The Sin of Monsieur Antoine, Volume 2 (of 2) and Leone Leoni

The Masterpieces of George Sand,
Amandine Lucille Aurore Dupin, Baroness
Dudevant, NOW FOR THE FIRST
TIME COMPLETELY TRANSLATED
INTO ENGLISH THE SIN
OF MONSIEUR ANTOINE, AND [LEONE
LEONI] BY G. BURNHAM IVES

WITH TWELVE PHOTOGRAVURES AFTER PAINTINGS BY
PIERRE VIDAL

VOLUME II

PRINTED ONLY FOR SUBSCRIBERS BY
GEORGE BARRIE & SON
PHILADELPHIA

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
XXIV. [MONSIEUR GALUCHET]
XXV. [THE EXPLOSION]
XXVI. [THE SNARE]
XXVII. [SORROWS AND JOYS OF LOVE]
XXVIII. [CONSOLATION]
XXIX. [AN ADVENTURE]
XXX. [THE IMPROMPTU SUPPER]
XXXI. [UNCERTAINTY]
XXXII. [A WEDDING PRESENT]
XXXIII. [THE STORY OF ONE TOLD BY THE OTHER]
XXXIV. [RESURRECTION]
XXXV. [ABSOLUTION]
XXXVI. [RECONCILIATION]
[LEONE LEONI]
[INTRODUCTION]
CHAPTER [I]
CHAPTER [II]
CHAPTER [III]
CHAPTER [IV]
CHAPTER [V]
CHAPTER [VI]
CHAPTER [VII]
CHAPTER [VIII]
CHAPTER [IX]
CHAPTER [X]
CHAPTER [XI]
CHAPTER [XII]
CHAPTER [XIII]
CHAPTER [XIV]
CHAPTER [XV]
CHAPTER [XVI]
CHAPTER [XVII]
CHAPTER [XVIII]
CHAPTER [XIX]
CHAPTER [XX]
CHAPTER [XXI]
CHAPTER [XXII]
CHAPTER [XXIII]
CHAPTER [XXIV]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE SIN OF MONSIEUR ANTOINE
LEONE LEONI
VOLUME II

[EMILE CONFESSES HIS LOVE FOR GILBERTE.]
[GILBERTE AND JAPPELOUP ACCOMPANY THE MARQUIS.]
[THE RECONCILIATION.]
[DON ALEO AND JULIETTE.]
[LEONI TAKES JULIETTE TO HIS PALACE.]
[THE MEETING ON THE CANAL.]

EMILE CONFESSES HIS LOVE FOR GILBERTE.

"My dear Janille," he cried at last, with impetuous emotion, "and you, noble and generous Antoine, listen to me and learn my secret at last. I love your daughter."

THE SIN OF MONSIEUR ANTOINE

(Continued)

XXIV
MONSIEUR GALUCHET

But, after sleeping twelve hours, Galuchet had only a very confused remembrance of the events of the preceding day, and, when Monsieur Cardonnet sent for him, he retained only a vague feeling of resentment against the carpenter. Moreover, he was little inclined to boast of having cut such an absurd figure at the outset of his diplomatic career, and he attributed his late rising and his sluggish manner to a violent sick-headache. "I did nothing but feel the ground," he replied to his master's questions. "I was feeling so miserable that I could not watch very closely. I can only assure you that they have very vulgar manners in that house, that they live on a footing of equality with peasants, and that the table is very poorly served."

"That is no news to me," said Monsieur Cardonnet; "it is impossible that you can have passed the whole day at Châteaubrun without noticing something more definite. At what hour did my son arrive, at what time did he leave?"

"I can't tell you just what time it was,—their old clock is so far out of the way!"

"That's not an answer. How many hours did he stay there? Come, I don't ask you to be exact to a minute."

"It must have been five or six hours, monsieur; I was horribly bored. Monsieur Emile seemed far from glad to see me; and as for the girl, she's a downright prude. It was fearfully hot on that mountain, and I couldn't say two words without being interrupted by that peasant."

"I can imagine it, for you don't say two words in succession this morning, Galuchet; what peasant do you mean?"

"That carpenter, Jappeloup, a miserable fellow, an animal who presumes to be familiar with everybody, and who speaks of monsieur as Père Cardonnet, as if he were speaking of his equal."

"That doesn't trouble me; but what did my son say to him?"

"Monsieur Emile laughed at his nonsense and Mademoiselle Gilberte thinks he is charming."

"Did you notice any asides between her and my son?"

"No, monsieur, not exactly. The old woman—who is certainly her mother, for she calls her my girl—hardly ever leaves her, and it can't be very easy to pay court to her, especially as she is very high and mighty, and puts on the airs of a princess. That's very becoming in her, on my word, with the dress she wears and not a sou! If they should offer her to me, I wouldn't have her!"

"No matter, Galuchet; you must pay court to her."

"To laugh at her, when the time comes—I agree to that!"

"And also to earn a reward, which you will not get unless you bring me a clearer and more circumstantial report next time; for you are all astray to-day."

Galuchet bent his head over his books and fought all day against the discomfort that follows over-indulgence.

Emile passed the whole week head over ears in hydrostatics; he indulged in no other distraction than to seek out Jean Jappeloup in the evening and chat with him; and, as he always tried to bring the conversation around to Gilberte, the carpenter finally said to him:

"Look you, Monsieur Emile, you never get tired of that subject, that's clear enough. Do you know that Mère Janille thinks you are in love with her child?"

"What an idea!" rejoined the young man, confused by this sudden apostrophe.

"It's a sensible idea enough. Why shouldn't you be in love with her?"

"True, why shouldn't I be in love with her?" echoed Emile, more and more embarrassed. "But can it be that you would speak jestingly of such a possibility, friend Jean?"

"I should say that you were the one, my boy, for you answer me as if we were in jest. Come, why not tell me the truth? out with it or I'll not talk to you any more."

"Jean, if I were really in love with a person for whom I have as much respect as for my own mother, my best friend should know nothing of it."

"I know very well that I am not your best friend, and yet I should like to have you tell me."

"Explain yourself, Jean."

"Explain yourself, rather; I am waiting."

"You will wait a long time; for I have no answer to make to such a question, despite all my esteem and affection for you."

"If that is so, you will have to say adieu forever one of these days to the people at Châteaubrun; for ma mie Janille is not the woman to sleep long when danger is brewing."

"That word offends me; I do not think that I can be accused of bringing danger upon a person whose reputation and dignity are as sacred to me as to her kindred and dearest friends."

"That sounds very well, but it isn't a straight answer to all my questions. Do you want me to tell you something?—early last week I went to Châteaubrun to borrow of Antoine a tool that I needed. I found ma mie Janille there; she was all alone, expecting you. You didn't come and she told me all. And now, my boy, if she didn't frown on you Sunday, and if she allows you to call from time to time to see her girl, you are indebted to me for it."

"How so, my good Jean?"

"Because I have more confidence in you than you have in me. I told ma mie Janille that if you loved Gilberte you would marry her, and that I would answer for you on the salvation of my soul."

"And you were right, Jean," cried Emile, grasping the carpenter's hand; "you never told a greater truth."

"Very good! but the question still remains whether you are in love, and that is what you won't tell me."

"It is what I can tell you alone, since you question me so closely. Yes, Jean, I love her, I love her more than my life, and I mean to marry her."

"I give my consent," replied Jean in a tone of enthusiastic satisfaction, "and so far as I am concerned, I join your hands—One moment! one moment!—provided that Gilberte gives her consent too."

"And if she should ask your advice, my good Jean, who are her friend and second father?"

"I should tell her that she can make no better choice, that you suit me and that I am willing to be your surety."

"Good! now my friend, we only have to obtain the consent of the parents."

"Oh! I'll answer for Antoine, if I take hold of the affair. He has some pride, and he will be afraid that your father may hesitate, but I know what to say to him on that subject."

"What will you say to him, pray?"

"Something that you don't know, something that nobody knows but me. I don't need to speak yet, for the time has not come, and you can't think of marrying for a year or two."

"Jean, confide this secret to me as I confided mine to you. I see but one obstacle to our marriage, my father's obstinacy. I have resolved to overcome it, but I do not conceal from myself that it is very serious."

"Well, as you have been so trustful and frank with old Jean, old Jean will be the same with you. Listen, my boy; before long your father will be ruined and will have no further excuse for putting on airs with the Châteaubrun family."

"If what you say should turn out to be true, I should bless your strange prophecy, notwithstanding my father's inevitable grief and disappointment; for I have many reasons for dreading this great wealth."

"I know it; I know your heart, and I see that you would like to enrich others before enriching yourself. Everything will turn out as you wish, I am sure. I have dreamed of it more than ten times."

"If you have done nothing more than dream, my dear Jean——-"

"Wait, wait. What is that book you always carry under your arm and that you seem to be studying?"

"I have already told you, a scientific treatise on the power and weight of water and the laws of equilibrium."

"I remember—you have told me before; but I tell you that your book lies, or else you have read it wrong; otherwise you would know what I know."

"What is that?"

"That your factory is impossible, and that your father, if he persists in fighting against a stream that snaps its fingers at him, will lose his outlay and will discover his folly too late. That is why I have been so cheerful for some time past. I was depressed and out of temper as long as I thought that your undertaking might succeed; but I had one hope that kept coming to my mind again and again, and I determined to satisfy myself about it. So I walked and worked and used my eyes and studied. Oh! yes, studied, and I didn't read your books and your maps and your figuring; I saw and understood everything. Monsieur Emile, I am only a poor peasant, and your Galuchet would spit on me if he dared; but I can tell you of one thing that you hardly suspect, and that is that your father has no idea of what he is doing, that he has taken bad advice, and that you don't know enough about it to set him right. The coming winter will carry away your works, and every winter will carry off whatever there is, until Monsieur Cardonnet has thrown his last three-franc piece into the water. Remember what I tell you, and don't try to persuade your father. It would be one more reason for him to persist in ruining himself, and we don't need that to induce him to do it; but you will be ruined, my son, and if not altogether here, you will be somewhere else, for I hold your papa's brain in the hollow of my hand. It is a powerful brain, I admit, but it is a madman's brain. He is a man who works himself into a frenzy for his schemes to such an extent that he considers them infallible, and when a man is built that way he never succeeds in anything. I thought at first that he had played his hand out, but now I see that the game is becoming serious, for he is beginning to rebuild all that the last freshet destroyed. He had had too good luck until then; still another reason—good luck makes a man overbearing and presumptuous. That is the history of Napoléon, whom I saw rise and fall, like a carpenter who climbs to the roof of a house without looking to see if the foundations are solid. However good a carpenter he may be—however fine a building he may build—if the wall totters, good-bye to the whole work!"

