had I, that
you should effect a saving of fifty per cent? None. But now it is
different. You give me, besides my wages, a share in your profits; you
raise me in my own esteem, by consulting my experience and knowledge.
Instead of treating me as an inferior being, you enter into communion
with me. It is my interest, it is my duty, to tell you all I know, and to
try to acquire more.' And thus it is, Mdlle. Angela, that the speculator
can organize his establishment, so as to shame his oppositionists, and
provoke their envy. Now if, instead of a cold hearted calculator, we tape
a man who unites with the knowledge of these facts the tender and
generous sympathies of an evangelical heart, and the elevation of a
superior mind, he will extend his ardent solicitude; not only to the
material comfort, but to the moral emancipation, of his workmen. Seeking
everywhere every possible means to develop their intelligence, to improve
their hearts, and strong in the authority acquired by his beneficence,
feeling that he on whom depends the happiness or the misery of three
hundred human creatures has also the care of souls, he will be the guide
of those whom he no longer calls his workmen, but his brothers, in a
straightforward and noble path, and will try to create in them the taste
for knowledge and art, which will render them happy and proud of a
condition of life that is often accepted by others with tears and curses
of despair. Well, Mdlle. Angela, such a man is--but, see! he could not
arrive amongst us except in the middle of a blessing. There he is--there
is M. Hardy!"

"Oh, M. Agricola!" said Angela, deeply moved, and drying her tears; "we
should receive him with our hands clasped in gratitude."

"Look if that mild and noble countenance is not the image of his
admirable soul!"

A carriage with post horses, in which was M. Hardy, with M. de Blessac,
the unworthy friend who was betraying him in so infamous a manner,
entered at this moment the courtyard of the factory.

A little while after, a humble hackney-coach was seen advancing also
towards the factory, from the direction of Paris. In this coach was
Rodin.

[30] The average price of a workman's lodging, composed of two small rooms
and a closet at most, on the third or fourth story.

[31] This calculation is amply sufficient, if not excessive. A similar
building, at one league from Paris, on the side of Montrouge, with all
the necessary offices, kitchen, wash-houses, etc.