While a practised rake may congratulate himself upon the unhoped-for accident which procures him a tête-à-tête with the object of his pursuit, a pure-hearted young man, who is sincerely in love, is more likely to be confused, almost terrified, when such good fortune comes to him for the first time.
So it was with Emile Cardonnet: the respect that Mademoiselle de Châteaubrun inspired was so profound that he feared to raise his eyes to hers at that moment, lest he should show himself in any degree unworthy of the confidence reposed in him.
Gilberte, even more naïve than he, did not feel the same embarrassment. The thought that Emile could abuse, even by a careless word, her isolation and her inexperience, found no place in a mind so noble and innocent as hers, and her sacred ignorance preserved her from any suspicion of that sort. So she was the first to break the silence, and her voice, as by enchantment, brought tranquillity to the young visitor's agitated breast. There are voices so sympathetic and so penetrating, that to hear them pronounce two or three trivial words is enough to fill one with affection for the persons whose characters they describe, even before one sees them. Gilberte's voice was of this number. On hearing her speak or laugh or sing, you felt that there had never been in her mind an evil or unkind thought.
The thing that moves and charms us in the song of birds is not so much the melody, opposed to all our musical conventions, or the extraordinary power of their flexible organs, as a certain accent of primitive innocence, of which nothing in the language of men can convey an idea. It seemed, on listening to Gilberte, that the same comparison could be aptly applied to her, and that the most indifferent things acquired, on passing between her lips, a meaning much deeper than that which they expressed by themselves.
"We saw our friend Jean this morning," she said; "he came at daybreak and carried away all my father's tools, in order to do his first day's work; for he has found work already, and we have strong hopes that there will be no lack of it. He told us all that you did and tried to do for him last evening, and I assure you, monsieur, that, for all the pride and perhaps roughness of his refusal, he is as grateful as he ought to be."
"What I have been able to do for him amounts to so little that I am ashamed to speak of it," said Emile. "I am especially grieved that he allows his obstinacy to deprive him of a certainty of employment, for it seems to me that his position is still very precarious. To begin a life of toil, at sixty, and to have neither a house, nor clothes, nor even the necessary tools, is a terrifying prospect, is it not, mademoiselle?"
"Still, I am not terrified," replied Gilberte. "Brought up as I have been in uncertainty, and living from day to day, as it were, perhaps I have myself fallen into the habit of looking upon poverty with that same happy indifference. Either I am naturally of that disposition, or Jean's heedlessness reassures me; it is certain that none of us felt the least uneasiness in the congratulations we exchanged this morning. It takes so little to satisfy Jean! He is as sober and as healthy as a wild man. He has never been better than during these two months that he has lived in the woods, walking all day and sleeping most of the time in the open air. He declares that his sight has grown keener, that his youth has returned again, and that, if the summer would last all the time, he would never need to come back to the village to live. But in the bottom of his heart he has an invincible affection for his native place, and furthermore he would not be satisfied to be idle long. We urged him this morning to settle down here with us, and to live as we do, without thought for the morrow.
"'There is room enough here and plenty of material for you to build yourself a house,' said my father. 'I have all the stone you need and enough old trees for your frame, and I'll help you to put it up as you helped me with mine.'
"But Jean wouldn't listen to that.
"'Very good,' said he, 'but what in heaven's name should I do to kill time when you have set me up as a country gentleman? I can't live on my income, and I don't propose to be a burden to you during the thirty years that I still have to live, it may be. Even if you were rich enough to support me, I should die of ennui. It's all right for you, Monsieur Antoine, you were brought up to do nothing. Although you're no sluggard and you have proved it—it costs you nothing to resume the habit of living like a monsieur; but there's no more hunting and coursing for me; pray, am I to sit with folded arms? I should go mad at the end of the first week.'"