XXII
INTRIGUE
We will leave Emile to forget his appointment with Janille, and to wander over hill and dale with the object of his thoughts; and we will take up the thread of the events in which his destiny is involved, at the Cardonnet factory.
Monsieur Cardonnet was beginning to be seriously annoyed by Emile's continual absences, and to say to himself that the time would soon come to keep watch on and regulate his actions. "Now that his mind is diverted from his socialism," he thought, "it is time for him to take hold of some profitable reality. Argument will have little effect on a mind so addicted to discussion. It seems that his hobby-horse is in the stable for a while, and I won't do anything to make him take him out; but let us see if we cannot replace theories by practice. At his age a man is led by instinct rather than by ideas, although he proudly fancies that the contrary is true; first of all let us bind him down to some practical work and make him devote himself to it, against his will, if necessary. He is too hard-working and intelligent not to do well what he is compelled to do. Gradually whatever employment I may have provided for him will become a necessity to him. He was always like that. Even although he detested the study of the law, he learned the law. Very good, let him finish his law-studies, even if he is destined to hate it more and more, and to relapse into the aberrations which have disturbed me so. I know now that it won't take very much time or a very clever coquette to rid him of the coat of pedagogy of the new schools."
But it was the middle of vacation, and Monsieur Cardonnet had no immediate pretext for sending Emile back to Poitiers. Moreover, he had great hopes of his stay at Gargilesse; for, little by little, Emile overcame his repugnance to the occupations which his father marked out for him from time to time, and seemed to be no longer engrossed by the object for which he had fought so earnestly. All the work that Emile did he did in a superior way and Monsieur Cardonnet flattered himself that he could drive love from his mind when he chose, without impairing the submission and the talents of which he sometimes reaped the fruits.
Nothing was farther from Madame Cardonnet's intention than to call her husband's attention to Emile's strange conduct. If she could have divined the joy which her son derived from absenting himself thus, and the secret of that joy, she would have assisted to save appearances and with more affection than prudence, would have become his accomplice. But she imagined that Monsieur Cardonnet's manner, which was often cold and sarcastic, was the only cause of the discomfort Emile suffered in his father's house; and, nursing a secret grudge against her lord and master therefor, she suffered bitterly because she enjoyed so little of her son's society. When Galuchet returned with the information that Monsieur Emile would not be at home until the evening of the next day or the next but one, she could not restrain her tears, and said in an undertone: "Now he has begun to pass the night away from home! He is not willing even to sleep here; he must be very unhappy!"
"Upon my word, that's a pretty subject for lamentation!" said Monsieur Cardonnet with a shrug. "Is your son a girl, that you are so frightened for him to pass a night away from home? If you begin this way, you are not at the end of your troubles; for this is only the beginning of the escapades a young man is likely to indulge in! Constant," he said to his secretary when they were alone, "who were the people in whose company you met my son?"
"Oh! a very agreeable party, monsieur. Monsieur Antoine de Châteaubrun, who is a high-liver, a stout, jovial man, altogether agreeable in his manners; and his daughter, a superb woman, with a perfect figure, the most attractive creature you can imagine."
"I see that you are a connoisseur, Galuchet, and that you missed none of the damsel's charms."
"Dame! monsieur, when a man has eyes, he uses them," said Galuchet, with a loud laugh of self-satisfaction; for it very rarely happened that his employer did him the honor to talk with him on a subject unconnected with his duties.
"And it is with these same persons, I suppose, that my son continued his romantic excursions?"