“Your mother is sick. Your sister is going to leave us. If you stay, I shall be less lonely.”
For a moment he hoped that he had warded off the storm. Maurice hesitated a little while, for at the bottom of his heart he really admired his father; then, persuading himself that he was scoring a victory over hypocrisy, he threw himself headlong again into the offensive.
“Yes, people have taken occasion to warn you against me and Mrs. Frasne. What have they been saying to you? I want to know, and I have the right to know. Bah! This provincial life is so impossible. One is watched and spied on, guarded, bound down. The noblest sentiments are travestied by all the envious hypocrisy and pious venom the village can muster up. But you, father, I won’t admit that you would listen to such low slanders, slanders that don’t hesitate to attack the most virtuous of women.”
Mr. Roquevillard could no longer shun the issue.
“I’ve let you talk, Maurice. Now listen to me. I don’t bother myself with gossip, and I don’t ask you whether it is true that you are more often in your chief’s drawing-room than in his office during his numerous absences on business. All the reasons I gave you for coming here were true ones. But since you cross-question me in this way, I won’t dodge the debate. I’ll admit that on Mrs. Frasne’s account, too, I asked you to finish your studies with me, the natural thing to do anyway. And I don’t need to lend an ear to every calumny. I’ve seen enough with my own eyes.”
“And what then?”
“There’s no use telling you. Don’t insist.”
“You’ve threatened me. Now I should like to know.”
“Very well, then. When your mother, at your request, receives your guests, you should at least respect your own roof. You know what I’m alluding to.”
But Maurice, made tactless by his anger, for the second time, went too far in his argumentative eagerness to justify his passion.