He could not think of one, for being alone made him feel fractious, yet he could not bear to meet any one.

As he came out on the Grand Quay he hesitated once more; then he turned towards the pier; he had chosen solitude.
Going close by a bench on the breakwater he sat down, tired already of walking and out of humour with his stroll before he had taken it.
He said to himself: "What is the matter with me this evening ?" And he began to search in his memory for what vexation had crossed him, as we question a sick man to discover the cause of his fever.
His mind was at once irritable and sober; he got excited, then he reasoned, approving or blaming his impulses; but in time primitive nature at last proved the stronger; the sensitive man always had the upper hand over the intellectual man.

So he tried to discover what had induced this irascible mood, this craving to be moving without wanting anything, this desire to meet some one for the sake of differing from him, and at the same time this aversion for the people he might see and the things they might say to him.
And then he put the question to himself, "Can it be Jean's inheritance ?" Yes, it was certainly possible.

When the lawyer had announced the news he had felt his heart beat a little faster.

For, indeed, one is not always master of one's self; there are sudden and pertinacious emotions against which a man struggles in vain.
He fell into meditation on the physiological problem of the impression produced on the instinctive element in man, and giving rise to a current of painful or pleasurable sensations diametrically opposed to those which the thinking man desires, aims at, and regards as right and wholesome, when he has risen superior to himself by the cultivation of his intellect.