“Only for to-night,” she said.  “Only for to-night.  And to-morrow morning you can send word to Roland that I was taken ill.”

“That is out of the question, as Pierre left you here.  Come, take courage.  I will arrange everything, I promise you, to-morrow; I will be with you by nine o’clock.  Come, put on your bonnet.  I will take you home.”

“I will do just what you desire,” she said with a childlike impulse of timidity and gratitude.

She tried to rise, but the shock had been too much for her; she could not stand.

He made her drink some sugared water and smell at some salts, while he bathed her temples with vinegar.  She let him do what he would, exhausted, but comforted, as after the pains of child-birth.  At last she could walk and she took his arm.  The town hall struck three as they went past.

Outside their own door Jean kissed her, saying: 

“Good-night, mother, keep up your courage.”

She stealthily crept up the silent stairs, and into her room, undressed quickly, and slipped into bed with a reawakened sense of that long-forgotten sin.  Roland was snoring.  In all the house Pierre alone was awake, and had heard her come in.

CHAPTER VIII

When he got back to his lodgings Jean dropped on a sofa; for the sorrows and anxieties which made his brother long to be moving, and to flee like a hunted prey, acted differently on his torpid nature and broke the strength of his arms and legs.  He felt too limp to stir a finger, even to get to bed; limp body and soul, crushed and heart-broken.  He had not been hit, as Pierre had been, in the purity of filial love, in the secret dignity which is the refuge of a proud heart; he was overwhelmed by a stroke of fate which, at the same time, threatened his own nearest interests.

When at last his spirit was calmer, when his thoughts had settled like water that has been stirred and lashed, he could contemplate the situation which had come before him.  If he had learned the secret of his birth through any other channel he would assuredly have been very wroth and very deeply pained, but after his quarrel with his brother, after the violent and brutal betrayal which had shaken his nerves, the agonizing emotion of his mother’s confession had so bereft him of energy that he could not rebel.  The shock to his feeling had been so great as to sweep away in an irresistible tide of pathos, all prejudice, and all the sacred delicacy of natural morality.  Besides, he was not a man made for resistance.  He did not like contending against any one, least of all against himself, so he resigned himself at once; and by instinctive tendency, a congenital love of peace, and of an easy and tranquil life, he began to anticipate the agitations which must surge up around him and at once be his ruin.  He foresaw that they were inevitable, and to avert them he made up his mind to superhuman efforts of energy and activity.