Emile passed two hours with the marquis, and found him more confidential and more affectionate than he had ever been. He felt that his attachment to him became stronger, and he determined that he would cause him no more suffering. And when, upon taking his leave, he expressed some anxiety because he had allowed him to talk so earnestly, the marquis replied:
"Never fear. Come again to-morrow and you will find me on my feet. That is not the kind of thing that tires one; it is the absence of opportunities for pouring out one's heart that dries up and kills."
XX
THE FORTRESS OF CROZANT
The marquis was in fact almost well on the following day, and breakfasted with Emile. Thenceforth nothing disturbed that curious friendship between an old man and a very young man; and, thanks to Monsieur de Châteaubrun's final declarations, the painful apprehensions of insanity no longer impaired the pleasure which Emile took in Monsieur de Boisguilbault's society. He refrained, as he had promised Antoine, from ever mentioning his name, and made up for it by opening his heart to the marquis concerning all his other secrets; for it was impossible for him not to describe his past life, not to impart to him his plans for the future, and, as a consequence thereof, the suffering, allayed for a time, but inevitably lasting, which his father's opposition had caused him and was certain to cause him at the first provocation.
Monsieur de Boisguilbault encouraged Emile in his projects of respect and submission; but he was amazed at the pains Monsieur Cardonnet had always taken to stifle the legitimate instincts of a son so well inclined to work and so richly endowed.
The liking for agriculture and the intelligent understanding of it displayed by Emile seemed to point to a noble and generous vocation for him, and the marquis said to himself that if he had had the good fortune to possess such a son, he would have been able to make use in his lifetime of the great fortune which he had destined for the poor, but of which he had been unable to make any use in the present.
He could not refrain from saying with a sigh that a man was blessed of heaven who found in a son, in a friend, in another self, a mind fertile in invention and the means of completing in all seriousness the work of his destiny. In his heart he accused Cardonnet of seeking to consecrate to evil purposes the forces and the instruments which God had given him to assist him in doing good, and he looked upon him as a blind and obstinate tyrant, who placed money above the happiness of his fellows and his own, as if man were the slave of material things and not the servant of truth before all else.
Monsieur de Boisguilbault was not however essentially religious. Emile found him always too indifferent in that respect. When the marquis had said: "I believe in God," he thought that he could dispense with saying: "I adore Him." When his thoughts, taking the highest flight of which he was capable, rose to a sort of invocation which was not so much prayer as homage, he said to God: "Thy name is wisdom!" Emile added: "Thy name is love!" Whereupon the old man would reply: "It is the same thing;" and he was right.
Emile could hardly contradict him; but in that disposition to insist upon the sublime character of the divine logic and rectitude, one could but be conscious of the absence of that exalted passion for the inexhaustible loving-kindness of the Omnipotent, which Emile bore in his bosom. But, when the facts, the miseries of life, human weakness, and all the evil that is done on earth seemed to give the lie to that theory of a merciful Providence, and Emile became in a measure discouraged, the old logician triumphed in the superiority of his faith.