Chapter 1: The Legacy

"Hang it!" exclaimed old Roland suddenly, who for a quarter of an hour had sat motionless, his eyes on the water, now and then giving a slight lift to his line, sunk deep in the sea.

Monsieur Roland had been a jeweller in Paris, and had had all his life a passion for boats and fishing; so, as soon as he had made a little fortune, he had retired to Le Havre, and there he lived for the sea. He had a boat, the Pearl, and an old sailor named Papagris, called Jean-Bart, to sail her; and he went out fishing whenever he could, and talked of nothing else.

His wife did not care for the sea; she went out in the boat because it pleased him, and sat in the stern dreaming, watching the coast and the clouds. She had been a pretty, romantic girl, who read poetry; she had married a good man who was not at all romantic, and had kept her house well, and saved, and brought up her sons, and kept her dreams to herself.

This afternoon the whole family was with him in the boat, out in the bay beyond the jetties: his wife, a quiet, thoughtful woman of about fifty, careful with money, with a touch of the sentimental — she liked poetry and dreamed a little; their two sons, Pierre and Jean; and a pretty young widow, Madame Rosémilly, a neighbour and friend, the widow of a sea captain, a sensible, capable woman who knew exactly what she wanted.

The two brothers were very unlike. Pierre, the elder, was thirty; he was dark and thin, excitable, restless, clever, quick to quarrel; he had tried law, and literature, and science, and had just finished, at last, his studies in medicine, and come home to Le Havre to set up as a doctor. Jean, five years younger, was large and fair, calm, gentle, steady, and had just qualified as a lawyer. They had been rivals since childhood — Pierre always jealous of the younger, who was everybody's favourite, and who had always got everything easily — and now they were rivals, without saying so, for the favour of Madame Rosémilly.

Pierre and Jean rowed home against each other, in a kind of race, to show their strength before the young widow; and Jean, who was stronger, kept the pace without effort, and Pierre wore himself out to keep up.

Madame Rosémilly, at the tiller, watched them both with an amused, measuring eye. She was a small, fair, practical woman, the widow of a captain who had been lost at sea; she had a little income, and her own house, and her own opinions; she was fond of both brothers, and gave neither of them any sign of preference.

When they got home, a visitor was waiting for them: the notary, Maître Lecanu. He had come to tell them that an old friend of theirs from Paris, Monsieur Léon Maréchal, had died, and had left his entire fortune — an income of some twenty thousand francs a year — to Jean.

The family was stunned. Maréchal had been a close friend in their Paris days, a frequent visitor to the shop and the house; then they had left Paris, and seen him less, though he had always written. The mother wept a little. The father was overjoyed. Jean was rich. And Pierre, who had nothing, felt something cold settle in his heart.

Old Roland could not get over it. "Twenty thousand francs a year!" he kept saying, rubbing his hands; he made calculations aloud, at table, of what it would bring in, and spoke of Maréchal as the best of men, the most faithful of friends. Jean, embarrassed and happy, said little. The mother, very pale, said that Maréchal had always been fond of the children, and that it was natural that he should leave his money to one of them, since he had no family of his own; and she looked at no one as she said it.