Jean spoke with such conviction, and his black eyes gleamed so bright beneath his grizzly bushy eyebrows, that Emile could not help being moved. He begged him to give his reasons for talking as he did, and the carpenter refused for a long time. At last, conquered by his persistence, and a little irritated by his doubts, he made an appointment with him for the following Sunday.

"You can go to Châteaubrun Saturday or Monday instead," he said, "and on Sunday we will start at daybreak and go up the stream to certain places that I will point out to you. Take all your books and all your instruments if you choose. If they don't confirm me, it's of little consequence; it will be science that lies. But don't expect to make this trip on horseback or in a carriage; and if you haven't good legs, don't expect to make it at all."

On the following Saturday Emile went to Châteaubrun, beginning, as usual, with Boisguilbault, as he dared not appear too early at Gilberte's.

As he approached the ruins he saw a black speck at the foot of the mountain, and that speck soon became Constant Galuchet, in a black coat, black trousers and gloves, black satin cravat and waistcoat. That was his costume in the country, winter and summer alike; and no matter how great the heat or the fatigue which he was about to undergo, he never left the village except in that ceremonious attire. He would have been afraid of resembling a peasant if, like Emile, he had donned a blouse and broad-brimmed gray hat.

If it be true that the bourgeois costume of our generation is the most depressing, the most inconvenient and the most unbecoming that fashion ever invented, it is equally true that all its inconveniences and deformities are most striking in the open country. In the outskirts of the large cities, one's eyes are less offended, because everything there is arranged, aligned, planked, built and walled in symmetrically, so that all the informality and charm of nature are destroyed. We may sometimes admire the beauty and symmetry of those estates which have been subjected to all the refinements of civilization; but it is very hard to imagine oneself loving such a region. The real country is not there, but in the heart of the fields, neglected and untilled to some extent, where agriculture has no thought of paltry embellishments and strict limits, where estates run together and where boundaries are indicated only by a stone or bush, put in place in full reliance upon rustic good faith. There the roads, intended only for foot passengers, equestrians or heavy carts, present innumerable picturesque irregularities; the hedges, abandoned to their natural vigor, hang in garlands, from leafy arbors, and deck themselves out with the wild climbing plants which are carefully removed in more pretentious regions. Emile remembered that he had walked about within several leagues of Paris without the pleasure of seeing a nettle, and he felt keenly the charm of that rural scenery amid which he now found himself. Poverty did not hide, in shame and degradation, beneath the feet of wealth. On the contrary it made itself manifest, light-hearted and free, on a soil which proudly bore its emblems, wild flowers and vagabond plants, the humble moss and the wood-strawberry, the water-cress on the brink of a stream with no well-defined bed, and the ivy clinging to a rock that had obstructed the path for centuries, without attracting the attention of the police. He loved the branches which overhung the road and were respected by passers-by; the bog-holes in which the frog croaked softly as if to warn the traveller,—a more vigilant sentinel than he who guards a king's palace; the old crumbling walls around the enclosure, which no one thought of rebuilding, the powerful roots which pushed up the ground and dug holes at the foot of the venerable trees; all that lack of art which makes nature ingenuous and which harmonizes so well with the severe type and grave and simple costume of the peasant.

But let that parasitic insect, that monsieur with the black coat, cleanly shaven chin, gloved hands and shambling legs, appear in the midst of that austere and impressive scene, which carries the imagination back to the epoch of primitive poesy, and that king of society becomes simply a ridiculous blotch, an annoying imperfection in the picture. What business have your funereal garments in this bright sunlight, where their creases seem to laugh scornfully as at a victim? Your offensive, misplaced costume inspires more pity than the poor man's rags; we feel that you are out of place in the fresh air and that your livery crushes you.

Never had these reflections presented themselves so vividly to Emile's mind as when Galuchet appeared before him, hat in hand, climbing the hill with a painful exertion which caused his coat-tails to flutter in laughable fashion, and pausing to brush away with his handkerchief the traces of frequent falls. Emile was strongly inclined to laugh at first; and then he asked himself angrily why the parasite was buzzing around the sacred hive. He urged his horse to a gallop, passed Galuchet without seeming to recognize him, arrived first at Châteaubrun, and announced the other's coming to Gilberte as an unavoidable calamity.

"Oh! father," said she, "don't receive that ill-bred, disagreeable man, I entreat you! let us not spoil our Châteaubrun, our home, our pleasant, unceremonious life, by the presence of this stranger, who never can and never will be in sympathy with us."

"What do you expect me to do with him, for heaven's sake?" said Monsieur de Châteaubrun, sorely embarrassed. "I invited him to come whenever he chose; I could not foresee that you, who are usually so long-suffering and generous, would take such a dislike to a poor devil because of his bad manners and his unattractive face. For my part I pity such people; I see that everyone spurns them and that life is a bore to them."

"Don't believe that," said Emile. "On the contrary they are very well satisfied and imagine that everybody likes them."

"In that case, why rob them of a delusion without which they would probably die of grief? I haven't courage to do it, and I don't believe that my dear Gilberte would advise me to have it."

"My too kind-hearted father!" rejoined Gilberte with a sigh; "I wish that I were as kind-hearted, too; indeed, I believe I am, generally speaking; but that conceited, self-satisfied creature, who seems to me to insult me when he looks at me, and who called me by my Christian name the first day he ever spoke to me!—no, I can't endure him, and I feel that he has a bad effect on me, because the sight of him makes me disdainful and sarcastic, contrary to my instincts and my character."

"It is certain that Monsieur Galuchet will become very familiar with mademoiselle," said Emile to Monsieur Antoine, "and that you will be compelled more than once to remind him of the respect he owes her. If it happens that he forces you to turn him out of the house, you will regret having received him with too much confidence. Wouldn't it be better to give him to understand by a somewhat chilly welcome that you have not forgotten the ungentlemanly way he behaved on his first visit?"

"The best way that I can think of to arrange matters," said Monsieur de Châteaubrun, "is for you two to go out in the orchard with Janille; I will take Galuchet out fishing and you will be rid of him."

This suggestion was not particularly agreeable to Emile. When he was under Monsieur de Châteaubrun's eye, he could almost believe that he was tête-à-tête with Gilberte, whereas Janille was an exceedingly active and keen-eyed third. Moreover Gilberte thought that it would be selfish to compel her father to bear alone the burden of such a visitor.—"No," she said, kissing him, "we will stay here to keep you in bad temper; for if we turn our backs on you, you will be so sweet and good-natured that monsieur will believe that he is welcome, once for all. Oh! I know you, father! you wouldn't be able to refrain from telling him so and from keeping him at the table, and then he will drink again! It will be very wise for me to stay here and force him to keep watch on himself."

"Oh! I'll look out for that," said Janille, who had listened thus far without giving her opinion, and who hated Galuchet ever since the day he had haggled over a ten-sou piece for which she asked him after showing him the ruins. "I like to have monsieur drink his wine with his friends and the people he likes; but I don't approve of wasting it on parasites, and I propose to give Monsieur Galuchet's wine a good baptizing. But you don't like water, monsieur, and that will make you cut short your stay at the table."

"Why, Janille, this is downright tyranny," said Monsieur Antoine. "You say you are going to put me on a water diet? do you want me to die, pray?"

"No, monsieur, your skin will be all the brighter for it, and if yonder little fellow makes a wry face at it, so much the worse for him."

Janille kept her word, but Galuchet was too disturbed in mind to notice it. He felt more and more ill at ease in the presence of Emile, whose eyes and smile seemed to be always questioning him sternly, and when he tried to pluck up courage and play the agreeable with Gilberte, he was so coldly received that he knew not what to do. He had determined to be very careful in the matter of the Châteaubrun wine, and he was well pleased when his host, after the first glass, neglected to invite him to take a second. Monsieur Antoine, when he led the way with the first bumper, as his duty as host required, stifled a sigh and glanced at Janille as if to reproach her for the liberality with which she had measured the admixture of water. Charasson, who was in the old woman's confidence, roared with laughter, and was sternly reprimanded by his master, who sentenced him to drink the rest of the harmless beverage with his supper.

When Galuchet was convinced that he was intolerable to Gilberte and Emile, he determined to advance his interests with Monsieur Cardonnet by venturing upon the proposal of marriage. He led Monsieur Antoine aside, and, feeling sure of being refused, offered his heart, his hand and his twenty thousand francs for his daughter. Monsieur Galuchet did not consider that he risked anything by doubling the fictitious capital of his marriage-portion.

This little fortune, in addition to a place which was worth about twelve hundred francs a year, surprised Monsieur Antoine extremely. It was a very good match for Gilberte; indeed, she could aspire to nothing better in the matter of wealth, for it was impossible for the excellent country gentleman to provide her with any dowry whatever, even if he should strip himself entirely. No one on earth was ever more unselfish than that worthy man; he had given proofs enough of it during his life. But he could not, without some bitterness, reflect that his darling daughter, failing to meet a man who would love her for her own sake, would probably be condemned to live single for many years, perhaps forever!

"What an unfortunate thing," he said to himself, "that this fellow isn't more attractive, for he is certainly honest and generous. My daughter takes his fancy, and he doesn't ask how much money she has. Doubtless he knows that she has nothing, and means to give her all he possesses. He is a well-intentioned suitor, whom I must refuse respectfully, pleasantly and with friendly words."

And not knowing how to go about it—not daring to expose Gilberte to the suspicion of being vain of her name or to the resentment of a heart wounded by her manifest aversion—he could think of no better way than to avoid giving a definite answer, and to ask for time to reflect and take counsel. Galuchet also asked leave to come again, not precisely to pay his court to Gilberte, but to learn his fate; and leave was given him to do so, although poor Antoine trembled as he gave it.

He took him to the bank of the stream to fish, although Galuchet had brought nothing for that purpose and was very desirous to remain at the château. However, Antoine walked him along the bank of the Creuse, to show him the best places, and, on the way, he had the weakness and good-nature to ask his pardon for Jean's teasing and mockery. Galuchet took it exceedingly well, and attributed all the blame to himself, saying, however, to put himself in a somewhat better light, that he had been surprised into drinking too much, and that, if he was not capable of carrying much wine, it was because he was habitually very abstemious.

"That's all right," said Antoine. "Janille was afraid that you might be a little intemperate, but what happened to you proves the contrary."

They talked for a considerable time, and, as Galuchet obstinately declined to go, although his host's uneasiness made it plain that he would have preferred not to take him back to the château, they returned thither, and Galuchet at once took Janille aside, to confide his intentions to her, and give Antoine time to inform Gilberte. He reckoned on the displeasure which the news would cause the latter; for on this occasion, not being drunk, he plainly detected Emile's air of annoyance and Gilberte's feelings for the protector she had chosen.

"This time," he said to himself, "Monsieur Cardonnet will not reproach me with having wasted my time. My pretty lovers will be furiously angry with me, and Monsieur Emile will not be able to hold back from picking a quarrel with me."

Galuchet was not a coward; and although he did not deem Emile capable of a duel with fists, he said to himself with much satisfaction that he was strong enough to hold his own against him. As for a genuine duel, that would have been less to his liking, because he had had no experience of duellists' weapons; but he could safely rely upon Monsieur Cardonnet to preserve him from that danger.

While he was talking with Janille, Monsieur de Châteaubrun remained in the orchard with his daughter and Emile, and told them what had taken place between him and Galuchet, albeit with some oratorical precautions. "Oh!" said he, "you call him an impertinent fool, but you will regret your harsh judgment of him; for he is really a very worthy fellow, and I have proof of that. I can tell this before Emile, who is our friend; and if Gilberte would look at the matter without prejudice, she might ask him some questions concerning this young man. Tell me, Emile, on your heart and conscience, is he an honest man?"

"Beyond any question," Emile replied. "My father has employed him for three years and would be very sorry to lose him."

"Is his character good?"

"Although he can hardly be said to have proved it here the other day, I must say that he is very peaceable, and ordinarily quite harmless."

"He isn't in the habit of getting drunk?"

"Not so far as I know."

"Well, then, what have you against him?"

"If he had not taken the fancy to become our guest, I should consider him an accomplished man," said Gilberte.

"Is he so very disagreeable to you?" said Monsieur Antoine, standing still to look her in the face.

"Why, no, father," she replied, surprised by the solemnity of his manner. "Do not take my dislike so seriously. I hate nobody; and if this young man's company is at all agreeable to you, if he has given you good reason to esteem him particularly, God forbid that I should deprive you of any pleasure by a mere caprice! I will make an effort, and perhaps I shall succeed in sharing the good opinion that my excellent father has of him."

"Spoken like a good, sensible girl, and I recognize my Gilberte. Let me tell you then, little one, that you are the last one who should despise this young man's character; and that, even though you do not feel attracted to him, you ought at least to treat him politely and dismiss him kindly. Come, do you understand me?"

"Not the least in the world, father."

"I am afraid that I understand," said Emile, his cheeks flushing scarlet.

"Well," continued Monsieur Antoine, "I will suppose that a young man, quite wealthy compared to us, notices a beautiful, virtuous girl who is very poor, and that, falling in love at first sight, he lays at her feet the most honorable proposals you can imagine—should he be dismissed roughly, turned out of doors with a: 'Monsieur, you are too ugly.'"

Gilberte blushed as hotly as Emile, and, strive as she would to be humble, she felt so insulted by Galuchet's proposals that she could make no reply, while her eyes filled with tears.

"The miserable fellow has lied shamefully to you," cried Emile, "and you can safely turn him away with contempt. He has no fortune, and my father rescued him from absolute destitution. Now, he has only been in his employ three years, and unless he has suddenly received some mysterious legacy——"

"No, Emile, no, he has told no lie; I am not so weak and credulous as you think. I questioned him and I know that the source of his little fortune is pure and unquestionable. Your father has promised him twenty thousand francs, in order to attach him permanently to his service by affection and gratitude, in case he marries in the province."

"But," said Emile in a trembling voice, "my father certainly cannot know that he has presumed to raise his eyes to Mademoiselle de Châteaubrun, for he would not have encouraged him in such a hope."

"On the contrary," rejoined Monsieur Antoine, to whom the affair seemed perfectly natural, "he has confided to your father his liking for Gilberte, and your father authorized him to use his name in support of his offer of marriage."

Gilberte turned deathly pale and looked at Emile, who lowered his eyes, stupefied, humiliated, and wounded to his heart's core.

XXV
THE EXPLOSION

"Well, well, what's the matter?" said Janille, joining them under a rustic arbor near the orchard, where they were sitting, all three; "why is Gilberte so woebegone, and why do you all keep quiet when I come near, as if you were plotting some conspiracy?"

Gilberte threw herself in her nurse's arms and burst into tears.

"Well, well," continued the good little woman, "here's something else! My little girl is unhappy and I don't know what the matter is! Will you speak, Monsieur Antoine?"

"Has that young man gone?" said Monsieur Antoine, looking about him uneasily.

"To be sure he has, for he took leave of me and I went with him as far as the gate," said Janille. "I had some difficulty in getting rid of him. He's a little dull about explaining himself. He would have liked to stay, I saw that well enough; but I gave him to understand that such affairs couldn't be settled so fast, that I must consult with you, and that we would write to him if we wanted to see him again for any reason. But, before I say anything more, what's the matter with my girl? who has hurt her feelings? Ah! but ma mie Janille is here to protect her and comfort her."

"Oh! yes, you will understand me," cried Gilberte, "and you will help me to repel the insult, for I feel insulted and I need you to help me make my father understand it. Why, he almost acts as Monsieur Galuchet's advocate!"

"Ah! so you already know what is going on, do you? In that case it's a family affair. I have something to tell, you, too; but all this will bore Monsieur Emile."

"I understand you, my dear Mademoiselle Janille," the young man replied, "and I know that the proprieties, as ordinarily understood, would require me to withdraw; but I am too deeply interested in what is going on here to consider myself bound by common customs; you can safely speak before me, as I know everything now."

"Very well, monsieur, if you know what is in the wind, and if Monsieur Antoine has thought best to state his views before you,—which, between ourselves, was hardly worth while—I will speak as if you were not here. And in the first place, Gilberte, you mustn't cry; what is it that makes you feel so bad, my girl? Because a poor fool considers himself worthy of you? Oh! bless my soul, it isn't the last time that you will have the pleasure, married or not, of seeing self-sufficient people make themselves ridiculous; for you must laugh at them, my child, and not be angry. This fellow thinks that he does you honor and gives you proof of esteem; receive it as such, and tell him or have somebody else tell him in all seriousness that you thank him, but that you will have none of him. I can't see at all why you are so disturbed; do you happen to think that I am disposed to encourage him? Ah! he might have a hundred thousand francs, or a hundred million, and I shouldn't think he was the man for my girl! The villain, with his big eyes and his air of satisfaction at being in the world—let him look farther! we have no girl here to give him. Oh! ma mie Janille knows what she is talking about, she knows that they don't put the thistle beside the rose in the same bouquet."

"That is well said, dear Janille!" cried Emile, "and you are worthy to be called her mother!"

"What concern is it of yours, pray, monsieur?" retorted Janille, warmed up and exalted by her own eloquence. "What have you to do with our little affairs? Do you know anything wrong about this suitor? If you do, it's of no use to tell us, for we don't need you to help us to get rid of him."

"Stop, Janille, don't scold him," said Gilberte, kissing her old friend. "It does me good to hear it said that that man's proposals are insulting to me, for it humiliates me to think of them. It makes me cold and sick. And yet father doesn't understand it! He considers himself honored by his offer, and will not say anything to keep him out of my sight!"

"Ha! ha!" laughed Janille, "he is the one who is at fault, as usual—the bad man! It is he who makes his daughter cry! Look you, monsieur, do you propose to play the tyrant here, I should like to know? Don't look forward to that, for ma mie Janille isn't dead and has no desire to die."

"That's right," said Monsieur Antoine; "of course I am a despot, an unnatural father! All right! all right! fall to on me if it relieves you. After that, perhaps my daughter will be kind enough to tell me what the matter is, and what I have done that's so criminal."

"Dear father," said Gilberte, throwing herself into his arms, "let us stop this melancholy jesting, and do you make haste to dismiss Monsieur Galuchet forever, so that I can breathe freely again and forget this bad dream."

"Ah! there's the rub," said Monsieur Antoine; "the trouble is to know what I am to write to him, and that is something it will be well to consult about."

"Do you know, mother," said Gilberte to Janille, "he doesn't know what answer to give him? Apparently he wasn't able to say no to him."

"Well, my child, your father didn't do very wrong," replied Janille, "for I listened to your fine suitor's offer without getting excited, and I didn't say yes or no to him. There! there! don't be angry. That's the right way to do, and then consult calmly. You can't say to the fellow: 'I don't like you;' people don't say that sort of thing. You can't say to him either: 'We belong to a good family and your name is Galuchet;' for that would be unkind and mortifying."

"And it wouldn't be any reason," said Gilberte. "What does nobility matter to us now? True nobility is in the heart and not in empty titles. It isn't the name of Galuchet that disgusts me, but the manners and feelings of the man who bears it."

"My daughter is right: name, profession and fortune are nothing," said Monsieur Antoine. "So those are not the means for us to use. Nor can we blame a man for his physical defects. The best thing for us to say is that Gilberte doesn't want to marry."

"Allow me, monsieur, one moment," said Janille. "I don't propose to have you say that; for if this young man should go about repeating it—as he wouldn't fail to do—no one else would come forward, and I am not in favor of my girl turning nun."

"But we must give some reason," said Monsieur Antoine. "Suppose we say that she doesn't want to marry yet, and that we think she's too young."

"Yes, yes, that's it, father! you have hit upon the best reason, and it's the true one. I do not want to marry yet; I am too young."

"That is not true!" cried Janille. "You are old enough, and I believe that before long you will find a good husband whom you like and whom we all like."

"Don't think of that, mother," said Gilberte, warmly. "I will take my oath before God that my father told the truth. I do not want to marry yet, and I want everybody to know it, so that all suitors may keep away. Oh dear! if I am to be surrounded by such importunate creatures, you will take away all the happiness I have in my home, and make my youth sad and gloomy! and you will make me unhappy to no purpose, for I shall not change my resolution, and I will die rather than part from you."

"Who says anything about parting?" rejoined Janille. "The man who loves you won't want to make you unhappy; and, more than that, you don't know what you will think when you love someone. Ah! my dear child! then it will be our turn to weep, perhaps, for it is written that the woman shall leave her father and mother to follow her husband, and He who said that knew a woman's heart."

"Oh! that is a law of obedience, not a law of love," cried Emile. "The man who truly loves Gilberte will truly love her parents and her friends as his own, and will no more desire to separate her from them than he will desire to live apart from them himself."

At that moment Janille encountered the passionate glances of the two lovers seeking each other, and all her prudence returned.

"Pardieu, monsieur," she said dryly, "you interfere in matters that hardly concern you, and it is my opinion that all my ideas would be better left unsaid before you; but since you persist in hearing them, and Monsieur Antoine considers it very wise, I will tell you that I forbid you to repeat or even to believe what my girl just said in a burst of anger against your Galuchet. For all men are not cut on that pattern, thank God! and we don't need to have the world condemn her to remain single, just because she prefers a more agreeable husband. We will find one for her easily enough, never fear; and don't you imagine that, because she isn't rich like you, she will go begging."

"Come, come, Janille!" said Monsieur Antoine, taking Emile's hand, "you are the one who says things that shouldn't be said. It would seem that you wanted to wound our young friend. You shake your head too much. I tell you that he is our best friend next to Jean, who has the right of priority; and I declare that no one, during the twenty years that, on account of my poverty, I have been in a way to appreciate disinterested sentiments, has shown me and inspired in me so much affection as Emile. That is why I say he will never be an embarrassment in our family secrets. By his common-sense, his education and the loftiness of his ideas, he is far ahead of his own age and ours. That is why we could find no better adviser. I look upon him as Gilberte's brother, and I will answer for it that, if a suitable husband for her should present himself, he would enlighten us concerning his character, and would exert himself to bring about a marriage that would make her happy, and to prevent one likely to do the contrary. So your sharp words have no common-sense, Janille. When I took him into my confidence, I knew what I was about; you treat me altogether too much like a child!"

"Ah indeed, monsieur! so you choose to pick a quarrel with me in your turn, do you?" said Janille, with great animation. "Very good! this is the day for truth-telling, and I will speak, since you drive me to the wall. I tell you and I tell Monsieur Emile, to his face, that he is much too young for this rôle of friend of the family, and that this friendship had better cool down a little, or you will feel the inconveniences of it. Why, here's an instance of it this very day, and you will find it out. A young man comes and offers to marry Gilberte: we won't have him—that's all right and fully understood; but what will prevent this discarded suitor from believing and saying—if for no other reason than to be revenged—that it is because of Monsieur Emile and of the family ambition to make a rich marriage, that we will listen to nobody else? I don't say that Monsieur Emile is capable of having such thoughts, I am sure he is not. He knows us well enough to know what sort of people we are. But fools will believe it and the consequence will be that we shall be thought fools. What? we turn Monsieur Galuchet away because our girl is thought to be too young, and Monsieur Cardonnet the younger will come here every week, as if he were the only one excepted from the rule! That can never be, Monsieur Antoine! And it's of no use for you to look at me with your soft eyes, Monsieur Emile, and to kneel by me and take my hands as if you were going to make me a declaration; I love you, yes I admit it, and I shall regret you much; but I shall do my duty all the same, as I am the only one in this house with any head and foresight and decision! Yes, my boy, you must go, too, for ma mie Janille isn't in her dotage yet."

Gilberte had become pale as a lily again and Monsieur Antoine was angry, probably for the first time in his life. He thought Janille unreasonable, and, as he dared not rise in revolt, he pulled Sacripant's ear, who, seeing that he was out of temper, overwhelmed him with caresses and submitted to be tortured by his unconscious hand. Emile was on his knees between Janille and Gilberte; his heart overflowed and he could not keep silent.

"My dear Janille," he cried at last, with impetuous emotion, "and you, noble and generous Antoine, listen to me and learn my secret at last. I love your daughter. I have loved her passionately since the first day that I saw her, and if she deigns to share my feelings, I ask her in marriage, not for Monsieur Galuchet, not for any protégé of my father, not for any of my friends, but for myself, who cannot live away from her, and who will not rise except with her consent and yours."

"Come to my heart!" cried Monsieur Antoine, in a transport of joy and enthusiasm; "for you are a noble fellow and I knew that nothing could be truer and more loyal than your heart."

He pressed the slender youth in his arms as if he would have suffocated him. Janille, deeply moved, put her handkerchief to her eyes; but in an instant she forced back her tears and said:

"This is madness, Monsieur Antoine, genuine madness! Keep watch on yourself and don't let your heart go so fast. Certainly he is a fine fellow, and if we were rich or if he were poor, we could never make a better choice; but we must not forget that what he proposes is impossible, that his family will never consent to it, and that he has been building a romance in his little brain. If I didn't love you so much, Emile, I would scold you for inflaming Monsieur Antoine's imagination so, for it is younger still than yours, and is capable of taking your dreams seriously. Luckily his daughter is more sensible than he and I are. She is not at all disturbed by your soft words. She is grateful to you for them and thanks you for your kind intentions; but she is perfectly well aware that you don't belong to yourself and can't dispense with your father's consent; and that, even if you were old enough to summon him into court to make him consent, she is too well born to care to enter by force a family that spurned her."

"That is true," said Monsieur Antoine, as if waking from a dream; "we are going astray, my poor children; Monsieur Cardonnet will never have anything to do with us, for we have nothing to offer him but a name which he would treat as a chimera, which, indeed, we hold too cheap ourselves, and which throws open no road to fortune. Emile, Emile, let us say no more about it, for it would become a source of regret. Let us be friends, friends forever! be my child's brother, her protector and defender if occasion offers; but let us say nothing about marriage or love, for, in these times we live in, love is a dream and marriage a business affair."

"You do not know me," cried Emile, "if you think that I accept or will ever accept the laws of society and the scheming of self-interest! I will not deceive you; I would answer for my mother if she were free, but my father will not be favorably disposed to this marriage. And yet my father loves me, and when he has tested the force and endurance of my will he will realize that his own will cannot carry the day in this matter. There is one means that he can try to compel me to submit. He can deprive me for a time of the enjoyments of his wealth. But in that case how joyfully I will work in order to deserve Gilberte's hand, to raise myself to her level, to deserve the esteem which is not accorded to lazy men, but which they merit who have passed through honorable tests, as you have, Monsieur Antoine. My father will yield some day, I have no doubt; I can take my oath to it before God and before you, because I feel within me all the strength of an invincible love. And when he has come to appreciate the power of a passion like mine, he, who is so sovereignly wise and intelligent and who loves me more than all the world, certainly more than ambition and wealth, will open his arms and his heart unreservedly to my bride. For I know my father well enough to know that when he yields to the power of destiny, he does it without a backward look to the past, without base rancor, without cowardly regret. Therefore believe in my love, O my friends, and rely as I do on God's help. There is nothing humiliating to you in the prejudices I shall have to combat, and the love of my mother, who lives only for me and in me, will make up to Gilberte in secret for my father's temporary prejudice. Oh! do not doubt it, do not doubt it, I implore you! Faith can do anything, and if you help me in this fight, I shall be the luckiest mortal who ever fought for the holiest of all causes, for a noble love, and for a woman worthy of my whole life's devotion!"

"Ta! ta! ta!" exclaimed Janille, bewildered by his eloquence; "here he is talking like a book and trying to excite my girl's brain. Will you be kind enough to keep quiet, golden tongue? we do not want to listen to you, and we refuse to believe you. I forbid you, Monsieur Antoine! You don't realize all the misfortunes this may bring on us, and the least would be to prevent Gilberte's making a possible, reasonable marriage."

Poor Antoine no longer knew which way to turn. When Emile spoke, he glowed with the memory of his youthful years, and remembered that he too had loved; nothing seemed to be nobler and holier than to defend the cause of love and to encourage such a noble enterprise. But when Janille threw water on the fire, he recognized his mentor's wisdom and prudence. Thus, sometimes he took part with her against Emile, sometimes with Emile against her.

"We have had enough of this," said Janille, vexed because she saw no apparent end to their irresolution; "all this ought not to be discussed before my child. What would be the result if she were a weak or frivolous creature? Luckily she does not bite at your fairy tales, and as she cares very little for your money she will have too keen a sense of dignity to wait until you're at liberty to dispose of your heart. She will dispose of hers as she thinks best, and while she continues to give you her esteem and friendship, she will beg you not to compromise her by your visits. Come, Gilberte, say a sensible, brave word to put an end to all this foolish talk!"

Thus far Gilberte had said nothing. Deeply moved as she was, she gazed pensively in turn at her father, Janille, and, most frequently of all, at Emile, whose ardor and tone of conviction stirred her to the depths of her soul. Suddenly she rose and knelt before her father and her governess, whose hands she affectionately kissed.

"It is too late to call upon me for cold prudence, and to remind me of the exigencies of self-interest," she said; "I love Emile, I love him as dearly as he loves me, and before it had occurred to me that I could ever belong to him, I had sworn in my heart never to belong to another. Receive my confession, my father and mother before God! For two months I have not been frank with you, and for two weeks I have been hiding from you a secret that weighs upon my conscience, and that will be the last, as it is the first in my whole life. I have given my heart to Emile, I have promised to be his wife on the day that my parents and his consent. Until then, I have promised to love him bravely and calmly; I promise it now anew, and I call upon God and you to witness my promise. I have promised, and I promise again, that if his father's will is inflexible, we will love each other as brother and sister, although it will be impossible for me ever to love another, and that I will never give way to any impulse of madness and despair. Have confidence in me. See—I am strong, and I am happier than ever, since I have placed Emile between you two and with you two in my heart. Do not fear complaints or melancholy or low spirits or sickness from me. Ten years hence I shall be just as you see me to-day, finding all-powerful consolation in your love, and in my own a courage proof against every trial."

"God's mercy!" cried Janille in desperation, "we are all accursed. We only lacked this. This girl of mine actually loves him and has told him so, and tells him so again before us! Oh! it was a wretched day for us that this young man entered our house!"

Antoine, utterly overwhelmed, could do nothing but burst into tears, pressing his daughter to his heart. But Emile, inspired by Gilberte's courage, found so much to say, that he succeeded in taking possession of that mind, incapable as it was of defending itself. Even Janille herself was shaken, and they ended by adopting the plan which the lovers themselves had formed at Crozant, namely, to wait—a plan which did not decide much to Janille's satisfaction—and not to meet too often—which, at all events, reassured her to some slight extent as to the danger from without.

They left the orchard, and a few moments later Galuchet also left it, but stealthily, and, without being seen, plunged into the bushes to make his way, under cover, to the Gargilesse road.

Emile remained to dinner, for neither Antoine nor Janille had the courage to shorten a visit which was not to be repeated until the following week.

The worthy country gentleman's affectionate and ingenuous heart was unable to resist the caresses and loving speeches of the two children, and when Janille's back was turned, he allowed himself to be prevailed upon to share their hopes and to bless their love. Janille tried to hold out against them, and her depression was genuine and profound; but no one can arrange a plan of seduction so cunningly as two lovers who desire to win over a friend to their cause. They were both so kind, so attentive, so affectionate, so ingenious in their cajoling flatteries, and above all, so beautiful, with their eyes and foreheads illumined by the glow of enthusiasm, that a tiger could not have resisted. Janille wept, at first with vexation, then with grief, then with affection: and when the evening came and they went and sat by the stream, in the soft moonlight, those four, united by invincible affection, formed but a single group, with arms intertwined and hearts beating in unison.

Gilberte especially was radiant, her heart was lighter and purer than the fragrance which exhaled from the plants when the stars rise, and ascends to them. Intoxicated with bliss as Emile was, he could not entirely forget the difficulty of the duties he had to perform in order to reconcile the religion of his love with filial respect. But Gilberte believed that they could wait forever, and that, so long as she loved, the miracle would occur of itself and no one would be obliged to act. When Emile, having ventured to kiss her hand under the eyes of her parents, had taken his leave, Janille said to her, with a sigh:

"Well, now you will be in the dumps for a week! I shall see you with your eyes all red, as they often were before that infernal trip to Crozant! There will be no more peace or happiness here!"

