"But without you he would not be going, nor Eléonore either! They had to have recommendations. You call that doing a service, M. Meffray? Did you even know what would be best for François—had you ever seen him in his home to know if he was unhappy there? Monsieur Meffray, you must give him back to me."
"Settle it with your son. It does not concern me."
"You will not speak to those who have entrapped my son, and annul the agreement?" Advancing a step, and pointing at him with extended arm, Toussaint Lumineau said in a loud voice: "Then you have done my son more harm in one single day than I in all my life."
M. Meffray's heavy face crimsoned.
"Be off, old hound!" he shouted. "Be off, take your son! Manage your own affairs. Ah! these peasants! Such are the thanks one gets for troubling about them!"
The farmer seemed not to have heard; he remained motionless. But there was a strange fire in his eyes; from the depths of his tortured heart, from the depths of the faith taught to his race for generations past, the words came to his lips:
"You shall answer for them," he said.
"How so?"
"There where they are going they will both be lost, M. Meffray. You shall answer for their eternal perdition."
As though stupefied by a speech so unlike any he had ever heard, the town councillor made no reply; it needed time for him to take in an idea so different from those usually filling his mind; then throwing a contemptuous glance at the huge peasant standing erect before him, he turned on his heel, and moved to the garden door, with a muttered: