You've already squandered it, perhaps ?" And making an allusion to her former misconduct he asked her if there were still not some low fellow to whom she gave her last sous?
He did not even spare his father, that drunkard Macquart, as he called him, who must have lived on her till the day of his death, and who left his children in poverty.

The poor woman listened with a stupefied air; big tears rolled down her cheeks.

She defended herself with the terror of a child, replying to her son's questions as though he were a judge; she swore that she was living respectably, and reiterated with emphasis that she had never had a sou of the money, that Pierre had taken everything.
Antoine almost came to believe it at last.
"Ah! the scoundrel!" he muttered; "that's why he wouldn't purchase my discharge." He had to sleep at his mother's house, on a straw mattress flung in a corner.

He had returned with his pockets perfectly empty, and was exasperated at finding himself destitute of resources, abandoned like a dog in the streets, without hearth or home, while his brother, as he thought, was in a good way of business, and living on the fat of the land.

As he had no money to buy clothes with, he went out on the following day in his regimental cap and trousers.