In the ensuing week the coming sale at the ChÂteau was the frequent subject of discussion among the men of La FromentiÈre. AndrÉ openly attacked the masters.

"They are ruined," he said. "All the nobles go the same road, because they do nothing. So much the worse for them!"

"So much the worse for the farmers," replied his father; "they do not often gain much by changing masters."

Toussaint Lumineau was painfully hit by the coming event, not only in his sincere and lifelong affection for the master's family, but in his honest pride as a peasant.

It was a humiliation to hear people talk of the downfall of the family to whom the Lumineaus were allied by traditions of generations; he took his share of the blame, his share of the disgrace; he felt he had lost stability, that in future he must be exposed to chances and changes, like so many another; and even found himself envying those whose farms belonged to wealthy proprietors, clear of mortgage.

"No," he resumed, "you do wrong to speak as you do, Driot. Our masters may have their reasons for this, of which we know nothing. Perhaps M. le Marquis is about to marry his daughter, and is in want of ready money. Rich and poor alike find it an expensive business to settle their children."

"If that is their only means to obtain money, they must be at a pretty low ebb!" rejoined AndrÉ. "To think that even family portraits are to be sold. I remember seeing them one day when I went with you to pay the rent."

"Bah! Perhaps they were not good likenesses. Besides, the Marquis probably has others. How are people in our station in life to know all that families like theirs possess?"

"And personal clothing? Is that usually sold? It is not very creditable in them to let everything go in a public sale, as if they were bankrupts."

"I tell you what, AndrÉ, I do not believe that half the things will be sold that are down in the catalogue; it is merely to draw people." But all the same, in his heart of hearts, the farmer well knew how poor were the reasons which respect for the family led him to urge.

Rising from the table, under pretext of having work to do, he shortened the meal.

AndrÉ's aggressiveness did not lessen, indeed his irritation seemed to increase as the day fixed for the sale approached. The poor lad needed to anger himself against something or somebody to gain courage. February 20th was the date on which he had secretly planned to leave La FromentiÈre, four days before the departure of an emigrant ship that he was to join at Antwerp. His anger was inspired not by temper, but by the ever-increasing grief within him. He forced himself to speak ill of La FromentiÈre because he still loved it, and was about to desert it.

Thus Sunday, the 20th of February, arrived. On that day the silence that had reigned over La FromentiÈre vanished, but to give place to what noises—what clatter! Visitors were again seen within its walls, but what visitors! People had come from afar, curiosity dealers from Nantes, from La Rochelle, even from Paris. Before eight in the morning they had gathered in groups beside the two flights of steps leading to the portico. Men, short, stout, red-faced; some with auburn beards, others with bird-like noses, talking together in subdued voices, sitting on chairs—to be sold—that had been ranged in rows on the broad carriage drive, laid with the red gravel that used to crunch so pleasantly beneath the roll of carriage wheels. On the topmost of the entrance steps, now converted into an auctioneer's rostrum, were the notary, MaÎtre Oulry, his eyes displaying discreet satisfaction behind his spectacles, the public crier, indifferent as any stone-breaker to the relics of which he was about to announce the dispersion, and the furniture removers standing in their shirt-sleeves despite the intense cold. The two flights of stone steps, stained with mud even to half way up the balustrades, testified to the crowds admitted on the previous two days to see the interior of the ChÂteau. Some had gone from curiosity, taking advantage of their first opportunity to go over a seigniorial dwelling; but all within was in disorder, faded, covered with dust. The battens, which for years had secured the windows of the rooms on the ground-floor, had been unnailed on one side, and hung down beside the open persiennes. In the dining-hall, and the two drawing-rooms en suite, had been piled the greater part of the bedroom furniture, cooking utensils, and crockery. Pictures, turned with their faces to the wall, formed a dado in front of couches and easy-chairs; there were four clocks on one mantel-piece, candelabras standing in fireplaces, fire-dogs on occasional tables, book shelves on the billiard table, baskets of choice wine standing in the boudoir of the dowager Marquise, hung with its dainty cherry-coloured satin; silk draperies trailing on a kitchen table. Broken bell-ropes and strips of torn paper hung from the walls. Everywhere was disorder and desolation as complete as is produced by Death in the human frame.

