"Do you think so?" "Yes, indeed; and he looks like a man who enjoys life, too." What strange craving impelled him on a sudden to tell this tavern-wench about Jean's legacy? Why should this thing, which he kept at arm's-length when he was alone, which he drove from him for fear of the torment it brought upon his soul, rise to his lips at this moment? And why did he allow it to overflow them, as if he needed once more to empty out his heart to some one, gorged as it was with bitterness? He crossed his legs and said: "He has wonderful luck, that brother of mine. He has just come into a legacy of twenty thousand francs a year." She opened those covetous blue eyes of hers very wide. "Oh! and who left him that? His grandmother or his aunt?" "No. An old friend of my parents'." "Only a friend! Impossible! And you--did he leave you nothing?" "No. I knew him very slightly." She sat thinking some minutes; then, with an odd smile on her lips, she said: "Well, he is a lucky dog, that brother of yours, to have friends of that pattern. My word! and no wonder he is so unlike you." He longed to slap her, without knowing why; and he asked with pinched lips: "And what do you mean by saying that?" She had put on a stolid, innocent face. "O--h, nothing. I mean he has better luck than you." He tossed a franc piece on the table and went out. Now he kept repeating the phrase: "No wonder he is so unlike you." What had her thought been, what had been her meaning under those words? There was certainly some malice, some spite, something shameful in it. Yes, that hussy must have fancied, no doubt, that Jean was Marechal's son. The agitation which came over him at the notion of this suspicion cast at his mother was so violent that he stood still, looking about him for some place where he might sit down. In front of him was another cafe. He went in, took a chair, and as the waiter came up, "A bock," he said. He felt his heart beating, his skin was goose-flesh. And then the recollection flashed upon him of what Marowsko had said the evening before. "It will not look well." Had he had the same thought, the same suspicion as this baggage? Hanging his head over the glass, he watched the white froth as the bubbles rose and burst, asking himself: "Is it possible that such a thing should be believed?"