result of a struggle in which a few triumph to the detriment of the vast
majority who lose their courage and succumb, will themselves disappear
in the natural course of things. Then you will find so much zeal and
love about you that you will no longer be obliged to wear yourself out
alone in order to stimulate all the others. How could it be otherwise
to-day, and of what do you complain? Under the law of selfishness each
one gives of his strength and his energy in proportion to the share of
the profits he receives. A marvellous result, truly, that you, who
receive all the profit, should be the only zealous, assiduous worker,
while the paid worker, who receives in your employ a trifle more alms
than he would receive elsewhere, brings you only a little more of his
zeal. You pay higher wages--that is a fine thing, certainly, and you are
more to be commended than the majority of your rivals, who would prefer
to lower them; but you have it in your power to increase the zeal of
your employés tenfold, a hundred-fold, to kindle as by a miracle the
flame of devotion, the intelligence of the heart in those benumbed and
paralyzed creatures, and you do not choose to do it!--Why not, father?
It is not that you care for the enjoyments of luxury; for you enjoy
nothing unless it be the intoxication of your plans and your triumphs.
Very well; do away with your individual profit; you have only to do it,
and I will abandon my claim to it with the greatest joy! Let us be
simply the trustees and managers of the common profits. This fortune
that you dream of, of which you dare not tell me the amount, will so
surpass your anticipations and your hopes, that you will soon have the
means to give your workmen moral, intellectual and physical pleasures
which will make new men of them, complete men, true men! and such men I
have never seen anywhere. All equilibrium is destroyed; I see only
knaves and brutes, tyrants and slaves, powerful and greedy eagles and
stupid and cowardly sparrows destined to be their prey. We live
according to the blind law of the savage nature; the code of savage
instinct which governs the brute is still the soul of our pretended
civilization; and we dare to say that the manufacturing industry will
save the world without departing from that path! No, no, father, all
these declamations of political economy are false and misleading! If you
compel me to be rich and powerful, as you have said so many times, and
if, by reason of the vulgar influence of money, the adorers of money
send me to represent their interests in the counsels of the nation, I
shall say what I have in my mind; I shall speak, and I suppose that I
shall speak only once: for they will put me to silence or force me to
leave the hall; but people will remember what I say, and they who chose
me will have reason to repent their choice!"
This discussion was prolonged far into the night, and it will be readily
understood that Emile did not convert his father. Monsieur Cardonnet was
not evil-minded, nor impious, nor voluntarily blameworthy toward God or
man. Indeed, certain practical virtues were very strongly accentuated in
him, and he had great talent in one special field. But his iron will was
the result of the entire absence of idealism in his character.
He loved his son but could not understand him. He was kind and attentive
to his wife, but he had never failed to stifle in her any thought
capable of interfering with his daily routine. He would have liked to be
able to reduce Emile to subjection in the same way; but, realizing that
was impossible, he was intensely annoyed and tears of vexation moistened
his burning eyes more than once during that stormy interview. He
sincerely believed that he was logically right; that his ideas were the
only really admissible and practicable ones.
He asked himself by what fatality he happened to have a dreamer and a
Utopian for a son, and more than once he raised his powerful arms to
heaven, asking with indescribable pain what crime he had committed that
such a calamity should be visited upon him.
Emile, worn out by fatigue and disappointment, was moved to pity at last
for that wounded heart and that incurable blindness.
"Let us talk no more about these matters, father," he said, wiping away
his own tears, which had their source farther down in his heart; "we
cannot become identified with each other. I can only continue to show my
submission and my filial love, thinking no more of myself and of a
happiness which I sacrifice to you. What are your orders? Shall I return
to Poitiers and go on with my studies until I pass my examinations?
Shall I stay here and act as your secretary and steward? I will close my
eyes and work like a machine so long as it is possible for me to do it.
I will look upon myself as your employé; I will enter your service----"
"And you will cease to look upon me as your father?" said Monsieur
Cardonnet. "No, Emile; stay with me, but be perfectly free. I give you
three months, during which, living as you will in the bosom of your
family, far from the declamations of the beardless philosophers who have
ruined you, you will recover your senses unassisted. You are blessed
with a robust temperament, and it may be that absorbing mental labor has
overheated your brain. I look upon you as a sick child whom I have taken
into the country to cure. Walk, ride, hunt; in a word, amuse yourself in
order to reestablish your equilibrium, which seems to me more disturbed
than that of society. I hope that you will abate your intolerance when
you see that your home is not a hotbed of wickedness and corruption.
