"You know I must positively go to see her to-day." "Yes, yes. To be sure." "Why must you positively?" asked Roland, whose habit it was never to understand what was said in his presence. "Because I promised her I would." "Oh, very well. That alters the case." And he began to fill his pipe, while the mother and son went upstairs to make ready. When they were in the street Jean said: "Will you take my arm, mother?" He was never accustomed to offer it, for they were in the habit of walking side by side. She accepted, and leaned on him. For some time they did not speak; then he said: "You see that Pierre is quite ready and willing to go away." She murmured: "Poor boy." "But why 'poor boy'? He will not be in the least unhappy on board the _Lorraine_!" "No--I know. But I was thinking of so many things." And she thought for a long time, her head bent, accommodating her step to her son's; then, in the peculiar voice in which we sometimes give utterance to the conclusion of long and secret meditations, she exclaimed: "How horrible life is! If by any chance we come across any sweetness in it, we sin in letting ourselves be happy, and pay dearly for it afterward." He said in a whisper: "Do not speak of that any more, mother." "Is that possible? I think of nothing else." "You will forget it." Again she was silent; then with deep regret she said: "How happy I might have been, married to another man." She was visiting it on Roland now, throwing all the responsibility of her sin on his ugliness, his stupidity, his clumsiness, the heaviness of his intellect, and the vulgarity of his person. It was to this that it was owing that she had betrayed him, had driven one son to desperation, and had been forced to utter to the other the most agonizing confession that can make a mother's heart bleed. She muttered: "It is so frightful for a young girl to have to marry such a husband as mine." Jean made no reply. He was thinking of the man he had hitherto believed to be his father; and possibly the vague notion he had long since conceived, of that father's inferiority, with his brother's constant irony, the scornful indifference of others, and the very maid-servant's contempt for Roland, had somewhat prepared his mind for his mother's terrible avowal. It had all made it less dreadful to him to find that he was another man's son; and if, after the great shock and agitation of the previous evening, he had not suffered the reaction of rage, indignation, and rebellion which Mme. Roland had feared, it was because he had long been unconsciously chafing under the sense of being the child of this well-meaning lout. They had now reached the dwelling of Mme. Rosemilly. She lived on the road to Sainte-Adresse, on the second floor of a large tenement which she owned. The windows commanded a view of the whole roadstead.