His mind was at once irritable and sober; he got excited, then he reasoned, approving or blaming his impulses; but in time primitive nature at last proved the stronger; the sensitive man always had the upper hand over the intellectual man.  So he tried to discover what had induced this irascible mood, this craving to be moving without wanting anything, this desire to meet some one for the sake of differing from him, and at the same time this aversion for the people he might see and the things they might say to him.

And then he put the question to himself, “Can it be Jean’s inheritance?”

Yes, it was certainly possible.  When the lawyer had announced the news he had felt his heart beat a little faster.  For, indeed, one is not always master of one’s self; there are sudden and pertinacious emotions against which a man struggles in vain.

He fell into meditation on the physiological problem of the impression produced on the instinctive element in man, and giving rise to a current of painful or pleasurable sensations diametrically opposed to those which the thinking man desires, aims at, and regards as right and wholesome, when he has risen superior to himself by the cultivation of his intellect.  He tried to picture to himself the frame of mind of a son who had inherited a vast fortune, and who, thanks to that wealth, may now know many long-wished-for delights, which the avarice of his father had prohibited—­a father, nevertheless, beloved and regretted.

He got up and walked on to the end of the pier.  He felt better, and glad to have understood, to have detected himself, to have unmasked the other which lurks in us.

“Then I was jealous of Jean,” thought he.  “That is really vilely mean.  And I am sure of it now, for the first idea which came into my head was that he would marry Mme. Rosemilly.  And yet I am not in love myself with that priggish little goose, who is just the woman to disgust a man with good sense and good conduct.  So it is the most gratuitous jealousy, the very essence of jealousy, which is merely because it is!  I must keep an eye on that!”

By this time he was in front of the flag-staff, whence the depth of water in the harbour is signalled, and he struck a match to read the list of vessels signalled in the roadstead and coming in with the next high tide.  Ships were due from Brazil, from La Plata, from Chili and Japan, two Danish brigs, a Norwegian schooner, and a Turkish steamship—­which startled Pierre as much as if it had read a Swiss steamship; and in a whimsical vision he pictured a great vessel crowded with men in turbans climbing the shrouds in loose trousers.

“How absurd!” thought he.  “But the Turks are a maritime people, too.”