muscles
+yielded, her fingers gave way and left go of the linen; and he uncovered
+her face.
+
+She was pale, quite colourless; and from under her closed lids tears
+were stealing. He threw his arms round her neck and kissed her eyes,
+slowly, with long heart-broken kisses, wet with her tears; and he said
+again and again:
+
+"Mother, my dear mother, I know it is not true. Do not cry; I know it.
+It is not true."
+
+She raised herself, she sat up, looked in his face, and with an effort
+of courage such as it must cost in some cases to kill one's self, she
+said:
+
+"No, my child; it is true."
+
+And they remained speechless, each in the presence of the other. For
+some minutes she seemed again to be suffocating, craning her throat
+and throwing back her head to get breath; then she once more mastered
+herself and went on:
+
+"It is true, my child. Why lie about it? It is true. You would not
+believe me if I denied it."
+
+She looked like a crazy creature. Overcome by alarm, he fell on his
+knees by the bedside, murmuring:
+
+"Hush, mother, be silent." She stood up with terrible determination and
+energy.
+
+"I have nothing more to say, my child. Good-bye." And she went towards
+the door.
+
+He threw his arms about her exclaiming:
+
+"What are you doing, mother; where are you going?"
+
+"I do not know. How should I know--There is nothing left for me to do,
+now that I am alone."
+
+She struggled to be released. Holding her firmly, he could find only
+words to say again and again:
+
+"Mother, mother, mother!" And through all her efforts to free herself
+she was saying:
+
+"No, no. I am not your mother now, poor boy--good-bye."
+
+It struck him clearly that if he let her go now he should never see her
+again; lifting her up in his arms he carried her to an arm-chair, forced
+her into it, and kneeling down in front of her barred her in with his
+arms.
+
+"You shall not quit this spot, mother. I love you and I will keep you! I
+will keep you always--I love you and you are mine."
+
+She murmured in a dejected tone:
+
+"No, my poor boy, it is impossible. You weep to-night, but to-morrow you
+would turn me out of the house. You, even you, could not forgive me."
+
+He replied: "I? I? How little you know me!" with such a burst of genuine
+affection that, with a cry, she seized his head by the hair with both
+hands, and dragging him violently to her kissed him distractedly all
+over his face.
+
+Then she sat still, her cheek against his, feeling the warmth of his
+skin through his beard, and she whispered in his ear: "No, my little
+Jean, you would not forgive me to-morrow. You think so, but you deceive
+yourself. You have forgiven me this evening, and that forgiveness has
+saved my life; but you must never see me again."
+
+And he repeated, clasping her in his arms:
+
+"Mother, do not say that."
+
+"Yes, my child, I must go away. I do not know where, nor how I shall set
+about it, nor what I shall do; but it must be done. I could never look
+at you, nor kiss you, do you understand?"
+
+Then he in his turn spoke into her ear:
+
+"My little mother, you are to stay, because I insist, because I want
+you. And you must pledge your word to obey me, now, at once."
+
+"No, my child."
+
+"Yes, mother, you must; do you hear? You must."
+
+"No, my child, it is impossible. It would be condemning us all to the
+tortures of hell. I know what that torment is; I have known it this
+month past. Your feelings are touched now, but when that is over,
+when you look on me as Pierre does, when you remember what I have told
+you--oh, my Jean, think--think--I am your mother!"
+
+"I will not let you leave me, mother. I have no one but you."
+
+"But think, my son, we can never see each other again without both of us
+blushing, without my feeling that I must die of shame, without my eyes
+falling before yours."
+
+"But it is not so, mother."
+
+"Yes, yes, yes, it is so! Oh, I have understood all your poor brother's
+struggles, believe me! All--from the very first day. Now, when I hear
+his step in the house my heart beats as if it would burst, when I
+hear his voice I am ready to faint. I still had you; now I have you no
+longer. Oh, my little Jean! Do you think I could live between you two?"
+
+"Yes, I should love you so much that you would cease to think of it."
+
+"As if that were possible!"
+
+"But it is possible."
+
+"How do you suppose that I could cease to think of it, with your brother
+and you on each hand? Would you cease to think of it, I ask you?"
+
+"I? I swear I should."
+
+"Why you would think of it at every hour of the day."
+
+"No, I swear it. Besides, listen, if you go away I will enlist and get
+killed."
+
+This boyish threat quite overcame her; she clasped Jean in a passionate
+and tender embrace. He went on:
+
+"I love you more than you think--ah, much more, much more. Come, be
+reasonable. Try to stay for only one week. Will you promise me one week?
+You cannot refuse me that?"
+
+She laid her two hands on Jean's shoulders, and holding him at arm's
+length she said:
+
+"My child, let us try and be calm and not give way to emotions. First,
+listen to me. If I were ever to hear from your lips what I have heard
+for this month past from your brother, if I were once to see in your
+eyes what I read in his, if I could fancy from a word or a look that I
+was as odious to you as I am to him--within one hour, mark me--within
+one hour I should be gone forever."
+
+"Mother, I swear to you--"
+
+"Let me speak. For a month past I have suffered all that any creature
+can suffer. From the moment when I perceived that your brother, my other
+son, suspected me, that as the minutes went by, he guessed the truth,
+every moment of my life has been a martyrdom which no words could tell
+you."
+
+Her voice was so full of woe that the contagion of her misery brought
+the tears to Jean's eyes.
+
+He tried to kiss her, but she held him off.
+
+"Leave me--listen; I still have so much to say to make you understand.
+But you never can understand. You see, if I stayed--I must--no, no. I
+cannot."
+
+"Speak on, mother, speak."
+
+"Yes, indeed, for at least I shall not have deceived you. You want me to
+stay with you? For what--for us to be able to see each other, speak to
+each other, meet at any hour of the day at home, for I no longer dare
+open a door for fear of finding your brother behind it. If we are to
+do that, you must not forgive me--nothing is so wounding as
+forgiveness--but you must owe me no grudge for what I have done. You
+must feel yourself strong enough, and so far unlike the rest of the
+world, as to be able to say to yourself that you are not Roland's son
+without blushing for the fact or despising me. I have suffered enough--I
+have suffered too much; I can bear no more, no indeed, no more! And it
+is not a thing of yesterday, mind you, but of long, long years. But you
+could never understand that; how should you! If you and I are to live
+together and kiss each other, my little Jean, you must believe that
+though I was your father's mistress I was yet more truly his wife, his
+real wife; that, at the bottom of my heart, I cannot be ashamed of it;
+that I have no regrets; that I love him still even in death; that I
+shall always love him and never loved any other man; that he was my
+life, my joy, my hope, my comfort, everything--everything in the world
+to me for so long! Listen, my boy, before God, who hears me, I should
+never have had a joy in my existence if I had not met him; never
+anything--not a touch of tenderness or kindness, not one of those hours
+which make us regret growing old--nothing. I owe everything to him! I
+had but him in the world, and you two boys, your brother and you. But
+for you, all would have been empty, dark, and void as the night. I
+should never have loved, or known, or cared for anything--I should not
+even have wept--for I have wept, my little Jean; oh, yes, and bitter
+tears, since we came to Havre. I was his wholly and forever; for ten
+years I was as much his wife as he was my husband before God who created
+us for each other. And then I began to see that he loved me less. He was
+always kind and courteous, but I was not what I had been to him. It
+was all over! Oh, how I have cried! How dreadful and delusive life is!
