“Absurd! A title that is worth twenty-one million pounds sterling?” Mr. Sharp thought to himself; but he was too gracious a courtier not to give in.
“As you wish; you are the master,” he replied. “I am going to take the train back to London, and will await your orders.”
“May I keep these documents?” asked the doctor.
“Of course, we have copies of them.”
Dr. Sarrasin, alone again, sat down at his desk, took a sheet of writing paper and wrote the following:
“I’m going to take the train back to London.”
“Brighton, October 28, 1871
“My dear son,
“We are the inheritors of an enormous, colossal, unbelievable fortune! Do not think I have been struck with some mental derangement, and do read the two or three printed pages that I enclose with my letter. You’ll clearly see that I am heir to the title of English — or rather Indian — baronet, and to a capital fortune in excess of half a billion francs which are currently on deposit at the Bank of England. I can well imagine, dear Octave, the feelings you will undoubtedly have upon hearing this news. Like myself, you will understand the new responsibilities that such a fortune imposes upon us, as well as the many dangers it poses in using it wisely. I have come to learn of this hardly an hour ago, and already the awareness of such a responsibility almost stifles the joy it first brought me when thinking of you. Perhaps this event will change our destiny. Modest pioneers in science, we were happy in our obscurity. Will we continue to be? No, perhaps, unless — but I don’t dare to tell you about an idea that has suddenly come to me! — unless this fortune itself becomes, in our hands, some new and powerful scientific instrument, a prodigious tool of civilization! We’ll talk more about it later. Write me soon, tell me your reactions to this wonderful news, and be sure to pass the word on to your mother. I’m sure that, sensible woman that she is, she’ll accept the news with perfect calmness. As for your sister, she is still too young to have her head turned by anything like this. Besides, her little head is quite sound, and were she able to understand all the possible ramifications of this news that I’m telling you, I’m sure that, of all of us, she would be the least disturbed. Give Marcel a good handshake for me. He is not absent from any of my future plans.
Your loving father,
François Sarrasin
Doctor of Medicine”
This letter, sealed in its envelope along with the most important papers, was addressed to “M. Octave Sarrasin, student at the Ecole Centrale of Arts and Manufacture, 32 rue de Roi-de-Sicile, Paris.” The doctor then took his hat, put his coat back on, and returned to the conference. A quarter of an hour later, the worthy fellow had completely ceased thinking about his millions.
2 Two Friends
The doctor’s son, Octave Sarrasin, was not exactly what one would call lazy. He was neither stupid nor of superior intelligence, neither handsome nor ugly, neither tall nor short, neither brown- nor blond-haired. The latter was a kind of chestnut color, and Octave was in every way an average young man born into the middle class. In school he generally earned a second prize and two or three runners-up. At the baccalauréat, he was given a passing grade. Rejected the first time at the competitive exam for the Ecole Centrale, he was admitted on the second try with a rating of 127. His character was somewhat indecisive, one of those minds that is content with uncertainty, that seems to live perpetually in the “approximate,” and that walks through life in semi-obscurity. The destiny of such people is often what a bottle cork is to the crest of a wave. Depending on whether the wind is blowing from the north or the south, they are carried off to either the equator or the pole. Chance alone decides the course of their lives. If Dr. Sarrasin had clearly understood his son’s character, perhaps he would have hesitated in writing him the above letter. But even the most brilliant minds sometimes exhibit a little paternal blindness.1
During the early years of his education, Octave had the good fortune to come under the spell of an energetic individual whose somewhat exacting but benevolent influence had imposed itself by sheer strength upon him. In the Lycée Charlemagne where his father had sent him to do his studies,2 Octave had become best friends with one of his classmates, an Alsatian named Marcel Bruckmann, who was younger than he by a year, but much his superior in terms of physical, intellectual, and moral vigor.
Marcel and Octave
Orphaned at the age of twelve, Marcel Bruckmann had inherited a small income which was just enough to pay for his schooling.3 Without Octave, who always brought him along to his parents’ home during vacations, he would probably never have ventured outside the school walls.
As a consequence, the family of Dr. Sarrasin soon became the young Alsatian’s family as well. Warm and sensitive beneath his apparently cold exterior, he understood that he owed his life to these worthy people who became both father and mother to him. So it is no surprise that he adored Dr. Sarrasin, his wife, and their kind and already serious-minded daughter Jeanne, who had all opened their hearts to him. But it was by facts, not words, that he proved his gratitude. Indeed, he had taken on the agreeable task of helping Jeanne, who loved learning, to become an upright young woman with a firm and judicious mind, and, at the same time, of making Octave a son worthy of his father. This latter task, one must say, proved to be a bit more difficult than in regard to the sister who was, for her age, already superior to her brother. But Marcel had promised himself to reach his double goal.
Marcel Bruckmann was one of those outstanding young champions, both spirited and discerning, that Alsace sends forth every year to fight in the great battlefield of Paris. As a child he had already distinguished himself by the toughness and flexibility of his muscles as well as by the sharpness of his mind. Strong on the outside, he was all purpose and courage on the inside.
Since his early school days, he felt a driving urge to excel in everything, on the horizontal bars as on the ball field, in the gymnasium as in the laboratory. If he missed a prize in his annual harvest, he felt the year was lost. At twenty he was tall in stature, robust, filled with zest and action, an organic machine at the peak of its performance.4 His intellect had already attracted the attention of thoughtful minds. Having entered the Ecole Centrale the same year as Octave as the second-ranked student, he was determined to finish as number one.
Moreover, it was due to Marcel’s persistent and overflowing energy — which was more than enough for two men — that Octave was eventually admitted to the university. For a whole year Marcel had mentored him, pushed him to work, and ultimately forced him to succeed. He felt a kind of friendly compassion for that vacillating and feeble character, like a lion might feel for a puppy. He enjoyed strengthening with his own energy that anemic plant and having it bear fruit before his eyes.5
The war of 1870 had broken out, surprising the two friends at a time when they were taking their exams. On the day after the last exam, Marcel, full of patriotic grief at the fate that was threatening Strasbourg and Alsace, had gone to enlist in the 31st Infantry Battalion. Octave had immediately followed his example.
Side by side as outposts, they had waged the difficult campaign of the siege of Paris. At Champigny, Marcel had received a bullet in his right arm; at Buzenval, a stripe on his left arm.6 Octave had neither stripes nor wound. In truth, it was not his fault, for he had always followed his friend under fire. He had been scarcely six meters behind — but those six meters had made all the difference.
After peace was declared and normalcy returned, the two students decided to live together in two adjacent rooms of a modest hotel near the school. The misfortunes of France and the loss of Alsace and Lorraine