He found her dozing on a chair in the beer-shop, which was almost deserted.  Three men were drinking and smoking with their elbows on the oak tables; the book-keeper in her desk was reading a novel, while the master, in his shirt-sleeves, lay sound asleep on a bench.

As soon as she saw him the girl rose eagerly, and coming to meet him, said: 

“Good-day, monsieur—­how are you?”

“Pretty well; and you?”

“I—­oh, very well.  How scarce you make yourself!”

“Yes.  I have very little time to myself.  I am a doctor, you know.”

“Indeed!  You never told me.  If I had known that—­I was out of sorts last week and I would have sent for you.  What will you take?”

“A bock.  And you?”

“I will have a bock, too, since you are willing to treat me.”

She had addressed him with the familiar tu, and continued to use it, as if the offer of a drink had tacitly conveyed permission.  Then, sitting down opposite each other, they talked for a while.  Every now and then she took his hand with the light familiarity of girls whose kisses are for sale, and looking at him with inviting eyes she said: 

“Why don’t you come here oftener?  I like you very much, sweetheart.”

He was already disgusted with her; he saw how stupid she was, and common, smacking of low life.  A woman, he told himself, should appear to us in dreams, or such a glory as may poetize her vulgarity.

Next she asked him: 

“You went by the other morning with a handsome fair man, wearing a big beard.  Is he your brother?”

“Yes, he is my brother.”

“Awfully good-looking.”

“Do you think so?”

“Yes, indeed; and he looks like a man who enjoys life, too.”

What strange craving impelled him on a sudden to tell this tavern-wench about Jean’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?”