acquaintance?"

Again Roland sat thinking, but he could remember no more and appealed
to his wife's better memory.

"In what year was it, Louise? You surely have not forgotten, you who
remember everything. Let me see--it was in--in--in fifty-five or
fifty-six? Try to remember. You ought to know better than I."

She did in fact think it over for some minutes, and then replied in a
steady voice and with calm decision:

"It was in fifty-eight, old man. Pierre was three years old. I am
quite sure that I am not mistaken, for it was in that year that the
child had scarlet fever, and Marechal, whom we then knew but very
little, was of the greatest service to us."

Roland exclaimed:

"To be sure--very true; he was really invaluable. When your mother was
half-dead with fatigue and I had to attend to the shop, he would go to
the chemist's to fetch your medicine. He really had the kindest heart!
And when you were well again, you cannot think how glad he was and how
he petted you. It was from that time that we became such great
friends."

And this thought rushed into Pierre's soul, as abrupt and violent as a
cannon-ball rending and piercing it: "Since he knew me first, since he
was so devoted to me, since he was so fond of me and petted me so
much, since I--_I_ was the cause of this great intimacy with my
parents, why did he leave all his money to my brother and nothing to
me?"

He asked no more questions and remained gloomy; absent-minded rather
than thoughtful, feeling in his soul a new anxiety as yet undefined,
the secret germ of a new pain.

He went out early, wandering about the streets once more. They were
shrouded in the fog which made the night heavy, opaque, and nauseous.
It was like a pestilential rock dropped on earth. It could be seen
swirling past the gas-lights, which it seemed to put out at intervals.
The pavement was as slippery as on a frosty night after a rain, and
all sorts of evil smells seemed to come up from the bowels of the
houses--the stench of cellars, drains, sewers, squalid kitchens--to
mingle with the horrible savor of this wandering fog.

Pierre, with his shoulders up and his hands in his pockets, not caring
to remain out of doors in the cold, turned into Marowsko's. The
druggist was asleep as usual under the gas-light, which kept watch. On
recognizing Pierre, for whom he had the affection of a faithful dog,
he shook off his drowsiness, went for two glasses, and brought out the
_Groseille