+Nothing lasts. Then we came here--I never saw him again; he never came.
+He promised it in every letter. I was always expecting him, and I never
+saw him again--and now he is dead! But he still cared for us since he
+remembered you. I shall love him to my latest breath, and I never will
+deny him, and I love you because you are his child, and I could never
+be ashamed of him before you. Do you understand? I could not. So if you
+wish me to remain you must accept the situation as his son, and we will
+talk of him sometimes; and you must love him a little and we must think
+of him when we look at each other. If you will not do this--if you
+cannot--then good-bye, my child; it is impossible that we should live
+together. Now, I will act by your decision."
+
+Jean replied gently:
+
+"Stay, mother."
+
+She clasped him in her arms, and her tears flowed again; then, with her
+face against his, she went on:
+
+"Well, but Pierre. What can we do about Pierre?"
+
+Jean answered:
+
+"We will find some plan! You cannot live with him any longer."
+
+At the thought of her elder son she was convulsed with terror.
+
+"No, I cannot; no, no!" And throwing herself on Jean's breast she cried
+in distress of mind:
+
+"Save me from him, you, my little one. Save me; do something--I don't
+know what. Think of something. Save me."
+
+"Yes, mother, I will think of something."
+
+"And at once. You must, this minute. Do not leave me. I am so afraid of
+him--so afraid."
+
+"Yes, yes; I will hit on some plan. I promise you I will."
+
+"But at once; quick, quick! You cannot imagine what I feel when I see
+him."
+
+Then she murmured softly in his ear: "Keep me here, with you."
+
+He paused, reflected, and with his blunt good-sense saw at once the
+dangers of such an arrangement. But he had to argue for a long time,
+combating her scared, terror-stricken insistence.
+
+"Only for to-night," she said. "Only for to-night. And to-morrow morning
+you can send word to Roland that I was taken ill."
+
+"That is out of the question, as Pierre left you here. Come, take
+courage. I will arrange everything, I promise you, to-morrow; I will
+be with you by nine o'clock. Come, put on your bonnet. I will take you
+home."
+
+"I will do just what you desire," she said with a childlike impulse of
+timidity and gratitude.
+
+She tried to rise, but the shock had been too much for her; she could
+not stand.
+
+He made her drink some sugared water and smell at some salts, while
+he bathed her temples with vinegar. She let him do what he would,
+exhausted, but comforted, as after the pains of child-birth. At last she
+could walk and she took his arm. The town hall struck three as they went
+past.
+
+Outside their own door Jean kissed her, saying:
+
+"Good-night, mother, keep up your courage."
+
+She stealthily crept up the silent stairs, and into her room,
+undressed quickly, and slipped into bed with a reawakened sense of that
+long-forgotten sin. Roland was snoring. In all the house Pierre alone
+was awake, and had heard her come in.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+When he got back to his lodgings Jean dropped on a sofa; for the sorrows
+and anxieties which made his brother long to be moving, and to flee
+like a hunted prey, acted differently on his torpid nature and broke the
+strength of his arms and legs. He felt too limp to stir a finger, even
+to get to bed; limp body and soul, crushed and heart-broken. He had
+not been hit, as Pierre had been, in the purity of filial love, in the
+secret dignity which is the refuge of a proud heart; he was overwhelmed
+by a stroke of fate which, at the same time, threatened his own nearest
+interests.
+
+When at last his spirit was calmer, when his thoughts had settled
+like water that has been stirred and lashed, he could contemplate the
+situation which had come before him. If he had learned the secret of his
+birth through any other channel he would assuredly have been very wroth
+and very deeply pained, but after his quarrel with his brother, after
+the violent and brutal betrayal which had shaken his nerves, the
+agonizing emotion of his mother's confession had so bereft him of energy
+that he could not rebel. The shock to his feeling had been so great as
+to sweep away in an irresistible tide of pathos, all prejudice, and all
+the sacred delicacy of natural morality. Besides, he was not a man made
+for resistance. He did not like contending against any one, least of
+all against himself, so he resigned himself at once; and by instinctive
+tendency, a congenital love of peace, and of an easy and tranquil life,
+he began to anticipate the agitations which must surge up around him and
+at once be his ruin. He foresaw that they were inevitable, and to avert
+them he made up his mind to superhuman efforts of energy and activity.
+The knot must be cut immediately, this very day; for even he had fits of
+that imperious demand for a swift solution which is the only strength
+of weak natures, incapable of a prolonged effort of will. His lawyer's
+mind, accustomed as it was to disentangling and studying complicated
+situations and questions of domestic difficulties in families that had
+got out of gear, at once foresaw the more immediate consequences of his
+brother's state of mind. In spite of himself, he looked at the issue
+from an almost professional point of view, as though he had to legislate
+for the future relations of certain clients after a moral disaster.
+Constant friction against Pierre had certainly become unendurable. He
+could easily evade it, no doubt, by living in his own lodgings; but even
+then it was not possible that their mother should live under the same
+roof with her elder son. For a long time he sat meditating, motionless,
+on the cushions, devising and rejecting various possibilities, and
+finding nothing that satisfied him.
+
+But suddenly an idea took him by storm. This fortune which had come to
+him. Would an honest man keep it?
+
+"No," was the first immediate answer, and he made up his mind that it
+must go to the poor. It was hard, but it could not be helped. He would
+sell his furniture and work like any other man, like any other beginner.
+This manful and painful resolution spurred his courage; he rose and went
+to the window, leaning his forehead against the pane. He had been poor;
+he could become poor again. After all he should not die of it. His eyes
+were fixed on the gas lamp burning at the opposite side of the street.
+A woman, much belated, happened to pass; suddenly he thought of Mme.
+Rosemilly with a pang at his heart, the shock of deep feeling which
+comes of a cruel suggestion. All the dire results of his decision rose
+up before him together. He would have to renounce his marriage, renounce
+happiness, renounce everything. Could he do such a thing after having
+pledged himself to her? She had accepted him knowing him to be rich.
+She would take him still if he were poor; but had he any right to demand
+such a sacrifice? Would it not be better to keep this money in trust, to
+be restored to the poor at some future date.
+
+And in his soul, where selfishness put on a guise of honesty, all these
+specious interests were struggling and contending. His first scruples
+yielded to ingenious reasoning, then came to the top again, and again
+disappeared.
+
+He sat down again, seeking some decisive motive, some all-sufficient
+pretext to solve his hesitancy and convince his natural rectitude.
+Twenty times over had he asked himself this question: "Since I am this
+man's son, since I know and acknowledge it, is it not natural that I
+should also accept the inheritance?"
+
+But even this argument could not suppress the "No" murmured by his
+inmost conscience.
