The miller's bad temper had for the last two months been increased by the return of his son Antonin to Janville under very deplorable circumstances. This young fellow, who had set off one morning to conquer Paris, sent there by his parents, who had a blind confidence in his fine handwriting, had remained with Maître Rousselet the attorney for four years as a petty clerk, dull-witted and extremely idle. He had not made the slightest progress in his profession, but had gradually sunk into debauchery, café-life, drunkenness, gambling, and facile amours. To him the conquest of Paris meant greedy indulgence in the coarsest pleasures such as he had dreamt of in his village. It consumed all his money, all the supplies which he extracted from his mother by continual promises of victory, in which she implicitly believed, so great was her faith in him. But he ended by grievously suffering in health, turned thin and yellow, and actually began to lose his hair at three-and-twenty, so that his mother, full of alarm, brought him home one day, declaring that he worked too hard, and that she would not allow him to kill himself in that fashion. It leaked out, however, later on, that Maître Rousselet had summarily dismissed him. Even before this was known his return home did not fail to make his father growl. The miller partially guessed the truth, and if he did not openly vent his anger, it was solely from pride, in order that he might not have to confess his mistake with respect to the brilliant career which he had predicted for Antonin. At home, when the doors were closed, Lepailleur revenged himself on his wife, picking the most frightful quarrels with her since he had discovered her frequent remittances of money to their son. But she held her own against him, for even as she had formerly admired him, so at present she admired her boy. She sacrificed, as it were, the father to the son, now that the latter's greater learning brought her increased surprise. And so the household was all disagreement as a result of that foolish attempt, born of vanity, to make their heir a Monsieur, a Parisian. Antonin for his part sneered and shrugged his shoulders at it all, idling away his time pending the day when he might be able to resume a life of profligacy. When the Froments passed by, it was a fine sight to see the Lepailleurs standing there stiffly and devouring them with their eyes. The father puckered his lips in an attempt to sneer, and the mother jerked her head with an air of bravado. The son, standing there with his hands in his pockets, presented a sorry sight with his bent back, his bald head, and pale face. All three were seeking to devise something disagreeable when an opportunity presented itself. "Why, where is Thérèse?" exclaimed La Lepailleur. "She was here just now: what has become of her? I won't have her leave me when there are all these people about!"