emember that we live in a city of commercial men, where
good taste is not to be met with at every turn."

Pierre replied:

"What does that matter? Is that a reason for living as fools do? If my
fellow-townsmen are stupid and ill-bred, need I follow their example?
A woman does not misconduct herself because her neighbor has a
lover."

Jean began to laugh.

"You argue by comparisons which seem to have been borrowed from the
maxims of a moralist."

Pierre made no reply. His mother and his brother reverted to the
question of stuffs and armchairs.

He sat looking at them, as he had looked at his mother in the morning
before starting for Trouville; looking at them as a stranger who would
study them, and he felt as though he had really suddenly come into a
family of which he knew nothing.

His father, above all, amazed his eye and his mind. That flabby, burly
man, happy and besotted, was his own father! No, no; Jean was not in
the least like him.

His family!

Within these two days an unknown and malignant hand, the hand of a
dead man, had torn asunder and broken, one by one, all the ties which
had held these four human beings together. 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 son's love demands; no brother--since his brother was the
child of a stranger; nothing was left him but his father, that coarse
man whom he could not love in spite of himself.

And he suddenly broke out:

"I say, mother, have you found that portrait?"

She opened her eyes in surprise.

"What portrait?"

"The portrait of Marechal."

"No--that is to say--yes--I have not found it, but I think I know
where it is."

"What is that?" asked Roland. And Pierre answered:

"A little likeness of Marechal which used to be in the drawing-room in
Paris. I thought that Jean might be glad to have it."

Roland exclaimed:

"Why, yes, to be sure; I remember it perfectly. I saw it again last
week. Your mother found it in her desk when she was tidying the
papers. It was on Thursday or Friday. Do you remember, Louise? I was
shaving myself when you took it out and laid it on a chair by your
side with a pile of letters of which you burnt half. Strange, isn't
it, that you should have come across that portrait only two or three
days before Jean heard of his legacy? If I believed in presentiments I
should think that this was one