“How did you first come to know this man Marechal?”

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 from the bowels of the houses—­the stench of cellars, drains, sewers, squalid kitchens—­to mingle with the horrible savour of this wandering fog.

Pierre, with his shoulders up and his hands in his pockets, not caring to remain out of doors in the cold, turned into Marowsko’s.  The druggist was asleep as usual under the gas-light, which kept watch.  On recognising Pierre for whom he had the affection of a faithful dog, he shook off his drowsiness, went for two glasses, and brought out the Groseillette.