uld buy a nice yacht, a cutter on the build
of our pilot-boats. I would sail as far as Senegal in such a boat as
that."

Pierre, in his turn, spoke his views. After all, said he, it was not his
wealth which made the moral worth, the intellectual worth of a man. To
a man of inferior mind it was only a means of degradation, while in the
hands of a strong man it was a powerful lever. They, to be sure, were
rare. If Jean were a really superior man, now that he could never want
he might prove it. But then he must work a hundred times harder than he
would have done in other circumstances. His business now must be not to
argue for or against the widow and the orphan, and pocket his fees for
every case he gained, but to become a really eminent legal authority, a
luminary of the law. And he added in conclusion:

"If I were rich wouldn't I dissect no end of bodies!"

Father Roland shrugged his shoulders.

"That is all very fine," he said. "But the wisest way of life is to take
it easy. We are not beasts of burden, but men. If you are born poor you
must work; well, so much the worse; and you do work. But where you have
dividends! You must be a flat if you grind yourself to death."

Pierre replied haughtily:

"Our notions differ. For my part, I respect nothing on earth but
learning and intellect; everything else is beneath contempt."

Mme. Roland always tried to deaden the constant shocks between father
and son; she turned the conversation, and began talking of a murder
committed the week before at Bolbec Nointot. Their minds were
immediately full of the circumstances under which the crime had been
committed, and absorbed by the interesting horror, the attractive
mystery of crime, which, however commonplace, shameful, and disgusting,
exercises a strange and universal fascination over the curiosity of
mankind. Now and again, however, old Roland looked at his watch. "Come,"
said he, "it is time to be going."

Pierre sneered.

"It is not yet one o'clock," he said. "It really was hardly worth while
to condemn me to eat a cold cutlet."

"Are you coming to the lawyer's?" his mother asked.

"I? No. What for?" he replied dryly. "My presence is quite unnecessary."

Jean sat silent, as though he had no concern in the matter. When they
were discussing the murder at Bolbec he, as a legal authority, had
put forward some opinions and uttered some reflections on crime and
criminals. Now he spoke no more; but the sparkle in his eye,