"It's not possible!" cried some.
"If you don't believe it," they were told, "you've only to look at Talouel's face and M. Vulfran's nephews."
Yet there were some who would not believe that the exile would return. The old man had been too hard on him. He had not deserved to be sent away to India because he had made a few debts. His own family had cast him aside, so he had a little family of his own out in India. Why should he come back? And then, even if he was in Bosnia or Turkey, that was not to say that he was on his way to Maraucourt. Coming from India to France, why should he have to go to Bosnia? It was not on the route.
This remark came from Bendit, who, with his English coolheadedness, looked at things only from a practical standpoint, in which sentiment played no part. He thought that just because everyone wished for the son and heir to return, it was not enough to bring him back. The French could wish a thing and believe it, but he was English, he was, and he would not believe that he was coming back until he saw him there with his own eyes!
Day by day the blind man grew more impatient to see his son. Perrine could not bear to hear him talk of his return as a certainty. Many times she tried to tell him that he might be disappointed. One day, when she could bear it no longer, she begged him in her sweet voice not to count too much upon seeing his son for fear something might still keep him away.
The blind man asked her what she meant.
"It is so terrible to hear the worst when one has been expecting the best," she said brokenly. "If I say this it is because that is just what happened to me. We had thought and hoped so much when my father was ill that he would get better, but we lost him, and poor mama and I did not know how to bear it. We would not think that he might die."
"Ah, but my boy is alive, and he will be here soon. He will come back to me very soon," said the old man in a firm voice.
The next day the banker from Amiens called at the factory. He was met at the steps by Talouel, who did all in his power to get the first information which he knew the banker was bringing. At first his attitude was very obsequious, but when he saw that his advances were repulsed, and that the visitor insisted upon seeing his employer at once, he pointed rudely in the direction of M. Vulfran's office and said:
"You will find him over there in that room," and then turned and went off with his hands in his pockets.