Chapter 8

When he got back to his lodgings Jean dropped on a sofa; for the sorrows
and anxieties which made his brother long to be moving, and to flee
like a hunted prey, acted differently on his torpid nature and broke the
strength of his arms and legs. He felt too limp to stir a finger, even
to get to bed; limp body and soul, crushed and heart-broken. He had
not been hit, as Pierre had been, in the purity of filial love, in the
secret dignity which is the refuge of a proud heart; he was overwhelmed
by a stroke of fate which, at the same time, threatened his own nearest
interests.

When at last his spirit was calmer, when his thoughts had settled
like water that has been stirred and lashed, he could contemplate the
situation which had come before him. If he had learned the secret of his
birth through any other channel he would assuredly have been very wroth
and very deeply pained, but after his quarrel with his brother, after
the violent and brutal betrayal which had shaken his nerves, the
agonizing emotion of his mother's confession had so bereft him of energy
that he could not rebel. The shock to his feeling had been so great as
to sweep away in an irresistible tide of pathos, all prejudice, and all
the sacred delicacy of natural morality. Besides, he was not a man made
for resistance. He did not like contending against any one, least of
all against himself, so he resigned himself at once; and by instinctive
tendency, a congenital love of peace, and of an easy and tranquil life,
he began to anticipate the agitations which must surge up around him and
at once be his ruin. He foresaw that they were inevitable, and to avert
them he made up his mind to superhuman efforts of energy and activity.
The knot must be cut immediately, this very day; for even he had fits of
that imperious demand for a swift solution which is the only strength
of weak natures, incapable of a prolonged effort of will. His lawyer's
mind, accustomed as it was to disentangling and studying complicated
situations and questions of domestic difficulties in families that had
got out of gear, at once foresaw the more immediate consequences of his
brother's state of mind. In spite of himself, he looked at the issue
from an almost professional point of view, as though he had to legislate
for the future relations of certain clients after a moral disaster.
Constant friction against Pierre had certainly become unendurable. He
could easily evade it, no doubt, by living in his own lodgings; but even
then it was not possible that their mother should live under the same
roof with her elder son. For a long time he sat meditating, motionless,
on the cushions, devising and rejecting various possibilities, and
finding nothing that satisfied him.

But suddenly