“If only your father makes no objection to the marriage,” he said.
“You know how much he troubles himself about me; the old man lives for himself,” said David. “But I will go over to Marsac tomorrow and see him, if it is only to ask leave to build.”
David went back to the house with the brother and sister, and asked Mme. Chardon’s consent to his marriage with the eagerness of a man who would fain have no delay. Eve’s mother took her daughter’s hand, and gladly laid it in David’s; and the lover, grown bolder on this, kissed his fair betrothed on the forehead, and she flushed red, and smiled at him.
“The betrothal of the poor,” the mother said, raising her eyes as if to pray for heaven’s blessing upon them.—“You are brave, my boy,” she added, looking at David, “but we have fallen on evil fortune, and I am afraid lest our bad luck should be infectious.”
“We shall be rich and happy,” David said earnestly. “To begin with, you must not go out nursing any more, and you must come and live with your daughter and Lucien in Angoulême.”
The three began at once to tell the astonished mother all their charming plans, and the family party gave themselves up to the pleasure of chatting and weaving a romance, in which it is so pleasant to enjoy future happiness, and to store the unsown harvest. They had to put David out at the door; he could have wished the evening to last forever, and it was one o’clock in the morning when Lucien and his future brother-in-law reached the Palet Gate. The unwonted movement made honest Postel uneasy; he opened the window, and looking through the Venetian shutters, he saw a light in Eve’s room.
“What can be happening at the Chardons’?” thought he, and seeing Lucien come in, he called out to him—
“What is the matter, sonny? Do you want me to do anything?”
“No, sir,” returned the poet; “but as you are our friend, I can tell you about it; my mother has just given her consent to my sister’s engagement to David Séchard.”
For all answer, Postel shut the window with a bang, in despair that he had not asked for Mlle. Chardon earlier.
David, however, did not go back into Angoulême; he took the road to Marsac instead, and walked through the night the whole way to his father’s house. He went along by the side of the croft just as the sun rose, and caught sight of the old “bear’s” face under an almond-tree that grew out of the hedge.
“Good day, father,” called David.
“Why, is it you, my boy? How come you to be out on the road at this time of day? There is your way in,” he added, pointing to a little wicket gate. “My vines have flowered and not a shoot has been frosted. There will be twenty puncheons or more to the acre this year; but then look at all the dung that has been put on the land!”
“Father, I have come on important business.”
“Very well; how are your presses doing? You must be making heaps of money as big as yourself.”
“I shall some day, father, but I am not very well off just now.”
“They all tell me that I ought not to put on so much manure,” replied his father. “The gentry, that is M. le Marquis, M. le Comte, and Monsieur What-do-you-call-’em, say that I am letting down the quality of the wine. What is the good of book-learning except to muddle your wits? Just you listen: these gentlemen get seven, or sometimes eight puncheons of wine to the acre, and they sell them for sixty francs apiece, that means four hundred francs per acre at most in a good year. Now, I make twenty puncheons, and get thirty francs apiece for them—that is six hundred francs! And where are they, the fools? Quality, quality, what is quality to me? They can keep their quality for themselves, these Lord Marquises. Quality means hard cash for me, that is what it means, You were saying?—”
“I am going to be married, father, and I have come to ask for—”
“Ask me for what? Nothing of the sort, my boy. Marry; I give you my consent, but as for giving you anything else, I haven’t a penny to bless myself with. Dressing the soil is the ruin of me. These two years I have been paying money out of pocket for topdressing, and taxes, and expenses of all kinds; Government eats up everything, nearly all the profit goes to the Government. The poor growers have made nothing these last two seasons. This year things don’t look so bad; and, of course, the beggarly puncheons have gone up to eleven francs already. We work to put money into the coopers’ pockets. Why, are you going to marry before the vintage?—”
“I only came to ask for your consent, father.”
“Oh! that is another thing. And who is the victim, if one may ask?”
“I am going to marry Mlle. Eve Chardon.”
“Who may she be? What kind of victual does she eat?”
“She is the daughter of the late M. Chardon, the druggist in L’Houmeau.”
“You are going to marry a girl out of L’Houmeau! you! a burgess of Angoulême, and printer to His Majesty! This is what comes of book-learning! Send a boy to school, forsooth! Oh! well, then she is very rich, is she, my boy?” and the old vinegrower came up closer with a cajoling manner; “if you are marrying a girl out of L’Houmeau, it must be because she has lots of cash, eh? Good! you will pay me my rent now. There are two years and one-quarter owing, you know, my boy; that is two thousand seven hundred francs altogether; the money will come just in the nick of time to pay the cooper. If it was anybody else, I should
