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The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII.

by Guy de Maupassant · English · Gutenberg #22069 · 579,894 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII.

Author: Guy de Maupassant


        
Release date: July 14, 2007 [eBook #22069]
                Most recently updated: January 18, 2009

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORKS OF GUY DE MAUPASSANT, VOLUME VIII. ***




Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Sankar Viswanathan, and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net









                             The Works of

                          Guy de Maupassant




                             VOLUME VIII



                            PIERRE ET JEAN

                          AND OTHER STORIES



                            _ILLUSTRATED_




                       NATIONAL LIBRARY COMPANY

                               NEW YORK



                         COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY

                         BIGELOW, SMITH & CO.

       *       *       *       *       *




CONTENTS


PIERRE ET JEAN.

DREAMS

MOONLIGHT

THE CORSICAN BANDIT

A DEAD WOMAN'S SECRET

THE CAKE

A LIVELY FRIEND

THE ORPHAN

THE BLIND MAN

A WIFE'S CONFESSION

RELICS OF THE PAST

THE PEDDLER

THE AVENGER

ALL OVER

LETTER FOUND ON A DROWNED MAN

MOTHER AND SON

THE SPASM

A DUEL

THE LOVE OF LONG AGO

AN UNCOMFORTABLE BED

A WARNING NOTE

THE HORRIBLE

A NEW YEAR'S GIFT

BESIDE A DEAD MAN

AFTER

A QUEER NIGHT IN PARIS

BOITELLE

       *       *       *       *       *




OF "THE NOVEL"


I do not intend in these pages to put in a plea for this little novel.
On the contrary, the ideas I shall try to set forth will rather
involve a criticism of the class of psychological analysis which I
have undertaken in _Pierre et Jean_. I propose to treat of novels in
general.

I am not the only writer who finds himself taken to task in the same
terms each time he brings out a new book. Among many laudatory
phrases, I invariably meet with this observation, penned by the same
critics: "The greatest fault of this book is that it is not, strictly
speaking, a novel."

The same form might be adopted in reply:

"The greatest fault of the writer who does me the honor to review me
is that he is not a critic."

For what are, in fact, the essential characteristics of a critic?

It is necessary that, without preconceived notions, prejudices of
"School," or partisanship for any class of artists, he should
appreciate, distinguish, and explain the most antagonistic tendencies
and the most dissimilar temperaments, recognizing and accepting the
most varied efforts of art.

Now the Critic who, after reading _Manon Lescaut_, _Paul and
Virginia_, _Don Quixote_, _Les Liaisons dangereuses_, _Werther_,
_Elective Affinities_ (_Wahlverwandschaften_), _Clarissa Harlowe_,
_Émile_, _Candide_, _Cinq-Mars_, _René_, _Les Trois Mousquetaires_,
_Mauprat_, _Le Père Goriot_, _La Cousine Bette_, _Colomba_, _Le Rouge
et le Noir_, _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, _Notre-Dame de Paris_,
_Salammbo_, _Madame Bovary_, _Adolphe_, _M. de Camors_, _l'Assommoir_,
_Sapho_, etc., still can be so bold as to write "This or that is, or
is not, a novel," seems to me to be gifted with a perspicacity
strangely akin to incompetence. Such a critic commonly understands by
a novel a more or less improbable narrative of adventure, elaborated
after the fashion of a piece for the stage, in three acts, of which
the first contains the exposition, the second the action, and the
third the catastrophe or _dénouement_.

And this method of construction is perfectly admissible, but on
condition that all others are accepted on equal terms.

Are there any rules for the making of a novel, which, if we neglect,
the tale must be called by another name? If _Don Quixote_ is a novel,
then is _Le Rouge et le Noir_ a novel? If _Monte Christo_ is a novel,
is _l'Assommoir_? Can any conclusive comparison be drawn between
Goethe's _Elective Affinities_, _The Three Mousqueteers_, by Dumas,
Flaubert's _Madame Bovary_, _M. de Camors_ by Octave Feuillet, and
_Germinal_, by Zola? Which of them all is The Novel? What are these
famous rules? Where did they originate? Who laid them down? And in
virtue of what principle, of whose authority, and of what reasoning?