"If I am sad, darling mother," said Gilberte, "I give you leave to prevent his coming again; and if my eyes are red, I will tear them out so that I can't see him. But what will you say if I am more cheerful and happier than ever? Don't you feel how calm my heart is? See, put your hand there, while we can still hear his horse's footsteps as he rides away! Am I excited? Light the lamp and examine me closely. Am I not still Gilberte, your daughter, who breathes only for you and my father, and who can never be bored and listless for an instant with you? Ah! when I suffered, when I cried, was when I had a secret from you, and when I was dying to be able to tell it to you. Now that I can speak and think aloud, I breathe again and I feel nothing but the joy of living for you and with you. And didn't you see this evening how happy we all were to be able to love one another without fear or shame? Do you think that it will ever be different, and that Emile and I would be happy together if you were not with us always and every minute?"

"Alas!" thought Janille with a sigh, "we are only at the very beginning of this fine arrangement!"

XXVI
THE SNARE

Emile determined to delay no longer to speak seriously to his father, and to make, not a formal and too hasty avowal of his love, but a sort of preliminary discourse which would lead little by little to more decisive explanations. But the carpenter had made an appointment with him for the following morning, and he thought, justly enough, that if that man proved what he had asserted, he would have an excellent pretext for broaching the subject, and for demonstrating to Monsieur Cardonnet the uncertainty and vanity of his plans for making a fortune.

Not that Emile placed blind faith in Jean Jappeloup's competence to form an opinion in such matters; but he knew that the observation of a natural logician may materially assist scientific investigation, and he set out before dawn to join his companion at a certain point where they had agreed to meet. He had informed Monsieur Cardonnet the night before of his purpose to examine the course of the stream that ran the factory, but without telling him whom he had chosen for his guide.

It was a difficult but interesting excursion, and on his return Emile requested a private interview with his father. He found him with a tranquil air of triumph, which seemed to him not to be of very good augury. However, as he deemed it his duty to inform him of what he had seen, he entered upon the subject without hesitation.

"You urge me, father," he began, "to espouse your projects and to take hold of them with the same ardor that you yourself display. I have done my best, for some time past, to place at your service all the application of which my brain is capable; I owe it therefore to the confidence you have placed in me to tell you that we are building on sand, and that, instead of doubling your fortune, you are rapidly throwing it into a bottomless pit."

"What do you mean, Emile?" replied Monsieur Cardonnet with a smile; "this is a very alarming exordium, and I supposed that science would have led you to the same result that practice shows—namely, that nothing is impossible to enlightened determination. It seems that you have deduced from your meditations a contrary solution. Let us see! you have made a long trip and doubtless a very thorough examination? I too explored last year the stream which it is our business to subdue, and I am certain of success; what do you say to that, boy?"

"I say that you will fail, father, because it will require an outlay beyond the means of a private individual, and which is not likely to be retrieved by proportionate profit."

With that, Emile, with much lucidity, entered upon explanations which we will spare the reader, but which tended to prove that the course of the Gargilesse presented natural obstacles impossible to overcome without an outlay ten times as great as Monsieur Cardonnet anticipated. It would be necessary for him to become the owner of a considerable part of the bed of the stream, in order to divert its course in one place, widen it in another, and in another, blast out ledges that interfered with the regularity of its flow; and finally, if he could not do away with the accumulation and sudden and violent overflow of the water in the upper reservoirs, he would have to build dikes around the factory a hundred times more extensive than those already begun, which dikes would then throw the water back in such quantities as to ruin the surrounding land; and, in order to do that, he would have to buy half of the commune or wield an oppressive power, impossible to obtain in France. The works already constructed by Monsieur Cardonnet were a serious detriment to the millers thereabout. The water, being arrested in its course for his use, made their mills walk backward, as they said in the province, producing a contrary current against their wheels, which stopped them entirely at certain hours. Not without compensating them in another way and at great expense, had he succeeded hitherto in pacifying these small manufacturers, pending the time when he would ruin them or ruin himself; for the compensation offered could be temporary only and was to cease with the completion of his works. He had bought at a high price, from one, his services for six months as a carter, from others, the use of their horses to draw his barges. He had soothed a goodly number with illusory promises, and the simple-minded people, dazzled by a temporary profit, had closed their eyes to the future, as always happens with those whose present circumstances are straitened.

Emile passed hurriedly over these details, which were of a nature to irritate Monsieur Cardonnet rather than to convince him; and he strove to arouse his apprehensions, especially as he was thoroughly convinced, and certain that he had exaggerated nothing.

Monsieur Cardonnet listened to the lad with much attention, and, when he had finished, said to him, passing his hand over his head with a fatherly, caressing touch, but with a calm smile of conscious power:

"I am well pleased with you, Emile. I see that you are busy; that you are working in earnest; and that you are no longer wasting your time running about from château to château. You have been talking very clearly, like a conscientious young lawyer who has studied his case carefully. I thank you for the excellent direction your ideas are taking; and do you know what affords me the most pleasure? that you apply yourself to your work as I had hoped that you would as a result of hard study. Here you are already eager for success; you feel its potent excitement. You are passing through the inevitable stages of alarm, doubt, and even momentary discouragement which accompany the development of every important plan in the genius of the manufacturer. Yes, Emile, that is what I call conceiving and giving birth. This mystery of the will is not begotten without pain; it is with the man's brain as with the woman's womb. But set your mind at rest now, my boy. The danger that you fancy that you have discovered exists only upon a superficial examination of things, and you cannot grasp the whole subject in a simple walk. I passed a week exploring this stream before I laid the first stone on its banks, and I took counsel of a man more experienced than you. See, here is a plan of the whole locality, with the levels, measurements and depths of water. Let us look it over together."

Emile examined the plan with care and discovered several actual mistakes. They had considered it impossible that the water should reach a certain elevation even in extraordinary freshets, and that certain barriers could hold it in check beyond a certain number of hours. They had figured on contingencies, and the commonest experience, the testimony of any witness of what had happened theretofore, would have sufficed to destroy the theory, if they had been willing to listen to that evidence. But that was something that Cardonnet's proud and distrustful nature could not do. He had placed himself at the mercy of the elements, with his eyes closed, like Napoléon in the Russian campaign, and in his superb obstinacy he would willingly have undertaken, like Xerxes, to whip the rebellious Neptune into submission. His adviser, although a very clever man, had thought of nothing but encouraging his ambition, or had allowed himself to be swayed and influenced by that ardent will.

"Father," said Emile, "this is not simply a matter of hydrographic calculations, and you will allow me to say that your absolute confidence in the work of a specialist has led you astray. You laughed at me when, at the beginning of my general studies, I said to you that all branches of human knowledge seemed to me to be interrelated, and that one must needs know almost everything to be infallible on any given point; in a word, that no special work could dispense with synthesis, and that before learning the mechanism of a watch it would be well to learn the mechanism of creation. You laughed at me—you laugh at me still—and you took me away from the stars to send me back to mills. Very well; if, with your hydrographer, you had consulted a geologist, a botanist and a physicist, they would have demonstrated to you something that I feel safe in asserting after one view of the locality, subject to the confirmation of more competent judges than myself. It is: that, taking into consideration the slope of the ridge of the mountain over which your stream flows, taking into consideration the direction of the winds that accompany it, taking into consideration the plateaus from which it takes its source and their relative elevation, which attracts all the clouds, where indeed all the storms take rise—floods of water must constantly pour down into this ravine and sweep away unavailing obstacles; unless, as I have said, it be controlled by works which you cannot undertake to erect, because the necessary expense exceeds the resources of any single capitalist. That is what the physicist would have told you on the authority of atmospheric laws: he would have appealed to the incessant effects of the lightning upon the rocks which attract it; the geologist would have appealed to the nature of the soil, whether loamy, chalky or granitic, which retains, absorbs and discharges the water in turn.

"And the botanist," said Monsieur Cardonnet, smiling, "do you forget him?"

"He," replied Emile, with an answering smile, "would have noticed on the steep, barren cliff, where the geologist could not have detected with absolute assurance the former passage of the water, a few blades of grass which would not have enlightened his fellow-scientists. 'This little plant,' he would have said to them, 'did not grow there all alone; it is not the kind of spot that it loves, and you see what a melancholy look it has, awaiting the time when the flood that brought it here shall carry it away again or bring some of its friends for company.'"

"Bravo! Emile, nothing could be more ingenious."

"And nothing more certain, father."

"Where did you learn all this, pray? Are you hydrographer, mechanician, astronomer, geologist, physicist and botanist all at once?"

"No, father; you compelled me to pick up on the wing the elements of those sciences, which have a common foundation; but there are some privileged natures in which observation and logic take the place of learning."

"You are not modest."

"I am not speaking of myself, father, but of a peasant, a true genius, who doesn't know how to read, who doesn't know the names of the fluids, gases, minerals or plants, but who understands causes and effects, whose keen eye and infallible memory detect differences and characteristics; of a man, in short, who, while speaking the language of a child, showed me all these things and made them clear to me."

"Who is this unknown genius whom you met on your walk, I pray to know?"

"A man whom you do not like, father, whom you take for a madman, and whose name I hardly dare mention to you."

"Ah! I understand! it is your friend Jappeloup the carpenter, Monsieur de Boisguilbault's vagabond, the village sorcerer, who cures sprains with words and puts out fires by cutting a cross on a beam with his axe."

Monsieur Cardonnet, who had thus far listened to his son with interest, albeit without being persuaded, laughed scornfully, and was thenceforth inclined to treat the subject with sarcasm and contempt.

"And this is the way madmen come together and agree!" he said. "Really, my poor Emile, nature made you an unfortunate gift when she gave you a large supply of intellect and imagination, for she withheld the guiding spirits, coolness and common-sense. Here you are astray, and because a miracle-working peasant has posed before you as the hero of a romance, you devote all your petty knowledge and your ingenious reasoning powers to attempt to confirm his wonderful decisions! You have put all the sciences at work, and astronomy, geology, hydrography, physics and even poor little botany, which hardly expected the honor, come in a body to sign the patent of infallibility awarded to Master Jappeloup. Write poetry, Emile, write novels! you are good for nothing else, I am very much afraid."

"So you despise experience and observation, father," rejoined Emile, restraining his anger; "you do not deign even to consider those commonplace bases of the work of the mind? and yet, you make sport of most theories. What am I to believe, according to your opinion, if you will not allow me to consult either theory or practice?"

