Maître Lecanu seemed quite easy.
"No; my Paris correspondent states that everything is quite clear. M. Jean has only to sign his acceptance."
"Good. Then—then the fortune is quite clear?"
"Perfectly clear."
"All the necessary formalities have been gone through?"
"All."
Suddenly the old jeweler had an impulse of shame—obscure, instinctive, and fleeting; shame of his eagerness to be informed, and he added:
"You understand when I ask all these questions so immediately it is to save my son disagreeables which he might not foresee. Sometimes there are debts, embarrassing liabilities, what not! And a legatee finds himself in an inextricable thorn bush. After all, I am not the heir—but I think first of the little 'un."
They were accustomed to speak of Jean among themselves as the "little one," though he was much bigger than Pierre.
Suddenly Mme. Roland seemed to wake from a dream, to recall some remote fact, a thing almost forgotten that she had heard long ago, and of which she was not altogether sure. She inquired doubtingly: