s laughing, spoke in his turn:

"It is I," said he, "who ought to thank my friends here, my excellent
friends," and he glanced at Mme. Rosemilly, "who have given me such a
touching evidence of their affection. But it is not by words that I
can prove my gratitude. I will prove it to-morrow, every hour of my
life, always, for our friendship is not one of those which fade away."

His mother, deeply moved, murmured: "Well said, my boy."

But Beausire cried out:

"Come, Mme. Rosemilly, speak on behalf of the fair sex."

She raised her glass, and in a pretty voice, slightly touched with
sadness, she said: "I will pledge you to the memory of Monsieur
Marechal."

There was a few moments' lull, a pause for decent meditation, as after
prayer. Beausire, who always had a flow of compliment, remarked:

"Only a woman ever thinks of these refinements." Then turning to
father Roland: "And who was this Marechal, after all? You must have
been very intimate with him."

The old man, emotional with drink, began to whimper, and in a broken
voice he said:

"Like a brother, you know. Such a friend as one does not make
twice--we were always together--he dined with us every evening--and
would treat us to the play--I need say no more--no more--no more. A
true friend--a real true friend--wasn't he, Louise?"

His wife merely answered: "Yes; he was a faithful friend."

Pierre looked at his father and then at his mother, then, as the
subject changed, he drank some more wine. He scarcely remembered the
remainder of the evening. They had coffee, then liqueurs, and they
laughed and joked a great deal. At about midnight he went to bed, his
mind confused and his head heavy; and he slept like a brute till nine
next morning.

CHAPTER IV

These slumbers, lapped in champagne and chartreuse, had soothed and
calmed him, no doubt, for he awoke in a very benevolent frame of mind.
While he was dressing he appraised, weighed, and summed up the
agitations of the past day, trying to bring out quite clearly and
fully their real and occult causes, those personal to himself as well
as those from outside.

It was, in fact, possible that the girl at the beer-shop had had an
evil suspicion--a suspicion worthy of such a hussy--on hearing that
only one of the Roland brothers had been made heir to a stranger; but
have not such natures as she always similar notions, without a shadow
of foundation, about every honest woman? Do they not, whenever they
speak,