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871 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1936
“He told me he didn’t worry; in fact he said he was happy, that he likes being there.� Provoked by his father’s chuckle of self-satisfaction, Antoine added in a cutting tone: “The poor boy has such memories of family life that even prison life strikes him as more agreeable.�
The insult missed its mark.
In attitudes of grief, like two mourning dark-robed figures on an ancient vase, the nuns were stationed on either hand of the dead man, whose statue-like repose lent a real grandeur to the scene, for all its artifice. That man had been Oscar Thibault, a master of men. Now that proud voice was stilled, all that power reduced to impotence. Antoine hardly dared to make a gesture, break the silence.
Jacques felt a rush of hatred stirring within him. Thus he had always been; even in childhood there had always smouldered deep in his heart a secret fire of anger � like the molten core, he pictured it, that seethes in the bowels of the earth � and now and again from that fiery underworld of rancour there would surge a jet of red-hot lava that nothing could hold back.