“Ah! ah! it’s ready, is it not?” said he; “Monsieur Firon-Badinier has again written me that he will be here at three o’clock.  And you know that I’m going to take you to the restaurant with him this evening; for one can never induce those fellows to give orders unless one plies them with good wine.  It annoys Constance to have it done here; and, besides, I prefer to entertain those people in town.  You warned Marianne, eh?”

“Certainly.  She knows that I shall return by the quarter-to-eleven-o’clock train.”

Beauchene had sunk upon a chair:  “Ah! my dear fellow, I’m worn out,” he continued; “I dined in town last night; I got to bed only at one o’clock.  And there was a terrible lot of work waiting for me this morning.  One positively needs to be made of iron.”

Until a short time before he had shown himself a prodigious worker, endowed with really marvellous energy and strength.  Moreover, he had given proof of unfailing business instinct with regard to many profitable undertakings.  Invariably the first to appear at the works, he looked after everything, foresaw everything, filling the place with his bustling zeal, and doubling his output year by year.  Recently, however, fatigue had been gaining ground on him.  He had always sought plenty of amusement, even amid the hard-working life he led.  But nowadays certain “sprees,” as he called them, left him fairly exhausted.

He gazed at Mathieu:  “You seem fit enough, you do!” he said.  “How is it that you manage never to look tired?”

As a matter of fact, the young man who stood there erect before his drawing-table seemed possessed of the sturdy health of a young oak tree.  Tall and slender, he had the broad, lofty, tower-like brow of the Froments.  He wore his thick hair cut quite short, and his beard, which curled slightly, in a point.  But the chief expression of his face rested in his eyes, which were at once deep and bright, keen and thoughtful, and almost invariably illumined by a smile.  They showed him to be at once a man of thought and of action, very simple, very gay, and of a kindly disposition.

“Oh!  I,” he answered with a laugh, “I behave reasonably.”

But Beauchene protested:  “No, you don’t!  The man who already has four children when he is only twenty-seven can’t claim to be reasonable.  And twins too—­your Blaise and your Denis to begin with!  And then your boy Ambroise and your little girl Rose.  Without counting the other little girl that you lost at her birth.  Including her, you would now have had five youngsters, you wretched fellow!  No, no, I’m the one who behaves reasonably—­I, who have but one child, and, like a prudent, sensible man, desire no others!”

He often made such jesting remarks as these, through which filtered his genuine indignation; for he deemed the young couple to be over-careless of their interests, and declared that the prolificness of his cousin Marianne was quite scandalous.