t
seeing them clearly, as one looks at total strangers, but suddenly a
woman's voice sent a shiver through him, which seemed to penetrate to
his very marrow. "George," it had said, "will you carve the chicken?"
And another replied: "Yes, Mamma."

Parent looked up, and he understood, he guessed immediately who those
people were! He should certainly not have known them again. His wife had
grown quite white and very stout, an old, serious, respectable lady, and
she held her head forwards as she ate, for fear of spotting her dress,
although she had a table napkin tucked under her chin. George had become
a man; he had a slight beard, that unequal and almost colorless beard
which becurls the cheeks of youths. He wore a high hat, a white
waistcoat and a single eyeglass, because it looked dandified, no doubt.
Parent looked at him in astonishment! Was that George, his son? No, he
did not know that young man; there could be nothing in common between
them. Limousin had his back to him, and was eating, with his shoulders
rather bent.

Well, all three of them seemed happy and satisfied; they came and dined
in the country, at well-known restaurants. They had had a calm and
pleasant existence, a family existence in a warm and comfortable house,
filled with all those trifles which make life agreeable, with affection,
with all those tender words which people exchange continually when they
love each other. They had lived thus, thanks to him, Parent, on his
money, after having deceived him, robbed him, ruined him! They had
condemned him, the innocent, the simple-minded, the jovial man to all
the miseries of solitude, to that abominable life which he had led
between the pavement and the counter, every moral torture and every
physical misery! They had made him a useless being, who was lost and
wretched amongst other people, a poor old man without any pleasures, or
anything to look forward to, and who hoped for nothing from anyone. For
him, the world was empty, because he loved nothing in the world. He
might go among other nations or go about the streets, go into all the
houses in Paris, open every room, but he would not find the beloved
face, the face of wife or child, that he was in search of, and which
smiles when it sees you, behind any door. And that idea worked upon him
more than any other, the idea of a door which one opens, to see and to
embrace somebody behind it.

And that was the fault of those three wretches! the fault of that