"Nay, do not appeal to Ronnay, dear cousin," rejoined the young man testily. "He hath no liking for women's company. Rumour hath it that the foundries are encircled by a wall beyond which no feminine foot hath ever trod, and anxious wives are not even allowed to bring hard-working husbands their dinner. 'Tis said that all the jail-birds in France are employed in forging cannon and manufacturing gunpowder, and that the overseers have to stand over them with flails and loaded muskets, for fear that the spirit of insubordination which is always rampant should break into open riot, and the foundries of La Frontenay be blown up sky-high by rebellious hands." De Maurel had waited with outward patience and in his own calm somewhat sullen way until his young brother had come to an end with his tirade; then he interposed curtly: "Rumour hath lied as usual." "You cannot deny, anyhow," retorted Laurent, "that all the deserters out of the army are made to slave in your factories." "There are not enough deserters in the armies of France to keep a single foundry going," rejoined de Maurel simply. "But these days, when foreign enemies threaten the country on every side, we cannot afford to keep even jail-birds idle. So we employ them in the powder factory, where the work is hard and full of danger, and where accidents, alas! are frequent. But the pay is good, and men who have a crime upon their conscience can redeem their past by toiling for their country, who hath need of their brain and of their muscle. Many pass out of the workshops into the army, and the Emperor had no finer soldiers than a company of our jail-birds, as you call them, who fought under my command at Austerlitz." He paused, for, as usual, every reference to the army and to his Emperor, whom he worshipped, was apt to stir his blood, so that his words became less sober and less measured. And he had come here this afternoon with the firm determination not to lose control over himself as he had done the other day. "If Mademoiselle Fernande desires to see the foundry," he said quite quietly after a while, "I will accompany her and show her all that there is to see." "If accidents in your works are frequent, my good Ronnay," rejoined Laurent, who was vainly trying to conceal the irritability of his nerves, "'tis obviously not fit that our cousin should visit them." "I would not take her there where there is any danger," retorted de Maurel curtly. "There is always danger for a refined woman in the propinquity of men who have been nurtured in class-hatred. The sight of a delicate and aristocratic girl is like to rouse the same resentment in your jail-birds that led to the atrocities of the Revolution. Fernande would certainly run the risk of insults, if not worse. I for one marvel at you, my dear brother, that you should think of exposing our cousin to the danger of hearing the blasphemous and obscene language which I am told is the only one spoken inside the foundries of La Frontenay."