"If I am sad, darling mother," said Gilberte, "I give you leave to prevent his coming again; and if my eyes are red, I will tear them out so that I can't see him. But what will you say if I am more cheerful and happier than ever? Don't you feel how calm my heart is? See, put your hand there, while we can still hear his horse's footsteps as he rides away! Am I excited? Light the lamp and examine me closely. Am I not still Gilberte, your daughter, who breathes only for you and my father, and who can never be bored and listless for an instant with you? Ah! when I suffered, when I cried, was when I had a secret from you, and when I was dying to be able to tell it to you. Now that I can speak and think aloud, I breathe again and I feel nothing but the joy of living for you and with you. And didn't you see this evening how happy we all were to be able to love one another without fear or shame? Do you think that it will ever be different, and that Emile and I would be happy together if you were not with us always and every minute?" "Alas!" thought Janille with a sigh, "we are only at the very beginning of this fine arrangement!" XXVI THE SNARE Emile determined to delay no longer to speak seriously to his father, and to make, not a formal and too hasty avowal of his love, but a sort of preliminary discourse which would lead little by little to more decisive explanations. But the carpenter had made an appointment with him for the following morning, and he thought, justly enough, that if that man proved what he had asserted, he would have an excellent pretext for broaching the subject, and for demonstrating to Monsieur Cardonnet the uncertainty and vanity of his plans for making a fortune. Not that Emile placed blind faith in Jean Jappeloup's competence to form an opinion in such matters; but he knew that the observation of a natural logician may materially assist scientific investigation, and he set out before dawn to join his companion at a certain point where they had agreed to meet. He had informed Monsieur Cardonnet the night before of his purpose to examine the course of the stream that ran the factory, but without telling him whom he had chosen for his guide. It was a difficult but interesting excursion, and on his return Emile requested a private interview with his father. He found him with a tranquil air of triumph, which seemed to him not to be of very good augury. However, as he deemed it his duty to inform him of what he had seen, he entered upon the subject without hesitation. "You urge me, father," he began, "to espouse your projects and to take hold of them with the same ardor that you yourself display. I have done my best, for some time past, to place at your service all the application of which my brain is capable; I owe it therefore to the confidence you have placed in me to tell you that we are building on sand, and that, instead of doubling your fortune, you are rapidly throwing it into a bottomless pit."