ay from him, he examined it. Then, fully
aware that his mother was looking at him, he slowly raised his eyes
and fixed them on his brother to compare the faces. He could hardly
refrain, in his violence, from saying: "Dear me! How like Jean!" And
though he dared not utter the terrible words, he betrayed his thought
by his manner of comparing the living face with the painted one.

They had, no doubt, details in common; the same beard, the same brow;
but nothing sufficiently marked to justify the assertion: "This is the
father and that the son." It was rather a family likeness, a
relationship of physiognomies in which the same blood courses. But
what to Pierre was far more decisive than the common aspect of the
faces, was that his mother had risen, had turned her back, and was
pretending, too deliberately, to be putting the sugar basin and the
liqueur bottle away in a cupboard. She understood that he knew, or at
any rate had his suspicions.

"Hand it on to me," said Roland.

Pierre held out the miniature and his father drew the candle toward
him to see it better; then he murmured in a pathetic tone:

"Poor fellow! To think that he was like that when we first knew him!
Cristi! How time flies! He was a good-looking man, too, in those days,
and with such a pleasant manner--was not he, Louise?"

As his wife made no answer he went on:

"And what an even temper! I never saw him put out. And now it is all
at an end--nothing left of him--but what he bequeathed to Jean. Well,
at any rate you may take your oath that that man was a good and
faithful friend to the last. Even on his deathbed he did not forget
us."

Jean, in his turn, held out his hand for the picture. He gazed at it
for a few minutes and then said regretfully:

"I do not recognize it at all. I only remember him with white hair."

He returned the miniature to his mother. She cast a hasty glance at
it, looking away again as if she were frightened; then in her usual
voice, she said:

"It belongs to you now, my little Jean, as you are his heir. We will
take it to your new rooms." And when they went into the drawing-room
she placed the picture on the chimney-shelf by the clock, where it had
formerly stood.

Roland filled his pipe; Pierre and Jean lighted cigarettes. They
commonly smoked them, Pierre while he paced the room, Jean, sunk in a
deep armchair, with his legs crossed. Their father always sat astride
on a chair and spit from afar into the fireplace.