And yet, as it would appear, these critics know in some positive and
indisputable way what constitutes a novel, and what distinguishes it
from other tales which are not novels. What this amounts to is that
without being producers themselves they are enrolled under a School,
and that, like the writers of novels, they reject all work which is
conceived and executed outside the pale of their esthetics. An
intelligent critic ought, on the contrary, to seek out everything
which least resembles the novels already written, and urge young
authors as much as possible to try fresh paths.

All writers, Victor Hugo as much as M. Zola, have insistently claimed
the absolute and incontrovertible right to compose--that is to say, to
imagine or observe--in accordance with their individual conception of
originality, and that is a special manner of thinking, seeing,
understanding, and judging. Now the critic who assumes that "the
novel" can be defined in conformity with the ideas he has based on the
novels he prefers, and that certain immutable rules of construction
can be laid down, will always find himself at war with the artistic
temperament of a writer who introduces a new manner of work. A critic
really worthy of the name ought to be an analyst, devoid of
preferences or passions; like an expert in pictures, he should simply
estimate the artistic value of the object of art submitted to him. His
intelligence, open to everything, must so far supersede his
individuality as to leave him free to discover and praise books which
as a man he may not like, but which as a judge he must duly
appreciate.

But critics, for the most part, are only readers; whence it comes that
they almost always find fault with us on wrong grounds, or compliment
us without reserve or measure.

The reader, who looks for no more in a book than that it should
satisfy the natural tendencies of his own mind, wants the writer to
respond to his predominant taste, and he invariably praises a work or
a passage which appeals to his imagination, whether idealistic, gay,
licentious, melancholy, dreamy, or positive, as "striking" or "well
written."

The public as a whole is composed of various groups, whose cry to us
writers is:

"Comfort me."

"Amuse me."

"Touch me."

"Make me dream."

"Make me laugh."

"Make me shudder."

"Make me weep."

"Make me think."

And only a few chosen spirits say to the artist:

"Give me something fine in any form which may suit you best, according
to your own temperament."

The artist makes the attempt; succeeds or fails.

The critic ought to judge the result only in relation to the nature of
the attempt; he has no right to concern himself about tendencies. This
has been said a thousand times already; it will always need repeating.

Thus, after a succession of literary schools which have given us
deformed, superhuman, poetical, pathetic, charming or magnificent
pictures of life, a realistic or naturalistic school has arisen, which
asserts that it shows us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth.

All these theories of art must be recognized as of equal interest, and
we must judge the works which are their outcome solely from the point
of view of artistic value, with an _a priori_ acceptance of the
general notions which gave birth to each. To dispute the author's
right to produce a poetical work or a realistic work, is to endeavor
to coerce his temperament, to take exception to his originality, to
forbid his using the eyes and wits bestowed on him by Nature. To
blame him for seeing things as beautiful or ugly, as mean or epic, as
gracious or sinister, is to reproach him for not being made on this or
that pattern, and for having eyes which do not see exactly as ours
see.

Let him be free by all means to conceive of things as he pleases,
provided he is an artist. Let us rise to poetic heights to judge an
idealist, and then prove to him that his dream is commonplace,
ordinary, not mad or magnificent enough. But if we judge a
materialistic writer, let us show him wherein the truth of life
differs from the truth in his book.

It is self-evident that schools so widely different must have adopted
diametrically opposite processes in composition.

The novelist who transforms truth--immutable, uncompromising, and
displeasing as it is--to extract from it an exceptional and delightful
plot, must necessarily manipulate events without an exaggerated
respect for probability, molding them to his will, dressing and
arranging them so as to attract, excite, or affect the reader. The
scheme of his romance is no more than a series of ingenious
combinations, skillfully leading to the issue. The incidents are
planned and graduated up to the culminating point and effect of the
conclusion, which is the crowning and fatal result, satisfying the
curiosity aroused from the first, closing the interest, and ending the
story so completely that we have no further wish to know what happened
on the morrow to the most engaging actors in it.

The novelist who, on the other hand, proposes to give us an accurate
picture of life, must carefully eschew any concatenation of events
which might seem exceptional. His aim is not to tell a story to amuse
us, or to appeal to our feelings, but to compel us to reflect, and to
understand the occult and deeper meaning of events. By dint of seeing
and meditating he has come to regard the world, facts, men, and things
in a way peculiar to himself, which is the outcome of the sum total of
his studious observation. It is this personal view of the world which
he strives to communicate to us by reproducing it in a book. To make
the spectacle of life as moving to us as it has been to him, he must
bring it before our eyes with scrupulous exactitude. Hence he must
construct his work with such skill, it must be so artful under so
simple a guise, that it is impossible to detect and sketch the plan,
or discern the writer's purpose.