"On the contrary, Emile," replied Monsieur Cardonnet, "I respect both one and the other, but on condition that they inhabit healthy brains; for their advantages change to poison or smoke, in foolish brains. Unfortunately, some alleged scientists are of this number, and that is why I would have liked to preserve you from their chimeras. Who is more absurdly credulous and more easily deceived than a pedant with preconceived ideas? I remember an antiquarian who came here last year: he was in search of Druidical stones, and he saw them everywhere. To satisfy him I showed him an old stone the peasants had hollowed out by pounding the grain of which they made their porridge, and I persuaded him that it was the urn in which the sacrificial priests among the Gauls shed human blood. He absolutely insisted on carrying it off for the departmental museum. He took all the granite drinking-troughs for ancient sarcophagi. And that is how the most absurd errors spread. It rested entirely with me whether a trough or a mortar should pass for venerable monuments. And yet that gentleman had passed fifty years of his life reading and meditating. Look out for yourself, Emile, a day may come when you will take bladders for lanterns!"

"I have done my duty," said Emile. "I was bound to urge you to make a further examination of the spots I have visited, and it seemed to me that the experience of your recent disaster might suggest the same advice. But as you answer me with jests I have nothing more to say."

"Let us see, Emile," said Monsieur Cardonnet after a few moments' reflection, "what your conclusion is from all this, and what there is at the bottom of your cheerful predictions. I understand very well that Master Jean Jappeloup, who has set himself up as an inveterate foe of my undertaking, and who passes his life declaiming against Père Cardonnet—even in your presence, and you could tell me many things about him—would like to persuade you to induce me to leave this country where, it appears, my presence is a thorn in his side. But whither do you seek to lead me, O my philosopher and scientist? Where do you wish to found a colony? into what American desert do you propose to carry the advantages of your socialism and my industrial talent?"

"We might carry them not so far away," replied Emile, "and if you were seriously inclined to work at the civilization of savages, you would find plenty under your hand; but I know only too well, father, that it is no part of your purpose to return to a subject that has been exhausted between us. I have forbidden myself to contradict you in that regard, and I do not think that since I have been here, I have once departed from the respectful silence you imposed upon me."

"Come, come, my boy, don't adopt this tone, for your somewhat cunning reserve is just what annoys me most. Let us drop the discussion of socialism, I agree to that; we will resume it next year and perhaps we shall both have made some progress then that will help us to understand each other better. Let us think of the present. The vacation will not last forever; what do you wish to do when it ends, for your instruction and employment?"

"I aspire to nothing except to remain with you, father."

"I know it," said Monsieur Cardonnet with a malicious smile; "I know that you enjoy yourself hugely in this neighborhood; but that doesn't lead to anything."

"If it leads me to the frame of mind in which I should be in order to reach a perfect understanding with my father, I shall not look upon it as time wasted."

"That is very prettily said, and you are very kind; but I don't think it puts us ahead much, unless you are prepared to devote yourself entirely to my enterprise. Come, shall we write for more experienced advisers and examine the whole locality again?"

"I agree with all my heart, and I persist in believing that it is my duty to urge you to do it."

"Very good; Emile, I see that you are afraid I shall use up your fortune, and I am not displeased to see it."

"You fail to understand the feeling on that subject which I have in the bottom of my heart," Emile replied with warmth; "and yet," he added, making an effort to be prudent, "I desire you to interpret what I say in whatever sense is most agreeable to you."

"You are a great diplomatist, I must agree; but you shall not escape me. Come, Emile, you must make up your mind. If, after the renewed and thorough examination we propose to make, science and observation decide that Master Jappeloup and you are not infallible, that the factory can be finished and have a prosperous existence, that my fortune and yours are planted here, and that they must germinate and fructify here, will you agree to embrace my projects body and soul, to second me in every way, with arms and brain, with heart and head? Swear to me that you will belong to me, that you will have no other thought than that of helping me to make you rich; place all your faculties at my disposal without argument; and in return I swear to you that I will give your heart and your passions all the gratification which it lies in my power to do, and which the laws of morality do not forbid. I believe that I make myself clear?"

"O father!" cried Emile, rising impetuously, "have you weighed your words?"

"They are carefully weighed, and I wish you to weigh your reply."

"I hardly understand you," said Emile, falling back upon his chair. A cloud of flame had passed before his eyes; he felt as if he were about to faint.

"Emile, do you wish to marry?" rejoined Monsieur Cardonnet, eager to make the most of his emotion.

"Yes, father, I do," Emile replied, leaning over the table that stood between them and putting out his hands imploringly. "Oh! do not play with me now, for you would kill me!"

"Do you doubt my word?"

"I cannot, if your word is given seriously."

"It is the most serious promise I have ever given in my life, as you can judge for yourself. You have a noble heart and an eminent mind; I know it and I have proofs of it. But with equal sincerity and equal certainty, I can tell you that your brain is both too weak and too active, and that twenty years hence, perhaps—always perhaps, Emile—you will not be competent to take care of yourself. You will be constantly attacked by vertigo, you will never act coolly, you will take sides passionately, for or against men and things, without precaution and without discernment, without the voice of the indispensable instinct of self-preservation to appeal to you and warn you from the depths of your conscience. You have a poetic nature; it would be useless for me to try to deceive myself in that respect, for everything leads me to the painful certainty that you need a guide and a master. Bless God, therefore, who has given you for your guide and master a father, your best friend. I love you as you are, although you are just the opposite of what I should have liked, could I have chosen my son. I love you as I would love my daughter if nature had not made a mistake in your sex; that is enough to tell you that I love you passionately. So do not complain of your fate and never let my reproaches humiliate you. In our present position with regard to each other, which is clearly defined now to my mind, I will make immense sacrifices to your happiness and your future; I will overcome my repugnance, which is very great, I confess, and I will allow you to marry the illegitimate daughter of a nobleman and his servant. I will satisfy your heart and your passions, as I have said; but only on the condition that your mind is to belong to me absolutely thenceforth, and that I am to dispose of you as freely as of myself."

"O my God! is it possible!" exclaimed Emile, dazzled and terrified at the same time; "but what do you intend by this renunciation of self, father, what meaning do you give to it?"

"Didn't I just tell you? Don't pretend that you can't understand me. Look you, Emile, I know the whole of your Châteaubrun romance, and I could repeat it to you word for word, from your arrival one stormy night down to the Crozant expedition, and from Crozant down to your conversation last Saturday in Monsieur Antoine's orchard. I know all the characters now as well as you do yourself, for I chose to see with my own eyes, and yesterday, while you were exploring the banks of the stream, I went to Châteaubrun, on the pretext of supporting Constant Galuchet's offer of marriage, and I talked a long while with Mademoiselle Gilberte."

"With her, father?"

"Isn't it perfectly natural that I should want to know the young woman you have chosen without consulting me, and who may perhaps be my daughter some day?"

"O father! father!"

"I found her charming, lovely, modest, humble and proud at once, able to express herself well, lacking neither deportment, good manners nor education, and common sense less than all! She refused with much propriety the suitor I proposed to her. Yes, with gentleness, modesty and dignity combined. I was very well pleased with her! What struck me most was her prudence, her reserve, and the perfect control she has over herself; for I confess that I tried to sting her a little, and even to offend her, to get a sight at the under side of her character. Her father was away; but the mother, that sly little old woman whose son-in-law you aspire to be, was so irritated by my reflections on her small fortune and the perfect suitability of a marriage with Galuchet, that she treated me with contempt; she called me bourgeois; and as I persisted, for the express purpose of pushing her to extremities, she said to me, with her arms akimbo, that her daughter was of too good a family to marry a manufacturer's servant; and that, if the manufacturer's son in person should offer himself, they would look at him twice before accepting such a misalliance. She amused me immensely. But Gilberte smoothed everything over by her calm and decided manner. I assure you that she keeps to the letter the promise she gave you, to be patient, to wait and to suffer everything for love of you."

"Oh! did you make her suffer terribly?" cried Emile, beside himself.

"Yes, a little," coolly replied Monsieur Cardonnet, "and I am very glad I did. Now, I know that she has some character, and I should be very glad to have such a person about me. Such a woman can be very useful in a household, and nothing can be worse than to have a wife who is passive and pig-headed at the same time, who can do nothing but sigh and keep silent like many women I know. It would be a pleasure to me to dispute sometimes with my daughter-in-law, and to discover at once that her views are just, that her will is strong, and that she is well fitted to give you sound advice. Come, Emile," he added, offering his son his hand, "you see, I trust, that I am neither blind nor unjust, and that I wish to make the best of the position in which you have put me."

"O mon Dieu! if you consent to my happiness, father, I will give you a lease of myself, I will become your man of business, your overseer, your workman during as many years as you consider me incapable of taking care of myself. I will submit to all your wishes, and I will work every hour in the day, never complaining, never resisting your most trivial orders."

"And never asking for a salary," laughed Monsieur Cardonnet. "Nonsense, Emile, that is not what I mean, and that rôle of menial would outrage nature. No, no, this is no time to throw dust in my eyes, and I am not the man to make any mistake as to your real intentions. I am not yet so nearly ruined that I can't afford to hire an overseer, and I do not think that I could select one less fitted than you to manage workmen. I want you to be another myself, to help me in the work of planning, to learn for me, to give me your ideas, subject to my right to combat and modify them; in a word, to seek out and invent methods of money-making which I will carry out when they suit me. In this way your constant studies and your fertile imagination can assist me in multiplying your fortune by ten. But to obtain this result, Emile, there must be no working with indifference and absence of interest, as you have been doing for a fortnight past. I am not deceived by this temporary submission, concerted with Gilberte, to extort my consent. I require submission for your whole life. I wish you to be ready to undertake journeys—with your wife, if you please—to examine the progress of the manufacturing industry; in a word, I want you to sign, not on paper before a notary, but on my head and with your heart's blood, and before God, a contract which will wipe out your whole past of dreams and chimeras, and which will pledge your convictions, your will, your faith, your devotion, your religion, your whole future, to the success of my work."

"And suppose I do not believe in your work?" said Emile, turning pale.

"You must believe in it; or, if it is impracticable, let me be the first to cease to believe in it. But do not think to escape me by that détour. If we are forced to strike our tent here, I shall pitch it somewhere else, and I shall not stop until I die. Wherever I may be, whatever I may do, you must follow me, second me, and sacrifice all your theories, all your dreams to me."

"What! even my very thoughts, my belief in the future?" cried Emile in dismay. "O father! you are trying to dishonor me in my own eyes!"

"Do you draw back? Ah! you are not even in love, my poor Emile! But let us stop here. This is enough excitement for your poor head. Take time to reflect. I don't wish you to reply until I question you again. Consult the intensity of your passion, and go and consult your mistress. Go to Châteaubrun, go there every day, every hour in the day; you won't meet Galuchet there again. Inform Gilberte and her parents of the result of this conference. Tell them everything. Tell them that I give my consent to your marriage a year hence on condition that you take now the oath that I demand. Your mistress must know this just as it is; I insist upon it; and if you don't tell her, I will take it upon myself to do it; for I know the way to Châteaubrun now!"

