While his brother was holding high revel, Pierre was freezing under the roofs in winter, and roasting beneath them in summer, eating and sleeping badly, and working every night on the wharves. On Sundays he mended his clothes, bought at the old clothes-man’s, which were far from being good, and he washed his own poor linen. Pierre wore only shirt-fronts and wristbands of passable quality, his shirt being of the coarsest material. His socks had only tops and no bottoms. He suffered in every way from poverty and all manner of privations.
But he had, on the other hand, the satisfaction of feeling the advantage it was to have had refined parents. He easily acquired good manners, and his hereditary intelligence seemed to fit him for the most arduous medical studies. He found that he possessed faculties of assimilation which astonished himself. To be brief, he passed his examinations brilliantly, while his brother failed in every one.
Doctor Seron, whom he met from time to time with his brother, was now an old man, bent down beneath the weight of troubles; his well-beloved son was ruining him.
When Pierre Seron had finished his studies and obtained his degrees, he wrote to his father and mother, saying that he would return to them like a son who had only been absent for a time, and that he forgave everything. He received no answer from his mother, but a letter full of furious maledictions from his father.
His friend, the herbalist of Compiègne, discovered that there was a chance for him at Chauny, and lent him some money. He found no help except from this faithful protector.
“And so it happens,” continued Pélagie Raincourt, “that Pierre Seron has come to establish himself in our town, where I have been waiting for him,” and she added: “Grandmother, he must be my husband.”
“Certainly,” replied her grandmother, “I love him, brave heart! already, but he must fall in love with you.”
Pélagie had never thought of that.
A friend was commissioned to ask Doctor Seron—they already gave him this title, without adding his first name, in order to avenge his father’s cruelties—a friend was asked to question him with regard to the possible feelings with which Mlle. Pélagie Raincourt had inspired him.
“She is a handsome girl,” he replied, “but I detest red-haired women.”