"With her, father?"
"Isn't it perfectly natural that I should want to know the young woman you have chosen without consulting me, and who may perhaps be my daughter some day?"
"O father! father!"
"I found her charming, lovely, modest, humble and proud at once, able to express herself well, lacking neither deportment, good manners nor education, and common sense less than all! She refused with much propriety the suitor I proposed to her. Yes, with gentleness, modesty and dignity combined. I was very well pleased with her! What struck me most was her prudence, her reserve, and the perfect control she has over herself; for I confess that I tried to sting her a little, and even to offend her, to get a sight at the under side of her character. Her father was away; but the mother, that sly little old woman whose son-in-law you aspire to be, was so irritated by my reflections on her small fortune and the perfect suitability of a marriage with Galuchet, that she treated me with contempt; she called me bourgeois; and as I persisted, for the express purpose of pushing her to extremities, she said to me, with her arms akimbo, that her daughter was of too good a family to marry a manufacturer's servant; and that, if the manufacturer's son in person should offer himself, they would look at him twice before accepting such a misalliance. She amused me immensely. But Gilberte smoothed everything over by her calm and decided manner. I assure you that she keeps to the letter the promise she gave you, to be patient, to wait and to suffer everything for love of you."
"Oh! did you make her suffer terribly?" cried Emile, beside himself.
"Yes, a little," coolly replied Monsieur Cardonnet, "and I am very glad I did. Now, I know that she has some character, and I should be very glad to have such a person about me. Such a woman can be very useful in a household, and nothing can be worse than to have a wife who is passive and pig-headed at the same time, who can do nothing but sigh and keep silent like many women I know. It would be a pleasure to me to dispute sometimes with my daughter-in-law, and to discover at once that her views are just, that her will is strong, and that she is well fitted to give you sound advice. Come, Emile," he added, offering his son his hand, "you see, I trust, that I am neither blind nor unjust, and that I wish to make the best of the position in which you have put me."
"O mon Dieu! if you consent to my happiness, father, I will give you a lease of myself, I will become your man of business, your overseer, your workman during as many years as you consider me incapable of taking care of myself. I will submit to all your wishes, and I will work every hour in the day, never complaining, never resisting your most trivial orders."
"And never asking for a salary," laughed Monsieur Cardonnet. "Nonsense, Emile, that is not what I mean, and that rôle of menial would outrage nature. No, no, this is no time to throw dust in my eyes, and I am not the man to make any mistake as to your real intentions. I am not yet so nearly ruined that I can't afford to hire an overseer, and I do not think that I could select one less fitted than you to manage workmen. I want you to be another myself, to help me in the work of planning, to learn for me, to give me your ideas, subject to my right to combat and modify them; in a word, to seek out and invent methods of money-making which I will carry out when they suit me. In this way your constant studies and your fertile imagination can assist me in multiplying your fortune by ten. But to obtain this result, Emile, there must be no working with indifference and absence of interest, as you have been doing for a fortnight past. I am not deceived by this temporary submission, concerted with Gilberte, to extort my consent. I require submission for your whole life. I wish you to be ready to undertake journeys—with your wife, if you please—to examine the progress of the manufacturing industry; in a word, I want you to sign, not on paper before a notary, but on my head and with your heart's blood, and before God, a contract which will wipe out your whole past of dreams and chimeras, and which will pledge your convictions, your will, your faith, your devotion, your religion, your whole future, to the success of my work."
"And suppose I do not believe in your work?" said Emile, turning pale.
"You must believe in it; or, if it is impracticable, let me be the first to cease to believe in it. But do not think to escape me by that détour. If we are forced to strike our tent here, I shall pitch it somewhere else, and I shall not stop until I die. Wherever I may be, whatever I may do, you must follow me, second me, and sacrifice all your theories, all your dreams to me."