Instead of manipulating an adventure and working it out in such a way
as to make it interesting to the last, he will take his actor or
actors at a certain period of their lives, and lead them by natural
stages to the next. In this way he will show either how men's minds
are modified by the influence of their environment, or how their
passions and sentiments are evolved; how they love or hate, how they
struggle in every sphere of society, and how their interests
clash--social interests, pecuniary interests, family interests,
political interests. The skill of his plan will not consist in
emotional power or charm, in an attractive opening or a stirring
catastrophe, but in the happy grouping of small but constant facts
from which the final purpose of the work may be discerned. If within
three hundred pages he depicts ten years of a life so as to show what
its individual and characteristic significance may have been in the
midst of all the other human beings which surrounded it, he ought to
know how to eliminate from among the numberless trivial incidents of
daily life all which do not serve his end, and how to set in a special
light all those which might have remained invisible to less
clear-sighted observers, and which give his book caliber and value as
a whole.

It is intelligible that this method of construction, so unlike the old
manner which was patent to all, must often mislead the critics, and
that they will not all detect the subtle and secret wires--almost
invisibly fine--which certain modern artists use instead of the one
string formerly known as the "plot."

In a word, while the novelist of yesterday preferred to relate the
crises of life, the acute phases of the mind and heart, the novelist
of to-day writes the history of the heart, soul, and intellect in
their normal condition. To achieve the effects he aims at--that is to
say, the sense of simple reality, and to point the artistic lesson he
endeavors to draw from it--that is to say, a revelation of what his
contemporary man is before his very eyes, he must bring forward no
facts that are not irrefragible and invariable.

But even when we place ourselves at the same point of view as these
realistic artists, we may discuss and dispute their theory, which
seems to be comprehensively stated in these words: "The whole Truth
and nothing but the Truth." Since the end they have in view is to
bring out the philosophy of certain constant and current facts, they
must often correct events in favor of probability and to the detriment
of truth; for

"Le vrai peut quelquefois, n'être pas le vraisemblable." (Truth may
sometimes not seem probable.)

The realist, if he is an artist, will endeavor not to show us a
commonplace photograph of life, but to give us a presentment of it
which shall be more complete, more striking, more cogent than reality
itself. To tell everything is out of the question; it would require at
least a volume for each day to enumerate the endless, insignificant
incidents which crowd our existence. A choice must be made--and this
is the first blow to the theory of "the whole truth."

Life, moreover, is composed of the most dissimilar things, the most
unforeseen, the most contradictory, the most incongruous; it is
merciless, without sequence or connection, full of inexplicable,
illogical, and contradictory catastrophes, such as can only be classed
as miscellaneous facts. This is why the artist, having chosen his
subject, can only select such characteristic details as are of use to
it, from this life overladen with chances and trifles, and reject
everything else, everything by the way.

To give an instance from among a thousand. The number of persons who,
every day, meet with an accidental death, all over the world, is very
considerable. But how can we bring a tile onto the head of an
important character, or fling him under the wheels of a vehicle in the
middle of a story, under the pretext that accident must have its due?

Again, in life there is no difference of foreground and distance, and
events are sometimes hurried on, sometimes left to linger
indefinitely. Art, on the contrary, consists in the employment of
foresight, and elaboration in arranging skillful and ingenious
transitions, in setting essential events in a strong light, simply by
the craft of composition, and giving all else the degree of relief, in
proportion to their importance, requisite to produce a convincing
sense of the special truth to be conveyed.

"Truth" in such work consists in producing a complete illusion by
following the common logic of facts and not by transcribing them
pell-mell, as they succeed each other.

Whence I conclude that the higher order of Realists should rather call
themselves Illusionists.

How childish it is, indeed, to believe in this reality, since to each
of us the truth is in his own mind, his own organs. Our own eyes and
ears, taste and smell, create as many different truths as there are
human beings on earth. And our brains, duly and differently informed
by those organs, apprehend, analyze, and decide as differently as if
each of us were a being of an alien race. Each of us, then, has simply
his own illusion of the world--poetical, sentimental, cheerful,
melancholy, foul, or gloomy, according to his nature. And the writer
has no other mission than faithfully to reproduce this illusion, with
all the elaborations of art which he may have learnt and have at his
command. The illusion of beauty--which is merely a conventional term
invented by man! The illusion of ugliness--which is a matter of
varying opinion! The illusion of truth--never immutable! The illusion
of depravity--which fascinates so many minds! All the great artists
are those who can make other men see their own particular illusion.