Before long, perhaps, you will tell me voluntarily that profitless
musing bores you, and that you feel that you must help me."
Emile bowed, without speaking, and left his father, after embracing him
with a feeling of profound sorrow. Monsieur Cardonnet, having been able
to do nothing better than temporize, tossed about a long while in his
bed, and finally fell asleep, saying, to himself, contrary to his
custom, that one must sometimes rely more upon Providence than upon
oneself.
XIV
FIRST LOVE
The energetic Cardonnet, entirely engrossed by his daily occupations, or
sufficiently self-controlled not to allow the slightest trace of his
inward suffering to appear on the surface, resumed his air of glacial
dignity on the following day.
Emile, overwhelmed with dismay and sadness, strove to smile in presence
of his mother, who was disturbed by his distraught air and altered
expression. But she was so overawed that she lacked even the penetration
peculiar to her sex. All her faculties had grown rusty, and at forty she
was already an octogenarian, mentally speaking. And yet she loved her
husband, as the result of a need of loving which had never been
satisfied. She had no definite grievances to allege against him, for he
had never openly maltreated her or made a slave of her; but every
impulse of the heart or the imagination had always been stifled in her
by irony and a sort of contemptuous pity, and she had accustomed herself
to entertain no thought or desire outside of the circle drawn about her
by an inflexible hand.
To oversee all the details of the housekeeping had become something more
than a wise and self-imposed occupation. It had been made a law of her
existence, so serious and so sacred that she might have been compared to
a Roman matron in respect to the trivial solemnity of domestic toil, if
in no other respect.
Thus she presented in her person the strange anachronism of a woman of
our own time, capable of reasoning and feeling, but who had insanely
forced herself to retrograde some thousands of years in order to make
herself like one of those women of ancient times whose glory it was to
proclaim the inferiority of their sex.
The strange and sad feature of her position was that she did not realize
it, and that she acted as she did--so she would say in a whisper--for
the sake of peace. And she did not obtain it! The more she immolated
herself, the more she bored her lord and master.
Nothing weakens and destroys the intelligence so quickly as blind
submission.
Madame Cardonnet was an example of this truth.
Her brain had shrivelled in slavery, and her husband, not realizing that
it was the result of his domination, had reached the point of despising
her in secret.
Several years earlier Cardonnet had been terribly jealous, and his wife,
although faded and worn, still trembled at the idea that he might impute
a vicious thought to her. She had acquired the habit of not listening or
looking, so that she could say confidently when any man was mentioned to
her: "I didn't look at him; I don't know what he said; I paid no
attention to him." The utmost that she dared do was look at her son and
question him; for, as to her husband, if she was made anxious by the
unusual pallor of his cheeks or the increased severity of his glance, he
would speedily compel her to lower her eyes, saying: "In heaven's name,
what is there extraordinary about me that you should stare at me as if
you didn't know me?" Sometimes, at night, he would notice that she had
been weeping, and he would become affectionate once more after his
fashion. "Tell me, what's the matter? Is something troubling the poor
little woman? Would you like a new shawl? Would you like me to take you
to drive? No? Then it must be because the camellias are frozen? We will
have some sent down from Paris that are more hardy and so beautiful that
you won't regret the old ones." And, in truth, he lost no opportunity to
gratify his helpmeet's innocent tastes, at any price. He even required
her to dress more richly than she cared to do. It was his idea that
wives are children who must be rewarded for being good with toys and
gimcracks.
"It is certain," Madame Cardonnet would say to herself at such times,
"that my husband loves me dearly, and he is very attentive to me. What
have I to complain of, and what is the reason that I always feel
depressed?"
She saw that Emile was gloomy and downcast, and she could not extort the
secret of his trouble from him. She questioned him at tedious length
concerning his health, and advised him to go to bed early. She had a
feeling that it was something more serious than the result of insomnia;
but she said to herself that it was much better to allow a sorrow to
fall asleep in silence than to keep it alive by trying to allay it.
