"On the contrary, Emile," replied Monsieur Cardonnet, "I respect both one and the other, but on condition that they inhabit healthy brains; for their advantages change to poison or smoke, in foolish brains. Unfortunately, some alleged scientists are of this number, and that is why I would have liked to preserve you from their chimeras. Who is more absurdly credulous and more easily deceived than a pedant with preconceived ideas? I remember an antiquarian who came here last year: he was in search of Druidical stones, and he saw them everywhere. To satisfy him I showed him an old stone the peasants had hollowed out by pounding the grain of which they made their porridge, and I persuaded him that it was the urn in which the sacrificial priests among the Gauls shed human blood. He absolutely insisted on carrying it off for the departmental museum. He took all the granite drinking-troughs for ancient sarcophagi. And that is how the most absurd errors spread. It rested entirely with me whether a trough or a mortar should pass for venerable monuments. And yet that gentleman had passed fifty years of his life reading and meditating. Look out for yourself, Emile, a day may come when you will take bladders for lanterns!" "I have done my duty," said Emile. "I was bound to urge you to make a further examination of the spots I have visited, and it seemed to me that the experience of your recent disaster might suggest the same advice. But as you answer me with jests I have nothing more to say." "Let us see, Emile," said Monsieur Cardonnet after a few moments' reflection, "what your conclusion is from all this, and what there is at the bottom of your cheerful predictions. I understand very well that Master Jean Jappeloup, who has set himself up as an inveterate foe of my undertaking, and who passes his life declaiming against _Père Cardonnet_--even in your presence, and you could tell me many things about him--would like to persuade you to induce me to leave this country where, it appears, my presence is a thorn in his side. But whither do you seek to lead me, O my philosopher and scientist? Where do you wish to found a colony? into what American desert do you propose to carry the advantages of your socialism and my industrial talent?" "We might carry them not so far away," replied Emile, "and if you were seriously inclined to work at the civilization of savages, you would find plenty under your hand; but I know only too well, father, that it is no part of your purpose to return to a subject that has been exhausted between us. I have forbidden myself to contradict you in that regard, and I do not think that since I have been here, I have once departed from the respectful silence you imposed upon me."