Then we must not be wroth with any theory, since each is simply the
outcome, in generalizations, of a special temperament analyzing
itself.

Two of these theories have more particularly been the subject of
discussion, and set up in opposition to each other instead of being
admitted on an equal footing: that of the purely analytical novel,
and that of the objective novel.

The partisans of analysis require the writer to devote himself to
indicating the smallest evolutions of a soul, and all the most secret
motives of our every action, giving but a quite secondary importance
to the act and fact in itself. It is but the goal, a simple milestone,
the excuse for the book. According to them, these works, at once exact
and visionary, in which imagination merges into observation, are to be
written after the fashion in which a philosopher composes a treatise
on psychology, seeking out causes in their remotest origin, telling
the why and wherefore of every impulse, and detecting every reaction
of the soul's movements under the promptings of interest, passion, or
instinct.

The partisans of objectivity--odious word--aiming, on the contrary, at
giving us an exact presentment of all that happens in life, carefully
avoid all complicated explanations, all disquisitions on motive, and
confine themselves to let persons and events pass before our eyes. In
their opinion, psychology should be concealed in the book, as it is in
reality, under the facts of existence.

The novel as conceived of on these lines gains in interest; there is
more movement in the narrative, more color, more of the stir of life.

Hence, instead of giving long explanations of the state of mind of an
actor in the tale, the objective writer tries to discover the action
or gesture which that state of mind must inevitably lead to in that
personage, under certain given circumstances. And he makes him so
demean himself from one end of the volume to the other, that all his
actions, all his movements shall be the expression of his inmost
nature, of all his thoughts, and all his impulses or hesitancies. Thus
they conceal psychology instead of flaunting it; they use it as the
skeleton of the work, just as the invisible bony framework is the
skeleton of the human body. The artist who paints our portrait does
not display our bones.

To me it seems that the novel executed on this principle gains also in
sincerity. It is, in the first place, more probable, for the persons
we see moving about us do not divulge to us the motives from which
they act.

We must also take into account the fact that, even if by close
observation of men and women we can so exactly ascertain their
characters as to predict their behavior under almost any
circumstances, if we can say decisively: "Such a man, of such a
temperament, in such a case, will do this or that"; yet it does not
follow that we could lay a finger, one by one, on all the secret
evolutions of his mind--which is not our own; all the mysterious
pleadings of his instincts--which are not the same as ours; all the
mingled promptings of his nature--in which the organs, nerves, blood,
and flesh are different from ours.

However great the genius of a gentle, delicate man, guileless of
passions and devoted to science and work, he never can so completely
transfuse himself into the body of a dashing, sensual, and violent
man, of exuberant vitality, torn by every desire or even by every
vice, as to understand and delineate the inmost impulses and
sensations of a being so unlike himself, even though he may very
adequately foresee and relate all the actions of his life.

In short, the man who writes pure psychology can do no more than put
himself in the place of all his puppets in the various situations in
which he places them. It is impossible that he should change his
organs, which are the sole intermediary between external life and
ourselves, which constrain us by their perceptions, circumscribe our
sensibilities, and create in each of us a soul essentially dissimilar
to all those about us. Our purview and knowledge of the world, and our
ideas of life, are acquired by the aid of our senses, and we cannot
help transferring them, in some degree, to all the personages whose
secret and unknown nature we propose to reveal. Thus, it is always
ourselves that we disclose in the body of a king or an assassin, a
robber or an honest man, a courtesan, a nun, a young girl, or a coarse
market woman; for we are compelled to put the problem in this personal
form: "If _I_ were a king, a murderer, a prostitute, a nun, or a
market woman, what should _I_ do, what should _I_ think, how should
_I_ act?" We can only vary our characters by altering the age, the
sex, the social position, and all the circumstances of life, of that
_ego_ which nature has in fact inclosed in an insurmountable barrier
of organs of sense. Skill consists in not betraying this _ego_ to the
reader, under the various masks which we employ to cover it.

Still, though on the point of absolute exactitude, pure psychological
analysis is impregnable, it can nevertheless produce works of art as
fine as any other method of work.

