"Well, I tell you, it will be painful to old soldiers like me to march cheek by jowl with a man we don't respect."
"What possible blame can you put on him?" asked Bertha, beginning to show some bitterness.
"Much."
"Much means nothing unless you specify it."
"Well, his father, his birth--"
"His father! his birth!" interrupted Bertha; "always the same nonsense! Let me tell you, Jean Oullier," she cried, frowning darkly, "that it is precisely on account of his father and his birth that he interests me, that young man."
"Why so?"
"Because my heart revolts against the unjust reproaches which he is made to endure from all our party. I am tired of hearing him blamed for a birth he did not choose, for a father he never knew, for faults he never committed, and which, perhaps, his father never committed. All that makes me indignant, Jean Oullier; it disgusts me. And I think it a noble and generous action to encourage that young man and help him to repair the past,--if there is anything to repair,--and to show himself so brave and so devoted that calumny will not dare to meddle with him in future."
"I don't care," retorted Jean Oullier; "he will have a good deal to do before I, for one, respect the name he bears."
"You must respect it, Jean Oullier," said Bertha, in a stern voice, "when I bear it, as I hope to do."