I have to drag you before the judges?"

Pierre shrugged his shoulders.

"I've got no money of yours," he replied, more calmly than ever. "My
mother disposed of her fortune as she thought proper. I am certainly not
going to poke my nose into her business. I willingly renounced all hope
of inheritance. I am quite safe from your foul accusations."

And as his brother, exasperated by this composure, and not knowing what
to think, muttered something, Pierre thrust Adelaide's receipt under his
nose. The reading of this scrap of paper completed Antoine's dismay.

"Very well," he said, in a calmer voice, "I know now what I have to do."

The truth was, however, he did not know what to do. His inability to hit
upon any immediate expedient for obtaining his share of the money and
satisfying his desire of revenge increased his fury. He went back to
his mother and subjected her to a disgraceful cross-examination. The
wretched woman could do nothing but again refer him to Pierre.

"Do you think you are going to make me run to and fro like a shuttle?"
he cried, insolently. "I'll soon find out which of you two has the
hoard. You've already squandered it, perhaps?"

And making an allusion to her former misconduct he asked her if there
were still not some low fellow to whom she gave her last sous? He did
not even spare his father, that drunkard Macquart, as he called him,
who must have lived on her till the day of his death, and who left his
children in poverty. The poor woman listened with a stupefied air; big
tears rolled down her cheeks. She defended herself with the terror of
a child, replying to her son's questions as though he were a judge; she
swore that she was living respectably, and reiterated with emphasis that
she had never had a sou of the money, that Pierre had taken everything.
Antoine almost came to believe it at last.

"Ah! the scoundrel!" he muttered; "that's why he wouldn't purchase my
discharge."

He had to sleep at his mother's house, on a straw mattress flung in
a corner. He had returned with his pockets perfectly empty, and was
exasperated at finding himself destitute of resources, abandoned like
a dog in the streets, without hearth or home, while his brother, as he
thought, was in a good way of business, and living on the fat of
the land. As he had no money to buy clothes with, he went out on the
following day in his regimental cap and trousers. He had the good
fortune to find, at the bottom of a cupboard