Lucienne did not realise that in calling up these pictures of the happy past she was not calming her brother's mind. He may have found pleasure in them for a moment, hoping to get away from the present, but a comparison was immediately drawn, and his revolt was only the more profound, arousing all the powers of his being, against his father, against his sister, against that false pity behind which Lucienne's incapability of sacrifice was hidden. Soon the young man gave up answering his sister. Alsheim was getting nearer, and was now a long outline broken here and there. In the calm evening the Oberlés' house raised its protecting roof amid the tops of the trees, still bare. When the park gates, closed each day when the workmen left, were opened for the two pedestrians, Jean slipped behind Lucienne, and, making her go on, said, in very low, ironical tones: "Come, Baroness von Farnow, enter the house of the old protesting deputy, Philippe Oberlé." She was going to make a retort, but an energetic footstep scrunched the gravel, a man turned into the avenue round a gigantic clump of beeches, and a resonant, imperious voice, which was singing in order to appear the voice of a happy man without any regrets, cried: "There you are, my children! What a nice walk you must have had! From the waterfall by the works I saw you in the corn leaning towards each other like lovers." M. Joseph Oberlé questioned the faces of his children, and saw that Lucienne at least was smiling. "Did we have things to tell each other?" he went on. "Great secrets, perhaps?" Lucienne, embarrassed by the nearness of the lodge, and still more so by the exasperation of her brother, answered quickly: "Yes; I have spoken to Jean. He has understood. He will not oppose my wishes." The father seized his son's hand. "I expected nothing else from him. I thank you, Jean. I shall not forget that." In his left hand he took Lucienne's, and, like a happy father between his two children, he crossed the park by the long, winding carriage drive. A woman behind the drawing-room window saw them come, and her pleasure in looking at this scene was not undiluted. She asked herself if the father and children had united against her. "You know, dear Jean," said the father, holding up his head and, as it were, questioning the front of the château. "You know that I wish to spare susceptibilities and to prepare solutions, and not to insist on them until I am forced to do so. We are invited to the Brausigs'----" "Ah! is it already settled?"