Chapter 7

In the break, on their way home, all the men dozed excepting Jean.
Beausire and Roland dropped every five minutes on to a neighbour's
shoulder which repelled them with a shove. Then they sat up, ceased
to snore, opened their eyes, muttered, "A lovely evening!" and almost
immediately fell over on the other side.

By the time they reached Havre their drowsiness was so heavy that they
had great difficulty in shaking it off, and Beausire even refused to go
to Jean's rooms where tea was waiting for them. He had to be set down at
his own door.

The young lawyer was to sleep in his new abode for the first time; and
he was full of rather puerile glee which had suddenly come over him, at
being able, that very evening, to show his betrothed the rooms she was
so soon to inhabit.

The maid had gone to bed, Mme. Roland having declared that she herself
would boil the water and make the tea, for she did not like the servants
to be kept up for fear of fire.

No one had yet been into the lodgings but herself, Jean, and the
workmen, that the surprise might be the greater at their being so
pretty.

Jean begged them all to wait a moment in the ante-room. He wanted to
light the lamps and candles, and he left Mme. Rosemilly in the dark with
his father and brother; then he cried: "Come in!" opening the double
door to its full width.

The glass gallery, lighted by a chandelier and little coloured lamps
hidden among palms, india-rubber plants, and flowers, was first seen
like a scene on the stage. There was a spasm of surprise. Roland,
dazzled by such luxury, muttered an oath, and felt inclined to clap his
hands as if it were a pantomime scene. They then went into the first
drawing-room, a small room hung with dead gold and furnished to match.
The larger drawing-room--the lawyer's consulting-room, very simple, hung
with light salmon-colour--was dignified in style.

Jean sat down in his arm-chair in front of his writing-table loaded with
books, and in a solemn, rather stilted tone, he began:

"Yes, madame, the letter of the law is explicit, and, assuming the
consent I promised you, it affords me absolute certainty that the matter
we discussed will come to a happy conclusion within three months."

He looked at Mme. Rosemilly, who began to smile and glanced at Mme.
Roland. Mme. Roland took her hand and pressed it. Jean, in high spirits,
cut a caper like a school-boy, exclaiming: "Hah! How well the voice
carries in this room; it would be capital for speaking in."

And he declaimed:

"If humanity alone, if the instinct of natural benevolence which we feel
towards all who suffer, were the motive of the acquittal we expect of
you, I