I will go and see it when it is all finished." Mme.

Roland appealed to the judgment of her elder son.
"And you, Pierre, what do you think of the matter ?" His nerves were in a state of such intense excitement that he would have liked to reply with an oath.

However, he only answered in a dry tone quivering with annoyance.
"Oh, I am quite of Jean's mind.

I like nothing so well as simplicity, which, in matters of taste, is equivalent to rectitude in matters of conduct." His mother went on: "You must remember that we live in a city of commercial men, where good taste is not to be met with at every turn." Pierre replied: "What does that matter?
Is that a reason for living as fools do?
If my fellow-townsmen are stupid and ill-bred, need I follow their example?
A woman does not misconduct herself because her neighbour has a lover." Jean began to laugh.
"You argue by comparisons which seem to have been borrowed from the maxims of a moralist." Pierre made no reply.

His mother and his brother reverted to the question of stuffs and arm-chairs.
He sat looking at them as he had looked at his mother in the morning before starting for Trouville; looking at them as a stranger who would study them, and he felt as though he had really suddenly come into a family of which he knew nothing.
His father, above all, amazed his eyes and his mind.