Ah! well, I'm not inquisitive, but it would
really amuse me to meet the fool who might attempt such madness."
"_Mon Dieu_, who knows?" Mathieu quietly concluded. "When one only loves
strongly one may work miracles."
La Lepailleur, after going to fetch a dozen eggs, now stood erect before
her husband in admiration at hearing him talk so eloquently to a
bourgeois. They agreed very well together in their avaricious rage at
being unable to amass money by the handful without any great exertion,
and in their ambition to make their son a gentleman, since only a
gentleman could become wealthy. And thus, as Marianne was going off after
placing the eggs under a cushion in Gervais' little carriage, the other
complacently called her attention to Antonin, who, having made a hole in
the ground, was now spitting into it.
"Oh! he's smart," said she; "he knows his alphabet already, and we are
going to put him to school. If he takes after his father he will be no
fool, I assure you."
It was on a Sunday, some ten days later, that the supreme revelation, the
great flash of light which was to decide his life and that of those he
loved, fell suddenly upon Mathieu during a walk he took with his wife and
the children.
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