Pierre laughed the louder.

“Ah! ha! very good.  I understand now why I should no longer speak of her as ‘the widow.’  But you have taken a strange way of announcing your engagement.”

“I forbid any jesting about it.  Do you hear?  I forbid it.”

Jean had come close up to him, pale, and his voice quivering with exasperation at this irony levelled at the woman he loved and had chosen.

But on a sudden Pierre turned equally furious.  All the accumulation of impotent rage, of suppressed malignity, of rebellion choked down for so long past, all his unspoken despair mounted to his brain, bewildering it like a fit.

“How dare you?  How dare you?  I order you to hold your tongue—­do you hear?  I order you.”

Jean, startled by his violence, was silent for a few seconds, trying in the confusion of mind which comes of rage to hit on the thing, the phrase, the word, which might stab his brother to the heart.  He went on, with an effort to control himself that he might aim true, and to speak slowly that the words might hit more keenly: 

“I have known for a long time that you were jealous of me, ever since the day when you first began to talk of ‘the widow’ because you knew it annoyed me.”

Pierre broke into one of those strident and scornful laughs which were common with him.

“Ah! ah!  Good Heavens!  Jealous of you!  I?  I?  And of what?  Good God!  Of your person or your mind?”

But Jean knew full well that he had touched the wound in his soul.

“Yes, jealous of me—­jealous from your childhood up.  And it became fury when you saw that this woman liked me best and would have nothing to say to you.”

Pierre, stung to the quick by this assumption, stuttered out: 

“I?  I?  Jealous of you?  And for the sake of that goose, that gaby, that simpleton?”

Jean, seeing that he was aiming true, went on: 

“And how about the day when you tried to pull me round in the Pearl?  And all you said in her presence to show off?  Why, you are bursting with jealousy!  And when this money was left to me you were maddened, you hated me, you showed it in every possible way, and made every one suffer for it; not an hour passes that you do not spit out the bile that is choking you.”

Pierre clenched his fist in his fury with an almost irresistible impulse to fly at his brother and seize him by the throat.

“Hold your tongue,” he cried.  “At least say nothing about that money.”

Jean went on: 

“Why your jealousy oozes out at every pore.  You never say a word to my father, my mother, or me that does not declare it plainly.  You pretend to despise me because you are jealous.  You try to pick a quarrel with every one because you are jealous.  And now that I am rich you can no longer contain yourself; you have become venomous, you torture our poor mother as if she were to blame!”