"Let us call that the Licence en droit examination—if you kindly will."
"Most willingly, uncle."
"Then give me a fuller explanation and one more up-to-date, for you must have had your diploma in your pocket more than a year. What have you done with your time?"
"It's very simple. The year before last I passed my examination, as you know, in Berlin, so finishing my law studies. Last year I worked with a lawyer till August. Then I travelled through Bohemia, Hungary, Croatia, and the Caucasus—with father's permission. I took six months over it. I returned to Berlin to get my student's luggage and to pay some farewell visits—and here I am."
"Well, and your father? In my haste to see you again I have not asked after him. Is he well?"
"He is not here."
"What! Was he obliged to be absent on the very evening of your return?"
Jean answered with a little bitterness:
"He was obliged to be present at a great dinner at the Councillor von Boscher's. He has taken my sister. It is a very grand reception, it seems."
There was a short silence. The two men smiled no longer. They felt between them—quite near—the supreme question, imposing itself upon them after a three minutes' conversation, that exasperating and fatal question which cannot be avoided, which unites and divides, which lurks beneath all social intercourse, honours, mortifications, and institutions, the question which has kept Europe under arms for thirty years.