Marc made a gesture expressive of his regret. He remembered having seen Jules as a babe in swaddling clothes in his mother's arms. Later, the lad, from his seventh to his fourteenth year, had become one of his pupils—a pupil who evinced much higher intelligence than his elder brothers, and who inspired great hopes. Like the master, Madame Savin, no doubt, was worried that her youngest boy's studies had been cut short by his father; for, again raising her beautiful eyes, she glanced at Marc furtively and sadly.
'Come,' said her husband to the latter, 'what advice can you give me? And first of all can't you make that big idler feel ashamed of his sloth? As you were his master, perhaps he will listen to you.'
At that moment, however, Achille, the other son, came in, returning from the process-server's office where he was now employed. He had made a start there as an errand boy when he was fifteen, and though nearly seven years had elapsed he did not yet earn enough to keep himself. Paler and of even poorer blood than his brother Philippe, he had remained a beardless stripling, sly, pusillanimous, and distrustful as in his school-days, ever ready to denounce a comrade in order to escape personal punishment. He seemed surprised on seeing his former master, and, after bowing to him, he said, doubtless in a spirit of malice: 'I don't know what there can be in Le Petit Beaumontais to-day, but people are almost fighting for copies at Mesdames Milhomme's. It must certainly be something more about that beastly affair.'
Marc already knew that the paper contained a fresh rectification, brimful of extraordinary mendacious impudence, on the part of Brother Gorgias; and he decided to avail himself of this opportunity to sound the young men. 'Oh!' said he, 'whatever Le Petit Beaumontais may attempt with its stories of buried millions, and its superb denials of well-established facts, everybody is beginning to admit that Simon is innocent.'
At this the twins shrugged their shoulders, and Achille in his drawling way replied: 'Oh! only imbeciles believe in those buried millions, and it's true that they are lying too much: one can see it. But what does it all matter to us?'
'Eh? what does it matter to you?' the schoolmaster exclaimed, surprised and failing to understand.
'Yes, what interest is there for us in that affair with which we have been plagued so long?'
Then Marc gradually became impassioned.
'My poor lads, I feel sorry for you,' he said; 'you admit Simon's innocence, do you not?'
'Well—yes. It is by no means clear, as yet; but when one has read things attentively it does seem that he may be innocent.'