He loved his son but could not understand him. He was kind and attentive to his wife, but he had never failed to stifle in her any thought capable of interfering with his daily routine. He would have liked to be able to reduce Emile to subjection in the same way; but, realizing that was impossible, he was intensely annoyed and tears of vexation moistened his burning eyes more than once during that stormy interview. He sincerely believed that he was logically right; that his ideas were the only really admissible and practicable ones.
He asked himself by what fatality he happened to have a dreamer and a Utopian for a son, and more than once he raised his powerful arms to heaven, asking with indescribable pain what crime he had committed that such a calamity should be visited upon him.
Emile, worn out by fatigue and disappointment, was moved to pity at last for that wounded heart and that incurable blindness.
"Let us talk no more about these matters, father," he said, wiping away his own tears, which had their source farther down in his heart; "we cannot become identified with each other. I can only continue to show my submission and my filial love, thinking no more of myself and of a happiness which I sacrifice to you. What are your orders? Shall I return to Poitiers and go on with my studies until I pass my examinations? Shall I stay here and act as your secretary and steward? I will close my eyes and work like a machine so long as it is possible for me to do it. I will look upon myself as your employé; I will enter your service——"
"And you will cease to look upon me as your father?" said Monsieur Cardonnet. "No, Emile; stay with me, but be perfectly free. I give you three months, during which, living as you will in the bosom of your family, far from the declamations of the beardless philosophers who have ruined you, you will recover your senses unassisted. You are blessed with a robust temperament, and it may be that absorbing mental labor has overheated your brain. I look upon you as a sick child whom I have taken into the country to cure. Walk, ride, hunt; in a word, amuse yourself in order to reestablish your equilibrium, which seems to me more disturbed than that of society. I hope that you will abate your intolerance when you see that your home is not a hotbed of wickedness and corruption. Before long, perhaps, you will tell me voluntarily that profitless musing bores you, and that you feel that you must help me."
Emile bowed, without speaking, and left his father, after embracing him with a feeling of profound sorrow. Monsieur Cardonnet, having been able to do nothing better than temporize, tossed about a long while in his bed, and finally fell asleep, saying, to himself, contrary to his custom, that one must sometimes rely more upon Providence than upon oneself.
XIV
FIRST LOVE
The energetic Cardonnet, entirely engrossed by his daily occupations, or sufficiently self-controlled not to allow the slightest trace of his inward suffering to appear on the surface, resumed his air of glacial dignity on the following day.
Emile, overwhelmed with dismay and sadness, strove to smile in presence of his mother, who was disturbed by his distraught air and altered expression. But she was so overawed that she lacked even the penetration peculiar to her sex. All her faculties had grown rusty, and at forty she was already an octogenarian, mentally speaking. And yet she loved her husband, as the result of a need of loving which had never been satisfied. She had no definite grievances to allege against him, for he had never openly maltreated her or made a slave of her; but every impulse of the heart or the imagination had always been stifled in her by irony and a sort of contemptuous pity, and she had accustomed herself to entertain no thought or desire outside of the circle drawn about her by an inflexible hand.