Pushing their way through the narrow passages left by all these piles of costly objects were to be seen coarse men accustomed to the handling of rags and rubbish, discharged servants, dealers in old clothes, coffee-house keepers covetously fingering carved oak chests, scratching the gold off picture frames to see how deep it was laid; opening cupboards and drawers, and bursting into rude loud laughter if, perchance, they lighted upon some private token, such as photographs, letters, missals, rosaries, relics of departed souls thus exposed to, and profaned by vulgar eyes.

On the upper floors boys in their sabots had perched themselves on the window-sills with legs hanging out, or were trying the mattresses still left on their wooden bedsteads. Gradually as the late February day dispersed the fog, and it was drifted by the wind in heavy masses over the woods, vehicles of all descriptions—cabriolets, victorias, tilburys, closed carriages formerly graced with armorial bearings, now let out on hire, mixed with some few well-appointed turn-outs—drove into the park. These were unharnessed, the carriages standing upon the lawns, some of the horses tied to the trees with nosebags of hay; while others, their feet clogged, were left to graze where they would. A row of carts stood on the border of a neighbouring copse, their shafts raised diagonally.

All round the ChÂteau was like a fair; the stables and coach-houses had been appropriated; plough horses were to be seen in the loose boxes; coachmen and stable-boys from inns, in their straw hats, gazed admiringly at the vast proportions of the stables and dependencies, or stood hypnotized before the copper appointments of the stalls, the nickel locks, the iron bars separating one from the other.

"It was a fine place after all," they said to themselves.

The sight of all the careful appointments seemed to give them a vague insight into the ancient splendours of the domain, while at the same time it came across them with stupefying force: how could a man have lost such a fortune? how could there be ruin, with a rental of hundreds of thousands of pounds? And, as a natural consequence, they gave the family credit for vices which had but a very small share in the disaster, for, spitting on the cemented floors, they exclaimed: "A pleasure-loving set!"

In front of the entrance the crowd increased rapidly, some impelled by the desire to buy, others by curiosity. Three hundred people, seated on chairs and benches, formed a compact, immovable, semicircular mass; outside them was perpetual movement of coming and going. Dealers in antiquities, sellers of old clothes, occupied the first row; after them came a number of shopkeepers, former purveyors to the Marquis, householders of Chalons with their wives, country dames dressed up as if for Easter Day, with bright eyes and loud voices, wearing little bunches of spring flowers in their bodices which they themselves had cut from the hot-houses of La FromentiÈre, given up this day to pillage. They commented derisively to each other on the ill-kept state of the apartments in the ChÂteau, the dirty windows, the grass-grown avenues, the bogs in the cross roads of the park. "We keep things very differently," said they. "Thank goodness, we know better what is fitting than your ruined Marquises do!" And with an air of "knowing all about it," they called up memories of bygone fÊtes. Behind them, again, were to be seen peasants of Saint Gervais, of Soullans, of Saint Urbian, but men only. Very few had come from the parish itself. The auction was not for them; what should take them there? To many who had known the family, it had seemed as if it would have been an insult to assist at the humiliating spectacle. At the most some ten of the old inhabitants of Sallertaine were there, and they not the most important, keeping well at the back, not daring to sit down. Shamefaced, as though the lord of the ChÂteau were there before them and sorrowful, they had followed the crowd, having nothing else to do in their Sunday leisure, and now exchanged recollections of kind words spoken by "Monsieur Henri," of greetings and girlish smiles given by Mademoiselle Ambroisine. Alas! after all the money so lavishly spent, so many a kindly action, so much cordiality and urbanity shown for centuries past by successive Marquises of La FromentiÈre—after eight years there only remained that slight expression of regret to be seen in the sad faces of a handful of farmers. Still fewer in number were the neighbouring gentry. Hidden among the throng was the Baron de la Houvelle, whose mania for collecting led him to forget what was due to his rank; the Comte de Bouart, coarse and red-faced, attracted by the wine cellar, and young d'Escaron, whose object was to secure a breeding mare.

