"You frighten me, Janille," said Gilberte. "Oh! if that is the case, you did well to disgust him, by your joking, with the idea of working again, and in that, as in everything else, you are our Providence!"
Mademoiselle de Châteaubrun spoke even more truly than she knew. Janille had been the good angel of Antoine de Châteaubrun's existence. Without her prudence, her motherly domination and her shrewd judgment, that excellent man would not have passed through the slough of poverty without deteriorating a little morally. At all events he would not have retained his external dignity as well as the generous purity of his instincts. He would often have sinned by too great resignation and self-abandonment. Being naturally inclined to effusiveness and prodigality, he would have become intemperate; he would have acquired as many faults of the common people as of their good qualities, and perhaps he would have ended by meriting in some degree the disdain which fools and vainglorious parvenus felt justified in entertaining for him, even as it was.
But, thanks to Janille, who, without thwarting him openly, had always maintained the equilibrium and instilled moderation, he had emerged from the test with honor and had not ceased to deserve the esteem and respect of judicious people.
The sound of Gilberte's spinning-wheel interrupted the conversation, or at least made it less coherent. She was unwilling to interrupt her work again until her task was completed; and yet she seemed to display more ardor than the apparent motive of her activity called for. She urged Emile not to subject himself to the tedium of listening to that monotonous clattering, but to go with Janille and explore the ruins; but, as Janille also wanted to finish her spinning, Gilberte unconsciously worked even faster than before, in order to finish as soon as she, and to be one of the party.
"I am ashamed of my inaction," said Emile, who dared not gaze too fondly at the young spinstress's lovely arms or watch her motions too closely, for fear of attracting Janille's sharp little eyes; "haven't you some work to give me?"
"What can you do?" queried Gilberte with a smile.
"Whatever Sylvain Charasson can do, I flatter myself," he replied.
"I might send you to water my lettuce," said Janille, laughing outright, "but that would deprive us of your company. Suppose you wind up the clock, which seems to have stopped?"
"Oh! it stopped three days ago," said Gilberte, "and I haven't been able to make it go. I think there's something broken."
"Ah! that's the job for me," cried Emile; "I have studied mechanics a little—unwillingly, to be sure—and I don't believe that this cuckoo affair is very complicated."