+
+Then came the thought: "Since I am not the son of the man I always
+believed to be my father, I can take nothing from him, neither during
+his lifetime nor after his death. It would be neither dignified nor
+equitable. It would be robbing my brother."
+
+This new view of the matter having relieved him and quieted his
+conscience, he went to the window again.
+
+"Yes," he said to himself, "I must give up my share of the family
+inheritance. I must let Pierre have the whole of it, since I am not his
+father's son. That is but just. Then is it not just that I should keep
+my father's money?"
+
+Having discerned that he could take nothing of Roland's savings, having
+decided on giving up the whole of this money, he agreed; he resigned
+himself to keeping Marechal's; for if he rejected both he would find
+himself reduced to beggary.
+
+This delicate question being thus disposed of he came back to that of
+Pierre's presence in the family. How was he to be got rid of? He was
+giving up his search for any practical solution when the whistle of a
+steam-vessel coming into port seemed to blow him an answer by suggesting
+a scheme.
+
+Then he threw himself on his bed without undressing, and dozed and
+dreamed till daybreak.
+
+At a little before nine he went out to ascertain whether his plans were
+feasible. Then, after making sundry inquiries and calls, he went to his
+old home. His mother was waiting for him in her room.
+
+"If you had not come," she said, "I should never have dared to go down."
+
+In a minute Roland's voice was heard on the stairs: "Are we to have
+nothing to eat to-day, hang it all?"
+
+There was no answer, and he roared out, with a thundering oath this
+time: "Josephine, what the devil are you about?"
+
+The girl's voice came up from the depths of the basement.
+
+"Yes, M'sieu--what is it?"
+
+"Where is your Miss'es?"
+
+"Madame is upstairs with M'sieu Jean."
+
+Then he shouted, looking up at the higher floor: "Louise!"
+
+Mme. Roland half opened her door and answered:
+
+"What is it, my dear?"
+
+"Are we to have nothing to eat to-day, hang it all?"
+
+"Yes, my dear, I am coming."
+
+And she went down, followed by Jean.
+
+Roland, as soon as he saw him, exclaimed:
+
+"Hallo! There you are! Sick of your home already?"
+
+"No, father, but I had something to talk over with mother this morning."
+
+Jean went forward holding out his hand, and when he felt his fingers
+in the old man's fatherly clasp, a strange, unforeseen emotion thrilled
+through him, and a sense as of parting and farewell without return.
+
+Mme. Roland asked:
+
+"Pierre is not come down?"
+
+Her husband shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"No, but never mind him; he is always behind-hand. We will begin without
+him."
+
+She turned to Jean:
+
+"You had better go to call him, my child; it hurts his feelings if we do
+not wait for him."
+
+"Yes, mother. I will go."
+
+And the young man went. He mounted the stairs with the fevered
+determination of a man who is about to fight a duel and who is in a
+fright. When he knocked at the door Pierre said:
+
+"Come in."
+
+He went in. The elder was writing, leaning over his table.
+
+"Good-morning," said Jean.
+
+Pierre rose.
+
+"Good-morning!" and they shook hands as if nothing had occurred.
+
+"Are you not coming down to breakfast?"
+
+"Well--you see--I have a good deal to do." The elder brother's voice was
+tremulous, and his anxious eye asked his younger brother what he meant
+to do.
+
+"They are waiting for you."
+
+"Oh! There is--is my mother down?"
+
+"Yes, it was she who sent me to fetch you."
+
+"Ah, very well; then I will come."
+
+At the door of the dining-room he paused, doubtful about going in first;
+then he abruptly opened the door and saw his father and mother seated at
+the table opposite each other.
+
+He went straight up to her without looking at her or saying a word, and
+bending over her, offered his forehead for her to kiss, as he had done
+for some time past, instead of kissing her on both cheeks as of old.
+He supposed that she put her lips near but he did not feel them on his
+brow, and he straightened himself with a throbbing heart after this
+feint of a caress. And he wondered:
+
+"What did they say to each other after I had left?"
+
+Jean constantly addressed her tenderly as "mother," or "dear mother,"
+took care of her, waited on her, and poured out her wine.
+
+Then Pierre understood that they had wept together, but he could not
+read their minds. Did Jean believe in his mother's guilt, or think his
+brother a base wretch?
+
+And all his self-reproach for having uttered the horrible thing came
+upon him again, choking his throat and his tongue, and preventing his
+either eating or speaking.
+
+He was now a prey to an intolerable desire to fly, to leave the house
+which was his home no longer, and these persons who were bound to him by
+such imperceptible ties. He would gladly have been off that moment,
+no matter whither, feeling that everything was over, that he could not
+endure to stay with them, that his presence was torture to them, and
+that they would bring on him incessant suffering too great to endure.
+Jean was talking, chatting with Roland. Pierre, as he did not listen,
+did not hear. But he presently was aware of a pointed tone in his
+brother's voice and paid more attention to his words. Jean was saying:
+
+"She will be the finest ship in their fleet. They say she is of 6,500
+tons. She is to make her first trip next month."
+
+Roland was amazed.
+
+"So soon? I thought she was not to be ready for sea this summer."
+
+"Yes. The work has been pushed forward very vigorously, to get her
+through her first voyage before the autumn. I looked in at the Company's
+office this morning, and was talking to one of the directors."
+
+"Indeed! Which of them?"
+
+"M. Marchand, who is a great friend of the Chairman of the Board."
+
+"Oh! Do you know him?"
+
+"Yes. And I wanted to ask him a favour."
+
+"Then you will get me leave to go over every part of the Lorraine as
+soon as she comes into port?"
+
+"To be sure; nothing could be easier."
+
+Then Jean seemed to hesitate, to be weighing his words, and to want to
+lead up to a difficult subject. He went on:
+
+"On the whole, life is very endurable on board those great Transatlantic
+liners. More than half the time is spent on shore in two splendid
+cities--New York and Havre; and the remainder at sea with delightful
+company. In fact, very pleasant acquaintances are sometimes made among
+the passengers, and very useful in after-life--yes, really very useful.
+Only think, the captain, with his perquisites on coal, can make as much
+as twenty-five thousand francs a year or more."
+
+Roland muttered an oath followed by a whistle, which testified to his
+deep respect for the sum and the captain.
+
+Jean went on:
+
+"The purser makes as much as ten thousand, and the doctor has a fixed
+salary of five thousand, with lodgings, keep, light, firing, service,
+and everything, which makes it up to ten thousand at least. That is very
+good pay."
+
+Pierre raising his eyes met his brother's and understood.
+
+Then, after some hesitation, he asked:
+
+"Is it very hard to get a place as medical man on board a Transatlantic
+liner?"
+
+"Yes--and no. It all depends on circumstances and recommendation."
+
+There was a long pause; then the doctor began again.
+
+"Next month, you say, the Lorraine is to sail?"
+
+"Yes. On the 7th."
+
+And they said nothing more.
+
+Pierre was considering. It certainly would be a way out of many
+difficulties if he could embark as medical officer on board the
+steamship. By-and-by he could see; he might perhaps give it up.
