The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII | Page 8

at Paris to continue their
studies, and came for the holidays from time to time to share their
father's amusements.
On leaving school, Pierre, the elder, five years older than Jean, had felt
a vocation to various professions and had tried half a dozen in
succession, but, soon disgusted with each in turn, he started afresh with
new hopes. Medicine had been his last fancy, and he had set to work
with so much ardor that he had just qualified after an unusually short
course of study, by a special remission of time from the minister. He
was enthusiastic, intelligent, fickle, but obstinate, full of Utopias and
philosophical notions.
Jean, who was as fair as his brother was dark, as deliberate as his
brother was vehement, as gentle as his brother was unforgiving, had
quietly gone through his studies for the law and had just taken his
diploma as a licentiate, at the time when Pierre had taken his in
medicine. So they were now having a little rest at home, and both
looked forward to settling at Havre if they could find a satisfactory
opening.

But a vague jealousy, one of those dormant jealousies which grow up
between brothers or sisters and slowly ripen till they burst, on the
occasion of a marriage perhaps, or of some good fortune happening to
one of them, kept them on the alert in a sort of brotherly and
non-aggressive animosity. They were fond of each other, it is true, but
they watched each other. Pierre, five years old when Jean was born, had
looked with the eyes of a little petted animal at that other little animal
which had suddenly come to lie in his father's and mother's arms and to
be loved and fondled by them. Jean, from his birth, had always been a
pattern of sweetness, gentleness, and good temper, and Pierre had by
degrees begun to chafe at everlastingly hearing the praises of this great
lad whose sweetness in his eyes was indolence, whose gentleness was
stupidity, and whose kindliness was blindness. His parents, whose
dream for their sons was some respectable and undistinguished calling,
blamed him for so often changing his mind, for his fits of enthusiasm,
his abortive beginnings, and all his ineffectual impulses toward
generous ideas and the liberal professions.
Since he had grown to manhood they no longer said in so many words:
"Look at Jean and follow his example," but every time he heard them
say "Jean did this--Jean does that," he understood their meaning and the
hint the words conveyed.
Their mother, an orderly soul, a thrifty and rather sentimental woman
of the middle class, with the soul of a soft-hearted book-keeper, was
constantly quenching the little rivalries between her two big sons to
which the petty events of their life in common gave rise day by day.
Another little circumstance, too, just now disturbed her peace of mind,
and she was in fear of some complication; for in the course of the
winter, while her boys were finishing their studies, each in his own line,
she had made the acquaintance of a neighbor, Mme. Rosémilly, the
widow of a captain of a merchantman who had died at sea two years
before. The young widow--quite young, only three-and-twenty--a
woman of strong intellect who knew life by instinct as the free animals
do, as though she had seen, gone through, understood, and weighed
every conceivable contingency, and judged them with a wholesome,
strict, and benevolent mind, had fallen into the habit of calling to work

or chat for an hour in the evening with these friendly neighbors, who
would give her a cup of tea.
Father Roland, always goaded on by his seafaring craze, would
question their new friend about the departed captain; and she would
talk of him, and his voyages, and his old-world tales, without hesitation,
like a resigned and reasonable woman who loves life and respects
death.
The two sons on their return, finding the pretty widow quite at home in
the house forthwith began to court her, less from any wish to charm her
than from the desire to cut each other out.
Their mother, being practical and prudent, sincerely hoped that one of
them might win the young widow, for she was rich; and then she would
have liked that the other should not be grieved.
Mme. Rosémilly was fair, with blue eyes, a mass of light waving hair,
fluttering at the least breath of wind, and an alert, daring, pugnacious
little way with her, which did not in the least answer to the sober
method of her mind.
She already seemed to like Jean best, attracted, no doubt, by an affinity
of nature. This preference, however, she betrayed only by an almost
imperceptible difference of voice and look and also