Why under the sun did he call me poor little fellow? Did I look as wretched as that? No doubt I hadn’t succeeded in seeing Nazzarena the whole day long. Yes, to be sure, I was unhappy, since everybody noticed it. Only no one ought to notice it. This was a secret, hidden in the very bottom of my heart, and no one had any right to speak to me of it. I at once assumed a repellant face, intended to discourage sympathy. But I couldn’t keep up this attitude. Ever since I emptied my glass, I felt, as it were, a veil before my eyes, and a warmth through all my body, an enervating torpor, and a sort of longing for confidence and affection. Furthermore, I had been mistaken as to Martinod’s intentions. He was not thinking of my love, he knew nothing about it, and with small respect to consistency I began now to regret that I didn’t hear him pronounce Nazzarena’s name. He was fascinating me with his gaze, as the serpent in my natural history must have fascinated the birds, and in a voice of caressing inflections, insinuating, coaxing, he gave me to understand that in my family I was misunderstood. In ambiguous words, with all sorts of circumlocutions, hesitations, reticences, he revealed to me that my father cared more for one of his older sons than for me. Which one? Stephen or Bernard? At this distance of time I do not remember which one he indicated. Was it Bernard, for his military air, his decided manner, his gaiety, his enthusiasm, and his resemblance to father? Or Stephen, for his fine and even temper, his good marks, his application, even his absence of mind? Upon my word I can not say which, now. Our parents treated us without the slightest difference, and each one was the object of special attention which he was free to consider a favour. Still, I did not hesitate to believe this stranger who did not know us, who had never set foot in our house, and who, I knew, had been chastised by my father for his perfidy.