+Meanwhile he would be gaining a living, and asking for nothing from his
+parents. Only two days since he had been forced to sell his watch, for
+he would no longer hold out his hand to beg of his mother. So he had no
+other resource left, no opening to enable him to eat the bread of any
+house but this which had become uninhabitable, or sleep in any other
+bed, or under any other roof. He presently said, with some little
+hesitation:
+
+"If I could, I would very gladly sail in her."
+
+Jean asked:
+
+"What should hinder you?"
+
+"I know no one in the Transatlantic Shipping Company."
+
+Roland was astounded.
+
+"And what has become of all your fine schemes for getting on?"
+
+Pierre replied in a low voice:
+
+"There are times when we must bring ourselves to sacrifice everything
+and renounce our fondest hopes. And after all it is only to make a
+beginning, a way of saving a few thousand francs to start fair with
+afterward."
+
+His father was promptly convinced.
+
+"That is very true. In a couple of years you can put by six or seven
+thousand francs, and that well laid out, will go a long way. What do you
+think of the matter, Louise?"
+
+She replied in a voice so low as to be scarcely audible:
+
+"I think Pierre is right."
+
+Roland exclaimed:
+
+"I will go and talk it over with M. Poulin: I know him very well. He is
+assessor of the Chamber of Commerce and takes an interest in the
+affairs of the Company. There is M. Lenient, too, the ship-owner, who is
+intimate with one of the vice-chairmen."
+
+Jean asked his brother:
+
+"Would you like me to feel my way with M. Marchand at once?"
+
+"Yes, I should be very glad."
+
+After thinking a few minutes Pierre added:
+
+"The best thing I can do, perhaps, will be to write to my professors at
+the college of Medicine, who had a great regard for me. Very inferior
+men are sometimes shipped on board those vessels. Letters of strong
+recommendation from such professors as Mas-Roussel, Remusot, Flanche,
+and Borriquel would do more for me in an hour than all the doubtful
+introductions in the world. It would be enough if your friend M.
+Marchand would lay them before the board."
+
+Jean approved heartily.
+
+"Your idea is really capital." And he smiled, quite reassured, almost
+happy, sure of success and incapable of allowing himself to be unhappy
+for long.
+
+"You will write to-day?" he said.
+
+"Directly. Now; at once. I will go and do so. I do not care for any
+coffee this morning; I am too nervous."
+
+He rose and left the room.
+
+Then Jean turned to his mother:
+
+"And you, mother, what are you going to do?"
+
+"Nothing. I do not know."
+
+"Will you come with me to call on Mme. Rosemilly?"
+
+"Why, yes--yes."
+
+"You know I must positively go to see her to-day."
+
+"Yes, yes. To be sure."
+
+"Why must you positively?" asked Roland, whose habit it was never to
+understand what was said in his presence.
+
+"Because I promised her I would."
+
+"Oh, very well. That alters the case." And he began to fill his pipe,
+while the mother and son went upstairs to make ready.
+
+When they were in the street Jean said:
+
+"Will you take my arm, mother?"
+
+He was never accustomed to offer it, for they were in the habit of
+walking side by side. She accepted and leaned on him.
+
+For some time they did not speak; then he said:
+
+"You see that Pierre is quite ready and willing to go away."
+
+She murmured:
+
+"Poor boy!"
+
+"But why 'poor boy'? He will not be in the least unhappy on board the
+Lorraine."
+
+"No--I know. But I was thinking of so many things."
+
+And she thought for a long time, her head bent, accommodating her step
+to her son's; then, in the peculiar voice in which we sometimes
+give utterance to the conclusion of long and secret meditations, she
+exclaimed:
+
+"How horrible life is! If by any chance we come across any sweetness
+in it, we sin in letting ourselves be happy, and pay dearly for it
+afterward."
+
+He said in a whisper:
+
+"Do not speak of that any more, mother."
+
+"Is that possible? I think of nothing else."
+
+"You will forget it."
+
+Again she was silent; then with deep regret she said:
+
+"How happy I might have been, married to another man!"
+
+She was visiting it on Roland now, throwing all the responsibility of
+her sin on his ugliness, his stupidity, his clumsiness, the heaviness of
+his intellect, and the vulgarity of his person. It was to this that it
+was owing that she had betrayed him, had driven one son to desperation,
+and had been forced to utter to the other the most agonizing confession
+that can make a mother's heart bleed. She muttered: "It is so frightful
+for a young girl to have to marry such a husband as mine."
+
+Jean made no reply. He was thinking of the man he had hitherto believed
+to be his father; and possibly the vague notion he had long since
+conceived, of that father's inferiority, with his brother's constant
+irony, the scornful indifference of others, and the very maid-servant's
+contempt for Roland, had somewhat prepared his mind for his mother's
+terrible avowal. It had all made it less dreadful to him to find that
+he was another man's son; and if, after the great shock and agitation
+of the previous evening, he had not suffered the reaction of rage,
+indignation, and rebellion which Mme. Roland had feared, it was because
+he had long been unconsciously chafing under the sense of being the
+child of this well-meaning lout.
+
+They had now reached the dwelling of Mme. Rosemilly.
+
+She lived on the road to Sainte-Adresse, on the second floor of a large
+tenement which she owned. The windows commanded a view of the whole
+roadstead.
+
+On seeing Mme. Roland, who entered first, instead of merely holding out
+her hands as usual, she put her arms round her and kissed her, for she
+divined the purpose of her visit.
+
+The furniture of this drawing-room, all in stamped velvet, was always
+shrouded in chair-covers. The walls, hung with flowered paper, were
+graced by four engravings, the purchase of her late husband, the
+captain. They represented sentimental scenes of seafaring life. In the
+first a fisherman's wife was seen, waving a handkerchief on shore, while
+the vessel which bore away her husband vanished on the horizon. In the
+second the same woman, on her knees on the same shore, under a sky shot
+with lightning, wrung her arms as she gazed into the distance at her
+husband's boat which was going to the bottom amid impossible waves.
+
+The others represented similar scenes in a higher rank of society. A
+young lady with fair hair, resting her elbows on the ledge of a large
+steamship quitting the shore, gazed at the already distant coast with
+eyes full of tears and regret. Whom is she leaving behind?
+
+Then the same young lady sitting by an open widow with a view of the
+sea, had fainted in an arm-chair; a letter she had dropped lay at her
+feet. So he is dead! What despair!
+
+Visitors were generally much moved and charmed by the commonplace pathos
+of these obvious and sentimental works. They were at once intelligible
+without question or explanation, and the poor women were to be pitied,
+though the nature of the grief of the more elegant of the two was not
+precisely known. But this very doubt contributed to the sentiment.
