Monsieur Cardonnet congratulated himself for not yielding to an angry impulse; he had recovered all his influence over Emile. In the evening, when the factory was closed and the workmen dismissed, he betook himself to a part of his garden which the flood had failed to reach, and walked there a long while alone, reflecting as to what he should say to this child who was so hard to manage, not intending to summon him until he should feel that he was in perfect control of himself.
The feverish fatigue which follows a day of giving orders and overlooking others, the spectacle of devastation which he still had before his eyes, and perhaps the state of the atmosphere as well, were ill adapted to soothe the nervous irritation which had become habitual with Monsieur Cardonnet. The temperature had indulged in such a sudden and violent change that the result was abnormal and enervating. The warm air was laden with vapors, as in November, although it was midsummer. But it was not the cool, transparent mist of autumn, but rather a suffocating smoke which exhaled from the ground. The path where the manufacturer strode was bordered on one side by rose-bushes and other brilliant flowers. On the other there were only débris, boards piled in disorder, huge stones brought thither by the water; and from that point, at which the flood had stopped, to the bank of the stream, several acres of garden, covered with black mud streaked with red gravel, resembled an American forest flooded and half-uprooted by the overflow of the Ohio or Mississippi. The young trees that had been overthrown lay with their branches interlaced in pools of stagnant water, which could find no outlet under those fortuitous dikes. Beautiful plants, crushed and besmirched, tried in vain to rise, but remained lying in the mud, while, in the case of some others, the abundant moisture had already caused superb flowers to bloom triumphantly upon half-broken stalks. Their delicious fragrance struggled against the brackish odor of the slime, and when a faint breeze raised the mist, that fragrance and that strange odor reached the nostrils alternately. A multitude of frogs, which seemed to have fallen with the rain, were croaking with disgusting energy among the reeds; and the roar of the factory, which it was not yet possible to stop, so that the machinery was constantly running and wearing itself out uselessly, made Monsieur Cardonnet feverishly impatient. Meanwhile the nightingale sang in the thickets that had been left unharmed, and saluted the full moon with the nonchalance of a lover or an artist. It was a medley of happiness and consternation, of ugliness and beauty, as if omnipotent Nature laughed at losses ruinous to man but trifling to herself, who needed but a day of sunlight and a cool, damp night to repair them.
Despite Cardonnet's efforts to concentrate his thoughts upon the interests of his family, he was disturbed and distracted at every turn by his anxiety concerning his pecuniary interests. "Infernal river," he thought, glaring involuntarily at the torrent that flowed proudly and mockingly at his feet, "when will you abandon an impossible fight? I shall find a way to chain you up and curb you at last. More stone, more iron, and you will flow within the bounds that my hand marks out for you. Oh! I shall succeed in overcoming your reckless power, in anticipating your whims, in stimulating your languor and crushing your temper. The genius of man is bound to triumph over the blind rebellion of nature on this spot. Twenty more men, and you will feel the curb. Money, and more money! It takes a small mountain of money to stop mountains of water. It is all a question of time and opportunity. My product must come to hand on the appointed day, to meet my expenses. A month of carelessness or discouragement would ruin everything. Credit is a pit that one must dig without hesitation, because at the bottom lies the treasure of profit. I must dig on! I must keep digging! The man is a fool and a coward who stops on the way and allows his plans and his outlay to be swallowed up in space. No, no, treacherous stream, feminine terror, lying predictions of the envious, you shall not frighten me, you shall not induce me to abandon my work, when I have made so many sacrifices on account of it, when the sweat of so many men has already flowed in vain, when my brain has already expended so much effort and my intelligence has given birth to so many miracles! Either this stream shall draw my dead body into its slime, or it shall submissively carry the results of my toil!"
And in the painful tension of his faculties, Monsieur Cardonnet stamped his foot on the bank with a sort of frenzied enthusiasm.
Meanwhile the thought came to his mind that from his own blood had come forth an obstacle more alarming for the future than storms and the river. His son could ruin or, at least, sadly embarrass everything in a day. However intense the man's earnestness and the jealousy of his character, he could never be satisfied to work for himself alone, and there is no capitalist who does not live in the future by virtue of his family ties. Cardonnet felt a fierce affection for his son in the depths of his heart. Oh! if he could only recast that rebellious mind and identify Emile with his own life! How proud he would be, what a feeling of security he would enjoy! But this boy, who had superior faculties for anything except what his father desired, seemed to have conceived a conscientious contempt for wealth, and it was necessary to find some joint in his armor, some vulnerable point at which that terrible passion could be forced into his system. Cardonnet was well aware what chords must be touched; but could he counteract or change the nature of his own mental habit and his own talent sufficiently to produce no discord? The instrument was at once powerful and delicate. The slightest lack of harmony in the theory he was about to expound would be detected by a watchful and perspicacious judge.
