This new view of the matter having relieved him and quieted his conscience, he went to the window again.

“Yes,” he said to himself, “I must give up my share of the family inheritance.  I must let Pierre have the whole of it, since I am not his father’s son.  That is but just.  Then is it not just that I should keep my father’s money?”

Having discerned that he could take nothing of Roland’s savings, having decided on giving up the whole of this money, he agreed; he resigned himself to keeping Marechal’s; for if he rejected both he would find himself reduced to beggary.

This delicate question being thus disposed of he came back to that of Pierre’s presence in the family.  How was he to be got rid of?  He was giving up his search for any practical solution when the whistle of a steam-vessel coming into port seemed to blow him an answer by suggesting a scheme.

Then he threw himself on his bed without undressing, and dozed and dreamed till daybreak.

At a little before nine he went out to ascertain whether his plans were feasible.  Then, after making sundry inquiries and calls, he went to his old home.  His mother was waiting for him in her room.

“If you had not come,” she said, “I should never have dared to go down.”

In a minute Roland’s voice was heard on the stairs:  “Are we to have nothing to eat to-day, hang it all?”

There was no answer, and he roared out, with a thundering oath this time:  “Josephine, what the devil are you about?”

The girl’s voice came up from the depths of the basement.

“Yes, M’sieu—­what is it?”

“Where is your Miss’es?”

“Madame is upstairs with M’sieu Jean.”

Then he shouted, looking up at the higher floor:  “Louise!”

Mme. Roland half opened her door and answered: 

“What is it, my dear?”

“Are we to have nothing to eat to-day, hang it all?”

“Yes, my dear, I am coming.”

And she went down, followed by Jean.

Roland, as soon as he saw him, exclaimed: 

“Hallo!  There you are!  Sick of your home already?”

“No, father, but I had something to talk over with mother this morning.”

Jean went forward holding out his hand, and when he felt his fingers in the old man’s fatherly clasp, a strange, unforeseen emotion thrilled through him, and a sense as of parting and farewell without return.

Mme. Roland asked: 

“Pierre is not come down?”

Her husband shrugged his shoulders.

“No, but never mind him; he is always behind-hand.  We will begin without him.”

She turned to Jean: 

“You had better go to call him, my child; it hurts his feelings if we do not wait for him.”

“Yes, mother.  I will go.”

And the young man went.  He mounted the stairs with the fevered determination of a man who is about to fight a duel and who is in a fright.  When he knocked at the door Pierre said: