"He gave me no advice at all."
"For heaven's sake, has he lost his wits too? Come, Emile, you will listen to me because I am right. I am neither rich nor learned; I don't know whether that deprives me of the right to eat my fill and sleep in a bed, but I know well that God never said to me when I prayed to him: 'Get you gone!' and that, when I have asked him what is true or false, bad or good, he has always told me, without answering: 'Go to school.' Just reflect a little. There are many of us poor people on earth, and a small lot of rich men; for, if everybody had a large slice, the earth would be too small. We are a good deal in the way of one another, and we can't love one another, try as we will. That is proved by our having to have police and prisons to keep us on good terms. How could it be otherwise? I have no idea. You say some very pretty things on that subject, and when you're on it I could pass days and nights listening to you, it pleases me so to see how you arrange it all in your head. That is what makes me love you; but I have never said, my boy, that I had any hope of seeing it come true. It seems to me to be a long way off, if it is possible at all, and I, who am accustomed to hard work, ask the good Lord for nothing more than to leave us as we are, and not allow the rich and great to make our lot any worse. I know that if everybody was like you and me and Antoine and Gilberte we should all eat the same soup at the same table; but I also see that most other people wouldn't care to hear of such an arrangement, and that it would take too much time and talk to bring them to it. I am proud myself, and I can get along very well without people who look down on me; that's my wisdom. I bother my head very little about politics; I don't understand it; but I don't want to be eaten, and I detest the people who say: 'Let us devour everything.' Your father is one of those devourers, and if you were like him I would split your head open with my axe rather than let you think of Gilberte. God chose that you should be a good man, and that the truth should seem to you worth sticking to. Stick to it, therefore, for it is the only thing the wicked cannot take from this earth. Let your father say: 'It's this way; it suits me so, and I choose to have it so!' Let him talk; he is powerful because he is rich, and neither you nor I can hold him back. But if he is obstinate and angry enough to try to make you say that it is so, and that God is satisfied to have it so—stop there! It is contrary to religion to say that God loves evil, and we are Christians, I believe. Have you been baptized? So have I; and I deny Satan. At all events my sponsors renounced him for me, and I have renounced him for others when I have been a sponsor. For that reason we must take no false oaths, nor blaspheme, nor say that all men are not equal when they come into the world and do not all deserve happiness, for that is equivalent to saying that some are condemned to hell before they are born. I am done, Emile. You won't lie, and you will make your father abandon that cunning condition!"
"Ah! my friend, if I could see Gilberte once a week! If I were not dishonored in her father's eyes and banished from his house, I should not lose hope or courage."
"Dishonored in Antoine's eyes? Pray tell me, what do you take him for? Do you think he would have a renegade and backslider for a son-in-law?"
"Oh, if he only looked at things as you do, Jean! but he will not understand my conduct."
"Antoine didn't invent gunpowder, I agree. He has never been able to get the square of the hypotenuse into his head, whereas I learned it in a few minutes, simply by watching a schoolmate do it. But you consider him much simpler than he is. In the matter of honor and worthy sentiments, that old fellow knows all that any one ought to know. Pray, do you think that a man must be very sly and very learned to understand that two and two make four and not five? For my part, I say that, to know that, one needn't have read a roomful of big books like old Boisguilbault, and that every unhappy man on this earth knows very well that his lot is unjust when he has not deserved it. Very good! hasn't friend Antoine suffered and endured, I should like to know? Did not the rich turn their backs on him when he became poor? Is there any one who can say that they were justified in treating him so—a man who never had a crust of bread that he didn't give three-quarters and sometimes the whole of it to others! And if you were not a sensible man, would you ever have been attracted to him? Would you be in love with his daughter to the point of wanting to marry her, if you had your father's ideas? No, you wouldn't have looked at her, or else you'd have seduced her; but you would reflect that she has no dowry, and you would abandon her like a villain. Courage, Emile, my boy! Honest men will always esteem you, and I will answer for Antoine; I will take charge of him. If Janille cries out, I will cry out too, and we will see whether she or I has the loudest voice and the best-oiled tongue. As for Gilberte, be sure that she will have a kindly feeling for you all her life, and that she will think well of you for your straightforwardness. She will never love any other man, I promise you! I know her; she's a girl who has only one word. But the time will come when your father will change his tune. That will be when he is unhappy in his turn, and I have already prophesied that time would come."
"He doesn't believe it."
"Have you told him what I think about his factory?"
"I was bound to."
"You did wrong, but it's done now, and what must be will be. Come, Emile, let us go back to the village and to bed, for I see that you are shivering and I feel that you are feverish. Come, my boy, don't let your blood boil like this, and rely a little on the good Lord! I will go to Châteaubrun to-morrow morning; I will say what I have to say, and they will have to listen to me. I will answer for it that you won't have any falling out with them, at all events, for doing your duty."