you say that it is so, and that God is satisfied to have it so--stop there! It is contrary to religion to say that God loves evil, and we are Christians, I believe. Have you been baptized? So have I; and I deny Satan. At all events my sponsors renounced him for me, and I have renounced him for others when I have been a sponsor. For that reason we must take no false oaths, nor blaspheme, nor say that all men are not equal when they come into the world and do not all deserve happiness, for that is equivalent to saying that some are condemned to hell before they are born. I am done, Emile. You won't lie, and you will make your father abandon that cunning condition!" "Ah! my friend, if I could see Gilberte once a week! If I were not dishonored in her father's eyes and banished from his house, I should not lose hope or courage." "Dishonored in Antoine's eyes? Pray tell me, what do you take him for? Do you think he would have a renegade and backslider for a son-in-law?" "Oh, if he only looked at things as you do, Jean! but he will not understand my conduct." "Antoine didn't invent gunpowder, I agree. He has never been able to get the square of the hypotenuse into his head, whereas I learned it in a few minutes, simply by watching a schoolmate do it. But you consider him much simpler than he is. In the matter of honor and worthy sentiments, that old fellow knows all that any one ought to know. Pray, do you think that a man must be very sly and very learned to understand that two and two make four and not five? For my part, I say that, to know that, one needn't have read a roomful of big books like old Boisguilbault, and that every unhappy man on this earth knows very well that his lot is unjust when he has not deserved it. Very good! hasn't friend Antoine suffered and endured, I should like to know? Did not the rich turn their backs on him when he became poor? Is there any one who can say that they were justified in treating him so--a man who never had a crust of bread that he didn't give three-quarters and sometimes the whole of it to others! And if you were not a sensible man, would you ever have been attracted to him? Would you be in love with his daughter to the point of wanting to marry her, if you had your father's ideas? No, you wouldn't have looked at her, or else you'd have seduced her; but you would reflect that she has no dowry, and you would abandon her like a villain. Courage, Emile, my boy! Honest men will always esteem you, and I will answer for Antoine; I will take charge of him. If Janille cries out, I will cry out too, and we will see whether she or I has the loudest voice and the best-oiled tongue. As for Gilberte, be sure that she will have a kindly feeling for you all her life, and that she will think well of you for your straightforwardness. She will never love any other man, I promise you! I know her; she's a girl who has only one word. But the time will come when your father will change his tune. That will be when