"Well," said the young man holding out his hand, "are your affairs settled?"
"With the authorities, yes, monsieur, but not with poverty. I made my submission, I argued as well as I could with the king's attorney and he listened to me patiently; he said a few stupid things by way of sermon; but he's not a bad fellow and he was just about to dismiss me, saying that he would do his best to prevent any prosecution, when your letters arrived. He read them without making a sign; but he paid some attention to them, for he said to me: 'Well, set your mind at rest, settle down somewhere, don't poach any more, find some work, and everything will be all right.'—So here I am; my friends have received me warmly, as you see, for I have already been asked to lodge in this house while I look about. But I must give my mind to my most pressing necessity, which is to earn something to buy clothes with, and before night I am going to make the tour of the village, to look for work among the good people."
"Listen, Jean," said Emile, walking beside him; "I have no large amount of money at my disposal; my father makes me an allowance, but I don't know whether he will continue it now that I am to live at home; however, I have a few hundred francs for which I have no use here, and I beg you to accept them, to buy clothes and provide for your first needs. You will make me feel aggrieved if you refuse. In a few days your ill-founded anger against my father will have passed away and you will come and ask him for work; or better still, authorize me to ask him for you; he will pay you higher wages than you will get anywhere else, and he will relax the severity of his original terms, I am sure; so——"
"No, Monsieur Emile," the carpenter replied. "I will take neither your money nor your father's work. I don't know how Monsieur Cardonnet treats you, nor how much money he gives you, but I know that a young man like you is always embarrassed when he hasn't a piece of gold or silver in his pocket to gratify his whims when occasion offers. You have done enough for me; I am well pleased with you, and, if I find an opportunity, you will see that you didn't offer your hand to an ingrate. But as for serving your father in any way, never! I was very near committing that folly and God would not permit it. I forgive him for the way in which he caused my arrest by Caillaud, but it was a contemptible act! However, as he may not have known that boy is my godson, and as he has since written kindly of me to the king's attorney to obtain my pardon, I must think no more of my grievance. In any event I would trample it under foot now because of you. But as for helping to build your factories—no! you don't need my arms, you will find plenty of others, and you know my reasons. What you are doing is a bad thing and will ruin many people, if it doesn't ruin everybody some day. Already your dams and your reservoirs are drowning all the small mills on the stream above you. Already your piles of stone and dirt have ruined the meadows all around, for the flood carried them all onto your neighbors' land. Thus, you see, the rich man injures the poor man even against his will. I don't choose to have it said that Jean Jappeloup lent his hand to the ruin of his neighborhood. Don't say any more about it. I mean to take up my trade again in a small way, and I shall have no lack of work. Now that your great enterprises employ all my fellows, no one in the village can find anybody to work for him. I shall inherit their customers but must give them back when your work fails. For mark my words; your father greases his wheels by paying a high price for the sweat of the workingman's brow to-day; but he won't be able to continue long on that footing, or his expenses will exceed his profits. The day will come—and perhaps it's not far away!—when he will run his factories at a loss, and then, woe to those who have sacrificed their position on the strength of fine promises! They will be forced to do whatever your father chooses and the time will have come to make them disgorge. You don't believe it? So much the better for you! that proves that you won't be at all responsible for the trouble that is brewing; but you won't be able to prevent it. So good night, my fine fellow! don't speak in my behalf to your father, for I should give you the lie. The good Lord has helped me out of my trouble; I propose to please Him in everything now and to do only such things as my conscience will never blame me for. Being poor myself, I shall be more useful to the poor than your father with all his wealth. I will build houses for my equals and they will make more by paying me small wages than by earning big wages with you. You will see that I am right, Monsieur Emile, and everybody will tell you so some time; but it will be too late to repent of having put their necks in the halter!"
Emile could not overcome the carpenter's obstinacy, and he returned home even more depressed than when he went out. That incorruptible workingman's predictions caused him a vague alarm.
As he approached the factory he met his father's secretary, Monsieur Galuchet, a stout young man, very talented in the way of ciphering, but of very limited capacity in other respects.
It was the hour of repose and Galuchet was taking advantage of it to fish for gudgeons. This was his favorite pastime; and when he had a goodly number in his basket, he would count them, and adding the count to the total of his previous catches, would say proudly as he wound up his line:
"This is the seven hundred and eighty-second gudgeon I have caught with this hook in two months. I am very sorry I didn't count what I caught last year."
Emile leaned against a tree to watch him fish. The fellow's phlegmatic watchfulness and puerile patience disgusted him. He could not understand how he could be perfectly happy just because he had a salary that placed him out of reach of want. He tried to make him talk, saying to himself that he might perhaps find beneath that thick envelope some ray of light, some sympathetic chord which would make that young man's society a source of comfort to him in his distress. But Monsieur Cardonnet selected his subordinates with an unerring eye and hand. Constant Galuchet was a fool; he understood nothing, knew nothing outside of arithmetic and bookkeeping. When he had been at work at his figures for twelve hours he had just enough reasoning power left to catch gudgeons.
However, Emile by mere chance led him to say certain things that cast an ominous light into his mind. That human machine was capable of reckoning profits and losses and of figuring the balance at the foot of a sheet of paper. While exhibiting the most complete ignorance of Monsieur Cardonnet's plans and resources, Constant observed that the wages of the men were exorbitant and that, if they were not reduced by half in two months, the funds invested in the enterprise would be insufficient.