The former master-puddler began to laugh. 'No, no; I've never been anything but a workman, and I'm only one to-day. But in a sense it's true that we've all made our fortunes and all become bourgeois.'
As if his envious fears were quieted by that answer, Ragu began to sneer once more: 'A workman can't be a bourgeois,' said he, 'and if a man still works it's because he hasn't made his fortune.'
'All right, my good fellow, we'll have a chat about it, and I'll explain things to you. Meantime go in, go in.'
Bonnaire for the time being was dwelling alone in this house, which was that of his granddaughter, Claudine, now the wife of Charles Froment. Daddy Lunot had long since been dead, and his daughter, Ragu's sister, the terrible Toupe, had followed him to his grave during the previous year, after a frightful quarrel, which, as she expressed it, had turned her blood. When Ragu heard of the loss of his sister and father, he simply made a little gesture, as if to say that by reason of their age he had anticipated it. After an absence of half a century one is not surprised to find nobody one knew left among the living.
'So here we are in the house of my granddaughter, Claudine,' continued Bonnaire; 'she's the daughter of my eldest son, Lucien, who married Louise Mazelle, the daughter of the Rentiers, whom you must remember. Claudine herself has married Charles Froment, a son of the master of La Crêcherie. But she and Charles have taken their daughter Aline, a little girl of eight, to see an aunt at Formeries, and they won't be back till to-morrow evening.' Then he concluded gaily: 'For some months now the children have taken me to live with them, by way of petting me. Come, the house is ours; you must eat and drink your fill, and then I'll show you to your bed. To-morrow, when it's daylight, we'll see to all the rest.'
Ragu's head swam as he listened. All those names, those marriages, those three generations flitting by at a gallop quite scared him. How was he ever to understand things when so many unknown events and so many marriages and births had taken place? He did not speak again, but, seated at a well-spread table, ate some cold meat and fruit ravenously in the gay room, which was brilliantly illumined by an electric lamp. The comfort and ease which he felt around him must have weighed heavily upon the old vagabond's shoulders, for he seemed yet more aged, more utterly 'done for,' as with his face lowered over his plate he devoured the food, glancing askance the while at all the encompassing happiness in which he had no share. His very silence, his downcast mien at the sight of so much comfort, was expressive of all his long stored-up rancour, his powerless thirst for vengeance, his now irrealisable dream of triumphing and seeing disaster fall on others. And Bonnaire, again uneasy at the sight of his gloominess, wondered through what adventures he had rolled during the last half-century, and felt more and more astonished at finding him still alive and in such destitution.
'Where have you come from?' he ended by inquiring.
'Oh, from everywhere more or less!' Ragu answered with a sweeping gesture.
'Ah! so you've seen a good many countries and people and things?'
'Oh, yes; in France, Germany, England and America, and elsewhere. I've dragged my carcase, indeed, from one end of the world to the other.'