"I understand, father," said Emile, deeply wounded and distressed; "you wish her to hate me if I abandon her, or to despise me if I obtain her at the price of my degradation and apostasy. I thank you for the alternative you offer me, and I admire the inventive genius of your paternal affection."

"Not another word, Emile," replied Monsieur Cardonnet, coldly. "I see that the socialistic craze still exists, and that love will have some difficulty in overcoming it. I trust that Gilberte de Châteaubrun will perform that miracle, so that you may not have to reproach me for refusing to consent to your happiness."

XXVII
SORROWS AND JOYS OF LOVE

Emile locked himself in his room and passed two hours there, a prey to the most violent agitation. The thought of possessing Gilberte without a struggle, without resistance, without the terrible distress of breaking his father's heart, which he had hitherto anticipated with dismay and horror, intoxicated him completely. But suddenly the thought of degrading himself in his own eyes by an unholy oath plunged him into bitter despair; and between these alternatives of joy and anguish he could make up his mind to nothing. Should he dare to go and throw himself at Gilberte's feet and confess everything to her? He could count upon her courage and grandeur of soul. But should he fulfill the duties imposed upon him by his love, if, instead of concealing from her the terrible sacrifice that he might make without a word, he should compel her to bear half of his remorse and his suffering? Had he not said to her a hundred times at Crozant, that, for her and to obtain her hand, he would submit to anything and would recoil at nothing? But he had not then foreseen that his father's infernal genius would appeal to the very force of his love to corrupt and ruin his soul, and he found that he had received an unforeseen blow which had disarmed and bewildered him. Twenty times he was on the point of returning to Monsieur Cardonnet, to ask him to give him his word that he would do nothing, that he would conceal from the family at Châteaubrun the intentions he had revealed to him, until he himself had made up his mind what to do. But an invincible pride held him back. After the contempt his father had manifested for him, by assuming that he was weak enough to apostatize in that way, should he exhibit his irresolution to him and lay bare the depths of his heart, rent by passion as it was?

But who would be the most unjustly punished victim, Gilberte or he, in case honor should carry the day over love? He was blameworthy toward her, for he had destroyed her repose by a fatal passion and had led her on to share his illusions. What had poor Gilberte, the sweet, noble-hearted child, done that she should be snatched from her pure and tranquil existence, and sacrificed at once to the law of inflexible duty? Was it not too late to take cognizance of the reef against which he had steered her? Must he not rather allow himself to be dashed to pieces upon it to save her, and had his conscience the right to recoil from the supreme sacrifice, when it was irrevocably pledged to Gilberte?

And then, if Gilberte should refuse to accept so tremendous a sacrifice, would Emile be any less dishonored in her parents' eyes? Would Monsieur Antoine, who loved and practised equality by instinct, at the dictates of his heart, and also as a necessity of his position, understand how Emile, young as he was, could have made it a religious duty, how an idea could prevail over a sentiment—a pledged oath? And what would Janille think of the slightest hesitation on his part, Janille who, in her humble position, cherished such strange aristocratic prejudices, and took advantage, in her relations with her masters, of the privileges, without giving a thought to the universal right, of equality? She would take him for a miserable fool, or rather she would think that he seized upon that pretext to break his word, and she would banish him from Châteaubrun with anger. Who could say that she would not in time work upon Gilberte's mind so successfully that Gilberte would share her scorn and indignation?

Feeling that he lacked strength to face so cruel a test, Emile tried to write to Gilberte. He began and destroyed twenty letters, and at last, being utterly unable to solve the problem of his situation, he resolved to go and open his heart to his old friend Monsieur de Boisguilbault, and ask his advice.

Meanwhile, Monsieur Cardonnet, acting with all the energy and freedom of his cruel inspiration, wrote Gilberte a letter thus conceived:

"Mademoiselle,

"You must have found me very troublesome and far from polite yesterday. I write to ask your pardon and to confess to a little feint for which you will forgive me, I am sure, when you know my intentions.

"My son loves you, mademoiselle, I know, and I also know that you deign to reciprocate his sentiments. I am happy and proud that it is so, now that I know you. Does it not seem natural to you that, before forming a decision of the utmost importance, I desired to see with my own eyes, and in a certain measure to test the character of the young woman who has in her hands my son's heart and the future of my family?

"And so, mademoiselle, I write to-day to apologize at your feet, and to say to you that one so lovely and amiable as you can dispense with many things, even with fortune, when it is a question of entering a rich and honorable family.

"I ask your permission, therefore, to call upon you once more in order to lay before your father in due form my petition for your hand, in my son's behalf, as soon as my son shall have fully authorized me to do so. This last sentence demands an explanation, and that explanation should properly find a place in this letter.

"I make my consent to my son's happiness dependent upon a single condition, and that condition tends only to make his happiness more complete and to assure its continuance indefinitely. I demand that he abandon those eccentric opinions which would impair our good understanding and would endanger his fortune and consideration in the future. I am sure that you are too sensible and too intelligent to understand the socialistic, levelling doctrines, with the aid of which my dear Emile and his young friends expect to overturn the world in a short time; that the stock phrases of the brotherhood of mankind, equal participation in privileges and enjoyments, and many other technical terms of the young communistic school are absolutely unintelligible to you. I fancy that Emile has never bored you to death with his philosophical declamations, and I find it hard to believe that he could have obtained the happiness of winning your affection by that nonsense. I have no doubt that he will consent to abstain from it forever and to renounce his folly. At that price, provided that he gives me the promise, freely but solemnly, I will consent with all my heart to ratify the fortunate choice that he has made of a perfect creature like yourself. Be kind enough, mademoiselle, to convey to monsieur your father my deep regret at not seeing him, and to inform him of the contents of this letter.

"Pray accept the sentiments of esteem and of paternal affection with which I place my son's cause and my own in your hands."

"VICTOR CARDONNET."

While a servant in gold lace, mounted on a fine horse, carried this letter to Châteaubrun, Emile, over-burdened with anxious care, betook himself on foot to the park of Boisguilbault.

"Well," said the marquis, squeezing his hand hard, "I did not expect you until next Sunday. I thought that you forgot me yesterday, so this is a pleasant surprise. I thank you, Emile. The days are very long since you have been working so faithfully for your father. I can only approve your submission, although I ask myself with some little alarm if it will not take you farther along with him and his principles than you think. But what's the matter, Emile? You are pale, distressed. You haven't had a fall from your horse, have you?"

"I came on foot; but I have had a worse fall," replied Emile, "and I believe that I have come to die here. Listen to me, my friend. I have come to ask you either for the strength to die or the secret of life. An insane joy and a ghastly sorrow are fighting together in my poor heart, in my tortured brain. I have had, ever since I knew you, a secret which I could not, dared not tell you, but which I cannot keep to myself to-day. I do not know whether you will understand it, whether there is within you any chord that will sympathize with my suffering; but I know that you love me, that you are wise and enlightened, and that you adore justice. It is impossible that you should not give me salutary advice."

Thereupon, the young man confided to the old man his whole story, abstaining carefully from mentioning any name, place, or incident which could possibly lead him to suspect that he was referring to Gilberte and her family. He dreaded the effect of the marquis's personal prejudices, and, desiring that his judgment should not be influenced in any way, he so expressed himself as to allow him to think that the object of his love was an entire stranger in the neighborhood and probably lived at Poitiers or Paris. His reserve in not mentioning his mistress's name did not fail to strike Monsieur de Boisguilbault as being in the best of taste.

When Emile had finished he was greatly surprised not to find his grave confidant armed with the stoical courage which he had anticipated and dreaded. The marquis sighed, hung his head, then looked up at the sky: "The truth is eternal!" he said.—But in another moment he let his head fall again upon his breast, saying: "And yet I know what love is."

"You do, my friend?" said Emile; "then you understand me and I rely upon you to save me."

"No, Emile; it is impossible for me to keep you from draining the cup of bitterness. Whichever course you choose, you must drain it to the dregs, and the only question is, in which direction honor lies, for, as for happiness, do not reckon on it, you have lost it forever."

"Ah! I feel it already," said Emile, "and I have passed from a day of bright sunshine and intoxicating bliss into the shadow of death. But the profound and irreparable calamity that forces itself upon my mind, whatever sacrifice I may resolve upon, is this—that my heart has become as ice toward my father, and that, for several hours past, it has seemed to me that I no longer love him, that I no longer dread to wound him, that I no longer feel either respect or esteem for him. O my God, preserve me from this suffering beyond my strength! Hitherto, as you know, despite all the pain and terror he has caused me, I still cherished him and I put forth all the strength of my heart to believe in him. I felt in the very depths of my being that I was still his son and his friend, and to-day it seems to me that the bond of blood is broken forever, and that I am struggling against a strange master, who oppresses me, who weighs on my heart like an enemy, like a ghost! Ah! I remember a dream I had the first night I passed in this neighborhood. I dreamed that my father came and sat on me to suffocate me!—It was horrible; and now that ghastly vision is being realized; my father has placed his knees, his elbows, his feet on my breast; he is trying to tear out my conscience or my heart. He is poking about in my entrails to see what weak spot will give way to him. Oh! it is a devilish invention, a murderous project, which leads him astray. Is it possible that love of gold and worship of success can inspire such thoughts in a father's mind against his child? If you had seen the smile of triumph with which he displayed the sudden inspiration of his peculiar generosity! he was not a protector and adviser, but an adversary who has set a trap and seizes his foe with a fiendish laugh. 'Choose,' he seemed to say, 'and if you die, what does it matter? I shall have triumphed.'—O my God! it is horrible, horrible, to condemn and to hate one's father!"

And poor Emile, crushed by grief, laid his face on the grass on which he was lying and watered it with burning tears.

"Emile," said Monsieur de Boisguilbault, "you can neither hate your father nor be false to your mistress. Tell me, do you set much store by the truth? Can you lie?"

The marquis had touched the right spot. Emile sprang to his feet impetuously.

"No, monsieur, no," he said, "you know that I cannot lie. And of what use is falsehood to cowards? What happiness, what repose can it assure them? If I swear to my father that I have changed my religion, that I believe in ignorance, error, injustice, folly, that I hate God in man, and that I despise man in myself, will some monstrous miracle take place in me? shall I be convinced? shall I find myself suddenly transformed into a placid and supercilious egotist?"

"Perhaps so, Emile! in evil it is only the first step that costs, and whoever has deceived other men, reaches the point where he is able to deceive himself. That has happened often enough to be credible."

