"No, on condition that you never meddle with the affairs of the municipality."
"And you will not have poor Jean arrested?"
"I have no answer to make to such a question; I had too much confidence in you, Emile; I see that we do not think alike on certain subjects, and until we are agreed, I shall not subject myself to discussions which do not befit my rôle as head of the family. Let that suffice. Good-night, my son! I have work to do."
"Can not I help you? you have never believed me capable of sparing you any fatigue!"
"I hope that you will become so. But you don't know how to add yet."
"Figures! always figures!"
"Go to sleep; I will sit up and work, so that you may be rich some day!"
"Ah! am I not rich enough already?" thought Emile as he left the room. "If, as my father has often and justly told me, wealth imposes vast duties, why waste our lives creating for ourselves those duties which may exceed our strength?"
The following day was devoted to repairing in some degree the confusion caused by the inundation. Monsieur Cardonnet, despite his strength of character, was profoundly disturbed when he discovered at every step some unforeseen damage in one or another of the innumerable details of his undertaking; his workmen were demoralized. The water, which kept the factory in operation and whose power it was yet impossible to control, imparted an irregular movement to the machinery, increasing in force as it struggled to escape over the dams. The proprietor was grave and thoughtful; he was secretly annoyed on account of the lack of presence of mind in the men he employed, who seemed to him more machine-like than the machinery. He had accustomed them to passive, blind obedience, and he realized that, at critical moments, when the will of a single man becomes insufficient, slaves are the worst servants who can be found. He did not call upon Emile to assist him; on the contrary, whenever the young man came and offered his services, he put him aside on various pretexts, as if he were really distrustful of him. This method of punishing him was the most mortifying one to an impulsive, generous heart.
Emile tried to find consolation with his mother; but good Madame Cardonnet was totally lacking in energy, and the ennui which the constant prostration and, as it were, stupor of her mental faculties caused all her friends, became in her son's case an unconquerable feeling of depression, when she tried to divert and entertain him. She too treated him like a child, and by her manifestations of affection arrived at the same galling result as her husband. Lacking sufficient strength of mind to sound the abyss that lay between the two men, and yet possessing sufficient intelligence to realize its existence, she turned from it with terror, and strove to play on the brink with her son, as if it were possible to deceive herself.