In a word it was necessary that Cardonnet, a man of violent temper and at the same time of much adroitness, in whom, however, the habit of domination was more powerful than the habit of strategy, should fight a terrific battle with himself, stifle every violent impulse, and speak the language of a conviction that was not altogether genuine. At last, feeling calmer, and deeming himself sufficiently prepared, he sent for Emile and returned to await his coming on the spot where he had lately been absorbed in a long and painful meditation.
"Well, father," said the young man, taking his hand affectionately and with evident emotion, for he felt that the moment was at hand when he should know which was destined to carry the day in his heart, filial affection, or terror and reproof; "well, father, here I am, ready to receive the communication you promised me. I am twenty-one years old, and I feel that I am becoming a man. You have delayed a long while to set me free from the law of silence and blind confidence; my heart has submitted as long as it can, but my common sense is beginning to speak very loudly, and I await your paternal voice to reconcile them. You will do it, I have no doubt, and throw open the doors of life to me; for thus far I have done nothing but dream and wait and look. I have been assailed by strange doubts, and I have suffered much already without daring to mention it to you. Now you will cure me, you will give me the key to this labyrinth in which I have gone astray; you will mark out for me a path to the future which I shall delight to follow; happy and proud if I can walk beside you!"
"My son," replied Monsieur Cardonnet, somewhat disturbed by this effusive exordium, "you have acquired, yonder, a habit of using emphatic language which I cannot imitate. This manner of talking is ill-advised, in that the mind gets heated and excited, and soon goes astray in an outburst of exaggerated emotion. I know that you love me and believe in me. You know that I cherish you above all things, and that your future is my only aim, my only thought. Let us talk reasonably, then, and coolly, if it is possible. Let us first of all review your brief and happy life. You were born in comfort, and as I worked hard and constantly, wealth took its place under your feet, so quickly and so naturally that you hardly noticed it. Each year increased the possibilities of your future career, and you were hardly more than a child when I began to think of your old age and of the future of your children. You showed a praiseworthy disposition to work—but only at useless arts, drawing, music, poetry,—ornamental accomplishments. It was my duty to combat and I did combat the development of these artistic instincts, when I saw that they threatened to stifle more essential and more solid faculties.
"By creating your fortune, I created duties for you. The fine arts are the blessing and the treasure of the poor man; but wealth demands powers of a sterner temper to support the weight of the obligations it imposes. I questioned myself; I saw what my own education lacked, and it seemed to me that we ought to complement each other, since we were, by the law of blood, partners in the same enterprise. I was well versed in the industrial theories to which I had devoted myself; but as I had not had experience in putting them in practice early enough in life, as I had not studied the practical part of my vocation and could solve problems in geometry and mechanics only by instinct and a sort of divination, I was likely to make mistakes, to start upon false scents, to allow myself to be led astray by my own dreams or those of other people, in a word, to lose, in addition to large sums of money, days, weeks, years, that is to say, time, which is the most valuable of all forms of capital. I determined therefore that you should be instructed in the mechanical sciences immediately after leaving school, and you forced yourself to work hard and faithfully, despite your youth. But your mind soon chose to take a flight which carried you away from my goal.
"The study of the exact sciences led you, against my will and your own, to a passion for the natural sciences, and, starting off at random, you thought of nothing but astronomy and of dreaming of worlds to which we can never go. After a contest in which I was not the stronger, I made you abandon those sciences, although I was not able to bring you back to a healthy and profitable application to the others; and, abandoning the idea of making you a mechanical engineer, I looked about to see in what way you could be useful to me. When I say useful to me, I assume that you do not mistake the sense in which I use the words. As my fortune was yours, it was my duty to train you to the work which will probably wear my life out to your advantage before long; that is in the natural order of things. I am happy to do my duty, and I shall persist in doing it in spite of you, if necessary. But should not good sense and paternal affection impel me to make you capable of preserving and defending that fortune, at all events, if not of developing it? My ignorance of the law had placed me a hundred times at the mercy of foolish or treacherous advice. I had been victimized by those parasites of pettifoggery who, having neither any genuine knowledge nor any healthy understanding of business, demand blind submission from their clients, and endanger their most valuable interests by folly, obstinacy, presumption, false tactics, useless subtleties and the rest. Thereupon, I said to myself that with a keen, quick intellect like yours, you could learn the law in a few years and obtain a sufficiently accurate idea of the details of procedure to need no other guide, no other adviser, and, above all, no other confidant than yourself. I had no desire to make of you an orator, an advocate, an assize court comedian, but I asked you to obtain your certificates and pass your examinations. You promised to do it!"