"
Madame Darbois gently removed her daughter's hat.
"Please, dear papa, I want to tell you everything."
"Too late, dear child, I know everything!"
The two ladies seemed surprised. "But--? How?"
"Through my friend, Victor Perliez, the chemist; who is, like me, a
father who feels deeply about his child's choice of a career."
Esperance made a little move.
"No, little girl," went on Francois Darbois, "I do not want to cause
you the least regret. Every now and then my innermost thoughts may
escape me; but that will pass.... I know that you showed unusual
simplicity as '_Henriette_,' and emotion as '_Iphygenia_.' Perliez's
son, whom I used to know when he was no higher than that," he said,
stretching out his hand, "was enthusiastic? He is, furthermore, a
clever boy, who might have made something uncommon out of himself
as a lawyer, perhaps. But--"
"But, father dear, he will make a fine lawyer; he will have an
influence in the theatre that will be more direct, more beneficial,
more far-reaching, than at the Bar. Oh! but yes! You remember, don't
you, mama, how disturbed you were by M. Dubare's plea on behalf of the
assassin of Jeanne Verdier? Well, is it not noble to defend the poets,
and introduce to the public all the new scientific and political
ideas?"
"Often wrong ideas," remarked Darbois.
"That is perhaps true, but what of it? Have you not said a thousand
times that discussion is the necessary soil for the development of new
ideas?"
The professor of philosophy looked at his daughter, realizing that
every word he had spoken in her hearing, all the seed that he had cast
to the wind, had taken root in her young mind.
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