"Good. Then--then the fortune is quite clear?"

"Perfectly clear."

"All the necessary formalities have been gone through?"

"All."

Suddenly the old jeweller had an impulse of shame--obscure, instinctive,
and fleeting; shame of his eagerness to be informed, and he added:

"You understand that I ask all these questions immediately so as to save
my son unpleasant consequences which he might not foresee. Sometimes
there are debts, embarrassing liabilities, what not! And a legatee finds
himself in an inextricable thorn-bush. After all, I am not the heir--but
I think first of the little 'un."

They were accustomed to speak of Jean among themselves as the "little
one," though he was much bigger than Pierre.

Suddenly Mme. Roland seemed to wake from a dream, to recall some remote
fact, a thing almost forgotten that she had heard long ago, and of which
she was not altogether sure. She inquired doubtingly:

"Were you not saying that our poor friend Marechal had left his fortune
to my little Jean?"

"Yes, madame."

And she went on simply: