He argued thus:  “Let me see:  first to examine the facts; then I will recall all I know about him, his behaviour to my brother and to me.  I will seek out the causes which might have given rise to the preference.  He knew Jean from his birth?  Yes, but he had known me first.  If he had loved my mother silently, unselfishly, he would surely have chosen me, since it was through me, through my scarlet fever, that he became so intimate with my parents.  Logically, then, he ought to have preferred me, to have had a keener affection for me—­unless it were that he felt an instinctive attraction and predilection for my brother as he watched him grow up.”

Then, with desperate tension of brain and of all the powers of his intellect, he strove to reconstitute from memory the image of this Marechal, to see him, to know him, to penetrate the man whom he had seen pass by him, indifferent to his heart during all those years in Paris.

But he perceived that the slight exertion of walking somewhat disturbed his ideas, dislocated their continuity, weakened their precision, clouded his recollection.  To enable him to look at the past and at unknown events with so keen an eye that nothing should escape it, he must be motionless in a vast and empty space.  And he made up his mind to go and sit on the jetty as he had done that other night.  As he approached the harbour he heard, out at sea, a lugubrious and sinister wail like the bellowing of a bull, but more long-drawn and steady.  It was the roar of a fog-horn, the cry of a ship lost in the fog.  A shiver ran through him, chilling his heart; so deeply did this cry of distress thrill his soul and nerves that he felt as if he had uttered it himself.  Another and a similar voice answered with such another moan, but farther away; then, close by, the fog-horn on the pier gave out a fearful sound in answer.  Pierre made for the jetty with long steps, thinking no more of anything, content to walk on into this ominous and bellowing darkness.

When he had seated himself at the end of the breakwater he closed his eyes, that he might not see the two electric lights, now blurred by the fog, which make the harbour accessible at night, and the red glare of the light on the south pier, which was, however, scarcely visible.  Turning half-round, he rested his elbows on the granite and hid his face in his hands.

Though he did not pronounce the words with his lips, his mind kept repeating:  “Marechal—­Marechal,” as if to raise and challenge the shade.  And on the black background of his closed eyelids, he suddenly saw him as he had known him:  a man of about sixty, with a white beard cut in a point and very thick eyebrows, also white.  He was neither tall nor short, his manner was pleasant, his eyes gray and soft, his movements gentle, his whole appearance that of a good fellow, simple and kindly.  He called Pierre and Jean “my dear children,” and had never seemed to prefer either, asking them both together to dine with him.  And then Pierre, with the pertinacity of a dog seeking a lost scent, tried to recall the words, gestures, tones, looks, of this man who had vanished from the world.  By degrees he saw him quite clearly in his rooms in the Rue Tronchet, where he received his brother and himself at dinner.