Pierre and Jean

re 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 sho

e jetty while the fog-horns were bellowing. The more he thought the less he doubted. He felt him

peacefully, and gently snoring. He could sleep! He had no presentiment, no suspicions! A man who had known their mother had left him all his fortune; he took the money and thought it quite

r, have gone in, and sitting by the bed, would

hich by to-morrow may have brought su

er's son. Now he must guard, must bury the shame he had discovered, hide from every eye the stain wh

rld should accuse his mother if only he, he alone, knew her to be innocent! How could he bear to live

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 e

m. He felt the roof weigh on his head, and the walls suffocate him. And as he was very thirst

m which seemed to grow louder every second. Then he heard another snore, an old man's snore, short, laboured, and hard, his father beyond doubt; and he writhed at the idea, as if it had but this moment sprung upon him, that these two men, sleeping under the same room-father and son-were nothing to each other! Not a tie, not the very slightest, bound them together, and they did not know it! They spoke to each other affectionately, they embraced each o

an ancestor to the great-great-grandson, showing that the whole race are the offspring of the same embrace. To him, a medical man, so little would suffice to enable him to discern this-the curve of a no

ng. But he had looked carelessly, observed badly, havi

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 fea

ke, what could he say? How co

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 ro

like Roland; and for the second time the recollection of the little portrait of Marechal, which had va

ght of the taper on his eyelids. The doctor retired on tip-toe to the door wh

ty 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

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 a

ently as he touched her door that he paused for breath. His hand as it lay on the lock was limp and tremulous,

is th

Pie

do you

use I am going to spend the day

m still

yourself. I shall see you t

pressing on her cheek the false kiss which it

ill let you in. Wait ti

loor and the sound of the bolt

me

ce to the wall, still lay sleeping. Nothing ever woke him but a shaking hard enough to pull his arm off. On the days when

udden sense of never having seen her before. She held up her

hat you decided on thi

last e

return t

At any rate do n

o 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

the invincible longing to know which had b

u used to have, in Paris, a little port

two, or at least he fancied

be s

ecome of th

ve replied m

don't exactly know-pe

kind of you

for it. What do

uld be a natural thing to give it to Jean,

s a good idea. I will look

e wen

spirits, the merchants going to business, the clerks going to their office, the gi

on board the Trouville boat; Pierr

ked h

rprised? Has she mislaid it, or has she hidden it? Does she

same line of thought from one deducti

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 be

had vanished. It had disappeared, he thought, about the time that Jean's beard was beginning to grow,

ng, 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

our, 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 r

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, an

art little shoe to the extravagant hat, the seductive charm of gesture, voice, and smile, all the coquettish airs in short displayed on this seashore, suddenly struck him as stupendous efflorescences of female depravity. All these bedizened women aimed at pleasing, bewitching, and deluding

capture. This wide shore was, then, no more than a love-market where some sold, others gave themselves-some drove a hard bargain for their kisses while others promised them for love. All th

nged on the whole to the class of fashionable and showy women of the world, some indeed to the less respectable sisterh

ill 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-

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 fo

r. He was too wretched. His revolted soul had not yet time to calm down. However, he m

faces we

with your purchases? I do not want to s

t takes much consideration to avoid buying things that d

. 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. S

elegant and opulent class, was anxious to captivate

ch had gone on all day,

not want to hear anything about it. I wi

ed to the judgment

what do you thin

hat he would have liked to reply with an oath. However,

well as simplicity, which, in matters of taste,

ther w

ity of commercial men, where good tast

e rep

fellow-townsmen are stupid and ill-bred, need I follow their example?

egan t

h seem to have been borrowed f

and his brother reverted to the q

ting for Trouville; looking at them as a stranger who would study them, and he f

That flabby, burly man, happy and besotted, was his o

fa

ther. 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

uddenly

have you found

her eyes

port

rait of M

have not found it, but I

asked Roland. An

to be in the dining-room in Paris. I tho

d exc

Do you remember, Louise? I was shaving myself when you took it out and laid in on a chair by your side with a pile of letters of which you burned half. Strange, isn't i

nd calmly

e it is. I will f

e: "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

r 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

eproach, as all mothers owe it to their children. If the fury that boiled within him verged

ty only of perfidy; but when the wife is a mother her duty is a higher one, since nature

sipped his glass of black-currant brandy. "You may do worse than live idle when you have a snug little income. I

g to his wi

oman, as you have done your dinner. I

hought long, though she was not away more than three minutes, Mme. Rola

aid she, "I fou

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

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

n to me,"

er drew the candle towards him to see it b

him! Cristi! How time flies! He was a good-looking man, too, in

made no answ

of him-but what he bequeathed to Jean. Well, at any rate you may take your oath that that

for the picture. He gazed at it for a

at all. I only rememb

t a hasty glance at it, looking away as if she w

it to your new rooms." And when they went into the drawing-room she placed

m, Pierre while he paced the room, Jean, sunk in a deep arm-chair, with his legs cro

e table on which the lamp stood, embr

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

uneasiness, intolerable to be borne, clutched at Pierre's

conds to look at Marechal's fair hair, and show quite plainly that he was haunted by a fixed idea. So that this little portrait,

violently, betraying to her doctor son the anguish of her nerves. Then she said: "

r instincts suspicious. When this woman who was coming in should see the miniature of a man she did not know, she might p

eiled, and, turning about just as the door opened, he took the little paintin

es again they seemed to him

Rosemilly. "I have come to

and asking after her health, Pierre m

rised. Jean, annoyed for the young widow, who, he

ed with him; he is not very well to-day a

that is no reason for taking

t all. He has gone away in the English fashion; people always disapp

. "But a man does not treat his family a l'Anglaise, a