+She had, no doubt, lost her lover. On entering the room the eye
+was immediately attracted to these four pictures, and riveted as if
+fascinated. If it wandered it was only to return and contemplate the
+four expressions on the faces of the two women, who were as like each
+other as two sisters. And the very style of these works, in their
+shining frames, crisp, sharp, and highly finished, with the elegance of
+a fashion plate, suggested a sense of cleanliness and propriety which
+was confirmed by the rest of the fittings. The seats were always in
+precisely the same order, some against the wall and some round the
+circular centre-table. The immaculately white curtains hung in such
+straight and regular pleats that one longed to crumple them a little;
+and never did a grain of dust rest on the shade under which the gilt
+clock, in the taste of the first empire--a terrestrial globe supported
+by Atlas on his knees--looked like a melon left there to ripen.
+
+The two women as they sat down somewhat altered the normal position of
+their chairs.
+
+"You have not been out this morning?" asked Mme. Roland.
+
+"No. I must own to being rather tired."
+
+And she spoke as if in gratitude to Jean and his mother, of all the
+pleasure she had derived from the expedition and the prawn-fishing.
+
+"I ate my prawns this morning," she added, "and they were excellent. If
+you felt inclined we might go again one of these days."
+
+The young man interrupted her:
+
+"Before we start on a second fishing excursion, suppose we complete the
+first?"
+
+"Complete it? It seems to me quite finished."
+
+"Nay, madame, I, for my part, caught something on the rocks of Saint
+Jouain which I am anxious to carry home with me."
+
+She put on an innocent and knowing look.
+
+"You? What can it be? What can you have found?"
+
+"A wife. And my mother and I have come to ask you whether she had
+changed her mind this morning."
+
+She smiled: "No, monsieur. I never change my mind."
+
+And then he held out his hand, wide open, and she put hers into it with
+a quick, determined movement. Then he said: "As soon as possible, I
+hope."
+
+"As soon as you like."
+
+"In six weeks?"
+
+"I have no opinion. What does my future mother-in-law say?"
+
+Mme. Roland replied with a rather melancholy smile:
+
+"I? Oh, I can say nothing. I can only thank you for having accepted
+Jean, for you will make him very happy."
+
+"We will do our best, mamma."
+
+Somewhat overcome, for the first time, Mme. Rosemilly rose, and throwing
+her arms round Mme. Roland, kissed her a long time as a child of her own
+might have done; and under this new embrace the poor woman's sick heart
+swelled with deep emotion. She could not have expressed the feeling;
+it was at once sad and sweet. She had lost her son, her big boy, but in
+return she had found a daughter, a grown-up daughter.
+
+When they faced each other again, and were seated, they took hands and
+remained so, looking at each and smiling, while they seemed to have
+forgotten Jean.
+
+Then they discussed a number of things which had to be thought of in
+view of an early marriage, and when everything was settled and decided
+Mme. Rosemilly seemed suddenly to remember a further detail and asked:
+"You have consulted M. Roland, I suppose?"
+
+A flush of colour mounted at the same instant on the face of both mother
+and son. It was the mother who replied:
+
+"Oh, no, it is quite unnecessary!" Then she hesitated, feeling that
+some explanation was needed, and added: "We do everything without saying
+anything to him. It is enough to tell him what we have decided on."
+
+Mme. Rosemilly, not in the least surprised, only smiled, taking it as a
+matter of course, for the good man counted for so little.
+
+When Mme. Roland was in the street again with her son she said:
+
+"Suppose we go to your rooms for a little while. I should be glad to
+rest."
+
+She felt herself homeless, shelterless, her own house being a terror to
+her.
+
+They went into Jean's apartments.
+
+As soon as the door was closed upon her she heaved a deep sigh, as if
+that bolt had placed her in safety, but then, instead of resting as she
+had said, she began to open the cupboards, to count the piles of linen,
+the pocket-handkerchiefs, and socks. She changed the arrangement to
+place them in more harmonious order, more pleasing to her housekeeper's
+eye; and when she had put everything to her mind, laying out the towels,
+the shirts, and the drawers on their several shelves and dividing all
+the linen into three principal classes, body-linen, household-linen, and
+table-linen, she drew back and contemplated the results, and called out:
+
+"Come here, Jean, and see how nice it looks."
+
+He went and admired it to please her.
+
+On a sudden, when he had sat down again, she came softly up behind his
+arm-chair, and putting her right arm round his neck she kissed him,
+while she laid on the chimney-shelf a small packet wrapped in white
+paper which she held in the other hand.
+
+"What is that?" he asked. Then, as she made no reply, he understood,
+recognising the shape of the frame.
+
+"Give it me!" he said.
+
+She pretended not to hear him, and went back to the linen cupboards. He
+got up hastily, took the melancholy relic, and going across the room,
+put it in the drawer of his writing-table, which he locked and double
+locked. She wiped away a tear with the tip of her finger, and said in a
+rather quavering voice: "Now I am going to see whether your new
+servant keeps the kitchen in good order. As she is out I can look into
+everything and make sure."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Letters of recommendation from Professors Mas-Roussel, Remusot, Flache,
+and Borriquel, written in the most flattering terms with regard to Dr.
+Pierre Roland, their pupil, had been submitted by M. Marchand to the
+directors of the Transatlantic Shipping Co., seconded by M. Poulin,
+judge of the Chamber of Commerce, M. Lenient, a great ship-owner, and
+Mr. Marival, deputy to the Mayor of Havre, and a particular friend of
+Captain Beausires's. It proved that no medical officer had yet been
+appointed to the Lorraine, and Pierre was lucky enough to be nominated
+within a few days.
+
+The letter announcing it was handed to him one morning by Josephine,
+just as he was dressed. His first feeling was that of a man condemned
+to death who is told that his sentence is commuted; he had an immediate
+sense of relief at the thought of his early departure and of the
+peaceful life on board, cradled by the rolling waves, always wandering,
+always moving. His life under his father's roof was now that of a
+stranger, silent and reserved. Ever since the evening when he allowed
+the shameful secret he had discovered to escape him in his brother's
+presence, he had felt that the last ties to his kindred were broken. He
+was harassed by remorse for having told this thing to Jean. He felt that
+it was odious, indecent, and brutal, and yet it was a relief to him to
+have uttered it.
+
+He never met the eyes either of his mother or his brother; to avoid his
+gaze theirs had become surprisingly alert, with the cunning of foes who
+fear to cross each other. He was always wondering: "What can she have
+said to Jean? Did she confess or deny it? What does my brother believe?
+What does he think of her--what does he think of me?" He could not
+guess, and it drove him to frenzy. And he scarcely ever spoke to them,
+excepting when Roland was by, to avoid his questioning.
+
+As soon as he received the letter announcing his appointment he showed
+it at once to his family. His father, who was prone to rejoicing over
+everything, clapped his hands. Jean spoke seriously, though his heart
+was full of gladness: "I congratulate you with all my heart, for I
+know there were several other candidates. You certainly owe it to your
+professors' letters."
+
+His mother bent her head and murmured:
+
+"I am very glad you have been successful."
+
+After breakfast he went to the Company's offices to obtain information
+on various particulars, and he asked the name of the doctor on board
+the Picardie, which was to sail next day, to inquire of him as to the
+details of his new life and any details he might think useful.
