that the Café Anglais is all lit up! … Paris is mine! … Everything is mine! … I’ll travel! … I’ll visit my barony in India! … I could afford a pagoda someday, including the monks and ivory idols! … I’ll have elephants! … I’ll hunt tigers! … and have splendid arms! … and a handsome boat! … A boat? No! A fine steam-yacht rather, to take me wherever I want, to put into port or to sail off, whatever I chose! … Speaking of steam, I really must let my mother know about this news. Suppose I left for Douai! … There’s school … Oh! school! I can get along without it! … But Marcel! He’ll have to be told. I’ll send him a message. He’ll fully understand that I’m eager to see my mother and my sister under such a circumstance!”
Octave entered a telegraph bureau, informed his friend that he was leaving and would return in two days. Then, he hailed a carriage to take him to the Gare du Nord.
Once on the train he continued to savor his dream.
At two o’clock in the morning, Octave chimed the night bell so noisily at the door of his parents that he stirred up the peaceful neighborhood of the Aubettes.
“Who do you suppose is ill?” the gossips asked from one window to another.
“The doctor isn’t in town!” shouted the old servant from the dormer window on the top floor.
“It’s me, Octave! … Come down and let me in, Francine!”
After a ten-minute wait, Octave succeeded in entering the house. His mother and his sister Jeanne, having hurriedly come downstairs in their dressing-gowns, were awaiting an explanation of this unexpected visit.
Read out loud, the letter from the doctor soon gave them the key to the mystery.
For a moment Mme Sarrasin was astounded. She embraced her son and her daughter, weeping for joy. It seemed to her that the universe was theirs from now on, and that no misfortune could ever befall young people who possessed several hundred million francs. Yet, women tend to adjust more quickly than men to such wondrous changes in fate. Mme Sarrasin reread the letter from her husband, said to herself that it was her husband who was the one to decide on her destiny and that of their children, and calm was restored to her heart. As for Jeanne, she was happy at her mother and brother’s joy, but her thirteen-year-old heart could not dream of any happiness exceeding that of the modest home where their life flowed by gently between the lessons of her teachers and the love of her parents. She did not quite see how a few bundles of banknotes could change her life very much, and this view did not trouble her for an instant.
Mme Sarrasin, married quite young to a man entirely absorbed by the quiet occupations of a devoted intellectual, respected the passion of her husband whom she loved tenderly, without, however, understanding him. Being unable to share the happiness that the doctor derived from his studies, she felt sometimes a bit lonely beside this relentless worker, and had as a result placed all her hope in her two children. She had always dreamed of a brilliant future for them, one that would make them happy. Octave, she was sure, was destined for great things. Since he had entered the Ecole Centrale, this unassuming and practical college for young engineers had been transformed in her mind into a breeding ground for illustrious men. Her sole concern had been that their modest fortune might eventually be an obstacle, a problem at least for the glorious career of her son, and might also harm the prospects of her daughter. Now, from what she had understood in her husband’s letter, her fears were no longer justified. Her satisfaction was complete.
The mother and the son spent a great part of the night talking and making plans, whereas Jeanne, very happy with the present, without any concern for the future, had fallen asleep in an armchair.
Then, before finally retiring, Mme Sarrasin said to her son:
“You haven’t talked to me about Marcel. Didn’t you let him know about this letter from your father? What did he say about it?”
“Oh,” replied Octave, “you know Marcel! He’s more than an intellectual, he’s a stoic! I think he was concerned by the enormity of this inheritance and its influence on us! I say ‘us,’ since his concern did not seem to extend to my father, whose good sense, he said, and scientific reasoning reassured him. But what else can I think? As far as you’re concerned, mother, and Jeanne as well, and especially me, he did not hide the fact that he would have preferred our receiving a modest inheritance, say twenty-five thousand pounds of annual income …”
“Marcel might have been right,” replied Mme Sarrasin, looking at her son. “Sudden wealth can pose a great danger for some people!”
Jeanne had just awoken. She had heard her mother’s last words:
“You know, mother,” she said to her, rubbing her eyes and heading for her little bedroom, “you know what you told me one day, that Marcel was always right! I, for one, always believe what our friend Marcel says!”
Octave’s mother and sister Jeanne
Then, kissing her mother, Jeanne retired for the night.
3 A News Item
Arriving at the fourth meeting of the Association of Hygiene Conference, Dr. Sarrasin could see that all his colleagues greeted him with utmost respect. Until then, Lord Glandover, Knight of the Garter, who held the office of president of the association, had scarcely deigned to notice the French doctor’s existence.
This lord was an august personage,1 whose role was limited to declaring the meeting open or closed and to mechanically grant the floor to the speakers listed on the paper placed before him. He kept his right hand habitually in the breast of his buttoned frock coat — not because he had fallen from his horse — but just because this uncomfortable posture was used by English sculptors in their bronzes of men of state.
His wan and beardless face, daubed with red spots, and topped with a brownish green wig raised pretentiously in a cowlick over a forehead that appeared hollow, seemed as comically aloof and ludicrously stiff as one could possibly imagine. Lord Glandover moved as one piece, as though he were made of wood or cardboard. Even his eyes did not seem to roll beneath their arched sockets, except by intermittent jerks, such as the eyes of a doll or a dummy.
During the initial presentations, the president of the Association of Hygiene had offered Dr. Sarrasin a greeting that was both protective and condescending and which could have been interpreted this way:
“Greetings, Mister Nobody! … You’re the one who labors on these little insignificant machines to earn a meager life? … I must surely have sharp vision to perceive a creature so distant from me in the hierarchy of human beings! … You may remain in the shadow of My Lordship. You have my permission.”
This time, Lord Glandover addressed him with the most gracious of smiles and pushed his courtesy so far as to point out an empty seat on his right. Moreover, all members of the association had risen when he approached.
Rather surprised by these tokens of such flattering attention, and saying to himself that no doubt the blood-cell counter had appeared to his colleagues a more worthy discovery than they had at first supposed, Dr. Sarrasin took the seat that was offered him.
But all his illusions as an inventor vanished when Lord Glandover leaned down toward his ear with such a contortion of cervical vertebrae as might result in a severe torticollis for His Lordship and whispered:
“I