That evening Emile, as he was walking near the entrance to the village,
met Jean Jappeloup, who had returned several hours earlier and was
joyously celebrating his arrival with several friends, in the doorway of
a rustic dwelling.
"Well," said the young man holding out his hand, "are your affairs
settled?"
"With the authorities, yes, monsieur, but not with poverty. I made my
submission, I argued as well as I could with the king's attorney and he
listened to me patiently; he said a few stupid things by way of sermon;
but he's not a bad fellow and he was just about to dismiss me, saying
that he would do his best to prevent any prosecution, when your letters
arrived. He read them without making a sign; but he paid some attention
to them, for he said to me: 'Well, set your mind at rest, settle down
somewhere, don't poach any more, find some work, and everything will be
all right.'--So here I am; my friends have received me warmly, as you
see, for I have already been asked to lodge in this house while I look
about. But I must give my mind to my most pressing necessity, which is
to earn something to buy clothes with, and before night I am going to
make the tour of the village, to look for work among the good people."
"Listen, Jean," said Emile, walking beside him; "I have no large amount
of money at my disposal; my father makes me an allowance, but I don't
know whether he will continue it now that I am to live at home; however,
I have a few hundred francs for which I have no use here, and I beg you
to accept them, to buy clothes and provide for your first needs. You
will make me feel aggrieved if you refuse. In a few days your
ill-founded anger against my father will have passed away and you will
come and ask him for work; or better still, authorize me to ask him for
you; he will pay you higher wages than you will get anywhere else, and
he will relax the severity of his original terms, I am sure; so----"
"No, Monsieur Emile," the carpenter replied. "I will take neither your
money nor your father's work. I don't know how Monsieur Cardonnet treats
you, nor how much money he gives you, but I know that a young man like
you is always embarrassed when he hasn't a piece of gold or silver in
his pocket to gratify his whims when occasion offers. You have done
enough for me; I am well pleased with you, and, if I find an
opportunity, you will see that you didn't offer your hand to an ingrate.
But as for serving your father in any way, never! I was very near
committing that folly and God would not permit it. I forgive him for the
way in which he caused my arrest by Caillaud, but it was a contemptible
act! However, as he may not have known that boy is my godson, and as he
has since written kindly of me to the king's attorney to obtain my
pardon, I must think no more of my grievance. In any event I would
trample it under foot now because of you. But as for helping to build
your factories--no! you don't need my arms, you will find plenty of
others, and you know my reasons. What you are doing is a bad thing and
will ruin many people, if it doesn't ruin everybody some day. Already
your dams and your reservoirs are drowning all the small mills on the
stream above you. Already your piles of stone and dirt have ruined the
meadows all around, for the flood carried them all onto your neighbors'
land. Thus, you see, the rich man injures the poor man even against his
will. I don't choose to have it said that Jean Jappeloup lent his hand
to the ruin of his neighborhood. Don't say any more about it. I mean to
take up my trade again in a small way, and I shall have no lack of work.
Now that your great enterprises employ all my fellows, no one in the
village can find anybody to work for him. I shall inherit their
customers but must give them back when your work fails. For mark my
words; your father greases his wheels by paying a high price for the
sweat of the workingman's brow to-day; but he won't be able to continue
long on that footing, or his expenses will exceed his profits. The day
will come--and perhaps it's not far away!--when he will run his
factories at a loss, and then, woe to those who have sacrificed their
position on the strength of fine promises! They will be forced to do
whatever your father chooses and the time will have come to make them
disgorge. You don't believe it? So much the better for you! that proves
that you won't be at all responsible for the trouble that is brewing;
but you won't be able to prevent it. So good night, my fine fellow!
don't speak in my behalf to your father, for I should give you the lie.
The good Lord has helped me out of my trouble; I propose to please Him
in everything now and to do only such things as my conscience will never
blame me for. Being poor myself, I shall be more useful to the poor than
your father with all his wealth. I will build houses for my equals and
they will make more by paying me small wages than by earning big wages
with you. You will see that I am right, Monsieur Emile, and everybody
will tell you so some time; but it will be too late to repent of having
put their necks in the halter!"
Emile could not overcome the carpenter's obstinacy, and he returned home
even more depressed than when he went out. That incorruptible
workingman's predictions caused him a vague alarm.
