in. She was sitting up in bed, while, by her side, Roland, with
a silk handkerchief by way of night-cap and his face to the wall, still
lay sleeping. Nothing ever woke him but a shaking hard enough to pull
his arm off. On the days when he went fishing it was Josephine, rung up
by Papagris at the hour fixed, who roused her master from his stubborn
slumbers.

Pierre, as he went towards his mother, looked at her with a sudden sense
of never having seen her before. She held up her face, he kissed each
cheek, and then sat down in a low chair.

"It was last evening that you decided on this excursion?" she asked.

"Yes, last evening."

"Will you return to dinner?"

"I do not know. At any rate do not wait for me."

He looked at her with stupefied curiosity. This woman was his mother!
All those features, seen daily from childhood, from the time when his
eye could first distinguish things, that smile, that voice--so well
known, so familiar--abruptly struck him as new, different from what they
had always been to him hitherto. He understood now that, loving her,
he had never looked at her. All the same it was very really she, and he
knew every little detail of her face; still, it was the first time he
clearly identified them all. His anxious attention, scrutinizing her
face which he loved, recalled a difference, a physiognomy he had never
before discerned.

He rose to go; then, suddenly yielding to the invincible longing to know
which had been gnawing at him since yesterday, he said:

"By the way, I fancy I remember that you used to have, in Paris, a
little portrait of Marechal, in the drawing-room."

She hesitated for a second or two, or at least he fancied she hesitated;
then she said:

"To be sure."

"What has become of the portrait?"

She might have replied more readily:

"That portrait--stay; I don't exactly know--perhaps it is in my desk."

"It would be kind of you to find it."

"Yes, I will look for it. What do you want it for?"

"Oh, it is not for myself. I thought it would be a natural thing to give
it to Jean, and that he would be pleased to have it."

"Yes, you are right; that is a good idea. I will look for it, as soon as
I am up."

And he went out.

It was a blue day without a breath of wind. The folks in the streets
seemed in good spirits, the merchants going to business, the clerks
going to their office, the girls going to their shop. Some sang as they
went, exhilarated by the bright weather.