“I will begin at the beginning,” he said with his eyes fixed on those of the Young Doctor, yet looking beyond him to far-off things. “I will start from the time when I used to watch the gold Cock of Beaugard turning on the mill, when I sat in the doorway of the Manor Cartier in my pinafore. I don’t know why I tell you, but maybe it was meant I should. I obey conviction. While you are able to keep logic and conviction hand in hand then everything is all right. I have found that out. Logic, philosophy are the props of life, but still you must obey the impulse of the soul—oh, absolutely! You must—”
He stopped short. “But it will seem strange to you,” he added after a moment, in which the Young Doctor gestured to him to proceed, “to hear me talk like this—a wayfarer—a vagabond you may think. But in other days I was in places—”
The Young Doctor interjected with abrupt friendliness that there was no need to say he had been in high places. It would still be apparent, if he were in rags.
“Then, there, I will speak freely,” rejoined Jean Jacques, and he took the cherry-brandy which the other offered him, and drank it off with gusto.
“Ah, that—that,” he said, “is like the cordials Mere Langlois used to sell at Vilray. She and Virginie Poucette had a place together on the market—none better than Mere Langlois except Virginie Poucette, and she was like a drink of water in the desert.... Well, there, I will begin. Now my father was—”
It was lucky there were no calls for the Young Doctor that particular early morning, else the course of Jean Jacques’ life might have been greatly different from what it became. He was able to tell his story from the very first to the last. Had it been interrupted or unfinished one name might not have been mentioned. When Jean Jacques used it, the Young Doctor sat up and leaned forward eagerly, while a light came into his face-a light of surprise, of revelation and understanding.
When Jean Jacques came to that portion of his life when manifest tragedy began—it began of course on the Antoine, but then it was not manifest—when his Carmen left him after the terrible scene with George Masson, he paused and said: “I don’t know why I tell you this, for it is not easy to tell; but you saved my life, and you have a right to know what it is you have saved, no matter how hard it is to put it all before you.”
It was at this point that he mentioned Zoe’s name—he had hitherto only spoken of her as “my daughter”; and here it was the Young Doctor showed startled interest, and repeated the name after Jean Jacques. “Zoe! Zoe!—ah!” he said, and became silent again.
Jean Jacques had not noticed the Young Doctor’s pregnant interruption, he was so busy with his own memories of the past; and he brought the tale to the day when he turned his face to the West to look for Zoe. Then he paused.
“And then?” the Young Doctor asked. “There is more—there is the search for Zoe ever since.”