As he approached the factory he met his father's secretary, Monsieur
Galuchet, a stout young man, very talented in the way of ciphering, but
of very limited capacity in other respects.
It was the hour of repose and Galuchet was taking advantage of it to
fish for gudgeons. This was his favorite pastime; and when he had a
goodly number in his basket, he would count them, and adding the count
to the total of his previous catches, would say proudly as he wound up
his line:
"This is the seven hundred and eighty-second gudgeon I have caught with
this hook in two months. I am very sorry I didn't count what I caught
last year."
Emile leaned against a tree to watch him fish. The fellow's phlegmatic
watchfulness and puerile patience disgusted him. He could not understand
how he could be perfectly happy just because he had a salary that placed
him out of reach of want. He tried to make him talk, saying to himself
that he might perhaps find beneath that thick envelope some ray of
light, some sympathetic chord which would make that young man's society
a source of comfort to him in his distress. But Monsieur Cardonnet
selected his subordinates with an unerring eye and hand. Constant
Galuchet was a fool; he understood nothing, knew nothing outside of
arithmetic and bookkeeping. When he had been at work at his figures for
twelve hours he had just enough reasoning power left to catch gudgeons.
However, Emile by mere chance led him to say certain things that cast an
ominous light into his mind. That human machine was capable of reckoning
profits and losses and of figuring the balance at the foot of a sheet of
paper. While exhibiting the most complete ignorance of Monsieur
Cardonnet's plans and resources, Constant observed that the wages of the
men were exorbitant and that, if they were not reduced by half in two
months, the funds invested in the enterprise would be insufficient.
"But that doesn't disturb monsieur your father," he added; "you pay your
workmen as you feed a horse, according to the amount of work you require
of him. When you double his work you double his pay, as you double the
quantity of oats; then, when you're no longer in such a hurry, you cut
down the pay or the rations proportionately."
"My father won't do that," said Emile; "he might with horses, but not
with men."
"Don't say that, monsieur," rejoined Galuchet; "monsieur your father
knows what he's about, he won't do anything foolish, never fear."
And he carried off his gudgeons, delighted to have had an opportunity to
set the son's mind at rest concerning the father's apparent imprudence.
"Oh! if that should be true!" thought Emile, as he walked excitedly
along the bank of the stream; "if it should prove that this temporary
generosity conceals inhuman cunning! Suppose that Jean's suspicions were
well-founded! that my father, while following the blind doctrines of
society, has no greater store of virtue or intelligence than other
speculators have, to diminish the disastrous results of his ambition!
But no, it is impossible; my father is kind-hearted, he loves his
fellow-men."
But Emile had death in his heart; the thought of all this waste of
energy and of life for the benefit of his future made him recoil in
horror and disgust. He wondered how it was that all these men who were
working to build his fortune did not hate him, and he was ready to hate
himself in order to balance the scales of justice.
On the following day, he was still profoundly distressed, but he hailed
with something like delight the day which he was to devote in part to
Monsieur de Boisguilbault, because he had made up his mind to go and
pass the day at Châteaubrun without saying a word to anybody. As he
mounted his horse, Monsieur Cardonnet made divers satirical remarks:
"You are starting early to go to Boisguilbault! it would seem that the
amiable marquis's society has charms for you; I should never have
suspected it, and I can't imagine what secret method you have of keeping
awake after each of his remarks."
"If this is your way of informing me that you do not like what I am
doing," said Emile, impatiently preparing to dismount, "I am ready to
give it up, although I accepted an invitation for to-day."
"I not like it!" rejoined the manufacturer; "why it is a matter of
perfect indifference to me whether you are bored there or somewhere
else. As your father's house is the place where you find least pleasure,
I am anxious that you should derive some recompense from the society of
the noble personages with whom you associate."
Under any other circumstances, Emile would have postponed his departure
in order to prove, or at least to make him believe that the rebuke was
not merited; but he was beginning to understand that it was his father's
tactics to rally him when he wished to make him talk; and as he felt
invincibly drawn toward Châteaubrun he determined not to allow himself
to be trapped.
Although nothing in the world stung him more keenly than the ridicule of
those whom he loved, he made an effort to seem to take it in good part.
