h a bow-window looking out over the sea.

When it came to taking it, the terms--three thousand francs--pulled
him up; the first quarter must be paid in advance, and he had nothing,
not a penny to call his own.

The little fortune his father had saved brought him in about eight
thousand francs a year, and Pierre had often blamed himself for having
placed his parents in difficulties by his long delay in deciding on a
profession, by forfeiting his attempts and beginning fresh courses of
study. So he went away, promising to send his answer within two days,
and it occurred to him to ask Jean to lend him the amount of this
quarter's rent, or even of a half-year, fifteen hundred francs, as
soon as Jean should have come into possession.

"It will be a loan for a few months at most," he thought. "I shall
repay him, very likely, before the end of the year. It is a simple
matter, and he will be glad to do so much for me."

As it was not yet four o'clock, and he had nothing to do, absolutely
nothing, he went to sit in the public gardens; and he remained a long
time on a bench, without an idea in his brain, his eyes fixed on the
ground, crushed by weariness amounting to distress.

And yet this was how he had been living all these days since his
return home, without suffering so acutely from the vacuity of his
existence and from inaction. How had he spent his time from rising in
the morning till bed-time?

He had loafed on the pier at high tide, loafed in the streets, loafed
in the cafes, loafed at Marowsko's, loafed everywhere. And on a sudden
this life, which he had endured till now, had become odious,
intolerable. If he had had any pocket-money he would have taken a
carriage for a long drive in the country, along by the farm-ditches
shaded by beech and elm trees; but he had to think twice of the cost
of a glass of beer or a postage-stamp, and such an indulgence was out
of his ken. It suddenly struck him how hard it was for a man of past
thirty to be reduced to ask his mother, with a blush, for a
twenty-franc piece every now and then; and he muttered, as he scored
the gravel with the ferrule of his stick:

"Christi, if I only had money!"

And again the thought of his brother's legacy came into his head like
the sting of a wasp; but he drove it out indignantly, not choosing to
allow himself to slip down that descent to jealousy.

Some children were playing about in the dusty paths. They were fair
little things with long h