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Updated: June 15, 2025
"Ah! well," resumed Beauchene, "I've only one boy, but he's a sturdy fellow, I warrant it; isn't he, Mathieu?" These words had scarcely passed his lips when he must have regretted them. His eyelids quivered and a little chill came over him as his glance met that of his former designer.
But would it not be necessary to send them the following year to a college, and where was the money for this to come from? A grave problem, a worry which grew from hour to hour, and which for Mathieu somewhat spoilt that charming spring whose advent was flowering the countryside. The worst was that Mathieu deemed himself immured, as it were, in his position as designer at the Beauchene works.
The fact is we should be very, very grateful if our little Victor could only be taken on at the works." "But he is only fifteen," exclaimed Beauchene. "You must wait till he's sixteen. The law is strict." "No doubt. Only one might perhaps just tell a little fib. It would be rendering us such a service " "No, it is impossible." Big tears welled into La Moineaude's eyes.
As he hurried off, Mathieu, still standing at the corner of the street, could not help thinking of the scenes which he had witnessed at the Beauchene works that day.
At about three o'clock Blaise rose from the table, refusing to allow Beauchene to take any more Chartreuse. "It's true, he is right, my children," Beauchene ended by exclaiming in a docile way. "We are very comfortable here, but it is absolutely necessary that we should return to the works. And we must deprive you of Denis, for we need his help over a big building affair.
And with a laugh he concluded: "When one has but one son, he keeps him." That same day, about an hour later, a terrible dispute which broke out between old Moineaud's daughters, Norine and Euphrasie, threw the factory into a state of commotion. Norine's intrigue with Beauchene had ended in the usual way.
He warned Beauchene one morning that he should leave the works at the end of the month, for on the previous day he had spoken to Seguin, and had found him quite willing to sell the little pavilion and some fifty acres around it on very easy terms.
Morange's scheme of leaving the Beauchene works and entering the service of the Credit National, where he would speedily rise to a high and lucrative position, his hope too of giving Reine a big dowry and marrying her off to advantage all the ambitious dreams of rank and wealth in which his wife and he had indulged, now showed no likelihood of fulfilment, since it seemed probable that Valerie might again have a child.
Poor Bonnard! he's sobbing; he wanted to kill himself when he saw the fine result of his absence." At this point Beauchene abruptly broke off and turned to Constance. "But what about you?" he asked. "Morange told me that he had left you up above near the trap." She was standing in front of her husband, in the full light which came through the window.
"He has pains in his legs," said his father to Mathieu, when he came round to inquire after Marianne; "he's growing so fast, and getting such a big fellow, you know." Lightly as Beauchene spoke, his eyes even then wavered, and his face remained for a moment clouded.
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