Chapter II: Part 2

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?"