"That is impossible," Emile replied, bewildered and appalled by such a
suggestion.
"You would be terribly bored!" said the marquis, with a sigh which
found, I know not how, the road to Emile's heart.
"Monsieur," he replied, with spontaneous cordiality, "I will come again
and dine with you when you choose."
"To-morrow, then!" said Monsieur de Boisguilbault in a melancholy tone,
which seemed desirous to contradict the heartiness of his invitation.
"To-morrow, so be it," rejoined the young man.
"Oh no! not to-morrow," said the marquis; "to-morrow will be Monday, a
bad day for me. But Tuesday; will that suit you?"
Emile accepted with very good grace, but in his heart he was dismayed at
the idea of a tête-à-tête of some hours with that dead man, and he
regretted an outburst of compassion which he had been unable to resist.
Monsieur de Boisguilbault meanwhile seemed to lay aside his fear; he
insisted upon escorting his visitor to the gate where he had tied his
horse. "You have a pretty little animal there," he said, examining
Corbeau with the eye of a connoisseur. "He's a _Brenne_, well-bred,
strong and quiet. Are you a good horseman?"
"I have more experience and courage than skill," replied Emile; "I have
never had time to learn equestrianism by rule, but I intend to do so as
soon as I have a favorable opportunity."
"It is a noble and useful exercise," said the marquis; "if you care to
come and see me now and then, I will place what little I know at your
service."
Emile accepted the offer courteously, but he could not forbear a
significant glance at the slender individual who put himself forward as
a professor.
"Is this fellow well trained?" Monsieur de Boisguilbault inquired, as he
patted Corbeau's neck.
"He is docile and willing, but otherwise he's as ignorant as his
master."
"I don't care very much for animals," said the marquis; "however, I
sometimes give a little attention to horses and I will show you some
very good pupils of mine. Will you allow me to try the qualities of
yours?"
Emile made haste to turn his courser for the marquis to mount; but he
was so afraid of an accident when he saw how slowly and painfully the
old man hoisted himself into the saddle, that he could not refrain from
warning him, even at the risk of insulting him, that Corbeau was a
little restive and mettlesome.
The marquis received the warning without taking offence, but persisted
none the less in his plan, with comical gravity. Emile trembled for his
venerable host, and Corbeau quivered with anger and dread under that
strange hand. He even tried to rebel, and from the marquis's gentle
manner of dealing with his rebellion, you would have said that he was
rather ill at ease himself. "There, there, my boy," he said, patting his
neck, "let's not get excited."
But that was only a consequence of his theories, which forbade the
maltreatment of a horse as the crime of _lèse-science_. He gradually
quieted his steed without punishing him, and riding him about his great
bare gravelled courtyard as if it were a riding-school, he tried him at
all his gaits, and with extraordinary ease made him go through all the
various evolutions and changes of foot which he would have required from
a well-schooled horse. Corbeau seemed to submit without effort; but when
the marquis turned him over to Emile his distended nostrils and his
quarters, dripping with sweat, revealed the mysterious power to which
that firm hand and those long legs had subjected him.
[Illustration: _MONSIEUR DE BOISGUILBAULT TRIES
EMILE'S HORSE._
_He gradually quieted his steed without punishing him, and riding him
about his great bare gravelled courtyard as if it were a riding-school,
he tried him at all his gaits, and with extraordinary ease made him go
through all the various evolutions and changes of foot which he would
have required from a well-schooled horse._]
"I had no idea that he knew so much!" said Emile, by way of flattering
the marquis.
"He's a very intelligent beast," was the modest reply.
When Emile was in the saddle, Corbeau reared and plunged furiously, as
if to revenge himself upon a less experienced rider for the wearisome
lesson he had received.
"That's a strange _dead man_!" said Emile to himself, as he rode rapidly
along the path that led him back to Jean Jappeloup, thinking of that
asthmatic marquis, who was covered with confusion before a child, and
subdued a spirited horse. "Can it be that corpse-like face and that dead
voice belong to a character of iron?"
