only fancy, I got it for two thousand eight hundred francs a year. They asked three thousand, but I got a reduction of two hundred francs on taking for three, six, or nine years. Your brother will be delightfully housed there. An elegant home is enough to make the fortune of a lawyer. It attracts clients, charms them, holds them fast, commands respect, and shows them that a man who lives in such good style expects a good price for his words."
She was silent for a few seconds and then went on:
"We must look out for something suitable for you; much less pretentious, since you have nothing, but nice and pretty all the same. I assure you it will be to your advantage."
Pierre replied contemptuously:
"For me! Oh, I shall make my way by hard work and learning."
But his mother insisted: "Yes, but I assure you that to be well lodged will be of use to you nevertheless."
About half-way through the meal he suddenly asked:
"How did you first come to know this man Marechal?"
Old Roland looked up and racked his memory:
"Wait a bit; I scarcely recollect. It is such an old story now. Ah, yes, I remember. It was your mother who made the acquaintance with him in the shop, was it not, Louise? He first came to order something, and then he called frequently. We knew him as a customer before we knew him as a friend."
Pierre, who was eating beans, sticking his fork into them one by one as if he were spitting them, went on:
"And when was it that you made his acquaintance?"
Again Roland sat thinking, but he could remember no more and appealed to his wife's better memory.
"In what year was it, Louise? You surely have not forgotten, you who remember everything. Let me see--it was in--in--in fifty-five or fifty-six? Try to remember. You ought to know better than I."
She did in fact think it over for some minutes, and then replied in a steady voice and with calm decision:
"It was in fifty-eight, old man. Pierre was three years old. I am quite sure that I am not mistaken, for it was in that year that the child had scarlet fever, and Marechal, whom we knew then but very little, was of the greatest service to us."
Roland exclaimed:
"To be sure--very true; he was really invaluable. When your mother was half-dead with fatigue and I had to attend to the shop, he would go to the chemist's to fetch your medicine. He really had the kindest heart! And when you were well again, you cannot think how glad he was and how he petted you. It was from that time that we became such great friends."
And this thought rushed into Pierre's soul, as abrupt and violent as a cannon-ball rending and piercing it: "Since he knew me first, since he was so devoted to me, since he was so fond of me and petted me so much, since I--_I_ was the cause of his great intimacy with my parents, why did he leave all his money to my brother and nothing to me?"
He asked no more questions and remained gloomy; absent-minded rather than thoughtful, feeling in his soul a new anxiety as yet undefined, the secret germ of a new pain.
He went out early, wandering about the streets once more. They were shrouded in the fog which made the night heavy, opaque, and nauseous. It was like a pestilential cloud dropped on the earth. It could be seen swirling past the gas-lights, which it seemed to put out at intervals. The pavement was as slippery as on a frosty night after rain, and all sorts of evil smells seemed to come up from the bowels of the houses--the stench of cellars, drains, sewers, squalid kitchens--to mingle with the horrible savour of this wandering fog.
Pierre, with his shoulders up and his hands in his pockets, not caring to remain out of doors in the cold, turned into Marowsko's. The druggist was asleep as usual under the gas-light, which kept watch. On recognising Pierre for whom he had the affection of a faithful dog, he shook off his drowsiness, went for two glasses, and brought out the _Groseillette_.
"Well," said the doctor, "how is the liqueur getting on?"
The Pole explained that four of the chief cafes in the town had agreed to have it on sale, and that two papers, the _Northcoast Pharos_ and the _Havre Semaphore_, would advertise it, in return for certain chemical preparations to be supplied to the editors.
After a long silence Marowsko asked whether Jean had come definitely into possession of his fortune; and then he put two or three other questions vaguely referring to the same subject. His jealous devotion to Pierre rebelled against this preference. And Pierre felt as though he could hear him thinking; he guessed and understood, read in his averted eyes and in the hesitancy of his tone, the words which rose to his lips but were not spoken--which the druggist was too timid or too prudent and cautious to utter.
At this moment, he felt sure, the old man was thinking: "You ought not to have suffered him to accept this inheritance which will make people speak ill of your mother."
Perhaps, indeed, Marowsko believed that Jean was Marechal's son. Of course he believed it! How could he help believing it when the thing must seem so possible, so probable, self-evident? Why, he himself, Pierre, her son--had not he been for these three days past fighting with all the subtlety at his command to cheat his reason, fighting against this hideous suspicion?
And suddenly the need to be alone, to reflect, to discuss the matter with himself--to face boldly, without scruple or weakness, this possible but monstrous thing--came upon him anew, and so imperative that he rose without even drinking his glass of _Groseillette_, shook hands with the astounded druggist, and plunged out into the foggy streets again.
He asked himself: "What made this Marechal leave all his fortune to Jean?"
It was not jealousy now which made him dwell on this question, not the rather mean but natural envy which he knew lurked within him, and with which he had been struggling these three days, but the dread of an overpowering horror; the dread that he himself should believe that Jean, his brother, was that man's son.
No. He did not believe it, he could not even ask himself the question which was a crime! Meanwhile he must get rid of this faint suspicion, improbable as it was, utterly and forever. He craved for light, for certainty--he must win absolute security in his heart, for he loved no one in the world but his mother. And as he wandered alone through the darkness he would rack his memory and his reason with a minute search that should bring out the blazing truth. Then there would be an end to the matter; he would not think of it again--never. He would go and sleep.
He argued thus: "Let me see: first to examine the facts; then I will recall all I know about him, his behaviour to my brother and to me. I will seek out the causes which might have given rise to the preference. He knew Jean from his birth? Yes, but he had known me first. If he had loved my mother silently, unselfishly, he would surely have chosen me, since it was through me, through my scarlet fever, that he became so intimate with my parents. Logically, then, he ought to have preferred me, to have had a keener affection for me--unless it were that he felt an instinctive attraction and predilection for my brother as he watched him grow up."
Then, with desperate tension of brain and of all the powers of his intellect, he strove to reconstitute from memory the image of this Marechal, to see him, to know him, to penetrate the man whom he had seen pass by him, indifferent to his heart during all those years in Paris.
But
