e; but just as he was going in he reflected that he
would meet friends there and acquaintances--people he would be
obliged to talk to; and fierce repugnance surged up in him for this
commonplace good-fellowship over coffee cups and liqueur glasses. So,
retracing his steps, he went back to the high-street leading to the
harbor.

"Where shall I go?" he asked himself, trying to think of a spot he
liked which would agree with his frame of mind. He could not think of
one, for being alone made him feel fractious, yet he could not bear to
meet any one. As he came out on the Grand Quay he hesitated once more;
then he turned toward the pier; he had chosen solitude.

Going close by a bench on the breakwater he sat down, tired already of
walking and out of humor with his stroll before he had taken it.

He said to himself: "What is the matter with me this evening?" And he
began to search in his memory for what vexation had crossed him, as we
question a sick man to discover the cause of his fever.

His mind was at once irritable and sober; he got excited, then he
reasoned, approving or blaming his impulses; but in time primitive
nature at last proved the stronger; the sensitive man always had the
upper hand over the intellectual man. So he tried to discover what had
induced this irascible mood, this craving to be moving without wanting
anything, this desire to meet some one for the sake of differing from
him, and at the same time this aversion for the people he might see
and the things they might say to him.

And then he put the question to himself, "Can it be Jean's
inheritance?"

Yes, it was certainly possible. When the lawyer had announced the news
he had felt his heart beat a little faster. For, indeed, one is not
always master of one's self; there are sudden and pertinacious
emotions against which a man struggles in vain.

He fell into meditation on the physiological problem of the impression
produced on the instinctive element in man, and giving rise to a
current of painful or pleasurable sensations diametrically opposed to
those which the thinking man desires, aims at, and regards as right
and wholesome, when he has risen superior to himself by the
cultivation of his intellect. He tried to picture to himself the frame
of mind of a son who has inherited a vast fortune, and who, thanks to
that wealth, may now know many long-wished-for delights which the
avarice of his father had prohibited--a father, nevertheless, belov