"Let him ruin and dishonour my child, I suppose?" burst from the pale lips of the lapidary, with violent and impatient energy.
"For heaven's sake, Morel, don't speak so loud; the children are awake, and will hear you."
"Pooh, pooh!" returned Morel, with bitter irony; "it will serve as a fine example for our two little girls. It will instruct them to expect that, one of these days, some villain or other like the notary may take a fancy to them,—perhaps the same man; and then, I suppose, you would tell me, as now, to be careful how I offended him, since he had me in his power. You say, if I displease him, he can put me in prison. Now, tell the truth: you advise me, then, to leave my daughter at his mercy, do you not?"
And then, passing from the extreme of rage at the idea of all the wickedness practised by the notary to tender recollections of his child, the unhappy man burst into a sort of convulsive weeping, mingled with deep and heavy sobs, for his kindly nature could not long sustain the tone of sarcastic indignation he had assumed.
"Oh, my children!" cried he, with bitter grief; "my poor children! My good, my beautiful, too—too beautiful Louise! 'Tis from those rich gifts of nature all our troubles proceeded. Had you been less lovely, that man would never have pressed his money upon me. I am honest and hard-working; and if the jeweller had given me time, I should never have been under the obligation to the old monster, of which he avails himself to seek to dishonour my child. I should not then have left her a single hour within his power; but I dare not remove her,—I dare not! For am I not at his mercy? Oh, want! oh, misery! What insults do they not make us endure!"
"But what can you do?" asked Madeleine. "You know he threatens Louise that if she quits him he will put you in prison directly."
"Oh, yes! He dares address her as though she were the very vilest of creatures."
"Well, you must not mind that; for should she leave the notary, there is no doubt he would instantly throw you into prison, and then what would become of me, with these five helpless creatures and my mother? Suppose Louise did earn twenty francs a month in another place, do you think seven persons can live on that?"
"And so that we may live, Louise is to be disgraced and left to ruin?"
"You always make things out worse than they are. It is true the notary makes offers of love to Louise; she has told us so repeatedly. But then you know what a good girl she is; she would never listen to him."