CHAPTER I_Pierre and Jean

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER I

“Tschah!” exclaimed old Roland suddenly, after he had remained

motionless for a quarter of an hour, his eyes fixed on the water, while

now and again he very slightly lifted his line sunk in the sea.

Mme. Roland, dozing in the stern by the side of Mme. 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, Mme. 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.”

Mme. Roland was now quite awake, and gazing with a softened look at the

wide horizon of cliff and sea.

“You have had good sport, all the same,” she murmured.

But her husband shook his head in denial, though at the same time he

glanced complacently at the basket where the fish caught by the three

men were still breathing spasmodically, with a low rustle of clammy

scales and struggling fins, and dull, ineffectual efforts, gasping in

the fatal air. Old Roland took the basket between his knees and tilted

it up, making the silver heap of creatures slide to the edge that he

might see those lying at the bottom, and their death-throes became more

convulsive, while the strong smell of their bodies, a wholesome reek of

brine, came up from the full depths of the creel. The old fisherman

sniffed it eagerly, as we smell at roses, and exclaimed:

“Cristi! But they are fresh enough!” and he went on: “How many did you

pull out, doctor?”

His eldest son, Pierre, a man of thirty, with black whiskers trimmed

square like a lawyer’s, his mustache and beard shaved away, replied:

“Oh, not many; three or four.”

The father turned to the younger. “And you, Jean?” said he.

Jean, a tall fellow, much younger than his brother, fair, with a full

beard, smiled and murmured:

“Much the same as Pierre—four or five.”

Every time they told the same fib, which delighted father Roland. He

had hitched his line round a row-lock, and folding his arms he

announced:

“I will never again try to fish after noon. After ten in the morning it

is all over. The lazy brutes will not bite; they are taking their

siesta in the sun.” And he looked round at the sea on all sides, with

the satisfied air of a proprietor.

He was a retired jeweller who had been led by an inordinate love of

seafaring and fishing to fly from the shop as soon as he had made

enough money to live in modest comfort on the interest of his savings.

He retired to le Havre, bought a boat, and became an amateur skipper.

His two sons, Pierre and Jean, had remained at Paris to continue their

studies, and came for the holidays from time to time to share their

father’s amusements.

On leaving school, Pierre, the elder, five years older than Jean, had

felt a vocation to various professions and had tried half a dozen in

succession, but, soon disgusted with each in turn, he started afresh

with new hopes. Medicine had been his last fancy, and he had set to

work with so much ardour that he had just qualified after an unusually

short course of study, by a special remission of time from the

minister. He was enthusiastic, intelligent, fickle, but obstinate, full

of Utopias and philosophical notions.

Jean, who was as fair as his brother was dark, as deliberate as his

brother was vehement, as gentle as his brother was unforgiving, had

quietly gone through his studies for the law and had just taken his

diploma as a licentiate, at the time when Pierre had taken his in

medicine. So they were now having a little rest at home, and both

looked forward to settling in Havre if they could find a satisfactory

opening.

But a vague jealousy, one of those dormant jealousies which grow up

between brothers or sisters and slowly ripen till they burst, on the

occasion of a marriage perhaps, or of some good fortune happening to

one of them, kept them on the alert in a sort of brotherly and

non-aggressive animosity. They were fond of each other, it is true, but

they watched each other. Pierre, five years old when Jean was born, had

looked with the eyes of a little petted animal at that other little

animal which had suddenly come to lie in his father’s and mother’s arms

and to be loved and fondled by them. Jean, from his birth, had always

been a pattern of sweetness, gentleness, and good temper, and Pierre

had by degrees begun to chafe at ever-lastingly hearing the praises of

this great lad, whose sweetness in his eyes was indolence, whose

gentleness was stupidity, and whose kindliness was blindness. His

parents, whose dream for their sons was some respectable and

undistinguished calling, blamed him for so often changing his mind, for

his fits of enthusiasm, his abortive beginnings, and all his

ineffectual impulses towards generous ideas and the liberal

professions.

Since he had grown to manhood they no longer said in so many words:

“Look at Jean and follow his example,” but every time he heard them say

“Jean did this—Jean does that,” he understood their meaning and the

hint the words conveyed.

Their mother, an orderly person, a thrifty and rather sentimental woman

of the middle class, with the soul of a soft-hearted book-keeper, was

constantly quenching the little rivalries between her two big sons to

which the petty events of their life constantly gave rise. Another

little circumstance, too, just now disturbed her peace of mind, and she

was in fear of some complications; for in the course of the winter,

while her boys were finishing their studies, each in his own line, she

had made the acquaintance of a neighbour, Mme. 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 weighted every conceivable

contingency, and judged them with a wholesome, strict, and benevolent

mind, had fallen into the habit of calling to work or chat for an hour

in the evening with these friendly neighbours, who would give her a cup

of tea.

Father Roland, always goaded on by his seafaring craze, would question

their new friend about the departed captain; and she would talk of him,

and his voyages, and his old-world tales, without hesitation, like a

resigned and reasonable woman who loves life and respects death.

The two sons on their return, finding the pretty widow quite at home in

the house, forthwith began to court her, less from any wish to charm

her than from the desire to cut each other out.

Their mother, being practical and prudent, sincerely hoped that one of

them might win the young widow, for she was rich; but then she would

have liked that the other should not be grieved.

Mme. 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 women—all women, poor weak things.

Never till his sons came home had M. Roland invited her to join his

fishing expeditions, nor had he ever taken his wife; for he liked to

put off before daybreak, with his ally, Captain Beausire, a master

mariner retired, whom he had first met on the quay at high tides and

with whom he had struck up an intimacy, and the old sailor Papagris,

known as Jean Bart, in whose charge the boat was left.

But one evening of the week before, Mme. Rosémilly, who had been dining

with them, remarked, “It must be great fun to go out fishing.” The

jeweller, flattered by her interest and suddenly fired with the wish to

share his favourite sport with her, and to make a convert after the

manner of priests, exclaimed: “Would you like to come?”

“To be sure I should.”

“Next Tuesday?”

“Yes, next Tuesday.”

“Are you the woman to be ready to start at five in the morning?”

She exclaimed in horror:

“No, indeed: that is too much.”

He was disappointed and chilled, suddenly doubting her true vocation.

However, he said:

“At what hour can you be ready?”

“Well—at nine?”

“Not before?”

“No, not before. Even that is very early.”

The old fellow hesitated; he certainly would catch nothing, for when

the sun has warmed the sea the fish bite no more; but the two brothers

had eagerly pressed the scheme, and organized and arranged everything

there and then.

So on the following Tuesday the Pearl had dropped anchor under the

white rocks of Cape la Hève; they had fished till midday, then they had

slept awhile, and then fished again without catching anything; and then

it was that father Roland, perceiving, rather late, that all that Mme.

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; seeing as he looked up at the sky that the sun was getting low:

“Well, boys,” said he, “suppose we turn homeward.”

The young men hauled in their lines, coiled them up, cleaned the hooks

and stuck them into corks, and sat waiting.

Roland stood up to look out like a captain.

“No wind,” said he. “You will have to pull, young ’uns.”

And suddenly extending one arm to the northward, he exclaimed:

“Here comes the packet from Southampton.”

Away over the level sea, spread out like a blue sheet, vast and sheeny

and shot with flame and gold, an inky cloud was visible against the

rosy sky in the quarter to which he pointed, and below it they could

make out the hull of the steamer, which looked tiny at such a distance.

And to southward other wreaths of smoke, numbers of them, could be

seen, all converging towards the Havre pier, now scarcely visible as a

white streak with the lighthouse, upright, like a horn, at the end of

it.

Roland asked: “Is not the Normandie due to-day?” And Jean replied:

“Yes, to-day.”

“Give me my glass. I fancy I see her out there.”

The father pulled out the copper tube, adjusted it to his eye, sought

the speck, and then, delighted to have seen it, exclaimed:

“Yes, yes, there she is. I know her two funnels. Would you like to

look, Mme. Rosémilly?”

She took the telescope and directed it towards the Atlantic horizon,

without being able, however, to find the vessel, for she could

distinguish nothing—nothing but blue, with a coloured halo round it, a

circular rainbow—and then all manner of queer things, winking eclipses

which made her feel sick.

She said as she returned the glass:

“I never could see with that thing. It used to put my husband in quite

a rage; he would stand for hours at the windows watching the ships

pass.”

Old Roland, much put out, retorted:

“Then it must be some defect in your eye, for my glass is a very good

one.”

Then he offered it to his wife.

“Would you like to look?”

“No, thank you. I know 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 nearest to the two women, took the stroke oar, Jean the

other, and they sat waiting till the skipper should say: “Give way!”

For he insisted on everything being done according to strict rule.

Simultaneously, as if by a single effort, they dipped the oars, and

lying back, pulling with all their might, began a struggle to display

their strength. They had come out easily, under sail, but the breeze

had died away, and the masculine pride of the two brothers was suddenly

aroused by the prospect of measuring their powers. When they went out

alone with their father they plied the oars without any steering, for

Roland would be busy getting the lines ready, while he kept a lookout

in the boat’s course, guiding it by a sign or a word: “Easy, Jean, and

you, Pierre, put your back into it.” Or he would say, “Now, then,

number one; come, number two—a little elbow grease.” Then the one who

had been dreaming pulled harder, the one who had got excited eased

down, and the boat’s head came round.

But to-day they meant to display their biceps. Pierre’s arms were

hairy, somewhat lean but sinewy; Jean’s were round and white and rosy,

and the knot of muscles moved under the skin.

At first Pierre had the advantage. With his teeth set, his brow knit,

his legs rigid, his hands clinched on the oar, he made it bend from end

to end at every stroke, and the Pearl was veering landward. Father

Roland, sitting in the bows, so as to leave the stern seat to the two

women, wasted his breath shouting, “Easy, number one; pull harder,

number two!” Pierre pulled harder in his frenzy, and “number two” could

not keep time with his wild stroke.

At last the skipper cried: “Stop her!” The two oars were lifted

simultaneously, and then by his father’s orders Jean pulled alone for a

few minutes. But from that moment he had it all his own way; he grew

eager and warmed to his work, while Pierre, out of breath and exhausted

by his first vigorous spurt, was lax and panting. Four times running

father Roland made them stop while the elder took breath, so as to get

the boat into her right course again. Then the doctor, humiliated and

fuming, his forehead dropping with sweat, his cheeks white, stammered

out:

“I cannot think what has come over me; I have a stitch in my side. I

started very well, but it has pulled me up.”

Jean asked: “Shall I pull alone with both oars for a time?”

“No, thanks, it will go off.”

And their mother, somewhat vexed, said:

“Why, Pierre, what rhyme or reason is there in getting into such a

state. You are not a child.”

And he shrugged his shoulders and set to once more.

Mme. 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 ploughing on at full steam, crowded with

passengers under open parasols. Its hurrying, noisy paddle-wheels

beating up the water which fell again in foam, gave it an appearance of

haste as of a courier pressed for time, and the upright stem cut

through the water, throwing up two thin translucent waves which glided

off along the hull.

When it had come quite near the Pearl, father Roland lifted his hat,

the ladies shook their handkerchiefs, and half a dozen parasols eagerly

waved on board the steamboat responded to this salute as she went on

her way, leaving behind her a few broad undulations on the still and

glassy surface of the sea.

There were other vessels, each with its smoky cap, coming in from every

part of the horizon towards the short white jetty, which swallowed them

up, one after another, like a mouth. And the fishing barks and lighter

craft with broad sails and slender masts, stealing across the sky in

tow of inconspicuous tugs, were coming in, faster and slower, towards

the devouring ogre, who from time to time seemed to have had a surfeit,

and spewed out to the open sea another fleet of steamers, brigs,

schooners, and three-masted vessels with their tangled mass of rigging.

The hurrying steamships flew off to the right and left over the smooth

bosom of the ocean, while sailing vessels, cast off by the pilot-tugs

which had hauled them out, lay motionless, dressing themselves from the

main-mast to the fore-tops in canvas, white or brown, and ruddy in the

setting sun.

Mme. Roland, with her eyes half-shut, murmured: “Good heavens, how

beautiful the sea is!”

And Mme. 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 kilometres,

said he. He pointed out Villerville, Trouville, Houlgate, Luc,

Arromanches, the little river of Caen, and the rocks of Calvados which

make the coast unsafe as far as Cherbourg. Then he enlarged on the

question of the sand-banks in the Seine, which shift at every tide so

that even the pilots of Quillebœuf 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: Étretat, 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 harbour, a tiny thing among those huge vessels.

When they came alongside of the quay, Papagris, who was waiting there,

gave his hand to the ladies to help them out, and they took the way

into the town. A large crowd, the crowd which haunts the pier every day

at high tide—was also drifting homeward. Mme. Roland and Mme. 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 a

jeweller’s shop, to look at a bonnet or an ornament; then after making

their comments they went on again. In front of the Place de la Bourse

Roland paused, as he did every day, to gaze at the docks full of

vessels—the _Bassin du Commerce_, with other docks beyond, where the

huge hulls lay side by side, closely packed in rows, four or five deep.

