A single thing marred Sans-Souci’s happiness; it was that Jacques no longer wore the decoration that he had won on the battle-field.
“Why don’t you wear it any more?” he would say to him, when they were alone; “what can prevent you? Morbleu! you act like a fool with your resolutions.”
“My brother disgraced our name.”
“Well! was it to you or your name that they gave the cross?”
“It’s out of respect for that honorable reward, that I deprive myself of the pleasure of wearing it.”
“But when you go by the name of Jacques simply——”
“That doesn’t matter; I know none the less that Edouard was a—Why, I tell you, that ghastly thought would make me blush for that symbol of honor; I shall never wear it again.”
“You are wrong.”
“That may be; I am and I shall always be a man of honor; but I have no pride left when I think of my brother’s shame.”
The tranquillity enjoyed by the family at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges was disturbed by a melancholy event which they still believed to be far away: honest Gerval fell sick and died, and the zealous care of all those who surrounded him was unavailing to save him.