+
+Dr. Pirette having gone on board, Pierre went to the ship, where he was
+received in a little state-room by a young man with a fair beard, not
+unlike his brother. They talked together a long time.
+
+In the hollow depths of the huge ship they could hear a confused and
+continuous commotion; the noise of bales and cases pitched down into
+the hold mingling with footsteps, voices, the creaking of the machinery
+lowering the freight, the boatswain's whistle, and the clatter of chains
+dragged or wound on to capstans by the snorting and panting engine which
+sent a slight vibration from end to end of the great vessel.
+
+But when Pierre had left his colleague and found himself in the street
+once more, a new form of melancholy came down on him, enveloping him
+like the fogs which roll over the sea, coming up from the ends of the
+world and holding in their intangible density something mysteriously
+impure, as it were the pestilential breath of a far-away, unhealthy
+land.
+
+In his hours of greatest suffering he had never felt himself so sunk
+in a foul pit of misery. It was as though he had given the last wrench;
+there was no fibre of attachment left. In tearing up the roots of every
+affection he had not hitherto had the distressful feeling which now came
+over him, like that of a lost dog. It was no longer a torturing mortal
+pain, but the frenzy of a forlorn and homeless animal, the physical
+anguish of a vagabond creature without a roof for shelter, lashed by the
+rain, the wind, the storm, all the brutal forces of the universe. As he
+set foot on the vessel, as he went into the cabin rocked by the waves,
+the very flesh of the man, who had always slept in a motionless and
+steady bed, had risen up against the insecurity henceforth of all his
+morrows. Till now that flesh had been protected by a solid wall built
+into the earth which held it, by the certainty of resting in the same
+spot, under a roof which could resist the gale. Now all that, which it
+was a pleasure to defy in the warmth of home, must become a peril and
+a constant discomfort. No earth under foot, only the greedy, heaving,
+complaining sea; no space around for walking, running, losing the way,
+only a few yards of planks to pace like a convict among other prisoners;
+no trees, no gardens, no streets, no houses; nothing but water and
+clouds. And the ceaseless motion of the ship beneath his feet. On stormy
+days he must lean against the wainscot, hold on to the doors, cling to
+the edge of the narrow berth to save himself from rolling out. On calm
+days he would hear the snorting throb of the screw, and feel the
+swift flight of the ship, bearing him on in its unpausing, regular,
+exasperating race.
+
+And he was condemned to this vagabond convict's life solely because his
+mother had yielded to a man's caresses.
+
+He walked on, his heart sinking with the despairing sorrow of those who
+are doomed to exile. He no longer felt a haughty disdain and scornful
+hatred of the strangers he met, but a woeful impulse to speak to them,
+to tell them all that he had to quit France, to be listened to and
+comforted. There was in the very depths of his heart the shame-faced
+need of a beggar who would fain hold out his hand--a timid but urgent
+need to feel that some one would grieve at his departing.
+
+He thought of Marowsko. The old Pole was the only person who loved
+him well enough to feel true and keen emotion, and the doctor at once
+determined to go and see him.
+
+When he entered the shop, the druggist, who was pounding powders in a
+marble mortar, started and left his work.
+
+"You are never to be seen nowadays," said he.
+
+Pierre explained that he had had a great many serious matters to attend
+to, but without giving the reason, and he took a seat, asking:
+
+"Well, and how is business doing?"
+
+Business was not doing at all. Competition was fearful, and rich folks
+rare in that workmen's quarter. Nothing would sell but cheap drugs, and
+the doctors did not prescribe the costlier and more complicated remedies
+on which a profit is made of five hundred per cent. The old fellow ended
+by saying: "If this goes on for three months I shall shut up shop. If I
+did not count on you, dear good doctor, I should have turned shoe-black
+by this time."
+
+Pierre felt a pang, and made up his mind to deal the blow at once, since
+it must be done.
+
+"I--oh, I cannot be of any use to you. I am leaving Havre early next
+month."
+
+Marowsko took off his spectacles, so great was his agitation.
+
+"You! You! What are you saying?"
+
+"I say that I am going away, my poor friend."
+
+The old man was stricken, feeling his last hope slipping from under him,
+and he suddenly turned against this man, whom he had followed, whom he
+loved, whom he had so implicitly trusted, and who forsook him thus.
+
+He stammered out:
+
+"You are surely not going to play me false--you?"
+
+Pierre was so deeply touched that he felt inclined to embrace the old
+fellow.
+
+"I am not playing you false. I have not found anything to do here, and I
+am going as medical officer on board a Transatlantic passenger boat."
+
+"O Monsieur Pierre! And you always promised you would help me to make a
+living!"
+
+"What can I do? I must make my own living. I have not a farthing in the
+world."
+
+Marowsko said: "It is wrong; what you are doing is very wrong. There is
+nothing for me but to die of hunger. At my age this is the end of all
+things. It is wrong. You are forsaking a poor old man who came here to
+be with you. It is wrong."
+
+Pierre tried to explain, to protest, to give reasons, to prove that he
+could not have done otherwise; the Pole, enraged by his desertion, would
+not listen to him, and he ended by saying, with an allusion no doubt to
+political events:
+
+"You French--you never keep your word!"
+
+At this Pierre rose, offended on his part, and taking rather a high tone
+he said:
+
+"You are unjust, pere Marowsko; a man must have very strong motives to
+act as I have done and you ought to understand that. Au revoir--I hope I
+may find you more reasonable." And he went away.
+
+"Well, well," he thought, "not a soul will feel a sincere regret for
+me."
+
+His mind sought through all the people he knew or had known, and among
+the faces which crossed his memory he saw that of the girl at the tavern
+who had led him to doubt his mother.
+
+He hesitated, having still an instinctive grudge against her, then
+suddenly reflected on the other hand: "After all, she was right." And he
+looked about him to find the turning.
+
+The beer-shop, as it happened, was full of people, and also full of
+smoke. The customers, tradesmen, and labourers, for it was a holiday,
+were shouting, calling, laughing, and the master himself was waiting
+on them, running from table to table, carrying away empty glasses and
+returning them crowned with froth.
+
+When Pierre had found a seat not far from the desk he waited, hoping
+that the girl would see him and recognise him. But she passed him again
+and again as she went to and fro, pattering her feet under her skirts
+with a smart little strut. At last he rapped a coin on the table, and
+she hurried up.
+
+"What will you take, sir?"
+
+She did not look at him; her mind was absorbed in calculations of the
+liquor she had served.
+
+"Well," said he, "this is a pretty way of greeting a friend."
+
+She fixed her eyes on his face. "Ah!" said she hurriedly. "Is it you?
+You are pretty well? But I have not a minute to-day. A bock did you wish
+for?"
+
+"Yes, a bock!"
+
+When she brought it he said:
+
+"I have come to say good-bye. I am going away."
+
+And she replied indifferently:
+
+"Indeed. Where are you going?"
+
+"To America."
+
+"A very fine country, they say."
+
+And that was all!
+
+Really, he was very ill-advised to address her on such a busy day; there
+were too many people in the cafe.
