ean's legacy? Why should this thing, which he kept at arm's
length when he was alone, which he drove from him for fear of the
torment it brought upon his soul, rise to his lips at this moment? And
why did he allow it to overflow them as if he needed once more to empty
out his heart to some one, gorged as it was with bitterness?

He crossed his legs and said:

"He has wonderful luck, that brother of mine. He had just come into a
legacy of twenty thousand francs a year."

She opened those covetous blue eyes of hers very wide.

"Oh! and who left him that? His grandmother or his aunt?"

"No. An old friend of my parents'."

"Only a friend! Impossible! And you--did he leave you nothing?"

"No. I knew him very slightly."

She sat thinking some minutes; then, with an odd smile on her lips, she
said:

"Well, he is a lucky dog, that brother of yours, to have friends of this
pattern. My word! and no wonder he is so unlike you."

He longed to slap her, without knowing why; and he asked with pinched
lips: "And what do you mean by saying that?"

She had put on a stolid, innocent face.

"O--h, nothing. I mean he has better luck than you."

He tossed a franc piece on the table and went out.

Now he kept repeating the phrase: "No wonder he is so unlike you."

What had her thought been, what had been her meaning under those words?
There was certainly some malice, some spite, something shameful in it.
Yes, that hussy must have fancied, no doubt, that Jean was Marechal's
son. The agitation which came over him at the notion of this suspicion
cast at his mother was so violent that he stood still, looking about
him for some place where he might sit down. In front of him was another
cafe. He went in, took a chair, and as the waiter came up, "A bock," he
said.

He felt his heart beating, his skin was gooseflesh. And then the
recollection flashed upon him of what Marowsko had said the evening
before. "It will not look well." Had he had the same thought, the same
suspicion as this baggage? Hanging his head over the glass, he watched
the white froth as the bubbles rose and burst, asking himself: "Is it
possible that such a thing should be believed?"

But the reasons which might give rise to this horrible doubt in other
men's minds now struck him, one after another, as plain, obvious, and
exasperating. That a childless old bachelor should leave his fortune to
a friend's two sons was the most simple and natural thing in the world