"I am not speaking of myself, father, but of a peasant, a true genius, who doesn't know how to read, who doesn't know the names of the fluids, gases, minerals or plants, but who understands causes and effects, whose keen eye and infallible memory detect differences and characteristics; of a man, in short, who, while speaking the language of a child, showed me all these things and made them clear to me."
"Who is this unknown genius whom you met on your walk, I pray to know?"
"A man whom you do not like, father, whom you take for a madman, and whose name I hardly dare mention to you."
"Ah! I understand! it is your friend Jappeloup the carpenter, Monsieur de Boisguilbault's vagabond, the village sorcerer, who cures sprains with words and puts out fires by cutting a cross on a beam with his axe."
Monsieur Cardonnet, who had thus far listened to his son with interest, albeit without being persuaded, laughed scornfully, and was thenceforth inclined to treat the subject with sarcasm and contempt.
"And this is the way madmen come together and agree!" he said. "Really, my poor Emile, nature made you an unfortunate gift when she gave you a large supply of intellect and imagination, for she withheld the guiding spirits, coolness and common-sense. Here you are astray, and because a miracle-working peasant has posed before you as the hero of a romance, you devote all your petty knowledge and your ingenious reasoning powers to attempt to confirm his wonderful decisions! You have put all the sciences at work, and astronomy, geology, hydrography, physics and even poor little botany, which hardly expected the honor, come in a body to sign the patent of infallibility awarded to Master Jappeloup. Write poetry, Emile, write novels! you are good for nothing else, I am very much afraid."
"So you despise experience and observation, father," rejoined Emile, restraining his anger; "you do not deign even to consider those commonplace bases of the work of the mind? and yet, you make sport of most theories. What am I to believe, according to your opinion, if you will not allow me to consult either theory or practice?"
"On the contrary, Emile," replied Monsieur Cardonnet, "I respect both one and the other, but on condition that they inhabit healthy brains; for their advantages change to poison or smoke, in foolish brains. Unfortunately, some alleged scientists are of this number, and that is why I would have liked to preserve you from their chimeras. Who is more absurdly credulous and more easily deceived than a pedant with preconceived ideas? I remember an antiquarian who came here last year: he was in search of Druidical stones, and he saw them everywhere. To satisfy him I showed him an old stone the peasants had hollowed out by pounding the grain of which they made their porridge, and I persuaded him that it was the urn in which the sacrificial priests among the Gauls shed human blood. He absolutely insisted on carrying it off for the departmental museum. He took all the granite drinking-troughs for ancient sarcophagi. And that is how the most absurd errors spread. It rested entirely with me whether a trough or a mortar should pass for venerable monuments. And yet that gentleman had passed fifty years of his life reading and meditating. Look out for yourself, Emile, a day may come when you will take bladders for lanterns!"
"I have done my duty," said Emile. "I was bound to urge you to make a further examination of the spots I have visited, and it seemed to me that the experience of your recent disaster might suggest the same advice. But as you answer me with jests I have nothing more to say."
"Let us see, Emile," said Monsieur Cardonnet after a few moments' reflection, "what your conclusion is from all this, and what there is at the bottom of your cheerful predictions. I understand very well that Master Jean Jappeloup, who has set himself up as an inveterate foe of my undertaking, and who passes his life declaiming against Père Cardonnet—even in your presence, and you could tell me many things about him—would like to persuade you to induce me to leave this country where, it appears, my presence is a thorn in his side. But whither do you seek to lead me, O my philosopher and scientist? Where do you wish to found a colony? into what American desert do you propose to carry the advantages of your socialism and my industrial talent?"