But the notary had many commissions to buy; for earlier in the week, before the day on which the ChÂteau had been on view to the invasion of plebeians, chÂtelaines, young and old, friends of the family, had driven over and, shown round by the game-keeper, might have been seen in private apartments and reception rooms, examining old tapestries and household linen with many an exclamation and regret.

Only one member of the Lumineau family was present at the auction, and that was Mathurin, to whom every event, even of a painful character, was a grateful change to his sufferings and weariness. When he had announced "I shall go," his father had said:

"I could not; it would irritate me too much. Go if you like; and when they come to selling personal things, send me word, Mathurin, for I want some little thing as a remembrance of M. le Marquis."

At some distance from the circle of buyers, to the left of the entrance, Mathurin Lumineau had found a seat under a group of trees. Wrapped in his brown cloak, more taciturn and brooding than ever, he had gradually pushed back his chair until he was almost hidden between the branches of two fir-trees, thence, as if lying in ambush, he listened to all that was going on, and his blue eyes, ever and anon lit up with sudden anger, scanned the front of the ChÂteau, now the buyers, now the passers-by.

At half-past eight the auction began. The auctioneer, a small bloodless man, endowed with a strong voice, announced from the top of the entrance steps to the crowd assembled, to brute nature, to the forests left for the past eight years to solitude and silence:

"The reception-room furniture of M. le Marquis, comprising six fauteuils, a couch, four ebony chairs upholstered in old gold satin, Louis XV. style, with gilt nails, for fifteen hundred francs; the covers will be thrown in. Going at fifteen hundred francs! Fifteen hundred and twenty; fifteen hundred and fifty; sixteen hundred." He rolled his eyes as the price augmented.

At sixteen hundred francs, the old gold satin suite was knocked down; and while the notary was putting the curtains up for auction, Mathurin's eyes followed the fauteuils, couch, and chairs he had only seen once before and that by chance on a quarter-day, now being carted away by the furniture removers who fell at once on these the first spoils. After the contents of the reception rooms followed tables, wardrobes, beds, these latter especially coveted; crockery, covered with dust and displayed to view on the steps, clocks, the billiard table.

The sale lasted the whole day, save a short interval at half-past ten. The auctioneer's voice was untiring. As people went, their places were taken by new-comers; the pale rays of the February sun lighted up clouds of dust issuing from the open windows; the rooms were thronged. Many of the purchasers were carrying away their lots themselves; others, who were only later to come into possession of their acquisitions, were writing their names in chalk on old oak chests, or pieces of furniture, covered for the time being with heaps of incongruous articles. Costly hangings, partly unnailed, hung from the cornices, and streaming over step-ladders, trailed on the dusty floors.

Towards four o'clock, the number of spectators had diminished; tethered horses had been taken from under sheltering trees; vehicles of all kinds and descriptions were on the homeward way to town and outskirts. Mathurin had not left his nook under the shade of the fir-trees. An uneasy suspicion was agitating him violently. Twice, at some distance in the direction of the offices, he had thought to recognise the eager face of Jean Nesmy. The young man, clad in brown, his hat drawn over his eyes, who only stealthily advanced, but who had been seen by Mathurin now here, now there in the copse on the other side of the lawn, could be no other than the dismissed farm-servant, Rousille's lover. Mathurin sat and waited for his father, to whom he had despatched a village lad, telling him of the approaching close of the sale. In the bluish mist, to right of the ChÂteau, Farmer Lumineau appeared, and with him Marie-Rose. Despite the growing dusk, both were somewhat shamefaced. Rousille did not go far, at a hundred paces from the front of the ChÂteau she stopped, and sitting on the bench of la Marquise, looked on with startled eyes at the scene of devastation, while her father went up closer to make his purchase. Among the two hundred people still grouped round the granite steps, women predominated. They had stayed to see the "wearing apparel and toilet appurtenances," given out by the notary as being the next lot. And now the auctioneer lifted above his head a soft, clinging, pale violet material, that unfolded and fluttered in the wind.

"A young lady's dress of mauve silk with muslin collarette—ten francs!" he called.

"Show it!" cried the women's voices.

