d; a sailor boy, fixing a
pulley to a cross-beam, looked as if he had gone up there
bird's-nesting.

"Will you dine with us without any sort of ceremony, just that we may
end the day together?" said Mme. Roland to her friend.

"To be sure I will, with pleasure; I accept equally without ceremony.
It would be dismal to go home and be alone this evening."

Pierre, who had heard, and who was beginning to be restless under the
young woman's indifference, muttered to himself: "Well, the widow is
taking root now, it would seem." For some days past he had spoken of
her as "the widow." The word, harmless in itself, irritated Jean
merely by the tone given to it, which to him seemed spiteful and
offensive.

The three men spoke not another word till they reached the threshold
of their own house. It was a narrow one, consisting of a ground-floor
and two floors above, in the rue Belle-Normande. The maid, Josephine,
a girl of nineteen, a rustic servant-of-all-work at low wages, gifted
to excess with the startled, animal expression of a peasant, opened
the door, went upstairs at her master's heels to the drawing-room,
which was on the first floor, and then said:

"A gentleman called--three times."

Old Roland, who never spoke to her without shouting and swearing,
cried out:

"Who do you say called, in the devil's name?"

She never winced at her master's roaring voice, and replied:

"A gentleman from the lawyer's."

"What lawyer?"

"Why M'sieu' Canu--who else?"

"And what did this gentleman say?"

"That M'sieu' Canu will call in himself in the course of the evening."

Maitre Lecanu was M. Roland's lawyer, and in a way his friend,
managing his business for him. For him to send word that he would call
in the evening, something urgent and important must be in the wind;
and the four Rolands looked at each other, disturbed by the
announcement as folks of small fortune are wont to be at any
intervention of a lawyer, with its suggestions of contracts,
inheritance, law-suits--all sorts of desirable or formidable
contingencies. The father, after a few moments of silence, muttered:

"What on earth can it mean?"

Mme. Rosemilly began to laugh.

"Why, a legacy, of course. I am sure of it. I bring good luck."

But they did not expect the death of any one who might leave them
anything.

Mme. Roland who had a good memory for relationships, began to think
over all their connections on her husband's side and on her own, to
tra