"I was mistaken," she said to herself. "My girl is not thinking too much about him; and if he thinks of her, he will know enough to say nothing, and draw back little by little, rather than endanger our repose. He is behaving well, and it would be a pity to hurt his feelings, since he understood me with half a word, and is carrying out my wishes of his own accord."
If Jean Jappeloup had conspired with Emile to take vengeance on Galuchet for his pretensions, he could have done no better than he did; for during more than an hour, while the lovers were strolling about with Janille in the neighborhood of the pavilion, he employed sometimes cunning raillery, sometimes open force to keep him at the table and make him drink, willy-nilly. In this test, which was beyond his strength, Galuchet soon lost the little good sense with which nature had endowed him. He was much scandalized at first by the châtelain's habits and conceived a profound contempt for him whom he regarded as the count's companion in debauchery. In a word, Galuchet, who had no trace of elevation in his feelings or his ideas, and who was not worth a single hair from the heads of those two rough-spoken worthies, deemed himself degraded, and promised himself that he would, in his report to his master, depict in startling colors the painful task he had undertaken. But, as he drank, his wits went astray altogether, his vulgar instincts gained the upper hand of his secret vanity, and he began to laugh, to pound on the table, to talk loud, to boast of innumerable feats of valor, and to make such a pitiful exhibition of himself, that Jappeloup, who was as refined as his manners were abrupt, took compassion on him and gave him a severe lecture with a cold and serious air.
"You don't know how to drink, my friend," he said; "you are ugly when you laugh and you are stupid when you try to be witty. If I ventured to give Monsieur Antoine a piece of advice, it would be to give you a glass of water when you come to breakfast with him, otherwise you might make remarks before his daughter that would force me to put you out of doors. You thought, when you saw us all so merry and so unceremonious with one another, that we were vulgar folk and that you must become vulgar to descend to our level. You made a mistake. Whoever has nothing evil in his heart or unclean in his mind can let himself go; and even if I should be so drunk that I couldn't stand, I shouldn't be afraid that I could be made to blush the next day for anything I had said. It seems that it's not the same with you; that is why you do well to dress in black from head to foot and make people who don't know you think you're a gentleman; for if there is a peasant here, you are the man!"
Antoine tried to soften the sermon, and Galuchet tried to get angry. Jean shrugged his shoulders and left the table to avoid having to give him a lesson more appropriate to the state of his intellect.
When they left the pavilion Galuchet was still walking straight; but his head was so heavy and so heated, that he dared not utter a word before Gilberte, for fear of saying one thing for another.
"Well," said Gilberte to Jappeloup, "are we going to the Devil's Rock? It's more than a year since I was there; Janille will never let father take me there because she says it's too dangerous and one can't afford to be absent-minded there; but she will let me go with you, my good Jean! Do you feel that your hand is still strong and your eye sure enough?"
"I?" said Jappeloup, "why, I feel as well equal to the task as if I were no more than twenty-five."
"And you are not tipsy?" said Janille, taking hold of Jean's sleeve and standing on tiptoe to look into his eyes.
"Look, look all you please," said he. "If you can do this, I will agree that I am tipsy!" And he placed on his head a pitcher of water that Janille was carrying, and ran several yards without upsetting it.
"Very good," said Janille; "I could do as much if I chose, but it's no use; I am sure of you, and I trust my girl with you. For my part, I haven't the time to go along. Do you, Monsieur Emile, just keep an eye on the father, for he is quite capable of trying to step ashore in mid-stream, if he is busy laughing or talking."