"Why does he need to know so much?" asked his mother. "We will make a
gentleman farmer of him. He can cultivate his land, as many of the
nobility do. He will live and grow old happily in this house, where we
have lived before him and where we shall die. What more can one do?"
But the baron shook his head. "What would you say to him if he should
say to you when he is twenty-five: 'I amount to nothing, I know
nothing, all through your fault, the fault of your maternal
selfishness. I feel that I am incapable of working, of making
something of myself, and yet I was not intended for a secluded, simple
life, lonely enough to kill one, to which I have been condemned by
your shortsighted affection.'"
She was weeping and said entreatingly: "Tell me, Poulet, you will not
reproach me for having loved you too well?" And the big boy, in
surprise, promised that he never would. "Swear it," she said. "Yes,
mamma." "You want to stay here, don't you?" "Yes, mamma."
Then the baron spoke up loud and decidedly: "Jeanne, you have no right
to make disposition of this life. What you are doing is cowardly and
almost criminal; you are sacrificing your child to your own private
happiness."
She hid her face in her hands, sobbing convulsively, and stammered out
amid her tears: "I have been so unhappy--so unhappy! Now, just as I am
living peacefully with him, they want to take him away from me. What
will become of me now--all by myself?" Her father rose and, sitting
down beside her, put his arms round her. "And how about me, Jeanne?"
She put her arms suddenly round his neck, gave him a hearty kiss and
with her voice full of tears, she said: "Yes, you are right perhaps,
little father. I was foolish, but I have suffered so much. I am quite
willing he should go to college."
And without knowing exactly what they were going to do with him,
Poulet in his turn began to weep.
Then the three mothers began to kiss him and pet him and encourage
him. When they retired to their rooms it was with a weight at their
hearts, and they all wept, even the baron, who had restrained himself
up to that.
It was decided that when the term began to put the young boy to school
at Havre, and during the summer he was petted more than ever; his
mother sighed often as she thought of the separation. She prepared his
wardrobe as if he were going to undertake a ten years' voyage. One
October morning, after a sleepless night, the two women and the baron
got into the carriage with him and set out on their journey.
They had previously selected his place in the dormitory and his desk
in the school room. Jeanne, aided by Aunt Lison, spent the whole day
in arranging his clothes in his little wardrobe. As it did not hold a
quarter of what they had brought, she went to look for the
superintendent to ask for another. The treasurer was called, but he
pointed out that all that amount of clothing would only be in the way
and would never be needed, and he refused, on behalf of the directors,
to let her have another chest of drawers. Jeanne, much annoyed,
decided to hire a room in a small neighboring hotel, begging the
proprietor to go himself and take Poulet whatever he required as soon
as the boy asked for it.