And masts innumerable; along several kilometres of quays the endless

masts, with their yards, poles, and rigging, gave this great gap in the

heart of the town the look of a dead forest. Above this leafless forest

the gulls were wheeling, and watching to pounce, like a falling stone,

on any scraps flung overboard; a sailor boy, fixing a pulley to a

cross-beam, looked as if he had gone up there bird’s-nesting.

“Will you dine with us without any sort of ceremony, just that we may

end the day together?” said Mme. Roland to her friend.

“To be sure I will, with pleasure; I accept equally without ceremony.

It would be dismal to go home and be alone this evening.”

Pierre, who had heard, and who was beginning to be restless under the

young woman’s indifference, muttered to himself: “Well, the widow is

taking root now, it would seem.” For some days past he had spoken of

her as “the widow.” The word, harmless in itself, irritated Jean merely

by the tone given to it, which to him seemed spiteful and offensive.

The three men spoke not another word till they reached the threshold of

their own house. It was a narrow one, consisting of a ground-floor and

two floors above, in the Rue Belle-Normande. The maid, 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 up stairs at her master’s heels to the drawing-room, which

was on the first floor, and then said:

“A gentleman called—three times.”

Old Roland, who never spoke to her without shouting and swearing, cried

out:

“Who do you say called, in the devil’s name?”

She never winced at her master’s roaring voice, and replied:

“A gentleman from the lawyer’s.”

“What lawyer?”

“Why, M’sieu ’Canu—who else?”

“And what did this gentleman say?”

“That M’sieu ’Canu will call in himself in the course of the evening.”

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, lawsuits—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 cousin-ship.

Before even taking off her bonnet she said:

“I say, father” (she called her husband “father” at home, and sometimes

“Monsieur Roland” before strangers), “tell me, do you remember who it

was that Joseph Lebru married for the second time?”

“Yes—a little girl named Dumenil, a stationer’s daughter.”

“Had they any children?”

“I should think so! four or five at least.”

“Not from that quarter, then.”

She was quite eager already in her search; she caught at the hope of

some added ease dropping from the sky. But Pierre, who was very fond of

his mother, who knew her to be somewhat visionary and feared she might

be disappointed, a little grieved, a little saddened if the news were

bad instead of good, checked her:

“Do not get excited, mother; there is no rich American uncle. For my

part, I should sooner fancy that it is about a marriage for Jean.”

Every one was surprised at the suggestion, and Jean was a little

ruffled by his brother’s having spoken of it before Mme. 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 later they were at dinner in the little dining-room on the

ground-floor.

At first they were silent; but presently Roland began again in

amazement at this lawyer’s visit.

“For after all, why did he not write? Why should he have sent his clerk

three times? Why is he coming himself?”

Pierre thought it quite natural.

“An immediate decision is required, no doubt; and perhaps there are

certain confidential conditions which it does not do to put into

writing.”

Still, they were all puzzled, and all four a little annoyed at having

invited a stranger, who would be in the way of their discussing and

deciding on what should be done.

They had just gone upstairs again when the lawyer was announced. Roland

flew to meet him.

“Good-evening, my dear 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 honours eagerly to their visitor.

“A cup of coffee, monsieur?”

“No, thank you. I have just had dinner.”

“A cup of tea, then?”

“Thank you, I will accept one later. First we must attend to business.”

The deep silence which succeeded this remark was broken only by the

regular ticking of the clock, and below stairs the clatter of saucepans

which the girl was cleaning—too stupid even to listen at the door.

The lawyer went on:

“Did you, in Paris, know a certain M. 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 a head clerk in the

exchequer office. I have never seen him since I left the capital, and

latterly we had ceased writing to each other. When people are far apart

you know——”

The lawyer gravely put in:

“M. 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 emotion 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 round 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 had no heir

I would not have forgotten him; he was a true friend.”

The lawyer smiled.

“I was very glad,” he said, “to announce the event to you myself. It is

always a pleasure to be the bearer of good news.”

It had not struck him that this good news was that of the death of a

friend, of Roland’s best friend; and the old man himself had suddenly

forgotten the intimacy he had but just spoken of with so much

conviction.

Only Mme. Roland and her sons still looked mournful. She, indeed, was

still shedding a few tears, wiping her eyes with her handkerchief,

which she then pressed to her lips to smother her deep sobs.

The doctor murmured:

“He was a good fellow, very affectionate. He often invited us to dine

with him—my brother and me.”

Jean, with wide-open, glittering eyes, laid his hand on his handsome

fair beard, a familiar gesture with him, and drew his fingers down it

to the tip of the last hairs, as if to pull it longer and thinner.

Twice his lips parted to utter some decent remark, but after long

meditation he could only say this:

“Yes, he was certainly fond of me. He would always embrace me when I

went to see him.”

But his father’s thoughts had set off at a gallop—galloping round this

inheritance to come; nay, already in hand; this money lurking behind

the door, which would walk in quite soon, to-morrow, at a word of

consent.

“And there is no possible difficulty in the way?” he asked. “No

lawsuit—no one to dispute it?”

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 jeweller had an impulse of shame—obscure, instinctive,

and fleeting; shame of his eagerness to be informed, and he added:

“You understand that I ask all these questions immediately so as to

save my son unpleasant consequences which he might not foresee.

Sometimes there are debts, embarrassing liabilities, what not! And a

legatee finds himself in an inextricable thorn-bush. After all, I am

not the heir—but I think first of the little ’un.”

They were accustomed to speak of Jean among themselves as the “little

one,” though he was much bigger than Pierre.

Suddenly Mme. Roland seemed to wake from a dream, to recall some remote

fact, a thing almost forgotten that she had heard long ago, and of

which she was not altogether sure. She inquired doubtingly:

“Were you not saying that our poor friend 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 mantel-shelf as if it were winter

and the fire burning, with his hands in his pockets and his lips

puckered for a whistle, could not keep still, tortured by the

invincible desire to give vent to his delight. The two brothers, in two

arm-chairs that matched, one on each side of the centre-table, stared

in front of them, in similar attitudes full of dissimilar expressions.

At last the tea appeared. The lawyer took a cup, sugared it, and drank

it, after having crumbled into it a little cake which was too hard to

crunch. Then he rose, shook hands, and departed.

“Then it is understood,” repeated Roland. “To-morrow, at your place, at

two?”

“Quite so. To-morrow, at two.”

Jean had not spoken a word.

When their guest had gone, silence fell again till father Roland

clapped his two hands on his younger son’s shoulders, crying:

“Well, you devilish lucky dog! You don’t embrace me!”

Then Jean smiled. He embraced his father, saying:

“It had not struck me as indispensable.”

The old man was beside himself with glee. He walked about the room,

strummed on the furniture with his clumsy nails, turned about on his

heels, and kept saying:

“What luck! What luck! Now, that is really what I call luck!”

Pierre asked:

“Then you used to know this Maréchal well?”

And his father replied:

“I believe! Why, he used to spend every evening at our house. Surely

you remember he used to fetch you from school on half-holidays, and

often took you back again after dinner. Why, the very day when Jean was

born it was he who went for the doctor. He had been breakfasting with

us when your mother was taken ill. Of course we knew at once what it

meant, and he set off post-haste. In his hurry he took my hat instead

of his own. I remember that because we had a good laugh over it

afterward. It is very likely that he may have thought of that when he

was dying, and as he had no heir he may have said to himself: ‘I

remember helping to bring that youngster into the world, so I will

leave him my savings.’”

Mme. Roland, sunk in a deep chair, seemed lost in reminiscences once

more. She murmured, as though she were thinking aloud:

“Ah, he was a good friend, very devoted, very faithful, a rare soul in

these days.”

Jean got up.

“I shall go out for a little walk,” he said.

His father was surprised and tried to keep him; they had much to talk

about, plans to be made, decisions to be formed. But the young man

insisted, declaring that he had an engagement. Besides, there would be

time enough for settling everything before he came into possession of

his inheritance. So he went away, for he wished to be alone to reflect.

Pierre, on his part, said that he too was going out, and after a few

minutes followed his brother.

As soon as he was alone with his wife, father Roland took her in his

arms, kissed her a dozen times on each cheek, and, replying to a

reproach she had often brought against him, said:

“You see, my dearest, that it would have been no good to stay any

longer in Paris and work for the children till I dropped, instead of

coming here to recruit my health, since fortune drops on us from the

skies.”

She was quite serious.

“It drops from the skies on Jean,” she said. “But Pierre?”

“Pierre? But he is a doctor; he will make plenty of money; besides, his

brother will surely do something for him.”

“No, he would not take it. Besides, this legacy is for Jean, only for

Jean. Pierre will find himself at a great disadvantage.”

The old fellow seemed perplexed: “Well, then, we will leave him rather