m conversant with everything. My desire is that
in a year or two he should know everything about the factory, like a
master."

At that last word which enlightened him, the accountant's good sense
suddenly awoke. Amid the manias which were wrecking his mind, he had
remained a man of figures with a passion for arithmetical accuracy, and
he protested.

"Well, madame, since you wish me to assist you, pray tell me everything;
tell me in what work we can employ this young man here. Really now,
you surely cannot hope through him to regain possession of the factory,
re-purchase the shares, and become sole owner of the place?"

Then, with the greatest logic and clearness, he showed how foolish such
a dream would be, enumerating figures and fully setting forth how large
a sum of money would be needed to indemnify Denis, who was installed in
the place like a conqueror.

"Besides, dear madame, I don't understand why you should take that young
man rather than another. He has no legal rights, as you must be aware.
He could never be anything but a stranger here, and I should prefer an
intelligent, honest man, acquainted with our line of business."

Constance had set to work poking the fire logs with the tongs. When she
at last looked up she thrust her face towards the other's, and said in
a low voice, but violently: "Alexandre is my husband's son, he is the
heir. He is not the stranger. The stranger is that Denis, that son of
the Froments, who has robbed us of our property! You rend my heart; you
make it bleed, my friend, by forcing me to tell you this."

The answer she thus gave was the answer of a conservative bourgeoise,
who held that it would be more just if the inheritance should go to an
illegitimate scion of the house rather than to a stranger. Doubtless
the woman, the wife, the mother within her, bled even as she herself
acknowledged, but she sacrificed everything to her rancor; she would
drive the stranger away even if in doing so her own flesh should be
lacerated. Then, too, it vaguely seemed to her that her husband's son
must be in some degree her own, since his father was likewise the father
of the son to whom she had given birth, and who was dead. Besides, she
would make that young fellow her son; she would direct him, she would
compel him to be hers, to work through her and for her.

"You wish to know how I shall employ him in the place," she resumed.
"I myself don't know. It is evident that I shall not easily fin