And Rousille saw the object lowered on to the stone steps, the little silken gown left behind, forgotten, that still retained something of the supple grace of its wearer, Mademoiselle Ambroisine de la FromentiÈre. And coarse words and low jests reached her, made by the brokers as they handled the dainty relics of refinement and purity.

"Can they put up that for sale!" she murmured; she shrank from the profanation, and would gladly have gone away.

But at that moment two sudden emotions, two surprises nailed her to her seat. Across the lawn, facing her, in front of a group of fir-trees, she had seen Mathurin, who had left the protection of the branches, and was looking over at the bench of la Marquise, shaking his fist; while, quite close behind her, she heard a voice from out the flowering laurels, say:

"My Rousille, Jean Nesmy has come!"

With perfect self-control she did not turn her head, made no movement; feeling herself to be spied upon, she had all the courage of her ancestors whom peril had ever found ready. Scarce opening her lips as if only breathing to calm her beating heart, she said to him who had rustled the leaves behind her:

"Beware! Mathurin is watching us."

"I know, he has already seen me."

"Then, go quickly! Come back later."

"When?"

"To-night, in the barn; when I put my candlestick on the window-sill."

Mathurin was hurrying across with the aid of his crutches to satisfy himself that he had seen a man's figure among the shadows of trees in that opposite group. Jean Nesmy meanwhile slipped away amid the undergrowth, and through the lonely copses. Round the steps, already in darkness, loud talking and laughing rose from the diminished crowd.

"I will have it. That's what I want," was heard in Lumineau's strong voice. The auctioneer was offering a walking-stick, with horn handle bound with a gold ring.

"That depends, my good man," was the reply, amid the jibes of the townspeople of Chalons, "that depends! To say 'I will have it' in an auction is not enough. What price do you put on it?"

"Two francs," said a broker.

"Five francs!" cried the farmer. Now no one laughed; the bid was an unusual one. Toussaint Lumineau had made it greatly to prevent competition, but also, as he would have said, from a spirit of bravado to prove that the tenant was not ruined like his master. Mounting the lower steps he reached up a crown piece, seized the cane, and, not venturing to lean upon it, tucked it under his arm, and slouched away from the remaining group of bargainers who were greedily snapping up odd remnants of the furniture of La FromentiÈre, hastily priced, given for next to nothing. Skirting the excited cluster of buyers, he went towards the group of trees where Mathurin had again taken up his post.

"Let us go," he said, "I have made my purchase. M. Henri's walking-stick."

"You paid too much for it," said the cripple.

"My poor lad," returned the farmer reproachfully, "he would have given it to me had he been there. I paid that price that no one should dispute it with me.... All those fellows would have made game of me, had I not!—"

And with a movement of the shoulder he signified the notary, the auctioneer, the invisible agents of the law, who to his excited fancy had had a hand in the proceedings now coming to an end. Moderating his pace so as not to hurry Mathurin, whose crutches struck against the mole-hills on the lawn, the farmer crossed the broad expanse where the blue mist thickened. They could hear the cracking of whips; see the red light of lanterns passing along the leafless woods, the frightened wood-pigeons circling over head. Rousille saw her father coming. She had remained in the same place sitting on the bench, joyous at heart, but with somewhat too much of love's dream in her eyes, for her father asked severely:

"What is it, child? This is no day for laughter."

"Nothing," she answered, rising.

"Then walk on in front," put in Mathurin. "You might be meeting someone."

And she went down the avenues, then along the path by the leafless hedges in front as she had been hidden. Her white coif turned neither to the right nor to the left; but proud as one enduring for her love, she walked on with elastic step down the hill towards the elm-trees of the farmstead, and her eyes gazing fixedly into the gathering night—those eyes which none could read, gazing at everything, seeing nothing, were filled with tender musings. She entered her domain, and began to pour over the bread the soup which had been simmering in her absence. The men stayed without, talking. When they came in she felt sure that she had been again betrayed by Mathurin, and that her father was angry with her. AndrÉ came in last, at about eight o'clock. The farmer had proposed waiting supper until his return, and he and Mathurin had sat in the chimney-corner warming themselves, by turns taking and trying the cane of M. Henri as they talked over the sad events of the day: the men who had come from Sallertaine to bid, how they had heard the battens nailed up again across the lower windows as they came away; the lights they had seen wandering along the corridors of the upper floor as in the good old days when the great white house was full of guests.

