is I
have done all these things, sir, in every quarter of the globe,
wherever and as often as I have had the chance, and I am none the
worse."

Pierre answered with some asperity:

"In the first place, captain, you are a stronger man than my father;
and in the next, all free livers talk as you do till the day
when--when they come back no more to say to the cautious doctor: 'You
were right.' When I see my father doing what is worst and most
dangerous for him, it is but natural that I should warn him. I should
be a bad son if I did otherwise."

Mme. Roland, much distressed, now put in her word: "Come, Pierre, what
ails you? For once it cannot hurt him? Think of what an occasion it is
for him, for all of us. You will spoil his pleasure and make us all
unhappy. It is too bad of you to do such a thing."

He muttered, as he shrugged his shoulders:

"He can do as he pleases. I have warned him."

But father Roland did not drink. He sat looking at his glass full of
the clear and luminous liquor while its light soul, its intoxicating
soul, flew off in tiny bubbles mounting from its depths in hurried
succession to die on the surface. He looked at it with the suspicious
eye of a fox smelling at a dead hen and suspecting a trap. He asked
doubtfully: "Do you think it will really do me much harm?" Pierre had
a pang of remorse and blamed himself for letting his ill-humor punish
the rest:

"No," said he. "Just for once you may drink it; but do not take too
much, or get into the habit of it."

Then old Roland raised his glass, but still he could not make up his
mind to put it to his lips. He contemplated it regretfully, with
longing and with fear; then he smelt it, tasted it, drank it in sips,
swallowing them slowly, his heart full of terrors, of weakness and
greediness; and then, when he had drained the last drop, of regret.

Pierre's eye suddenly met that of Mme. Rosemilly; it rested on him
clear and blue, far-seeing and hard. And he read, he knew, the precise
thought which lurked in that look, the indignant thought of this
simple and right-minded little woman; for the look said: "You are
jealous--that is what you are. Shameful!"

He bent his head and went on with his dinner.

He was not hungry and found nothing nice. A longing to be off harassed
him, a craving to be away from these people, to hear no more of their
talking, jests, and laughter.

Father Roland meanwhile, to whose head the fumes of the wine were
rising o