At last the tea appeared.  The lawyer took a cup, sugared it, and drank it, after having crumbled into it a little cake which was too hard to crunch.  Then he rose, shook hands, and departed.

“Then it is understood,” repeated Roland.  “To-morrow, at your place, at two?”

“Quite so.  To-morrow, at two.”

Jean had not spoken a word.

When their guest had gone, silence fell again till father Roland clapped his two hands on his younger son’s shoulders, crying: 

“Well, you devilish lucky dog!  You don’t embrace me!”

Then Jean smiled.  He embraced his father, saying: 

“It had not struck me as indispensable.”

The old man was beside himself with glee.  He walked about the room, strummed on the furniture with his clumsy nails, turned about on his heels, and kept saying: 

“What luck!  What luck!  Now, that is really what I call luck!”

Pierre asked: 

“Then you used to know this Marechal well?”

And his father replied: 

“I believe!  Why, he used to spend every evening at our house.  Surely you remember he used to fetch you from school on half-holidays, and often took you back again after dinner.  Why, the very day when Jean was born it was he who went for the doctor.  He had been breakfasting with us when your mother was taken ill.  Of course we knew at once what it meant, and he set off post-haste.  In his hurry he took my hat instead of his own.  I remember that because we had a good laugh over it afterward.  It is very likely that he may have thought of that when he was dying, and as he had no heir he may have said to himself:  ’I remember helping to bring that youngster into the world, so I will leave him my savings.’”

Mme. Roland, sunk in a deep chair, seemed lost in reminiscences once more.  She murmured, as though she were thinking aloud: 

“Ah, he was a good friend, very devoted, very faithful, a rare soul in these days.”

Jean got up.

“I shall go out for a little walk,” he said.

His father was surprised and tried to keep him; they had much to talk about, plans to be made, decisions to be formed.  But the young man insisted, declaring that he had an engagement.  Besides, there would be time enough for settling everything before he came into possession of his inheritance.  So he went away, for he wished to be alone to reflect.  Pierre, on his part, said that he too was going out, and after a few minutes followed his brother.

As soon as he was alone with his wife, father Roland took her in his arms, kissed her a dozen times on each cheek, and, replying to a reproach she had often brought against him, said: 

“You see, my dearest, that it would have been no good to stay any longer in Paris and work for the children till I dropped, instead of coming here to recruit my health, since fortune drops on us from the skies.”