Madame Seron waded in complete felicity. She talked, and appeared to the young professor like some unreal, beneficent fairy, who, with a touch of her magic wand, changes a woodcutter into a prince, a disinherited man into the most fortunate one in the world.
Jean Louis Lambert’s emotion, his gratitude, were expressed in such noble, almost passionate, terms that it brought tears to her eyes, and she at once assumed the rôle of an ideal mother to him.
They agreed, approved, and understood each other in everything. Jean Louis—his protectrice already left off the Lambert—during the next three months would prepare himself for his new studies, and then, on some very plausible pretext, would leave the school and go to Paris, where his future mother-in-law, as an advance on her daughter’s dot, would provide for all expenses until he should have passed his examinations.
He would study doubly hard, and, as soon as he should have obtained his degrees, he would return and marry Olympe, whom, meanwhile, her mother would influence favourably towards the match.
Isolated in Paris, with but one friend from Chauny, Bergeron, who later fired a pistol at Louis Philippe, Jean Louis worked with passionate ardour. In love for the first time and with the woman whom he knew would be his wife, infatuated with his studies, his mystical adoration for the Virgin transformed into a desire to possess the object he adored, he lived in a fever, impatient to deserve the promised happiness, and finding the reward for all his struggles far superior to the efforts he made to acquire it.
Doctor Seron completely approved his wife’s romantic plan, considering that it was without question his place, who had been so cruelly abandoned by all save the humble, to protect a young, hard-working, and virtuous man.
This latter adjective he rolled out with great emphasis, which much amused Olympe’s mother every time he pronounced it.
“No one more than myself esteems, admires, and honours purity and virtue,” said Pélagie’s amusing husband, “for no one is so conscious of the rarity, the beauty of these two traits.”
A renewal of good feeling flourished between the husband and wife. Every letter from their future son-in-law was read, commented upon, admired, and even re-read by them both; these youthful, exuberant, loving letters, often containing very good poetry, rejuvenated the parents’ hearts, already extremely proud of him whom they called between themselves: “Our son.”
Olympe, while her parents were enthusiastic, was perfectly indifferent. One day, when they were both exasperated at her, they asked whether or not she would consent to this marriage. The young girl replied to her anxious mother, and to her father, revolted at seeing her so prosaic: