David and Ève’s betrothal joins a long-hidden mutual love to a practical plan for sustaining Lucien and his family. David offers marriage not as a private escape from hardship but as the means to make a shared household in which Ève, her mother, and Lucien can be supported; Ève, who has loved David quietly, accepts both the love and the difficult life he foresees. Madame Chardon’s joyful consent turns their private understanding into a family commitment, though the scene promises a future rather than depicting the wedding itself.

A proposal shaped by Lucien’s future

David’s proposal begins with his anxiety about Lucien’s prospects. He believes Lucien cannot endure poverty after having tasted social success and luxury, and warns that the earnings of Ève’s work will never match Lucien’s needs. Ève hears this as discouragement and calls David a false friend. David answers that he wants the right to be Lucien’s brother: marriage would let him help with the practical judgment of a provider, while sharing the devotion Ève already gives her brother.

He imagines a household reorganized around that purpose. Lucien would no longer work as David’s printer’s apprentice or lodge in L’Houmeau; Ève would no longer have to remain a worker, and their mother could give up her own trade. Lucien could live on the second floor while David arranged an apartment above the outbuilding at the back of the courtyard, unless his father agreed to add another story. David also looks beyond Angoulême: Paris, he believes, is the one place where Lucien’s talents can be recognized and paid, but its cost would require the resources of all three. In his vision, marrying Ève makes this support possible and gives David a reason to pursue wealth beyond his own needs.

Love across a difference in fortune

The proposal is practical, but the exchange exposes the feeling beneath its calculations. Ève says that their circumstances divide them: David is rich, while she is poor, and crossing that boundary requires deep love. David takes her hesitation as evidence that she may not love him enough. When she worries that his father might oppose the marriage, he dismisses that obstacle and tells her that, if his father is the only difficulty, she will be his wife.

Ève then reveals that she has never thought of another man. She has regarded David as someone a woman could be proud to belong to, but, as a poor worker with no prospects, had not dared to hope for such a future. Her acceptance is not merely an agreement to help Lucien: she promises to become David’s wife, devote herself to him, and try not to make their initially difficult life more painful. David, in turn, tells her that he has loved her since the first day he saw her. Their conversation makes explicit a reciprocal attachment that had remained unspoken, while the difference in their means gives the declaration its immediate social obstacle.

Madame Chardon gives her consent

David accompanies Ève and Lucien to Madame Chardon’s home and asks for Ève’s hand without delay. Their mother takes her daughter’s hand and places it in David’s, accepting the match with joy. David kisses his promised bride on the forehead; Ève smiles and blushes. The gesture makes the betrothal a family act, not only a private promise between the couple.

Madame Chardon calls it the betrothal of poor people and acknowledges the family’s misfortune, fearing that hardship may prove contagious. David answers gravely that they will be rich and happy. As an immediate change, he promises that she will stop working as a caregiver and come live with Ève and Lucien in Angoulême. His confidence contrasts with the mother’s fear, but the material arrangements he has already described show what that confidence depends on: shared labor, a household, and future earnings.

A family future imagined in one evening

After the mother’s consent, the three young people eagerly tell her their plan. Their excited family conversation dwells on anticipated happiness, as if they could gather its seeds in advance. The evening runs so late that David has to be made to leave; when Lucien walks his future brother-in-law back to Porte-Palet, the hour is one in the morning.

Their unusual late-night activity catches Postel’s attention. Watching the light at the Chardon home from behind his window, he wonders what has happened and asks Lucien whether he needs help. Lucien tells him that, as a friend, he can share the news: his mother has just given David Séchard his sister’s hand. The announcement confirms the betrothal beyond the family circle. The scene thus closes on both a concrete change in the family’s arrangements and an expansive promise whose fulfillment remains ahead: David and Ève have committed themselves to one another, and to a future in which Lucien’s prospects are bound up with their own.