His mother, deeply moved, murmured:  “Well said, my boy.”

But Beausire cried out: 

“Come, Mme. Rosemilly, speak on behalf of the fair sex.”

She raised her glass, and in a pretty voice, slightly touched with sadness, she said:  “I will pledge you to the memory of M. Marechal.”

There was a few moments’ lull, a pause for decent meditation, as after prayer.  Beausire, who always had a flow of compliment, remarked: 

“Only a woman ever thinks of these refinements.”  Then turning to Father Roland:  “And who was this Marechal, after all?  You must have been very intimate with him.”

The old man, emotional with drink, began to whimper, and in a broken voice he said: 

“Like a brother, you know.  Such a friend as one does not make twice—­we were always together—­he dined with us every evening—­and would treat us to the play—­I need say no more—­no more—­no more.  A true friend—­a real true friend—­wasn’t he, Louise?”

His wife merely answered:  “Yes; he was a faithful friend.”

Pierre looked at his father and then at his mother, then, as the subject changed he drank some more wine.  He scarcely remembered the remainder of the evening.  They had coffee, then liqueurs, and they laughed and joked a great deal.  At about midnight he went to bed, his mind confused and his head heavy; and he slept like a brute till nine next morning.

CHAPTER IV

These slumbers, lapped in Champagne and Chartreuse, had soothed and calmed him, no doubt, for he awoke in a very benevolent frame of mind.  While he was dressing he appraised, weighed, and summed up the agitations of the past day, trying to bring out quite clearly and fully their real and occult causes, those personal to himself as well as those from outside.

It was, in fact, possible that the girl at the beer-shop had had an evil suspicion—­a suspicion worthy of such a hussy—­on hearing that only one of the Roland brothers had been made heir to a stranger; but have not such natures as she always similar notions, without a shadow of foundation, about every honest woman?  Do they not, whenever they speak, vilify, calumniate, and abuse all whom they believe to be blameless?  Whenever a woman who is above imputation is mentioned in their presence, they are as angry as if they were being insulted, and exclaim:  “Ah, yes, I know your married women; a pretty sort they are!  Why, they have more lovers than we have, only they conceal it because they are such hypocrites.  Oh, yes, a pretty sort, indeed!”