M. Moriaz started up, and his cane, slipping from his hand, rolled to the bottom of the declivity. He looked at his daughter, and said to her: "I beg of you to repeat what you just said to me. I fear I have misunderstood you."
She answered in a firmer voice, "I am curious to know what you would think if I should marry, some day or other, Count Larinski."
He was startled, thunderstruck. He never had foreseen that such a catastrophe could occur, nor had the least suspicion that anything had passed between his daughter and M. Larinski. Of all the ideas that had suggested themselves to him, this seemed the least admissible, the most improbable and ridiculous. After a long silence, he said to Antoinette, "You want to frighten me--this is not serious."
"Certainly not; I by no means dislike him. He has good manners, he speaks well, and I must acknowledge that he had a very graceful way of taking me from off my rock, where I should still be had it not been for him. I am grateful to him for it; but, from that to giving him my daughter, there is a wide margin. If he wanted me to give him a medal he should have it."
"Let us talk seriously," said she. "What objections have you to make?"
"First, M. Larinski is a stranger, and I mistrust strangers. Then, I know him but slightly. I naturally demand additional information. Finally, I own that the state of his affairs--"
"Ah! that is the main point," she interrupted. "He is poor; that is his crime, which he has not disguised. How differently we think! I have some fortune; its only advantage that I can see is that it makes me free to marry the man I esteem, though he be poor."
"And perhaps a little because of that very reason," interrupted M. Moriaz, in his turn. "Come, I entreat you, let me explain the anxieties arising from my miserable good sense. M. Larinski has related his history to us. Frankly, do you not think that it is rather that--what shall I say--of an adventurer? The word shocks you--I take it back--but you must admit that this Pole belongs to the--ambulatory family."
"That is it, of wandering heroes. I wish all manner of good to heroes, although I never have clearly discovered their use. At all events, I am not sure that they are the best qualified men in the world to make a wife happy, and I intend that my daughter shall be happy."