He found the carpenter exceedingly impatient and anxious; but when he
had given him an account of the conference, he said:
"That is first-rate; I am obliged to you and I place my interests in
your hands. But a man must do what he can to help himself, and that is
what I propose to do. While you go and write to the authorities, I will
go and see them. Your writing will take time, and I cannot sleep until I
have embraced my friends at Gargilesse in broad daylight, after vespers,
on the steps of our church. I am off to the village----"
"And suppose you are arrested on the way?"
"I shan't be arrested on a road which I know and the gendarmes don't. I
will arrive at night and slip into the king's attorney's kitchen. His
cook is my niece. I have a good tongue and I will explain my position; I
will tell my reasons for what I do, and before sunset to-morrow I will
enter my village with my head in the air."
Without awaiting Emile's reply, the carpenter darted off like a flash
and disappeared in the bushes.
XII
INDUSTRIAL DIPLOMACY
When Emile informed his father that the carpenter had found a protector,
and told him how he had employed his day, Monsieur Cardonnet became
thoughtful, and for some moments maintained a silence as problematical
as Monsieur de Boisguilbault's pauses and sighs. But the apparent
coldness of the two men indicated no resemblance between their
respective characters. In the marquis it was due to instinct, habit and
incapacity, whereas, in the manufacturer it was a quality acquired by a
powerful exertion of the will. In the marquis it was due to the slow and
embarrassed working of the mind; in the other, on the contrary, it
served as a veil and a curb to the activity of a too impetuous mind. In
a word, it was assumed in Monsieur Cardonnet. It was a borrowed dignity,
a rôle assumed in order to make an impression on other men; and, while
he seemed thus to hold himself in check, he was calculating feverishly
the best method of venting the wrath that was about to explode, and its
effects. And so, while Monsieur de Boisguilbault's vexed irresolution
resulted only in a few mysterious monosyllables, Monsieur Cardonnet's
deceptive calm covered a storm, the explosion of which he postponed to
suit himself, but which found vent sooner or later in significant and
unambiguous words. It may be said that the life of one was nourished by
its energetic manifestations, whereas the other's wore itself out in
repressed emotions.
Monsieur Cardonnet was very well aware that his son was not to be easily
convinced, and that it was impossible to intimidate him by violence or
threats. He had come in collision too frequently with that energetic
will, he had had too much experience of his power of resistance,
although it had hitherto been only in regard to trivial matters
pertaining to young men, not to realize that it was essential first of
all to inspire a well-founded respect. He made few false moves therefore
in his presence, but, on the contrary, kept an extremely close watch
upon himself.
"Well, father, do you regret poor Jean's good luck?" said Emile, "and do
you blame me for meeting his protector's kind intentions half-way? I
felt absolutely certain of your approval, and this suspicious carpenter
must be taught to know you, to respect you, yes, and to like you."
"All this," said Monsieur Cardonnet, "is mere talk. You must write in
his behalf at once. My secretary is busy, but I presume that you will be
willing to take his place sometimes in confidential matters."
"Oh! with all my heart," cried Emile.
"Write then, and I will dictate."
And Monsieur Cardonnet dictated several letters overflowing with zeal
and solicitude for the delinquent, and couched in terms of rare
propriety and dignity. He went so far as to offer himself as security
for Jean Jappeloup, in case--although he said it was impossible--that
Monsieur de Boisguilbault, who had anticipated his own intentions,
should recede from his undertaking. When these letters were signed and
sealed, he bade Emile despatch them at once by a messenger, and added:
"Now I have done as you wished; I have interrupted my business so that
your protégé should not be subjected to the slightest delay. I return
to my work. We shall dine in an hour, and then you must stay with your
mother, whom you have neglected a little to-day. But to-night, when the
men have stopped work, I trust that you will hold yourself at my
disposal and that I may be able to talk with you on serious subjects."
