David went back to the house with the brother and sister, and asked Mme. Chardon’s consent to his marriage with the eagerness of a man who would fain have no delay. Eve’s mother took her daughter’s hand, and gladly laid it in David’s; and the lover, grown bolder on this, kissed his fair betrothed on the forehead, and she flushed red, and smiled at him. “The betrothal of the poor,” the mother said, raising her eyes as if to pray for heaven’s blessing upon them.--“You are brave, my boy,” she added, looking at David, “but we have fallen on evil fortune, and I am afraid lest our bad luck should be infectious.” “We shall be rich and happy,” David said earnestly. “To begin with, you must not go out nursing any more, and you must come and live with your daughter and Lucien in Angoulême.” The three began at once to tell the astonished mother all their charming plans, and the family party gave themselves up to the pleasure of chatting and weaving a romance, in which it is so pleasant to enjoy future happiness, and to store the unsown harvest. They had to put David out at the door; he could have wished the evening to last for ever, and it was one o’clock in the morning when Lucien and his future brother-in-law reached the Palet Gate. The unwonted movement made honest Postel uneasy; he opened the window, and looking through the Venetian shutters, he saw a light in Eve’s room. “What can be happening at the Chardons’?” thought he, and seeing Lucien come in, he called out to him-- “What is the matter, sonny? Do you want me to do anything?” “No, sir,” returned the poet; “but as you are our friend, I can tell you about it; my mother has just given her consent to my sister’s engagement to David Séchard.” For all answer, Postel shut the window with a bang, in despair that he had not asked for Mlle. Chardon earlier. David, however, did not go back into Angoulême; he took the road to Marsac instead, and walked through the night the whole way to his father’s house. He went along by the side of the croft just as the sun rose, and caught sight of the old “bear’s” face under an almond-tree that grew out of the hedge. “Good day, father,” called David. “Why, is it you, my boy? How come you to be out on the road at this time of day? There is your way in,” he added, pointing to a little wicket gate. “My vines have flowered and not a shoot has been frosted. There will be twenty puncheons or more to the acre this year; but then look at all the dung that has been put on the land!” “Father, I have come on important business.” “Very well; how are your presses doing? You must be making heaps of money as big as yourself.” “I shall some day, father, but I am not very well off just now.”