"I have always said to myself that your sight was clearer and your mind more provident than those of tender, timid natures, that the momentary suffering you inflict was with a view to doing lasting good and to strengthening the foundations of talent; and so, notwithstanding my distaste for the studies you imposed upon me, notwithstanding the sacrifice of my tastes to your hidden purposes, and the constant denial and stifling of my desires at their birth, I made it the law of my life to follow you and obey you in everything. But the time has come when you must open my eyes if you wish me to succeed in this superhuman effort; for the study of the law doesn't satisfy my conscience; I cannot imagine myself ever engaging in legal contests, still less compelling myself, like you, to urge men on to toil for my benefit, unless I see clearly whither I am going and what sacrifice beneficial to mankind I shall have consummated at the cost of my happiness."
"Your happiness then would consist in doing nothing and living with your arms folded, staring at the stars? It seems that work of any sort vexes and tires you, even the study of the law, which all young men learn in sport?"
"You are well aware that the contrary is true, father; you saw me become passionately interested in the most abstract studies, and you stopped me as if I were rushing to my destruction. You know well, however, what my wishes were, when you urged me to seek some material application of the sciences I preferred. You were not willing that I should be an artist or a poet; perhaps you were right; but I might have been a naturalist, or at least an agriculturist, and you forbade that. And yet that was a real, practical application.
"Love of nature impelled me toward life in the country. The infinite pleasure that I took in investigating nature's laws and mysteries led me naturally to the discovery of its concealed forces and to the attempt to guide them and make them more fruitful by intelligent toil. Yes, that was my vocation, you may be sure. Agriculture is in its infancy; the peasant wears himself out in monotonous routine tasks; vast tracts of land are untilled. Science would increase tenfold the richness of the soil and lighten the labor of man.
"My ideas concerning society were in accord with my dreams of such a future. I asked you to send me to some model farm to study. I should have been happy to become a peasant, to work with mind and body, to be constantly in contact with men and things as nature knows them. I would have applied myself with zeal, I would have ploughed farther than some others perhaps in the field of discoveries! And some day I would have founded, upon some desert, naked tract of land transformed by my labors, a colony of free men living together like brothers and loving me as a brother. That was my only ambition, in that direction alone was I thirsty for fortune and glory. Was it an insane freak? and why did you require me to go and work like a slave to learn a code of laws that will never be mine?"
"There you are! there you are!" said Monsieur Cardonnet shrugging his shoulders; "there we have the Utopia of Brother Emile, Moravian brother, Quaker, Neo-Christian, Neo-Platonist and God knows what. It is magnificent, but it is absurd."
"Pray tell me why, father? for again you pronounce sentence without giving any reasons."
"Because, mingling your socialistic Utopias with your vain speculations as a scientist, you would have poured treasures upon the barren rock, you would not have raised wheat from the sterile soil nor would you have raised men capable of living as brothers from the communistic idea. You would have spent foolishly with one hand what I had saved with the other; and, at forty years of age, with your imagination run dry, at the end of your genius and your confidence, disgusted with the imbecility or the perversity of your disciples, mad perhaps—for that is what excitable and romantic minds come to when they seek to put their dreams in practice, you would have come back to me, crushed by your helplessness, angry with mankind, and too old to return to the right road. Whereas, if you listen to me and follow me, we will travel together over a straight, sure road, and within ten years we shall have made a fortune of which I don't dare name the amount, for you would not believe me."
"Let us admit that this is not a dream also, father, for it makes little difference for my present purpose; what shall we do with this fortune?"
"Whatever you choose, all the good that you may then dream of doing; for I am not at all disturbed about your common sense and prudence, if you will wait for experience of life and allow your brain to mature in peace."