第41章

"I resisted; I felt no vocation for it.But it required great courage to oppose my uncle's wishes.He is so good, he loves me so much! Quite recently he bought a substitute to save me from the conscription--me, a poor orphan!""What do you mean to be?" asked Marguerite; then, immediately checking herself as though she would unsay the words, she added with a pretty gesture, "I beg your pardon; you must think me very inquisitive.""Oh, mademoiselle," said Emmanuel, looking at her with tender admiration, "except my uncle, no one ever asked me that question.I am studying to be a teacher.I cannot do otherwise; I am not rich.If Iwere principal of a college-school in Flanders I should earn enough to live moderately, and I might marry some single woman whom I could love.That is the life I look forward to.Perhaps that is why I prefer a daisy in the meadows to these splendid tulips, whose purple and gold and rubies and amethysts betoken a life of luxury, just as the daisy is emblematic of a sweet and patriarchal life,--the life of a poor teacher like me.""I have always called the daisies marguerites," she said.

Emmanuel colored deeply and sought an answer from the sand at his feet.Embarrassed to choose among the thoughts that came to him, which he feared were silly, and disconcerted by his delay in answering, he said at last, "I dared not pronounce your name"--then he paused.

"A teacher?" she said.

"Mademoiselle, I shall be a teacher only as a means of living: I shall undertake great works which will make me nobly useful.I have a strong taste for historical researches.""Ah!"

That "ah!" so full of secret thoughts added to his confusion; he gave a foolish laugh and said:--"You make me talk of myself when I ought only to speak of you.""My mother and your uncle must have finished their conversation, Ithink," said Marguerite, looking into the parlor through the windows.

"Your mother seems to me greatly changed," said Emmanuel.

"She suffers, but she will not tell us the cause of her sufferings;and we can only try to share them with her."Madame Claes had, in fact, just ended a delicate consultation which involved a case of conscience the Abbe de Solis alone could decide.

Foreseeing the utter ruin of the family, she wished to retain, unknown to Balthazar who paid no attention to his business affairs, part of the price of the pictures which Monsieur de Solis had undertaken to sell in Holland, intending to hold it secretly in reserve against the day when poverty should overtake her children.With much deliberation, and after weighing every circumstance, the old Dominican approved the act as one of prudence.He took his leave to prepare at once for the sale, which he engaged to make secretly, so as not to injure Monsieur Claes in the estimation of others.