After about two hours' sleep, Emile was awakened with a start by the fall of a heavy body on the straw beside him. "It's nothing, it's only I," said Monsieur Antoine; "don't let me disturb you. I undertook to share my bed with that good-for-naught; but my gentleman, on the plea that he is growing, must needs have the fidgets in his legs, and he kicked me so many times that I abandoned the field to him. Let him sleep in a bed, as he's so set upon it! for my part, I shall be much more comfortable here." Such was the exemplary punishment which the page of Châteaubrun underwent at Fresselines. XXII INTRIGUE We will leave Emile to forget his appointment with Janille, and to wander over hill and dale with the object of his thoughts; and we will take up the thread of the events in which his destiny is involved, at the Cardonnet factory. Monsieur Cardonnet was beginning to be seriously annoyed by Emile's continual absences, and to say to himself that the time would soon come to keep watch on and regulate his actions. "Now that his mind is diverted from his socialism," he thought, "it is time for him to take hold of some profitable reality. Argument will have little effect on a mind so addicted to discussion. It seems that his hobby-horse is in the stable for a while, and I won't do anything to make him take him out; but let us see if we cannot replace theories by practice. At his age a man is led by instinct rather than by ideas, although he proudly fancies that the contrary is true; first of all let us bind him down to some practical work and make him devote himself to it, against his will, if necessary. He is too hard-working and intelligent not to do well what he is compelled to do. Gradually whatever employment I may have provided for him will become a necessity to him. He was always like that. Even although he detested the study of the law, he learned the law. Very good, let him finish his law-studies, even if he is destined to hate it more and more, and to relapse into the aberrations which have disturbed me so. I know now that it won't take very much time or a very clever coquette to rid him of the coat of pedagogy of the new schools." But it was the middle of vacation, and Monsieur Cardonnet had no immediate pretext for sending Emile back to Poitiers. Moreover, he had great hopes of his stay at Gargilesse; for, little by little, Emile overcame his repugnance to the occupations which his father marked out for him from time to time, and seemed to be no longer engrossed by the object for which he had fought so earnestly. All the work that Emile did he did in a superior way and Monsieur Cardonnet flattered himself that he could drive love from his mind when he chose, without impairing the submission and the talents of which he sometimes reaped the fruits.