"Do you forbid me?"
"Forbid you? Do you know that you talk as if I were your master?" he rejoined, with a fatuous, mysterious air.
"As if you were my father," replied Julie artlessly.
An old man of impure morals would have been wounded by that remark; but Antoine was virtuous in his madness, and we have no hesitation in asserting that he was not in love with Julie. The countess alone, not the woman, was the object of his passion. It mattered little to him whether she was his adopted daughter or his wife. Provided that he could show her to his grave and learned guests on the morrow, to Marcel, to Julien, to Madame Thierry above all, and to all his gardeners, leaning on his arm or seated at his table, and manifesting a sort of filial affection for him, undisturbed by any thought of what people might say, it seemed to him that he should be perfectly happy.
"And if I am not satisfied yet," he mused, speaking to himself of himself with boundless affection, "I shall be in time to tame her and lead her on to marriage, to sacrifice her title for the name of Thierry senior, which will then be quite as illustrious as that of my brother, Thierry the painter!—Since you are so polite," he said to Julie, "I will not be outdone. I will do all that you want me to do. For instance, be kind enough to invite Madame André Thierry in my name, and say to her that if you should fail to keep your appointment to-morrow through her fault, I will never forgive her as long as I live."
"I will answer for her, neighbor. Until to-morrow, and have no fear!"
"Would it trouble you to say my friend?" said Antoine, whose tongue was loosened under the influence of internal well-being.
"It would not trouble me at all," replied Julie, laughingly; "I will call you that to-morrow, if you keep your word."
"You will call me that—in public?"
"In public, with all my heart."