and satisfied; they came and took luncheon
in the country at well-known restaurants. They had had a calm and
pleasant existence, a family existence in a warm and comfortable house,
filled with all those trifles which make life agreeable, with affection,
with all those tender words which people exchange continually when they
love each other. They had lived thus, thanks to him, Parent, on his
money, after having deceived him, robbed him, ruined him! They had
condemned him, the innocent, simple-minded, jovial man, to all the
miseries of solitude, to that abominable life which he had led, between
the pavement and a bar-room, to every mental torture and every physical
misery! They had made him a useless, aimless being, a waif in the world,
a poor old man without any pleasures, any prospects, expecting nothing
from anybody or anything. For him, the world was empty, because he loved
nothing in the world. He might go among other nations, or go about the
streets, go into all the houses in Paris, open every room, but he would
not find inside any door the beloved face, the face of wife or child
which smiles when it sees you. This idea worked upon him more than any
other, the idea of a door which one opens, to see and to embrace somebody
behind it.

And that was the fault of those three wretches! The fault of that
worthless woman, of that infamous friend, and of that tall, light-haired
lad who put on insolent airs. Now he felt as angry with the child as he
did with the other two. Was he not Limousin's son? Would Limousin have
kept him and loved him otherwise? Would not Limousin very quickly have
got rid of the mother and of the child if he had not felt sure that it
was his, positively his? Does anybody bring up other people's children?
And now they were there, quite close to him, those three who had made him
suffer so much.

Parent looked at them, irritated and excited at the recollection of all
his sufferings and of his despair, and was especially exasperated at
their placid and satisfied looks. He felt inclined to kill them, to throw
his siphon of Seltzer water at them, to split open Limousin's head as he
every moment bent it over his plate, raising it again immediately.

He would have his revenge now, on the spot, as he had them under his
hand. But how? He tried to think of some means, he pictured such dreadful
things as one reads of in the newspapers occasionally, but could not hit
on anything practical. And he went on drinki