Paul Solange did not sleep the night which followed the day on which he learned all these things. His brain was full of strange thoughts. He was calling up shadowy confused recollections. He sought to go back as far as possible to the first years of his childhood, but his memory was at fault. He suddenly found a dark corner where everything disappeared; he could go no farther; but now that he knew Monsieur Roger's story, he was certain, absolutely certain that he had answered to the name of George in the fire at the farm. It was that name, that name only, which had suddenly shaken off his torpor and given him the strength to awake; it was that name that had saved him. Feverishly searching in his memory, he said to himself that this name he had heard formerly pronounced with the same loud and terrified voice in some crisis, which must have been very terrible, but which he could not recall; and then, hesitating anxiously, feeling that he was making a fool of himself, he asked himself if it was during the fire on shipboard, of which Miette had spoken, that he had heard this name of George; and little by little, in the silence of the night, this conviction entered and fixed itself in his mind. Then he turned his thoughts upon the way that Monsieur Roger had treated him. Whence this sudden and great affection which Monsieur Roger had shown him? Why that sympathy which he knew to be profound and whose cause he could not explain, as he did not merit it a bit more than his friend Albert? Why had Monsieur Roger so bravely risked his life to save him? Why had his emotion been so great? Lastly, why this cry of "George?"
And Paul Solange arrived at this logical conclusion,—
"If Monsieur Roger loves me so much; if he gave me, at the terrible moment when I came near dying, the name of his son, it must be because I recalled to him his son; it must be because I resemble his little George. And what then?"
[CHAPTER XXVIII.]
MY FATHER.
When Paul at last fell into an uneasy sleep, the sun had been up for some hours. Monsieur Dalize and his friend Roger went out from the château.
"Has the postman not been here yet?" said Monsieur Dalize to his servant.
"No sir; he will not be here for an hour."