Here, for instance we have the _Symbolists_. And why not? Their
artistic dream is a worthy one; and they have this especially
interesting feature: that they know and proclaim the extreme
difficulty of art.

And, indeed, a man must be very daring or foolish to write at all
nowadays. And so many and such various masters of the craft, of such
multifarious genius, what remains to be done that has not been done,
or what to say that has not been said? Which of us all can boast of
having written a page, a phrase, which is not to be found--or
something very like it--in some other book? When we read, we who are
so soaked in (French) literature that our whole body seems as it were
a mere compound of words, do we ever light on a line, a thought, which
is not familiar to us, or of which we have not had at least some vague
forecast?

The man who only tries to amuse his public by familiar methods, writes
confidently, in his candid mediocrity, works intended only for the
ignorant and idle crowd. But those who are conscious of the weight of
centuries of past literature, whom nothing satisfies, whom everything
disgusts because they dream of something better, to whom the bloom is
off everything, and who always are impressed with the uselessness, the
commonness of their own achievements--these come to regard literary
art as a thing unattainable and mysterious, scarcely to be detected
save in a few pages by the greatest masters.

A score of phrases suddenly discovered thrill us to the heart like a
startling revelation; but the lines which follow are just like all
other verse, the further flow of prose is like all other prose.

Men of genius, no doubt, escape this anguish and torment because they
bear within themselves an irresistible creative power. They do not sit
in judgment on themselves. The rest of us, who are no more than
persevering and conscientious workers, can only contend against
invincible discouragement by unremitting effort.

Two men by their simple and lucid teaching gave me the strength to try
again and again: Louis Bouilhet and Gustave Flaubert.

If I here speak of myself in connection with them, it is because their
counsels, as summed up in a few lines, may prove useful to some young
writers who may be less self-confident than most are when they make
their _début_ in print. Bouilhet, whom I first came to know somewhat
intimately about two years before I gained the friendship of Flaubert,
by dint of telling me that a hundred lines--or less--if they are
without a flaw and contain the very essence of the talent and
originality of even a second-rate man, are enough to establish an
artist's reputation, made me understand that persistent toil and a
thorough knowledge of the craft, might, in some happy hour of
lucidity, power, and enthusiasm, by the fortunate occurrence of a
subject in perfect concord with the tendency of our mind, lead to the
production of a single work, short but as perfect as we can make it.
Then I learned to see that the best-known writers have hardly ever
left us more than one such volume; and that needful above all else is
the good fortune which leads us to hit upon and discern, amid the
multifarious matter which offers itself for selection, the subject
which will absorb all our faculties, all that is of worth in us, all
our artistic powers.

At a later date, Flaubert, whom I had occasionally met, took a fancy
to me. I ventured to show him a few attempts. He read them kindly and
replied: "I cannot tell whether you will have any talent. What you
have brought me proves a certain intelligence; but never forget this,
young man: talent--as Chateaubriand[1] says--is nothing but long
patience. Go and work."

[Footnote 1: The idea did not originate with Chateaubriand.]

I worked; and I often went to see him, feeling that he liked me, for
he had taken to calling me, in jest, his disciple. For seven years I
wrote verses, I wrote tales, I even wrote a villainous play. Nothing
of all this remains. The master read it all; then, the next Sunday
while we breakfasted together, he would give me his criticisms,
driving into me by degrees two or three principles which sum up the
drift of his long and patient exhortations: "If you have any
originality," said he, "you must above all things bring it out; if you
have not you must acquire it."

Talent is long patience.

Everything you want to express must be considered so long, and so
attentively, as to enable you to find some aspect of it which no one
has yet seen and expressed. There is an unexplored side to everything,
because we are wont never to use our eyes but with the memory of what
others before us have thought of the things we see. The smallest thing
has something unknown in it; we must find it. To describe a blazing
fire, a tree in a plain, we must stand face to face with that fire or
that tree, till to us they are wholly unlike any other fire or tree.
Thus we may become original.

Then, having established the truth that there are not in the whole
world two grains of sand, two flies, two hands, or two noses
absolutely alike, he would make me describe in a few sentences some
person or object, in such a way as to define it exactly, and
distinguish it from every other of the same race or species.

"When you pass a grocer sitting in his doorway," he would say, "a
porter smoking his pipe, or a cab stand, show me that grocer and that
porter, their attitude and their whole physical aspect, including, as
indicated by the skill of the portrait, their whole moral nature, in
such a way that I could never mistake them for any other grocer or
porter; and by a single word give me to understand wherein one cab
horse differs from fifty others before or behind it."

I have explained his notions of style at greater length in another
place; they bear a marked relation to the theory of observation I have
just laid down. Whatever the thing we wish to say, there is but one
word to express it, but one verb to give it movement, but one
adjective to qualify it. We must seek till we find this noun, this
verb, and this adjective, and never be content with getting very near
it, never allow ourselves to play tricks, even happy ones, or have
recourse to sleights of language to avoid a difficulty. The subtlest
things may be rendered and suggested by applying the hint conveyed in
Boileau's line:

"D'un mot mis en sa place enseigna le pouvoir." "He taught the power
of a word put in the right place."

There is no need for an eccentric vocabulary to formulate every shade
of thought--the complicated, multifarious, and outlandish words which
are put upon us nowadays in the name of artistic writing; but every
modification of the value of a word by the place it fills must be
distinguished with extreme clearness. Give us fewer nouns, verbs, and
adjectives, with almost inscrutable shades of meaning, and let us have
a greater variety of phrases, more variously constructed, ingeniously
divided, full of sonority and learned rhythm. Let us strive to be
admirable in style, rather than curious in collecting rare words.

It is in fact more difficult to bend a sentence to one's will and make
it express everything--even what it does not say, to fill it full of
implications of covert and inexplicit suggestions, than to invent new
expressions, or seek out in old and forgotten books all those which
have fallen into disuse and lost their meaning, so that to us they are
as a dead language.

The French tongue, to be sure, is a pure stream, which affected
writers never have and never can trouble. Each age has flung into the
limpid waters its pretentious archaisms and euphuisms, but nothing has
remained on the surface to perpetuate these futile attempts and
impotent efforts. It is the nature of the language to be clear,
logical, and vigorous. It does not lend itself to weakness, obscurity,
or corruption.

Those who describe without duly heeding abstract terms, those who make
rain and hail fall on the _cleanliness_ of the window panes, may throw
stones at the simplicity of their brothers of the pen. The stones may
indeed hit their brothers, who have a body, but will never hurt
simplicity--which has none.

GUY DE MAUPASSANT.

LA GUILLETTE, ETRETAT, September, 1887.




PIERRE ET JEAN




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.

Madame Roland, dozing in the stern by the side of Madame Rosémilly,
who had been invited to join the fishing-party, woke up, and turning
her head to look at her husband, said:

"Well, well! Gérome."

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, Madame Rosémilly, 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."

Madame 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 moustache 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 jeweler 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 et 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 ardor 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 at 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 everlastingly
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 toward 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 soul, 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 in common gave rise day by day.
Another little circumstance, too, just now disturbed her peace of
mind, and she was in fear of some complication; 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 neighbor, Mme. Rosémilly,
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 weighed 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 neighbors, 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; and then she would
have liked that the other should not be grieved.

Mme. Rosémilly 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 woman--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, as Mme. Rosémilly, who had been
dining with them, remarked, "It must be great fun to go out fishing,"
the jeweler, flattered on his passion, and suddenly fired with the
wish to impart it, 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 Héve; they had fished till mid-day, 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. Rosémilly 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; and 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 the southward other wreaths of smoke, numbers of
them, could be seen, all converging toward the Havre pier, now
scarcely visible as a white streak with the light-house, 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. Rosémilly?"

She took the telescope and directed it toward the Atlantic horizon,
without being able, however, to find the vessel, for she could
distinguish nothing--nothing but blue, with a colored 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 window 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 beforehand 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 the 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.

Both at once, as if by a single effort, they dipped the oars and lay
back, pulling with all their might, and then a struggle began 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 clenched 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 in such a
state. You are not a child."

And he shrugged his shoulders and set to once more.

Mme. Rosémilly 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 plowing 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 toward 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, toward 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
top-weight of tangled antlers. The hurrying steam-ships 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 mainmast to the fore-top 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. Rosémilly 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 kilometers,
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 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,
Fécamp, Saint-Valery, Tréport, 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 harbor, 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.
Rosémilly 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
jeweler'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 kilometers 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, Joséphine,
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 upstairs 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."

Maître 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, law-suits--all sorts of desirable or formidable
contingencies. The father, after a few moments of silence, muttered:

"What on earth can it mean?"

Mme. Rosémilly 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 cousinship.

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, 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 Madame Rosémilly.

"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. Maître 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 after 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 Maître," said he, giving his visitor the title
which in France is the official prefix to the name of every lawyer.

Mme. Rosémilly 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 honors eagerly to their visitor.

"A cup of coffee, Monsieur?"

"No, thank you. I have this moment done dinner."

"A cup of tea, then?"

"Thank you, I will not refuse presently. First we must attend to
business."

The total 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. Maréchal--Léon Maréchal?"

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 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. Maréchal 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.

Maître 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 emotions and stammered out:

"Good heavens! Poor Léon--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 around
to these interesting facts he asked.

"And what did he die of, poor Maréchal?"

Maître 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 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 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?"

Maître 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 jeweler had an impulse of shame--obscure,
instinctive, and fleeting; shame of his eagerness to be informed, and
he added:

"You understand when I ask all these questions so immediately it is to
save my son disagreeables 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 Maréchal 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. Rosémilly.

"Charming! charming!" the lawyer said again and again.

Roland, leaning against the marble mantelshelf 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 armchairs that matched, one on each side of the center-table,
stared in front of them, in similar attitudes full of dissimilar
expression.

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 Maréchal well?"

And his father replied:

"I believe you! 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 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, it would have been of 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 these 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 theater, he was attracted
by the lights in the Café Tortoni, and slowly bent his steps to the
dazzling façade; 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
harbor.

"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 toward the pier; he had chosen solitude.

Going close by a bench on the breakwater he sat down, tired already of
walking and out of humor 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 has 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 Madame Rosémilly. 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 flagstaff, whence the depth of
water in the harbor is signaled, and he struck a match to read the
list of vessels signaled 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
Hève, like monstrous twin Cyclops, shot their long and powerful beams
across the sea. Starting from two neighboring centers, 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 harbor; 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 eyelids: "I am here. I am Trouville; I am Honfleur; I am the
Audemer River." And high above all the rest, so high that from this
distance it might be taken for a planet, the airy light-house 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 two-pence!"

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 a few steps further again, 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 recognized 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 colored 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 laboring 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
Rosémilly." 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 toward the quarter of
the town known as Ingouville.

He had known old Marowsko--_le père 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
afterwards among his neighbors. 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 single 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 recognizing the
doctor, came forward to meet him, holding out both hands.

His black frock coat, streaked with stains of acids and syrups, 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 a
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
syrup 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
syrups and liqueurs. "A good syrup 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 color 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 flavor. 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
"_Grosélia_," or again "_Groséline_." 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 yet he could hear 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 learnt 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 mornings 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 would be easier than to achieve this by skillful 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 then he might make love. 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 arrangements of the exits,
explaining that he was a medical man and had many visitors. He must
have a broad and well-kept staircase; 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
about."

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 rise 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 color 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
François, 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 cafés, 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 ferrule 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 endeavors are like the labors 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 hears
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.
Rosémilly. 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 those 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 game 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 a dream, 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 has 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
that 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
Maréchal'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 café. He went in, took a chair, and as the waiter came
up, "A bock," he said.

He felt his heart beating, his skin was goose-flesh. 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 neighbors, 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 honor.

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. Rosémilly, whom his father had brought home and
engaged to dine with them in honor 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.
Rosémilly 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 humored by the old mariner, laughed
heartily, his face flushed already and his eye watery from the
absinthe. He had a burly shopkeeping 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 color to her cheeks.

In him too the fullness 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. Rosémilly, 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 intermingled with
ribbon favors--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 syrup; 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.
Rosémilly, 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. Rosémilly's maid-servant 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 jeweler'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-humor 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. Rosémilly; 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 from a focus, 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 arose to propose a toast. Having bowed to the
company, he began:

"Most gracious ladies and gentlemen, we have met to do honor 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 brought 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 behavior 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. Rosémilly, "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. Rosémilly, 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 Monsieur
Maréchal."

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 Maréchal, 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. Rosémilly, 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
the blessed memory of the deceased Maréchal. 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-humor.

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.
Rosémilly 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 toward the jetty on the still water
of the harbor. The breath of wind that came down the street 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
spanker, which was close-reefed against its 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 François,
1er.

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 the 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 mold, the peculiar smell of a sea fog, made him
close his mouth that he might not taste the cold, wet vapor. By the
time the boat was at her usual moorings in the harbor 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.

"Where is it?" he asked.

"Boulevard François, 1er."

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 Maréchal?"

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 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 Maréchal, whom we then knew 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 this 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 rock dropped on 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 a 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 savor 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
recognizing 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 cafés 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 Maréchal'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 Maréchal 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 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 for ever. 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 behavior to my brother and to me. I
will seek out the causes which might have given rise to this
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
Maréchal, 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 harbor 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 further 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 harbor 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 word with his lips, his mind kept
repeating: "Maréchal--Maréchal," 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 et 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." Maréchal 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, Maréchal 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 any 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 Maréchal 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 Maréchal 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 Maréchal brought flowers; he, the gentleman, the rich man, the
customer, to the humble shop-keeper, the jeweler'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 Maréchal 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 jeweler'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.
Maréchal 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 hands for one minute!
His mother kept it perhaps in the unconfessed drawer where love-tokens
were treasured.

His misery at 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 clamor 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, 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? And she had been frail. 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?
Everyone; 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. 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 lookout 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 Indiaman, homeward bound.

He saw several more come in, one after another, out of the
impenetrable vapor. Then, as the damp became quite intolerable, Pierre
set out toward 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 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 dishonor 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?

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
recognize the man to whose kisses they have lent their lips? The kiss
strikes like a thunder-bolt, 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 you 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 nightshirt, 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, labored 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 roof--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 kiss. 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 practiced eye might recognize 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 clenched 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 Maréchal, 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 tiptoe 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 nightcap 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 Joséphine,
rung up by Papagris at the hour fixed, who roused her master from his
stubborn slumbers.

Pierre as he went toward 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 Maréchal, 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 was 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 has 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 when 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
neighboring lands. They reached the harbor 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, sunshades of every hue, hats of every shape, dresses of every
color, 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 on 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
insinuating charm of gesture, voice and smile, all the coquettish airs
in short displayed on this sea-shore, 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, hunted them like game, coy and furtive notwithstanding
that it seemed so near and so easy to capture. This wide shore was,
then, no more than a love-market--some drove a hard bargain for their
kisses while others only promised them. And he reflected that it was
everywhere the same, all the world over.

His mother had done what others did--that was all. Others? No. For
there were exceptions--many, very many. 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 lacelike 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 Maréchal.
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 had 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 neighbor 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 armchairs.

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 eye 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 Maréchal."

"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 Maréchal which used to be in the drawing-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 it on a chair by your
side with a pile of letters of which you burnt half. Strange, isn't
it, that you should have come across that 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 toward 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 an 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 toward
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 deathbed 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 recognize 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 again 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 armchair, with his legs crossed. Their father always sat astride
on a chair and spit from afar into the fireplace.

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 fireplace he stopped for a few seconds to
look at Maréchal'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. Rosémilly"; and
her eye again anxiously turned to the mantelshelf.

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 a 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. Rosémilly. "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. Rosémilly 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 _à l'Anglaise_, and my brother has done
nothing else for some time past."


CHAPTER VI

For a week or two nothing occurred at the Rolands'. The father went
fishing; Jean, with his mother's help, was furnishing and settling
himself; Pierre, very gloomy, never was seen excepting at mealtimes.

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 had not 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 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 matter 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 clue 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.

The 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
bedroom 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 started by 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. Rosémilly, 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 beetroot, 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 eating 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. Rosémilly was quite 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-by 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 meters 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 this 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. Rosémilly
as they fled away before him. And this flight fired his ardor, urging
him on to the sudden determination which comes to hesitating and timid
natures. The warm air, fragrant with seacoast odors--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 favor 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 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. Rosémilly, 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.

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 briars and grass on the
raised shelf where the boulders were piled.

"Oh, I am so thirsty!" cried Mme. Rosémilly.

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 eyelashes, 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's
back as he came down, stern foremost, 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 both his hand
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 hilltop.
Mme. Rosémilly 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 seaweed, 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 tidepool 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 further; 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-colored hair, were
swaying under the quivering water as it trickled off to the distant
sea through some invisible crevice.

Mme. Rosémilly 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 toward the
seaweed, 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. Rosémilly, 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 tips 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 caught 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 so 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 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 seaweed, 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. Rosémilly, 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
seagrasses.

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. Rosémilly. 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
from 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

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