"I am at your service, father, this evening and my whole life, as you
know very well," said Emile, embracing him.
Monsieur Cardonnet congratulated himself for not yielding to an angry
impulse; he had recovered all his influence over Emile. In the evening,
when the factory was closed and the workmen dismissed, he betook himself
to a part of his garden which the flood had failed to reach, and walked
there a long while alone, reflecting as to what he should say to this
child who was so hard to manage, not intending to summon him until he
should feel that he was in perfect control of himself.
The feverish fatigue which follows a day of giving orders and
overlooking others, the spectacle of devastation which he still had
before his eyes, and perhaps the state of the atmosphere as well, were
ill adapted to soothe the nervous irritation which had become habitual
with Monsieur Cardonnet. The temperature had indulged in such a sudden
and violent change that the result was abnormal and enervating. The warm
air was laden with vapors, as in November, although it was midsummer.
But it was not the cool, transparent mist of autumn, but rather a
suffocating smoke which exhaled from the ground. The path where the
manufacturer strode was bordered on one side by rose-bushes and other
brilliant flowers. On the other there were only débris, boards piled in
disorder, huge stones brought thither by the water; and from that point,
at which the flood had stopped, to the bank of the stream, several acres
of garden, covered with black mud streaked with red gravel, resembled an
American forest flooded and half-uprooted by the overflow of the Ohio or
Mississippi. The young trees that had been overthrown lay with their
branches interlaced in pools of stagnant water, which could find no
outlet under those fortuitous dikes. Beautiful plants, crushed and
besmirched, tried in vain to rise, but remained lying in the mud, while,
in the case of some others, the abundant moisture had already caused
superb flowers to bloom triumphantly upon half-broken stalks. Their
delicious fragrance struggled against the brackish odor of the slime,
and when a faint breeze raised the mist, that fragrance and that strange
odor reached the nostrils alternately. A multitude of frogs, which
seemed to have fallen with the rain, were croaking with disgusting
energy among the reeds; and the roar of the factory, which it was not
yet possible to stop, so that the machinery was constantly running and
wearing itself out uselessly, made Monsieur Cardonnet feverishly
impatient. Meanwhile the nightingale sang in the thickets that had been
left unharmed, and saluted the full moon with the nonchalance of a lover
or an artist. It was a medley of happiness and consternation, of
ugliness and beauty, as if omnipotent Nature laughed at losses ruinous
to man but trifling to herself, who needed but a day of sunlight and a
cool, damp night to repair them.
Despite Cardonnet's efforts to concentrate his thoughts upon the
interests of his family, he was disturbed and distracted at every turn
by his anxiety concerning his pecuniary interests. "Infernal river," he
thought, glaring involuntarily at the torrent that flowed proudly and
mockingly at his feet, "when will you abandon an impossible fight? I
shall find a way to chain you up and curb you at last. More stone, more
iron, and you will flow within the bounds that my hand marks out for
you. Oh! I shall succeed in overcoming your reckless power, in
anticipating your whims, in stimulating your languor and crushing your
temper. The genius of man is bound to triumph over the blind rebellion
of nature on this spot. Twenty more men, and you will feel the curb.
Money, and more money! It takes a small mountain of money to stop
mountains of water. It is all a question of time and opportunity. My
product must come to hand on the appointed day, to meet my expenses. A
month of carelessness or discouragement would ruin everything. Credit is
a pit that one must dig without hesitation, because at the bottom lies
the treasure of profit. I must dig on! I must keep digging! The man is a
fool and a coward who stops on the way and allows his plans and his
outlay to be swallowed up in space. No, no, treacherous stream, feminine
terror, lying predictions of the envious, you shall not frighten me, you
shall not induce me to abandon my work, when I have made so many
sacrifices on account of it, when the sweat of so many men has already
flowed in vain, when my brain has already expended so much effort and my
intelligence has given birth to so many miracles! Either this stream
shall draw my dead body into its slime, or it shall submissively carry
the results of my toil!"
