ooked
so resolute, who had the air of one who could say,

"This is the way to go," because he knew and was sure; he was not to be
denied.

"Who was Virginie Poucette?" repeated the Young Doctor insistently, yet
ever so gently. "Was she such a prize among women? What did she do?"

A flood of feeling passed over Jean Jacques' face. He looked at his hat
and his knapsack lying in a chair, with a desire to seize them and fly
from the inquisitor; then a sense of fatalism came upon him. As though
he had received an order from within his soul, he said helplessly:

"Well, if it must be, it must."

Then he swept the knapsack and his hat from the chair to the floor, and
sat down.

"I will begin at the beginning," he said with his eyes fixed on those
of the Young Doctor, yet looking beyond him to far-off things. "I will
start from the time when I used to watch the gold Cock of Beaugard
turning on the mill, when I sat in the doorway of the Manor Cartier
in my pinafore. I don't know why I tell you, but maybe it was meant
I should. I obey conviction. While you are able to keep logic and
conviction hand in hand then everything is all right. I have found that
out. Logic, philosophy are the props of life, but still you must obey
the impulse of the soul--oh, absolutely! You must--"

He stopped short. "But it will seem strange to you," he added after a
moment, in which the Young Doctor gestured to him to proceed, "to hear
me talk like this--a wayfarer--a vagabond you may think. But in other
days I was in places--"

The Young Doctor interjected with abrupt friendliness that there was no
need to say he had been in high places. It would still be apparent, if
he were in rags.

"Then, there, I will speak freely," rejoined Jean Jacques, and he took
the cherry-brandy which the other offered him, and drank it off with
gusto.

"Ah, that--that," he said, "is like the cordials Mere Langlois used to
sell at Vilray. She and Virginie Poucette had a place together on the
market--none better than Mere Langlois except Virginie Poucette, and she
was like a drink of water in the desert.... Well, there, I will begin.
Now my father was--"

It was lucky there were no calls for the Young Doctor that particular
early morning, else the course of Jean Jacques' life might have been
greatly different from what it became. He was able to tell his story
from the very first to the last. Had it been interrupted or unfinished
one name might not have been men