"I anticipate so much pleasure at Monsieur de Boisguilbault's," he said,
"that I propose to go there by the longest road, and my détour will
probably extend to five or six leagues, unless you need me, father, in
which case I will gladly sacrifice to you the delights of a ride in the
hot sun over perpendicular roads."
But Monsieur Cardonnet was not deceived by his stratagem and replied
with a clear and penetrating glance:
"Go where the devil of youth drives you! I am not disturbed about you,
for a very good reason."
"Very good," said Emile to himself as he galloped away, "if you're not
disturbed about me, I won't disturb myself about your threats."
And, feeling the fire of anger blazing in his breast, in spite of his
efforts, he indulged in a long, hard run to calm himself.
"O God," he said after some time, "forgive me for these angry outbreaks,
which I cannot repress. Thou knowest that my heart is full of love, and
that it asks nothing better than to respect and venerate my father, who
makes it his business to stifle all its impulses and to freeze all its
affections."
Whether from hesitation or from prudence, he made a long detour before
he turned his horse's head in the direction of Châteaubrun; and when,
from the crest of a hill, he saw that he was a long distance from the
ruins, which stood out against the sky on the horizon, he so bitterly
regretted the time he had wasted that he drove the spurs into his
horse's sides in order to arrive there more quickly.
He did in fact arrive there from the valley of the Creuse in less than
half an hour, almost as rapidly as a bird on the wing, having endangered
his life a hundred times leaping ditches and galloping on the brink of
precipices. A violent longing, which he did not choose to analyze, gave
him wings.
"I don't love her," he said to himself; "I hardly know her; I cannot
love her! In any event I should love her to no purpose! It is not she
who attracts me any more than her worthy father, his romantic château,
his environment of repose, happiness and freedom from care. I long to
see people who are happy, so that I may forget that I am not and never
shall be!"
He met Sylvain Charasson, who was engaged in stretching cloth in the
Creuse. The child ran to meet him with an eager delighted air.
"You won't find Monsieur Antoine," he said. "He's gone to market to sell
six sheep; but Mademoiselle Janille's at home, and Mademoiselle
Gilberte, too."
"Do you think I shall not disturb them?"
"Oh! not at all, not at all, Monsieur Emile; they'll be very glad to see
you, for they often talk about you with Monsieur Antoine at dinner. They
say that they think a great deal of you."
"Take my horse, then," said Emile, "I can go faster on foot."
"Yes, yes," replied the child. "Look, just behind what used to be the
terrace. You climb the breach, take a little jump and you'll be in the
courtyard. That's _Jean's road_."
Emile leaped down on the grass, which deadened the sound of his
footsteps, and approached the square pavilion without frightening the
two goats, who seemed to know him already.
Monsieur Sacripant, who was no prouder than his master, and did not
disdain to perform at need the duties of sheep dog, although he belonged
to the nobler breed of hunters, had escorted the sheep to market.
As he was about to enter, Emile found that his heart was beating so
fast--a fact that he attributed to his rapid climb up the side of the
cliff--that he paused a moment to recover himself and make his entrée
with due dignity. He heard the sound of a spinning-wheel inside, and no
music had ever struck more pleasantly on his ear. Then the dull hissing
of the little instrument of toil ceased and he heard Gilberte's voice
saying:
"Well, it's quite true, Janille, that I don't enjoy myself the days that
father is away. If you weren't here with me, I should be bored
outright!"
"Work, my child, work," replied Janille; "that's the way to avoid being
bored."
"But I do work, and still I am not amused. I know well enough that
there's no need of being amused; but I always am, and am always ready to
laugh and jump when father's with us. Confess, little mother, that if we
had to live long away from him, we should lose all our happiness and
good spirits! Oh! it would be impossible to live without father! I
should much rather die at once."
"Well, well, those are pretty ideas!" said Janille. "What in heaven's
name will you think about next, little head? Your father is still young
and well, thank God! so what has put all this nonsense into your head
these last two or three days?"
"What do you say? these last two or three days?"
"Why, yes, fully two or three days; several times you have chosen to
worry about what would become of us if we should lose your dear father,
which God forbid!"
"Lose him!" cried Gilberte. "Oh! don't speak of such a thing; it makes
me shudder, and I never thought of it. Oh! no, I could never think of
it!"