"
"Yes, yes," answered Pierre. "But calm yourself, and don't move about.
I'll say everything. And in my absence Sophie will stop here with you in
case you should need her."
Having given full instructions to the servant, Pierre set out to take a
tramcar, intending to alight from it on the Boulevard de Rochechouart,
and then climb the height on foot. And on the road, lulled by the gliding
motion of the heavy vehicle, he began to think of his brother's past life
and connections, with which he was but vaguely, imperfectly, acquainted.
It was only at a later date that details of everything came to his
knowledge. In 1850 a young professor named Leroi, who had come from Paris
to the college of Montauban with the most ardent republican ideas, had
there married Agathe Dagnan, the youngest of the five girls of an old
Protestant family from the Cevennes. Young Madame Leroi was /enceinte/
when her husband, threatened with arrest for contributing some violent
articles to a local newspaper, immediately after the "Coup d'Etat," found
himself obliged to seek refuge at Geneva. It was there that the young
couple's daughter, Marguerite, a very delicate child, was born in 1852.
For seven years, that is until the Amnesty of 1859, the household
struggled with poverty, the husband giving but a few ill-paid lessons,
and the wife absorbed in the constant care which the child required.
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