"Only a friend! Impossible! And you—did he leave you nothing?"
"No. I knew him very slightly."
She sat thinking some minutes; then, with an odd smile on her lips, she said:
"Well, he is a lucky dog, that brother of yours, to have friends of that pattern. My word! and no wonder he is so unlike you."
He longed to slap her, without knowing why; and he asked with pinched lips: "And what do you mean by saying that?"
She had put on a stolid, innocent face.
"O—h, nothing. I mean he has better luck than you."
He tossed a franc piece on the table and went out.
Now he kept repeating the phrase: "No wonder he is so unlike you."
What had her thought been, what had been her meaning under those words? There was certainly some malice, some spite, something shameful in it. Yes, that hussy must have fancied, no doubt, that Jean was Maréchal's son. The agitation which came over him at the notion of this suspicion cast at his mother was so violent that he stood still, looking about him for some place where he might sit down. In front of him was another café. He went in, took a chair, and as the waiter came up, "A bock," he said.