What strange craving impelled him on a sudden to tell this tavern-wench
about Jean's legacy? Why should this thing, which he kept at arm's
length when he was alone, which he drove from him for fear of the
torment it brought upon his soul, rise to his lips at this moment? And
why did he allow it to overflow them as if he needed once more to empty
out his heart to some one, gorged as it was with bitterness?

He crossed his legs and said:

"He has wonderful luck, that brother of mine. He had just come into a
legacy of twenty thousand francs a year."

She opened those covetous blue eyes of hers very wide.

"Oh! and who left him that? His grandmother or his aunt?"

"No. An old friend of my parents'."

"Only a friend! Impossible! And you--did he leave you nothing?"

"No. I knew him very slightly."

She sat thinking some minutes; then, with an odd smile on her lips, she
said:

"Well, he is a lucky dog, that brother of yours, to have friends of this
pattern. My word! and no wonder he is so unlike you."

He longed to slap her, without knowing why; and he asked with pinched