“Comment? You don’t want to marry Lucien?”
“No, mon oncle.”
“But——” He swept the air with a protesting gesture.
“I have already told you so,” said Félise.
“But, ma chère petite, that wasn’t serious. It was because you had some stupid and beautiful idea of not deserting me. That is all imbecile. Young people must marry, sacrebleu! so that the race is perpetuated, and fathers and mothers and uncles don’t count.”
“But what has that to do with it, mon oncle?” protested Félise. “I find Lucien very charming; but I don’t love him. If I loved him, I would marry him. But as I don’t love him, I can’t marry him.”
“But marry him and you will love him,” cried Bigourdin, as millions of French fathers and uncles have cried for the last three or four hundred years. “It is very simple. What more do you want than a gallant fellow like Lucien?”
Then, of course, she broke down, and began to cry. Bigourdin, unused to feminine tears, tried to clutch his hair. If it had been longer than half an inch of upstanding bristle, he would have torn it.
“You don’t understand, mon oncle,” she sobbed, with bowed head. “It is only my mother who can advise me. I must see my mother.”
Bigourdin put his arm round the girl’s slender shoulders. “Your mother, my poor Félise, sees nobody.”