Volume VIII Part 15 (1/2)
Pierre replied:
”What does thatas fools do? If my fellonsmen are stupid and ill-bred, need I follow their example?
A wohbor has a lover”
Jean began to laugh
”You argue by comparisons which seem to have been borrowed from the maxims of a moralist”
Pierre made no reply His mother and his brother reverted to the question of stuffs and ar at the before starting for Trouville; looking at theh he had really suddenly co
His father, above all, amazed his eye and his mind That flabby, burly man, happy and besotted, was his own father! No, no; Jean was not in the least like him
His fanant hand, the hand of a dead man, had torn asunder and broken, one by one, all the ties which had held these four huether It was all over, all ruined He had now no er love her now that he could not revere her with that perfect, tender, and pious respect which a son's love deer; nothing was left him but his father, that coarse man whom he could not love in spite of himself
And he suddenly broke out:
”I say, mother, have you found that portrait?”
She opened her eyes in surprise
”What portrait?”
”The portrait of Marechal”
”No--that is to say--yes--I have not found it, but I think I knohere it is”
”What is that?” asked Roland And Pierre answered:
”A little likeness of Marechal which used to be in the drawing-roolad to have it”
Roland exclaimed:
”Why, yes, to be sure; I reain last week Yourthe papers It was on Thursday or Friday Do you re myself when you took it out and laid it on a chair by your side with a pile of letters of which you burnt half Strange, isn't it, that you should have come across that portrait only two or three days before Jean heard of his legacy? If I believed in presentiments I should think that this was one”
Mme Roland calmly replied:
”Yes, I knohere it is I will fetch it presently”
Then she had lied! When she had said that veryto her son, who had asked her what had become of the miniature: ”I don't exactly know--perhaps it is in my desk”--it was a lie! She had seen it, touched it, handled it, gazed at it but a few days since; and then she had hidden it away again in the secret draith those letters--his letters