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; but that he should leave the whole of it to one alone—­of course people would wonder, and whisper, and end by smiling.  How was it that he had not foreseen this, that his father had not felt it?  How was it that his mother had not guessed it?  No; they had been too delighted at this unhoped-for wealth for the idea to come near them.  And besides, how should these worthy souls have ever dreamed of anything so ignominious?

But the public—­their neighbours, the shopkeepers, their own tradesmen, all who knew them—­would not they repeat the abominable thing, laugh at it, enjoy it, make game of his father and despise his mother?

And the barmaid’s remark that Jean was fair and he dark, that they were not in the least alike in face, manner, figure, or intelligence, would now strike every eye and every mind.  When any one spoke of Roland’s son, the question would be:  “Which, the real or the false?”

He rose, firmly resolved to warn Jean, and put him on his guard against the frightful danger which threatened their mother’s honour.

But what could Jean do?  The simplest thing no doubt, would be to refuse the inheritance, which would then go to the poor, and to tell all friends or acquaintances who had heard of the bequest that the will contained clauses and conditions impossible to subscribe to, which would have made Jean not inheritor but merely a trustee.