"So it did, and it wasn't any more foolish than my excellent brother's idea. Was he an eagle in those days, I would ask? No, he was a little dauber, who hadn't succeeded in laying by four sous, and no one thought anything of him. Was he any better looking than I was, or younger, or better bred? We were both brought up just alike; I was five years older, that's all. I wasn't the ugliest, and he wasn't a beauty by any means! He knew how to talk; he was always a chatterer. I said less, but what I said was solid. Neither one of us was more of a plebeian than the other, for we had the same father and mother. I had already saved nearly a million which no one knew anything about! With a million a man can do many things that my brother couldn't do: he can put the law to sleep and appease angry parents, and obtain patrons who never sleep; with a million one can even reach the king's ear, and surely one can marry a girl who has nothing at all. If society makes a fuss, it's because everyone would like to have the million in his own pocket. In fact, my million proved that even if I was not quite so fine a talker as my brother, it wasn't for want of wit and genius. That is what the girl ought to have understood. I didn't ask her to love me right away, but to love her André enough to forget him and keep him from going to prison and rotting there. Very good; instead of appreciating my good sense and generosity, lo and behold! the prude loses her temper, calls me a boor and a wicked brother and a dishonorable man, and decamps from my house without telling me where she's going, staking all to win all, and leaving a letter for me in which all the thanks she gives me is a promise never to betray my treachery to Monsieur André! I confess that I have never forgiven her for that, and that I never shall forgive her. As for my excellent brother, he behaved in a way that disgusted me almost as much as madame did. I didn't choose to wait till his prude of a wife had sold me. When I saw that he was out of his difficulties and married, I told him the whole story, just as I have told it to you. He didn't lose his temper; on the contrary, he thanked me for my good intentions, but then he began to laugh. You know what a frivolous, weak-brained creature he was! Well, my idea struck him as very comical, and he made fun of me. Thereupon I broke with him, and I would never see the wife or the husband again." "At last!" said Marcel, "now I know where we are. But Julien? Why do you bear Julien a grudge, for he wasn't born at the time of your grievance?" "I don't bear Julien a grudge; but he is his mother's son, and I am sure that he hates me." "Upon my honor, Julien knows nothing of what you have told me, and he knows you only by your conduct of late. Do you think that he can possibly approve it? Shouldn't you have redeemed his mother's house, when he swore by all that is most sacred that he would devote his life to the payment of his debt to you?"