So Jean-Jacques lived solitary and sought solitude, not finding it irksome. The doctor saw, too late to remedy them, the disastrous results of this temperament and character. He would gladly have seen his son married; but as that would have been to subject him to a rule which would soon be despotic, he could not but hesitate. Would not that be to hand over his fortune to the management of a stranger, an unknown woman? Now he well knew how difficult it is to foresee, from a study of a young girl, exactly what the woman’s character may become. And so, while looking about him for a daughter-in-law whose education or whose ideas should be a sufficient guarantee, he tried to guide his son into the paths of avarice. Failing intelligence, he hoped thus to give this simpleton a guiding instinct. He began by accustoming him to a mechanical existence, and gave him fixed notions as to the investment of money; then he spared him the chief difficulties of the management of landed estate by leaving all his lands in capital order, and let on long leases. And for all that, the principal fact, which was to be paramount in this poor creature’s life, escaped the doctor’s penetration—Jean-Jacques was passionately in love with la Rabouilleuse.
Nothing could, indeed, be more natural. Flore was the only woman with whom the young man came in contact, the only woman he ever saw at his ease, gazing on her in secret, and watching her from hour to hour; for him Flore was the light of his father’s house; without knowing it, she afforded him the only pleasures that gilded his youth. Far from being jealous of his father, he was delighted by the education he bestowed on Flore; was not the wife he needed an approachable woman who would need no courting? For passion, be it observed, brings insight with it; it can give a sort of intelligence to simpletons, fools, and idiots, especially during youth. In the least human soul we always find the animal instinct which, in its persistency, is like a thought.
Next day, Flore, who had meditated on her master’s silence, expected some important communication; but, though he hovered about her, looking at her with covert, amorous glances, Jean-Jacques found nothing to say. At last, at dessert, the master began again as he had begun yesterday.
“You are comfortable here?” he asked Flore.
“Yes, Monsieur Jean.”
“Well, stay then.”
“Thank you, Monsieur Jean.”
This strange state of things lasted for three weeks. One night, when not a sound broke the stillness, Flore, waking by chance, heard the regular breathing of a man at her door, and was frightened at finding Jean-Jacques lying on the mat like a dog, having, no doubt, made some little hole at the bottom of the door to see into the room.
“He is in love with me,” thought she; “but he will get the rheumatism at this game.”
Next day Flore looked at her master in a marked way. This speechless and almost instinctive love had touched her; she no longer thought the poor simple creature so hideous, in spite of the ulcer-like spots on his temples and forehead, the terrible coronal of vitiated blood.
“You do not want to go back to the open fields, I suppose?” said Jean-Jacques, when they were alone.
“Why do you ask?” said she, looking at him.
“I wanted to know—” replied Rouget, turning the color of a boiled lobster.
“Do you want me to go?” she asked.
“No, mademoiselle.”
“Well, then, what is it you want to know? You have some reason—”
“Yes, I wanted to know—”
“What?” said Flore.
“You would not tell me.”
“Yes, on my word as an honest woman.”
“Ah! That is the point,” said Rouget alarmed. “You are an honest woman?”
“By Heaven!”
“Yes—really?”
“Since I say it—”
“Come, now. Are you the same now as you were when you stood there, barefoot, brought here by your uncle?”
“A pretty question, on my word!” exclaimed Flore, reddening.
The heir bent his head in silence, and did not look up again. Flore, astounded at finding her reply, so flattering to the man, received with such consternation, left the room.
Three days later, at the same hour, for they both seemed to regard the dessert as the scene of battle, Flore was the first to say to her master, “Are you vexed with me for anything?”
“No, mademoiselle,” he replied. “No … on the contrary—”
“You seemed so much annoyed the other day at hearing that I was an honest girl—”
“No; I only wanted to know … but you would not tell me.”
“On my honor,” said she, “I will tell you the whole truth.”
“The whole truth about … my father—” said he in a choked voice.
“Your father,” said she, looking straight into her master’s eyes, “was a good fellow; he loved a laugh. … Well, a little. … Poor dear man, it was not for want of will. And then he had some grievance against you, I don’t know what, and he had intentions—oh! unfortunate intentions.—He often made me laugh; well! that is all. And what then?”
“Well, then, Flore,” said the heir, taking the girl’s hand, “since my father was nothing to you—”
“Why, what did you suppose he was to me?” she exclaimed, in the tone of a girl offended by an insulting suggestion.
“Well, then, listen to me.”
“He was my benefactor, that was all. Ah! I he would have liked to make me his wife … but—”
“But,” said Rouget, taking her hand again, for she had pulled it away, “since he was nothing of the kind, you can stay here with me?”
“If you like,” said she, looking down.
“No, no. It is if you like, you” replied Rouget. “Yes, you may be—mistress here. All
