en stood by in gloomy silence, conscious of his own
inefficiency. His heart swelled with a sullen anger. He was hurt,
and longed for somebody or something to vent his hate upon.

The drive home was a silent one. Jean nearly gave himself cramp
in his determined efforts not to touch with his own the knees
of Madame Ewans' who dozed on the back seat of the conveyance.
She hardly awoke enough to bid him good-bye when he alighted
at his father's door.

As he entered, he was struck for the first time by a smell of
paste that seemed past bearing. The room where he had slept for
years, happy in himself and loved by others, seemed a wretched
hole. He sat down on his bed and looked round gloomily and morosely
at the holy-water stoup of gilt porcelain, the print commemorating
his First Communion, the toilet basin on the chest of drawers,
and stacked in the corners piles of pasteboard and ornamental
paper for binding.

Everything about him seemed animated by a hostile, malevolent,
unjust spirit. In the next room he could hear his father moving.
He pictured him at his work-bench, with his serge apron, calm
and content. What a humiliation! and for the second time in a
dozen hours he blushed for his parentage.

His slumbers were broken and uneasy; he dreamed he was turning,
turning unendingly in complicated figures, and it was impossible
always to avoid touching Madame Evans' knee, though all the time
he was horribly afraid of doing it. Then there was a great field
full of thousands and thousands of marble pigs stuck up on stone
pedestals, among which he could see Monsieur Delbeque promenading
slowly up and down.

VIII

Next morning he awoke feeling sour-tempered and low-spirited.

"Well, my boy," his father asked him, blowing noisily at each
spoonful of soup he absorbed, "well, did you enjoy yourself
yesterday?"

He answered curtly and crossly. Everything stirred his gorge.
His aunt's print gown filled him with a sort of rage.

His father propounded a hundred minute inquiries; he would fain
have pictured the whole expedition to himself as he consumed his
bowl of soup. He had seen Saint-Cloud in his soldiering days;
but he had never been there since. He had a bright idea; they
would go to Versailles, the three of them; his sister would see
to having a bit of veal cooked overnight, and they could take
it with them. They would have a look at the pictures, eat their
snack on the great lawn, and have a fine time genera