On the other hand, Blaise, who was endowed with the creative fire of the Froments, ever striving, ever hard at work, became a valuable assistant to Maurice as soon as a brief stay in Morange’s office had made him familiar with the business of the firm.  Indeed it was Maurice who, finding that his father seconded him less and less, had insisted on Blaise and Charlotte installing themselves in the little pavilion, in order that the former’s services might at all times be available.  And Constance, ever on her knees before her son, could in this matter only obey respectfully.  She evinced boundless faith in the vastness of Maurice’s intellect.  His studies had proved fairly satisfactory; if he was somewhat slow and heavy, and had frequently been delayed by youthful illnesses, he had, nevertheless, diligently plodded on.  As he was far from talkative, his mother gave out that he was a reflective, concentrated genius, who would astonish the world by actions, not by speech.  Before he was even fifteen she said of him, in her adoring way:  “Oh! he has a great mind.”  And, naturally enough, she only acknowledged Blaise to be a necessary lieutenant, a humble assistant, one whose hand would execute the sapient young master’s orders.  The latter, to her thinking, was now so strong and so handsome, and he was so quickly reviving the business compromised by the father’s slow collapse, that surely he must be on the high-road to prodigious wealth, to that final great triumph, indeed, of which she had been dreaming so proudly, so egotistically, for so many years.

But all at once the thunderbolt fell.  It was not without some hesitation that Blaise had agreed to make the little pavilion his home, for he knew that there was an idea of reducing him to the status of a mere piece of machinery.  But at the birth of his little girl he bravely decided to accept the proposal, and to engage in the battle of life even as his father had engaged in it, mindful of the fact that he also might in time have a large family.  But it so happened that one morning, when he went up to the house to ask Maurice for some instructions, he heard from Constance herself that the young man had spent a very bad night, and that she had therefore prevailed on him to remain in bed.  She did not evince any great anxiety on the subject; the indisposition could only be due to a little fatigue.  Indeed, for a week past the two cousins had been tiring themselves out over the delivery of a very important order, which had set the entire works in motion.  Besides, on the previous day Maurice, bareheaded and in perspiration, had imprudently lingered in a draught in one of the sheds while a machine was being tested.