From his mother he inherited other features: the straight nose, the haughty mouth, the dimpled chin. These points of resemblance had justified Madame de Claviers in asserting that he was her living portrait--to those who were not aware! Landri was aware now, and he shuddered at the thought that the intimate guests at Grandchamp had certainly detected in him the unmistakable tokens of his descent. He was humiliated in the most secret depths of his being. He had prided himself, throughout his young manhood, upon not being the prisoner of his caste. He had treated as delusions at least, if not as prejudices, the uncompromising convictions of the head of the house of Grandchamp concerning the nobility; and he had a strange sensation of degradation in facing the alloyage of his origin, the blending of other inherited characteristics with the purely aristocratic maternal inheritance. This feeling was most illogical. Had he not proposed, did he not propose, to marry a woman even less aristocratic than a Charles Jaubourg? But does logic ever govern the spontaneous reactions of our pride? This indescribable impression of essential degradation was intensified by another, more profound and more generous: the affection and admiration that he had always entertained for M. de Claviers made it almost unendurable to think that the sacred bond of parentage between him and that loving, loyal, superior man was broken. Even while struggling against his father's despotism, he had always been so proud that he was his father! And he was not his father! What a heart-breaking thing! It was as if, the very root of his being having suddenly been laid bare, he were bleeding in every fibre that attaches the soul to the body. And he walked on and on, aimlessly, forgetting the time, regardless of his surroundings, until, at the end of the afternoon, he found himself a long way from his starting-point, at the far end of the Ménilmontant quarter, beyond the cemetery of Père La Chaise. The approaching twilight warned him at last that the day was passing. He looked at a street sign and saw that he was at the corner of Boulevard Mortier and Rue Saint-Fargeau. He consulted his watch. It was almost five o'clock. The train he was to take started at a quarter past five. His servant was waiting for him at the Gare de l'Est. He had just enough time to make it, in a cab.