But M. Favoral took every thing tragically. If Maxence was kept in,
or otherwise punished, he pretended that it reflected upon himself,
and that his son was disgracing him.

If a report came home with this remark, "execrable conduct," he fell
into the most violent passion, and seemed to lose all control of
himself.

"At your age," he would shout to the terrified boy, "I was working
in a factory, and earning my livelihood. Do you suppose that I
will not tire of making sacrifices to procure you the advantages
of an education which I lacked myself? Beware. Havre is not far
off; and cabin-boys are always in demand there."

If, at least, he had confined himself to these admonitions, which,
by their very exaggeration, failed in their object! But he favored
mechanical appliances as a necessary means of sufficiently impressing
reprimands upon the minds of young people; and therefore, seizing
his cane, he would beat poor Maxence most unmercifully, the more so
that the boy, filled with pride, would have allowed himself to be
chopped to pieces rather than utter a cry, or shed a tear.

The first time that Mme. Favoral saw her son struck, she was seized
with one of those wild fits of anger which do not reason, and never
forgive. To be beaten herself would have seemed to her less
atrocious, less humiliating. Hitherto she had found it impossible
to love a husband such as hers: henceforth, she took him in utter
aversion: he inspired her with horror. She looked upon her son as
a martyr for whom she could hardly ever do enough.