And in the painful tension of his faculties, Monsieur Cardonnet stamped
his foot on the bank with a sort of frenzied enthusiasm.
Meanwhile the thought came to his mind that from his own blood had come
forth an obstacle more alarming for the future than storms and the
river. His son could ruin or, at least, sadly embarrass everything in a
day. However intense the man's earnestness and the jealousy of his
character, he could never be satisfied to work for himself alone, and
there is no capitalist who does not live in the future by virtue of his
family ties. Cardonnet felt a fierce affection for his son in the depths
of his heart. Oh! if he could only recast that rebellious mind and
identify Emile with his own life! How proud he would be, what a feeling
of security he would enjoy! But this boy, who had superior faculties for
anything except what his father desired, seemed to have conceived a
conscientious contempt for wealth, and it was necessary to find some
joint in his armor, some vulnerable point at which that terrible passion
could be forced into his system. Cardonnet was well aware what chords
must be touched; but could he counteract or change the nature of his own
mental habit and his own talent sufficiently to produce no discord? The
instrument was at once powerful and delicate. The slightest lack of
harmony in the theory he was about to expound would be detected by a
watchful and perspicacious judge.
In a word it was necessary that Cardonnet, a man of violent temper and
at the same time of much adroitness, in whom, however, the habit of
domination was more powerful than the habit of strategy, should fight a
terrific battle with himself, stifle every violent impulse, and speak
the language of a conviction that was not altogether genuine. At last,
feeling calmer, and deeming himself sufficiently prepared, he sent for
Emile and returned to await his coming on the spot where he had lately
been absorbed in a long and painful meditation.
"Well, father," said the young man, taking his hand affectionately and
with evident emotion, for he felt that the moment was at hand when he
should know which was destined to carry the day in his heart, filial
affection, or terror and reproof; "well, father, here I am, ready to
receive the communication you promised me. I am twenty-one years old,
and I feel that I am becoming a man. You have delayed a long while to
set me free from the law of silence and blind confidence; my heart has
submitted as long as it can, but my common sense is beginning to speak
very loudly, and I await your paternal voice to reconcile them. You will
do it, I have no doubt, and throw open the doors of life to me; for thus
far I have done nothing but dream and wait and look. I have been
assailed by strange doubts, and I have suffered much already without
daring to mention it to you. Now you will cure me, you will give me the
key to this labyrinth in which I have gone astray; you will mark out for
me a path to the future which I shall delight to follow; happy and proud
if I can walk beside you!"
"My son," replied Monsieur Cardonnet, somewhat disturbed by this
effusive exordium, "you have acquired, _yonder_, a habit of using
emphatic language which I cannot imitate. This manner of talking is
ill-advised, in that the mind gets heated and excited, and soon goes
astray in an outburst of exaggerated emotion. I know that you love me
and believe in me. You know that I cherish you above all things, and
that your future is my only aim, my only thought. Let us talk
reasonably, then, and coolly, if it is possible. Let us first of all
review your brief and happy life. You were born in comfort, and as I
worked hard and constantly, wealth took its place under your feet, so
quickly and so naturally that you hardly noticed it. Each year increased
the possibilities of your future career, and you were hardly more than a
child when I began to think of your old age and of the future of your
children. You showed a praiseworthy disposition to work--but only at
useless arts, drawing, music, poetry,--ornamental accomplishments. It
was my duty to combat and I did combat the development of these artistic
instincts, when I saw that they threatened to stifle more essential and
more solid faculties.
"By creating your fortune, I created duties for you. The fine arts are
the blessing and the treasure of the poor man; but wealth demands powers
of a sterner temper to support the weight of the obligations it imposes.