+
+Pierre went down to the sea. As he reached the jetty he descried the
+Pearl; his father and Beausire were coming in. Papagris was pulling,
+and the two men, seated in the stern, smoked their pipes with a look
+of perfect happiness. As they went past the doctor said to himself:
+"Blessed are the simple-minded!" And he sat down on one of the benches
+on the breakwater, to try to lull himself in animal drowsiness.
+
+When he went home in the evening his mother said, without daring to lift
+her eyes to his face:
+
+"You will want a heap of things to take with you. I have ordered your
+under-linen, and I went into the tailor's shop about cloth clothes; but
+is there nothing else you need--things which I, perhaps, know nothing
+about?"
+
+His lips parted to say, "No, nothing." But he reflected that he must
+accept the means of getting a decent outfit, and he replied in a very
+calm voice: "I hardly know myself, yet. I will make inquiries at the
+office."
+
+He inquired, and they gave him a list of indispensable necessaries. His
+mother, as she took it from his hand, looked up at him for the first
+time for very long, and in the depths of her eyes there was the humble
+expression, gentle, sad, and beseeching, of a dog that has been beaten
+and begs forgiveness.
+
+On the 1st of October the Lorraine from Saint-Nazaire, came into the
+harbour of Havre to sail on the 7th, bound for New York, and Pierre
+Roland was to take possession of the little floating cabin in which
+henceforth his life was to be confined.
+
+Next day as he was going out, he met his mother on the stairs waiting
+for him, to murmur in an almost inaudible voice:
+
+"You would not like me to help you to put things to rights on board?"
+
+"No, thank you. Everything is done."
+
+Then she said:
+
+"I should have liked to see your cabin."
+
+"There is nothing to see. It is very small and very ugly."
+
+And he went downstairs, leaving her stricken, leaning against the wall
+with a wan face.
+
+Now Roland, who had gone over the Lorraine that very day, could talk of
+nothing all dinnertime but this splendid vessel, and wondered that his
+wife should not care to see it as their son was to sail on board.
+
+Pierre had scarcely any intercourse with his family during the days
+which followed. He was nervous, irritable, hard, and his rough speech
+seemed to lash every one indiscriminately. But the day before he left
+he was suddenly quite changed, and much softened. As he embraced his
+parents before going to sleep on board for the first time he said:
+
+"You will come to say good-bye to me on board, will you not?"
+
+Roland exclaimed:
+
+"Why, yes, of course--of course, Louise?"
+
+"Certainly, certainly," she said in a low voice.
+
+Pierre went on: "We sail at eleven precisely. You must be there by
+half-past nine at the latest."
+
+"Hah!" cried his father. "A good idea! As soon as we have bid you
+good-bye, we will make haste on board the Pearl, and look out for you
+beyond the jetty, so as to see you once more. What do you say, Louise?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+Roland went on: "And in that way you will not lose sight of us among
+the crowd which throngs the breakwater when the great liners sail. It
+is impossible to distinguish your own friends in the mob. Does that meet
+your views?"
+
+"Yes, to be sure; that is settled."
+
+An hour later he was lying in his berth--a little crib as long and
+narrow as a coffin. There he remained with his eyes wide open for a long
+time, thinking over all that had happened during the last two months of
+his life, especially in his own soul. By dint of suffering and making
+others suffer, his aggressive and revengeful anguish had lost its edge,
+like a blunted sword. He scarcely had the heart left in him to owe any
+one or anything a grudge; he let his rebellious wrath float away
+down stream, as his life must. He was so weary of wrestling, weary of
+fighting, weary of hating, weary of everything, that he was quite worn
+out, and tried to stupefy his heart with forgetfulness as he dropped
+asleep. He heard vaguely, all about him, the unwonted noises of the
+ship, slight noises, and scarcely audible on this calm night in port;
+and he felt no more of the dreadful wound which had tortured him
+hitherto, but the discomfort and strain of its healing.
+
+He had been sleeping soundly when the stir of the crew roused him.
+It was day; the tidal train had come down to the pier bringing the
+passengers from Paris. Then he wandered about the vessel among all
+these busy, bustling folks inquiring for their cabins, questioning
+and answering each other at random, in the scare and fuss of a voyage
+already begun. After greeting the Captain and shaking hands with his
+comrade the purser, he went into the saloon where some Englishmen were
+already asleep in the corners. The large low room, with its white marble
+panels framed in gilt beading, was furnished with looking-glasses,
+which prolonged, in endless perspective, the long tables, flanked by
+pivot-seats covered with red velvet. It was fit, indeed, to be the
+vast floating cosmopolitan dining-hall, where the rich natives of two
+continents might eat in common. Its magnificent luxury was that of great
+hotels, and theatres, and public rooms; the imposing and commonplace
+luxury which appeals to the eye of the millionaire.
+
+The doctor was on the point of turning into the second-class saloon,
+when he remembered that a large cargo of emigrants had come on board
+the night before, and he went down to the lower deck. He was met by a
+sickening smell of dirty, poverty-stricken humanity, an atmosphere of
+naked flesh (far more revolting than the odour of fur or the skin of
+wild beasts). There, in a sort of basement, low and dark, like a
+gallery in a mine, Pierre could discern some hundreds of men, women, and
+children, stretched on shelves fixed one above another, or lying on the
+floor in heaps. He could not see their faces, but could dimly make out
+this squalid, ragged crowd of wretches, beaten in the struggle for
+life, worn out and crushed, setting forth, each with a starving wife and
+weakly children, for an unknown land where they hoped, perhaps, not to
+die of hunger. And as he thought of their past labour--wasted labour,
+and barren effort--of the mortal struggle taken up afresh and in vain
+each day, of the energy expended by this tattered crew who were going to
+begin again, not knowing where, this life of hideous misery, he longed
+to cry out to them:
+
+"Tumble yourselves overboard, rather, with your women and your little
+ones." And his heart ached so with pity that he went away unable to
+endure the sight.
+
+He found his father, his mother, Jean, and Mme. Rosemilly waiting for
+him in his cabin.
+
+"So early!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Yes," said Mme. Roland in a trembling voice. "We wanted to have a
+little time to see you."
+
+He looked at her. She was dressed all in black as if she were in
+mourning, and he noticed that her hair, which only a month ago had been
+gray, was now almost white. It was very difficult to find space for four
+persons to sit down in the little room, and he himself got on to his
+bed. The door was left open, and they could see a great crowd hurrying
+by, as if it were a street on a holiday, for all the friends of the
+passengers and a host of inquisitive visitors had invaded the huge
+vessel. They pervaded the passages, the saloons, every corner of the
+ship; and heads peered in at the doorway while a voice murmured outside:
+"That is the doctor's cabin."
+
+Then Pierre shut the door; but no sooner was he shut in with his own
+party than he longed to open it again, for the bustle outside covered
+their agitation and want of words.
+
+Mme. Rosemilly at last felt she must speak.
+
+"Very little air comes in through those little windows."
+
+"Port-holes," said Pierre. He showed her how thick the glass was,
+to enable it to resist the most violent shocks, and took a long time
+explaining the fastening. Roland presently asked: "And you have your
+doctor's shop here?"
