He pressed the slender youth in his arms as if he would have suffocated him. Janille, deeply moved, put her handkerchief to her eyes; but in an instant she forced back her tears and said: "This is madness, Monsieur Antoine, genuine madness! Keep watch on yourself and don't let your heart go so fast. Certainly he is a fine fellow, and if we were rich or if he were poor, we could never make a better choice; but we must not forget that what he proposes is impossible, that his family will never consent to it, and that he has been building a romance in his little brain. If I didn't love you so much, Emile, I would scold you for inflaming Monsieur Antoine's imagination so, for it is younger still than yours, and is capable of taking your dreams seriously. Luckily his daughter is more sensible than he and I are. She is not at all disturbed by your soft words. She is grateful to you for them and thanks you for your kind intentions; but she is perfectly well aware that you don't belong to yourself and can't dispense with your father's consent; and that, even if you were old enough to summon him into court to make him consent, she is too well born to care to enter by force a family that spurned her." "That is true," said Monsieur Antoine, as if waking from a dream; "we are going astray, my poor children; Monsieur Cardonnet will never have anything to do with us, for we have nothing to offer him but a name which he would treat as a chimera, which, indeed, we hold too cheap ourselves, and which throws open no road to fortune. Emile, Emile, let us say no more about it, for it would become a source of regret. Let us be friends, friends forever! be my child's brother, her protector and defender if occasion offers; but let us say nothing about marriage or love, for, in these times we live in, love is a dream and marriage a business affair."