"In that case, falsehood to the winds! for I feel that I am a man and I cannot transform myself into a brute of my own free will. My father, with all his craft and all his strength, is blind in this. He believes what he tries to make me believe, and if he should be urged to make my belief his own he could not do it. No interest, no passion could force him to do it, and yet he fancies that he would not despise me on the day that I debased myself so far as to do a dastardly thing of which he knows that he is himself incapable! Does he feel that he must despise me and ruin me in order to confirm himself in his inhuman theories?"

"Do not accuse him of such perversity; he is the man of his epoch—what do I say? he is the man of all epochs. Fanaticism does not reason, and your father is a fanatic; he still burns and tortures heretics, believing that he is doing honor to the truth. Is the priest who comes to us at our last hour and says; 'Believe or you will be damned!' much wiser or more humane? Does not the powerful man who says to the poor clerk or the unfortunate artist; 'Serve me and I will make your fortune,' believe that he is doing him a favor, conferring a benefit on him?"

"But that is corruption!" cried Emile.

"Very good!" rejoined the marquis; "by what means is the world governed to-day, pray tell me? Upon what does the social structure rest? One must needs be very strong, Emile, to protest against it; for when you do, you must make up your mind to be sacrificed."

"Ah! if I were the only victim of my sacrifice," said the young man sorrowfully; "but she! poor, saint-like creature, must she be sacrificed too?"

"Tell me, Emile, if she should advise you to lie, would you still love her?"

"I don't know! I think so! Can I imagine a state of things in which I should not love her, since I love her now?"

"You really love her, I see. Alas! I too have loved!"

"Tell me, then, if you would have sacrificed honor?"

"Perhaps so, if I had been loved."

"Oh! feeble creatures that we are!" cried Emile. "God help me! shall I not find a counsellor, a guide, a help in my distress? Will no one give me strength? Strength, O my God! I implore it on my knees; and never have I prayed with greater faith and ardor: I beseech Thee, give me strength!"

The marquis went to Emile and pressed him to his heart. Tears were rolling down his cheeks; but he held his peace and did not help him.

Emile wept a long time on his breast and felt that he loved that man whom each succeeding test revealed to him as an extremely sensitive rather than really strong man. He loved him the more for it, but he grieved that he did not find in him the energetic and powerful adviser upon whom he had counted in his weakness. He left him at nightfall and the marquis said nothing more to him than: "Come again to-morrow; I must know what you decide upon. I shall not sleep until I see you in a calmer frame of mind."

Emile took the longest road to return to Gargilesse; he made a détour by means of which he passed within a short distance of Châteaubrun by shaded paths which hid him from sight, and when he was quite near the ruins, he stopped, fairly distracted at the thought of what Gilberte must have suffered since his father's heartless visit, and not daring to carry her better news lest he should lose all his courage and virtue.

He had been standing there several minutes, unable to come to any decision, when he heard his name called in an undertone, with an accent that sent a thrill through him; and looking toward a small clump of oaks at the right hand side of the road, he saw in the shadow a dress gliding behind the bushes. He darted in that direction, and when he was far enough among the trees to be in no danger of being seen, Gilberte turned and called him again.

"Come, Emile," she said, when he was at her side. "We haven't an instant to lose. My father is in the field close by. I saw you and recognized you just as you started down this road, and I left him without saying anything while he was talking with the mowers. I have a letter to show you, a letter from Monsieur Cardonnet: but it is too dark for you to read it, so I will repeat it to you almost word for word. I know it by heart."

When she had repeated the substance of the letter, she continued:

"Now, tell me what this means? I think that I understand it, but I must know surely from you."

"O Gilberte!" cried Emile, "I hadn't the courage to come and tell you; but it was God's will that I should meet you and that my fate should be decided by you. Tell me, my Gilberte, my first and last love, do you know why I love you?"

"Apparently," replied Gilberte, abandoning her hand to him, which he pressed against his lips, "it was because you divined in me a heart created to assist you."

"Very good; and can you tell me, my only love, my only treasure on this earth, why your heart gave itself to me?"

"Yes, I can tell you, my dear; because you seemed to me, from the very first day, noble, generous, simple-hearted, humane, in a single word, good, which to my mind is the noblest quality a man can have."

"But there is a passive goodness which in some sort excludes nobility and generosity of sentiment, a yielding weakness, which may be a charming characteristic, but which, under difficult circumstances, compromises with duty and betrays the interests of mankind generally to spare itself and one or two others a little suffering?"

"I understand that, but I do not call weakness and fear goodness. To my mind there is no true goodness without courage, dignity and, above all, devotion to duty. If I esteem you to the point of saying to you, without suspicion and without shame, that I love you, Emile, it is because I know that you are great in heart and mind; it is because you pity the unfortunate and think only of assisting them, because you despise nobody, because you suffer when others suffer, because you would gladly give everything that belongs to you, even your blood, to relieve the poor and the abandoned. That is what I understood about you as soon as you talked before me and with me; and that is why I said to myself: This heart answers mine; these noble thoughts exalt my soul and confirm me in all that I have thought; I detect in this mind, which impresses me and charms me, a light which I am compelled to follow and which guides me toward God himself. That is why, Emile, I felt neither terror nor remorse in yielding to the inclination to love you. It seemed to me that I was performing a duty; and I have not changed my opinion after reading your father's mocking words concerning you."

"Dear Gilberte, you know my heart and my thought; but your adorable goodness, your divine affection ascribe to me as a great merit sentiments which seem to me so natural and so forced upon men by the instinct God has implanted in them, that I should blush not to have them. And yet these sentiments, which must appear in the same light to you, since you yourself entertain them with such innocence and simplicity, are spurned by many people and derided as dangerous errors. There are some who hate and despise them because they haven't them. There are others who, by a strange anomaly, have them to a certain extent, but cannot tolerate the logical deduction from them and their inevitable consequences. Heaven help me! I fear that I cannot explain myself clearly."

"Yes, yes, I understand you. Janille is good like God himself, and, through ignorance or prejudice, that perfect friend rejects my ideas of equality, and tries to convince me that I can love and pity and help the unfortunate without ceasing to think that they are naturally inferior to me."

"Well, my noble-hearted Gilberte, my father has the same prejudices as Janille, from another point of view. While she believes that birth creates a claim to power, he is persuaded that skill, strength and energy create a claim to wealth, and that it is the duty of acquired wealth to go on adding to itself forever, at any cost, and to pursue its way into the future, never allowing the weak to be happy and free."

"Why, that is horrible!" cried Gilberte, ingenuously.

"It is prejudice, Gilberte, and the terrible power of custom. I cannot condemn my father; but tell me—when he asks me to swear that I will espouse his errors, that I will share his passionate ambition and his arrogant intolerance—ought I to obey him? And if your hand is to be had only at that price, if I hesitate an instant, if a profound terror takes possession of me, if I fear that I may become unworthy of you by denying my belief in the future of mankind, do I not deserve some pity from you, some encouragement, or some consolation?"

"O mon Dieu!" said Gilberte, clasping her hands, "you do not understand what is happening to us, Emile! Your father does not wish us ever to be married, and his conduct is full of cunning and shrewdness. He knows well enough that you cannot change your heart and brain as one changes his coat or his horse; and be sure that he would despise you himself, that he would be in despair if he should obtain what he asks. No, no, he knows you too well to believe it, Emile, and he has but little fear of it; but he attains his end all the same. He separates you from me, he tries to make trouble between us, he puts himself in the right and you in the wrong. But he will not succeed, Emile; no, I swear it; your resistance to his demands will increase my affection for you. Ah! yes, I understand it all; but I am above such a paltry stratagem, and nothing shall ever part us."

"O my Gilberte, O my blessed angel!" cried Emile, "tell me what I shall do; I belong to you absolutely. If you bid me, I will bend my neck under the yoke; I will commit all manner of iniquities, all manner of crimes for you."

"I hope not," rejoined Gilberte, mildly yet proudly, "for I should no longer love you if you ceased to be yourself, and I will have no husband whom I cannot respect. Tell your father, Emile, that I will never give you my hand on such conditions, and that, notwithstanding all the contempt he may entertain for me in the bottom of his heart, I will wait until he has opened his eyes to justice and his heart to a more honorable feeling for us two. I will not be the reward of an act of treachery."

"O noble girl!" cried Emile, throwing himself at her knees and ardently embracing them, "I adore you as my God and bless you as my providence! But I have not your courage. What is going to become of us?"

"Alas!" said Gilberte, "we must cease to meet for some time. We must do it; my father and Janille were present when your father's letter arrived. My poor father was dumb with joy, and understood nothing of the conditions at the end. He has expected you all day, and he will continue to expect you every day until I tell him that you are not coming, and then, I trust, that I shall be able to justify your conduct and your absence. But Janille will not excuse you for long; she is already beginning to be surprised and disturbed and irritated because your father seems to await your sanction to come and make a formal request for my hand. If you should tell her now what I insist upon your doing, she would curse you and banish you from my presence forever."

"O my God!" cried Emile, "to see you no more! No, that is impossible!"

"Why, my dear, what change will there be in our relations? Will you cease to love me because you do not see me for a few weeks, a few months, perhaps? Are we proposing to bid each other adieu forever? Do you no longer believe in me? Did we not anticipate obstacles, suffering, a period of separation?"

"No, no," said Emile, "I anticipated nothing. I could not believe that this would happen! I cannot believe it yet!"

"O my dear Emile! do not be weak when I need all my strength. You have sworn to overcome your father's opposition, and you will do it. Here is one of his most tremendous efforts which we have defeated already. He was very sure beforehand that you would not accept dishonor, and he thinks that you will be discouraged so easily! He doesn't know you. You will persist in loving me, and in telling him so, and in proving it to him every day. Come, the hardest part of it is over, since he knows all, and, instead of being indignant and grieved, he accepts the battle with a smile, like a game of cards in which he believes himself the more skilful. So have courage; I will have plenty of it. Do not forget that our union is the work of several years of perseverance and faithful toil. Adieu, Emile, I hear my father's voice coming nearer and I must fly. Stay here, and do not go on until we are well out of the way."

"To see you no more!" murmured Emile; "to hear your voice no more, and still have courage?"

"If you lack courage, Emile, it will be because you do not love me as much as I love you, and because our union does not promise happiness enough to induce you to fight hard and long."

"Oh! I will have courage!" cried Emile, conquered by the noble-hearted girl's energy. "I will force myself to suffer and to wait. You will see, Gilberte, whether the happiness the future promises does not enable me to endure everything in the present. But can we not meet sometimes, by chance, as we met to-day, for instance?"

"Who knows," said Gilberte. "Let us rely on Providence."

"But one can sometimes assist Providence. Can we not invent some means of communication, of sending word to each other?—by writing, for instance?"

"Yes, but then we must deceive those whom we love!"

"O Gilberte! what can we do?"