rechal?"

Old Roland looked up and racked his memory:

"Wait a bit; I scarcely recollect. It is such an old story now. Ah, yes,
I remember. It was your mother who made the acquaintance with him in the
shop, was it not, Louise? He first came to order something, and then
he called frequently. We knew him as a customer before we knew him as a
friend."

Pierre, who was eating beans, sticking his fork into them one by one as
if he were spitting them, went on:

"And when was it that you made his acquaintance?"

Again Roland sat thinking, but he could remember no more and appealed to
his wife's better memory.

"In what year was it, Louise? You surely have not forgotten, you
who remember everything. Let me see--it was in--in--in fifty-five or
fifty-six? Try to remember. You ought to know better than I."

She did in fact think it over for some minutes, and then replied in a
steady voice and with calm decision:

"It was in fifty-eight, old man. Pierre was three years old. I am quite
sure that I am not mistaken, for it was in that year that the child had
scarlet fever, and Marechal, whom we knew then but very little, was of
the greatest service to us."

Roland exclaimed:

"To be sure--very true; he was really invaluable. When your mother was
half-dead with fatigue and I had to attend to the shop, he would go to
the chemist's to fetch your medicine. He really had the kindest heart!
And when you were well again, you cannot think how glad he was and how
he petted you. It was from that time that we became such great friends."

And this thought rushed into Pierre's soul, as abrupt and violent as a
cannon-ball rending and piercing it: "Since he knew me first, since he
was so devoted to me, since he was so fond of me and petted me so much,
since I--_I_ was the cause of his great intimacy with my parents, why
did he leave all his money to my brother and nothing to me?"

He asked no more questions and remained gloomy; absent-minded rather
than thoughtful, feeling in his soul a new anxiety as yet undefined, the
secret germ of a new pain.

He went out early, wandering about the streets once more. They were
shrouded in the fog which made the night heavy, opaque, and nauseous.
It was like a pestilential cloud dropped on the earth. It could be seen
swirling past the gas-lights, which it seemed to put out at intervals.
The pavement was as slippery as on a frosty night after rain, and
all sorts of evil smells seemed to come up fro