+
+The doctor opened a cupboard and displayed an array of phials ticketed
+with Latin names on white paper labels. He took one out and enumerated
+the properties of its contents; then a second and a third, a perfect
+lecture on therapeutics, to which they all listened with great
+attention. Roland, shaking his head, said again and again: "How very
+interesting!" There was a tap at the door.
+
+"Come in," said Pierre, and Captain Beausire appeared.
+
+"I am late," he said as he shook hands, "I did not want to be in the
+way." He, too, sat down on the bed and silence fell once more.
+
+Suddenly the Captain pricked his ears. He could hear the orders being
+given, and he said:
+
+"It is time for us to be off if we mean to get on board the Pearl to see
+you once more outside, and bid you good-bye out on the open sea."
+
+Old Roland was very eager about this, to impress the voyagers on board
+the Lorraine, no doubt, and he rose in haste.
+
+"Good-bye, my boy." He kissed Pierre on the whiskers and then opened the
+door.
+
+Mme. Roland had not stirred, but sat with downcast eyes, very pale. Her
+husband touched her arm.
+
+"Come," he said, "we must make haste, we have not a minute to spare."
+
+She pulled herself up, went to her son and offered him first one and
+then another cheek of white wax which he kissed without saying a word.
+Then he shook hands with Mme. Rosemilly and his brother, asking:
+
+"And when is the wedding to be?"
+
+"I do not know yet exactly. We will make it fit in with one of your
+return voyages."
+
+At last they were all out of the cabin, and up on deck among the crowd
+of visitors, porters, and sailors. The steam was snorting in the huge
+belly of the vessel, which seemed to quiver with impatience.
+
+"Good-bye," said Roland in a great bustle.
+
+"Good-bye," replied Pierre, standing on one of the landing-planks lying
+between the deck of the Lorraine and the quay. He shook hands all round
+once more, and they were gone.
+
+"Make haste, jump into the carriage," cried the father.
+
+A fly was waiting for them and took them to the outer harbour, where
+Papagris had the Pearl in readiness to put out to sea.
+
+There was not a breath of air; it was one of those crisp, still autumn
+days, when the sheeny sea looks as cold and hard as polished steel.
+
+Jean took one oar, the sailor seized the other and they pulled off.
+On the breakwater, on the piers, even on the granite parapets, a crowd
+stood packed, hustling, and noisy, to see the Lorraine come out. The
+Pearl glided down between these two waves of humanity and was soon
+outside the mole.
+
+Captain Beausire, seated between the two women, held the tiller, and he
+said:
+
+"You will see, we shall be close in her way--close."
+
+And the two oarsmen pulled with all their might to get out as far as
+possible. Suddenly Roland cried out:
+
+"Here she comes! I see her masts and her two funnels! She is coming out
+of the inner harbour."
+
+"Cheerily, lads!" cried Beausire.
+
+Mme. Roland took out her handkerchief and held it to her eyes.
+
+Roland stood up, clinging to the mast, and answered:
+
+"At this moment she is working round in the outer harbour. She is
+standing still--now she moves again! She is taking the tow-rope on board
+no doubt. There she goes. Bravo! She is between the piers! Do you hear
+the crowd shouting? Bravo! The Neptune has her in tow. Now I see her
+bows--here she comes--here she is! Gracious Heavens, what a ship! Look!
+Look!"
+
+Mme. Rosemilly and Beausire looked behind them, the oarsmen ceased
+pulling; only Mme. Roland did not stir.
+
+The immense steamship, towed by a powerful tug, which, in front of
+her, looked like a caterpillar, came slowly and majestically out of the
+harbour. And the good people of Havre, who crowded the piers, the beach,
+and the windows, carried away by a burst of patriotic enthusiasm,
+cried: "_Vive la Lorraine!_" with acclamations and applause for this
+magnificent beginning, this birth of the beautiful daughter given to the
+sea by the great maritime town.
+
+She, as soon as she had passed beyond the narrow channel between the two
+granite walls, feeling herself free at last, cast off the tow-ropes and
+went off alone, like a monstrous creature walking on the waters.
+
+"Here she is--here she comes, straight down on us!" Roland kept
+shouting; and Beausire, beaming, exclaimed: "What did I promise you!
+Heh! Do I know the way?"
+
+Jean in a low tone said to his mother: "Look, mother, she is close upon
+us!" And Mme. Roland uncovered her eyes, blinded with tears.
+
+The Lorraine came on, still under the impetus of her swift exit from the
+harbour, in the brilliant, calm weather. Beausire, with his glass to his
+eye, called out:
+
+"Look out! M. Pierre is at the stern, all alone, plainly to be seen!
+Look out!"
+
+The ship was almost touching the Pearl now, as tall as a mountain and
+as swift as a train. Mme. Roland, distraught and desperate, held out her
+arms towards it; and she saw her son, her Pierre, with his officer's cap
+on, throwing kisses to her with both hands.
+
+But he was going away, flying, vanishing, a tiny speck already, no more
+than an imperceptible spot on the enormous vessel. She tried still to
+distinguish him, but she could not.
+
+Jean took her hand.
+
+"You saw?" he said.
+
+"Yes, I saw. How good he is!"
+
+And they turned to go home.
+
+"Cristi! How fast she goes!" exclaimed Roland with enthusiastic
+conviction.
+
+The steamer, in fact, was shrinking every second, as though she were
+melting away in the ocean. Mme. Roland, turning back to look at her,
+watched her disappearing on the horizon, on her way to an unknown land
+at the other side of the world.
+
+In that vessel which nothing could stay, that vessel which she soon
+would see no more, was her son, her poor son. And she felt as though
+half her heart had gone with him; she felt, too, as if her life were
+ended; yes, and she felt as though she would never see the child again.
+
+"Why are you crying?" asked her husband, "when you know he will be back
+again within a month."
+
+She stammered out: "I don't know; I cry because I am hurt."
+
+When they had landed, Beausire at once took leave of them to go to
+breakfast with a friend. Then Jean led the way with Mme. Rosemilly, and
+Roland said to his wife:
+
+"A very fine fellow, all the same, is our Jean."
+
+"Yes," replied the mother.
+
+And her mind being too much bewildered to think of what she was saying,
+she went on:
+
+"I am very glad that he is to marry Mme. Rosemilly."
+
+The worthy man was astounded.
+
+"Heh? What? He is to marry Mme. Rosemilly?"
+
+"Yes, we meant to ask your opinion about it this very day."
+
+"Bless me! And has this engagement been long in the wind?"
+
+"Oh, no, only a very few days. Jean wished to make sure that she would
+accept him before consulting you."
+
+Roland rubbed his hands.
+
+"Very good. Very good. It is capital. I entirely approve."
+
+As they were about to turn off from the quay down the Boulevard
+Francois, his wife once more looked back to cast a last look at the high
+seas, but she could see nothing now but a puff of gray smoke, so far
+away, so faint that it looked like a film of haze.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Pierre and Jean, by Guy de Maupassant
+
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