I questioned myself; I saw what my own education lacked, and it seemed
to me that we ought to complement each other, since we were, by the law
of blood, partners in the same enterprise. I was well versed in the
industrial theories to which I had devoted myself; but as I had not had
experience in putting them in practice early enough in life, as I had
not studied the practical part of my vocation and could solve problems
in geometry and mechanics only by instinct and a sort of divination, I
was likely to make mistakes, to start upon false scents, to allow myself
to be led astray by my own dreams or those of other people, in a word,
to lose, in addition to large sums of money, days, weeks, years, that is
to say, time, which is the most valuable of all forms of capital. I
determined therefore that you should be instructed in the mechanical
sciences immediately after leaving school, and you forced yourself to
work hard and faithfully, despite your youth. But your mind soon chose
to take a flight which carried you away from my goal.
"The study of the exact sciences led you, against my will and your own,
to a passion for the natural sciences, and, starting off at random, you
thought of nothing but astronomy and of dreaming of worlds to which we
can never go. After a contest in which I was not the stronger, I made
you abandon those sciences, although I was not able to bring you back to
a healthy and profitable application to the others; and, abandoning the
idea of making you a mechanical engineer, I looked about to see in what
way you could be useful to me. When I say useful to me, I assume that
you do not mistake the sense in which I use the words. As my fortune was
yours, it was my duty to train you to the work which will probably wear
my life out to your advantage before long; that is in the natural order
of things. I am happy to do my duty, and I shall persist in doing it in
spite of you, if necessary. But should not good sense and paternal
affection impel me to make you capable of preserving and defending that
fortune, at all events, if not of developing it? My ignorance of the law
had placed me a hundred times at the mercy of foolish or treacherous
advice. I had been victimized by those parasites of pettifoggery who,
having neither any genuine knowledge nor any healthy understanding of
business, demand blind submission from their clients, and endanger their
most valuable interests by folly, obstinacy, presumption, false tactics,
useless subtleties and the rest. Thereupon, I said to myself that with a
keen, quick intellect like yours, you could learn the law in a few years
and obtain a sufficiently accurate idea of the details of procedure to
need no other guide, no other adviser, and, above all, no other
confidant than yourself. I had no desire to make of you an orator, an
advocate, an assize court comedian, but I asked you to obtain your
certificates and pass your examinations. You promised to do it!"
"Well, father, have I ever rebelled, have I broken my promise?" said
Emile, surprised to hear Monsieur Cardonnet speak with superb and as it
were insulting contempt of that profession of which he had done his best
to extol the honor and brilliancy, when it was a question of persuading
his son to study it.
"Emile," rejoined the manufacturer, "I do not propose to reproach you;
but you have a passive, apathetic way of submitting, that is a hundred
times worse than resistance. If I could have foreseen that you would
waste your time, I would very quickly have thought of something else;
for, as I have told you, time is the capital of capital, and here are
two years of your life which have had no result in the way of developing
your faculties and therefore none in the way of assuring your future."
"I flatter myself that the contrary is true," said Emile, with a smile
of mingled sweetness and pride, "and I can assure you, father, that I
have worked hard, read a great deal, thought a great deal--I dare not
say learned a great deal--since I have been at Poitiers."
"Oh! I know very well what you have read and learned, Emile! I should
have found it out from your letters even if I had not learned
it from my correspondent; and I tell you that all this fine
philosophico-metaphysico-politico-economical learning is of all things
the vainest, the falsest, the most chimerical and the most ridiculous,
not to say the most dangerous, for a young man. It has gone so far that
your last letters would have made me roar with laughter as a judge, if I
had not felt a mortal disappointment as a father; and it was precisely
because I saw that you had mounted a new hobby-horse and were about to
take your flight through space once more that I resolved to summon you
here, perhaps for a time only, perhaps for good, if I do not succeed in
restoring you to your senses."
"Your sarcasm and your contempt are very cruel, father, and grieve my
heart more than they wound my self-esteem. That I am not in full accord
with you is possible. I am prepared to hear you deny all my beliefs; but
that you should repulse me with ironical jeers, when, for the first time
in my life, I feel a longing and have the courage to pour all my
thoughts and all my emotions into your bosom--that is a very bitter
thing to me, and does me more harm than you think."