"Come to my heart!" cried Monsieur Antoine, in a transport of joy and enthusiasm; "for you are a noble fellow and I knew that nothing could be truer and more loyal than your heart."
He pressed the slender youth in his arms as if he would have suffocated him. Janille, deeply moved, put her handkerchief to her eyes; but in an instant she forced back her tears and said:
"This is madness, Monsieur Antoine, genuine madness! Keep watch on yourself and don't let your heart go so fast. Certainly he is a fine fellow, and if we were rich or if he were poor, we could never make a better choice; but we must not forget that what he proposes is impossible, that his family will never consent to it, and that he has been building a romance in his little brain. If I didn't love you so much, Emile, I would scold you for inflaming Monsieur Antoine's imagination so, for it is younger still than yours, and is capable of taking your dreams seriously. Luckily his daughter is more sensible than he and I are. She is not at all disturbed by your soft words. She is grateful to you for them and thanks you for your kind intentions; but she is perfectly well aware that you don't belong to yourself and can't dispense with your father's consent; and that, even if you were old enough to summon him into court to make him consent, she is too well born to care to enter by force a family that spurned her."
"That is true," said Monsieur Antoine, as if waking from a dream; "we are going astray, my poor children; Monsieur Cardonnet will never have anything to do with us, for we have nothing to offer him but a name which he would treat as a chimera, which, indeed, we hold too cheap ourselves, and which throws open no road to fortune. Emile, Emile, let us say no more about it, for it would become a source of regret. Let us be friends, friends forever! be my child's brother, her protector and defender if occasion offers; but let us say nothing about marriage or love, for, in these times we live in, love is a dream and marriage a business affair."
"You do not know me," cried Emile, "if you think that I accept or will ever accept the laws of society and the scheming of self-interest! I will not deceive you; I would answer for my mother if she were free, but my father will not be favorably disposed to this marriage. And yet my father loves me, and when he has tested the force and endurance of my will he will realize that his own will cannot carry the day in this matter. There is one means that he can try to compel me to submit. He can deprive me for a time of the enjoyments of his wealth. But in that case how joyfully I will work in order to deserve Gilberte's hand, to raise myself to her level, to deserve the esteem which is not accorded to lazy men, but which they merit who have passed through honorable tests, as you have, Monsieur Antoine. My father will yield some day, I have no doubt; I can take my oath to it before God and before you, because I feel within me all the strength of an invincible love. And when he has come to appreciate the power of a passion like mine, he, who is so sovereignly wise and intelligent and who loves me more than all the world, certainly more than ambition and wealth, will open his arms and his heart unreservedly to my bride. For I know my father well enough to know that when he yields to the power of destiny, he does it without a backward look to the past, without base rancor, without cowardly regret. Therefore believe in my love, O my friends, and rely as I do on God's help. There is nothing humiliating to you in the prejudices I shall have to combat, and the love of my mother, who lives only for me and in me, will make up to Gilberte in secret for my father's temporary prejudice. Oh! do not doubt it, do not doubt it, I implore you! Faith can do anything, and if you help me in this fight, I shall be the luckiest mortal who ever fought for the holiest of all causes, for a noble love, and for a woman worthy of my whole life's devotion!"
"Ta! ta! ta!" exclaimed Janille, bewildered by his eloquence; "here he is talking like a book and trying to excite my girl's brain. Will you be kind enough to keep quiet, golden tongue? we do not want to listen to you, and we refuse to believe you. I forbid you, Monsieur Antoine! You don't realize all the misfortunes this may bring on us, and the least would be to prevent Gilberte's making a possible, reasonable marriage."
Poor Antoine no longer knew which way to turn. When Emile spoke, he glowed with the memory of his youthful years, and remembered that he too had loved; nothing seemed to be nobler and holier than to defend the cause of love and to encourage such a noble enterprise. But when Janille threw water on the fire, he recognized his mentor's wisdom and prudence. Thus, sometimes he took part with her against Emile, sometimes with Emile against her.
"We have had enough of this," said Janille, vexed because she saw no apparent end to their irresolution; "all this ought not to be discussed before my child. What would be the result if she were a weak or frivolous creature? Luckily she does not bite at your fairy tales, and as she cares very little for your money she will have too keen a sense of dignity to wait until you're at liberty to dispose of your heart. She will dispose of hers as she thinks best, and while she continues to give you her esteem and friendship, she will beg you not to compromise her by your visits. Come, Gilberte, say a sensible, brave word to put an end to all this foolish talk!"
Thus far Gilberte had said nothing. Deeply moved as she was, she gazed pensively in turn at her father, Janille, and, most frequently of all, at Emile, whose ardor and tone of conviction stirred her to the depths of her soul. Suddenly she rose and knelt before her father and her governess, whose hands she affectionately kissed.
"It is too late to call upon me for cold prudence, and to remind me of the exigencies of self-interest," she said; "I love Emile, I love him as dearly as he loves me, and before it had occurred to me that I could ever belong to him, I had sworn in my heart never to belong to another. Receive my confession, my father and mother before God! For two months I have not been frank with you, and for two weeks I have been hiding from you a secret that weighs upon my conscience, and that will be the last, as it is the first in my whole life. I have given my heart to Emile, I have promised to be his wife on the day that my parents and his consent. Until then, I have promised to love him bravely and calmly; I promise it now anew, and I call upon God and you to witness my promise. I have promised, and I promise again, that if his father's will is inflexible, we will love each other as brother and sister, although it will be impossible for me ever to love another, and that I will never give way to any impulse of madness and despair. Have confidence in me. See—I am strong, and I am happier than ever, since I have placed Emile between you two and with you two in my heart. Do not fear complaints or melancholy or low spirits or sickness from me. Ten years hence I shall be just as you see me to-day, finding all-powerful consolation in your love, and in my own a courage proof against every trial."