Mathieu listened at first in great astonishment, and then began to ask questions and raise objections, at most of which Beauchene laughed gayly, like the gross egotist he was.  He talked at length with extreme volubility, going into all sorts of details, at times assuming a semi-apologetic manner, but more frequently justifying himself with an air of triumph.  And, finally, when they reached the corner of the Rue Caumartin he halted to bid Mathieu good-by.  He there had a little bachelor’s lodging, which was kept in order by the concierge of the house, who, being very well paid, proved an extremely discreet domestic.

As he hurried off, Mathieu, still standing at the corner of the street, could not help thinking of the scenes which he had witnessed at the Beauchene works that day.  He thought of old Moineaud, the fitter, whom he again saw standing silent and unmoved in the women’s workroom while his daughter Euphrasie was being soundly rated by Beauchene, and while Norine, the other girl, looked on with a sly laugh.  When the toiler’s children have grown up and gone to join, the lads the army of slaughter, and the girls the army of vice, the father, degraded by the ills of life, pays little heed to it all.  To him it is seemingly a matter of indifference to what disaster the wind may carry the fledgelings who fall from the nest.

It was now half-past nine o’clock, and Mathieu had more than an hour before him to reach the Northern railway station.  So he did not hurry, but strolled very leisurely up the Boulevards.  He had eaten and drunk far more than usual, and Beauchene’s insidious confidential talk, still buzzing in his ears, helped on his intoxication.  His hands were hot, and now and again a sudden glow passed over his face.  And what a warm evening it was, too, on those Boulevards, blazing with electric lights, fevered by a swarming, jostling throng, amid a ceaseless rumble of cabs and omnibuses!  It was all like a stream of ardent life flowing away into the night, and Mathieu allowed himself to be carried on by the torrent, whose hot breath, whose glow of passion, he ever felt sweeping over him.

Then, in a reverie, he pictured the day he had just spent.  First he was at the Beauchenes’ in the morning, and saw the father and mother standing, like accomplices who fully shared one another’s views, beside the sofa on which Maurice, their only son, lay dozing with a pale and waxen face.  The works must never be exposed to the danger of being subdivided.  Maurice alone must inherit all the millions which the business might yield, so that he might become one of the princes of industry.  And therefore the husband hurried off to sin while the wife closed her eyes.  In this sense, in defiance of morality and health, did the capitalist bourgeoisie, which had replaced the old nobility, virtually re-establish the law of primogeniture.  That law had been abolished at the Revolution for the bourgeoisie’s benefit; but now, also for its own purposes, it revived it.  Each family must have but one son.