This modest apology inspired in Emile such a warm regard for Monsieur Antoine, that he stooped over the hand which held his and put his lips to it with a feeling of veneration with which Gilberte was not wholly unconnected. Gilberte was more moved than she was prepared to be by this sudden impulse on their young guest's part. She felt a tear trembling on her eyelid, and lowered her eyes to hide it; she tried to assume a serious bearing, and, suddenly carried away by an irresistible impulse of the heart, she almost held out her own hand to the young man; but she did not yield to this outburst of feeling and artlessly turned it aside by rising to take Emile's plate and give him another, with the grace and simplicity of a patriarch's daughter holding the pitcher to the wayfarer's lips.
Emile was surprised at first by this act of humble sympathy, so out of harmony with the conventionalities of the society in which he had lived. Then he understood it, and his breast was so agitated that he could find no words to thank the fair hostess of Châteaubrun, his charming servant.
"After all this," continued Monsieur Antoine, who saw nothing but the simplest courtesy in his daughter's action, "Janille must surely agree that there has been a little misfortune in my life; for that lawsuit had been going on for some time when I discovered the acknowledgment of his debt that my father had left behind him, in the drawer of an old abandoned desk. Until then I had not believed in the good faith of his creditors. It seemed improbable that they could have been unfortunate enough to lose their proofs, so I slept on both ears. My Gilberte was born and I had no suspicion that she was doomed to share with me a hand-to-mouth existence. The dear child's birth made the blow a little more severe than it would otherwise have been to my natural improvidence. Seeing that I was absolutely without resource, I resolved to work for my living, and I had some hard moments at first."
"Yes, monsieur, that is true," said Janille, "but you succeeded in buckling down to work, and you soon recovered your good humor and your open-hearted gayety, didn't you?"
"Thanks to you, good Janille, for you did not desert me. We went to Gargilesse to live with Jean Jappeloup, and the honest fellow found me something to do."
"What!" said Emile, "you have been a mechanic, monsieur le comte?"
"To be sure, my young friend. I was carpenter's apprentice, journeyman carpenter, and in a few years carpenter's assistant, and not more than two years ago you could have seen me with a blouse on my back and a hatchet over my shoulder, going out for my day's work with Jappeloup."
"That is the reason, then," said Emile, sorely embarrassed, "that——" He paused, not daring to finish.
"That is the reason, yes, I understand," rejoined Monsieur Antoine; "that is the reason that you have heard some one say: 'Old Antoine degenerated terribly during his poverty; he lived with workingmen; he was seen laughing and drinking with them in wineshops.' Well, that requires a little explanation, and I will not make myself out any stronger or purer than I am. According to the ideas of the nobles and the rich bourgeois of the province, I should have done better doubtless to remain melancholy and solemn, proudly crushed by my disgrace, working in silence, sighing in secret, blushing to receive wages,—I who had had wage-earners under my orders—and taking no part on Sundays in the merrymaking of the mechanics who permitted me to work beside them during the week. Well, I do not know if it would have been better so, but, I confess, that it would have been entirely foreign to my character. I am so constituted that it is impossible for me to be affected and horrified for long by anything under heaven. I had been brought up with Jappeloup and other peasant children of my own age. I had treated them as my equals in our childish games. Since then I had never played the master or the nobleman with them. They received me with open arms in my distress, and offered me their houses, their bread, their advice, their tools and their custom. How could I have helped being fond of them? How could their society seem to me to be unworthy of me? How could I help sharing my week's wages with them on Sunday? Bah! on the contrary, I suddenly found joy and pleasure in doing it, as a compensation for my hard work. Their songs, their meetings, under the trellised arbor where the holly-branch of the wineshop waved in the wind, their frank familiarity with me, and my indissoluble friendship with dear Jean, my foster-brother, my master in carpentry, my comforter, made a new life for me, which I could not but find very pleasant, especially when I had succeeded in acquiring enough skill at my trade not to be a burden to them."
"It is true enough that you worked hard," said Janille, "and that you were soon a very great help to poor Jean. Ah! I remember his fits of anger with you at the beginning, for he was never patient, the dear man, and you were so awkward! Really, Monsieur Emile, you'd have laughed to hear Jean swear after Monsieur le Comte, as he would after any little apprentice. And then, after it was over, they would make it up and shake hands, so that I used to feel like crying. But as we have actually set about telling you our whole history, instead of just quarrelling among ourselves, as I intended to do at first, I propose to tell you the rest of it; for if we let Monsieur Antoine do it, he'll never let me put in a word."