"Our masters will never come back now," said Toussaint Lumineau. "And I, who always believed in them! This is the end!"

"The end!" repeated AndrÉ, as he came in at the door from the outer darkness. "I am glad not to have seen it."

The good-looking young MaraÎchin seemed tired and troubled; his eyes were brilliant as if about to shed tears. Toussaint Lumineau thought that the shame of this public auction, so painful to him, had affected his son in like manner, and had been the sole cause of his long absence.

"Sit down, Driot," he said, "you must be hungry. The soup is ready."

"No, I am not hungry," replied AndrÉ.

"Nor am I," returned his father.

Mathurin alone, dragging himself to the table, ladled out a plate of soup; while his father remained sitting beside the fire, and Driot stood leaning against the projecting chimney-corner, looking alternately at his father and brother.

"Where did you go?" asked the farmer.

AndrÉ made a sweeping gesture:

"From one to the other. To your friend Guerineau, of La PinÇonniÈre; to the miller of Moque-Souris; the Levrelles; the Massonneau...."

"A good fellow, le Glorieux," interrupted the farmer; "worthy family his."

"I saw the Ricolleaus of Malabrit too."

"What, you went as far as that?"

"The Ertus of La ParÉe du Mont——"

Toussaint Lumineau looked straight into his son's clear eyes, trying to understand.

"What led you to go and see all these people, my boy?"

"An idea"—no longer able to endure his father's inquiring look, his eyes sought the dark corner wherein stood the bed—"an idea. Well then, going along, I thought I would go as far as La Roche and see FranÇois." "FranÇois?" murmured the farmer. "You are like me then, dear lad, your thoughts are often with him?"

Slowly the young man nodded his head, as he answered:

"Yes, this evening especially; this evening, more than any evening of my whole life, I would have liked to have him beside me."

AndrÉ's words were spoken with such strong emotion, with so mournful a solemnity, that Mathurin, who had not known the date of AndrÉ's departure, understood that the time had come, and that his brother had not many more minutes to remain in La FromentiÈre.

The blood rushed to his head, his lips half opened, a violent fit of trembling seized him, while his eyes stared fixedly at AndrÉ. There was an unwonted animation in those eyes of his, for, while they expressed triumphant pride, there was also, in that supreme hour, something of pity and affection, perhaps of remorse. AndrÉ knew that they bade him farewell. The father, meanwhile, had drawn up his chair to the table, and raising the cane horizontally to the level of the lamp, that AndrÉ might the better see it, was caressing the gold ring with his fingers, none too clean from the day's toil. He imagined that his son's thoughts were again with the present, or like his own, were embracing the same future.

"See," said he, "what I bought as a souvenir of M. Henri. How often he has knocked against my door with the point of this cane, tap! tap! tap! 'Are you there, my old Lumineau?' AndrÉ, when you are the master of La FromentiÈre——"

At these words the young man, who was standing behind the farmer, felt all his courage give way. Unable to restrain his tears, and fearing lest his father should turn towards him, he retreated silently towards the door.

Toussaint Lumineau had noticed nothing; he continued: "When you are the master at La FromentiÈre, you will see no more of the family. I do not believe that the farmstead will be sold. I greatly hope not, but our Marquises will not come amongst us again. My lad, the new times you will be living in will not be like those I used to know!"

Now Driot's tears fell fast as he looked at the old walls worn with the shoulders of many a Lumineau past and gone.

"Do not distress yourself, dear boy. If the masters go, the land remains." Driot's tears fell fast as he looked on the rosary of MÈre Lumineau, hanging at the head of the bed.

"The land is good, though you have spoken ill of it, and so you will find out."

Driot's tears fell as he looked at Mathurin.

"You will do your best for it; and it will do its best for you!"

Driot's tears fell fast as he looked at his father, still fondling the light wood cane. He gazed for some time by the light of the lamp on the tired hands, the horny hands, seamed with scars gained working for his family for their support and education—the hands that had never known discouragement, and, impelled by respect and grief, he did a thing unknown at La FromentiÈre, now that the sons were grown up and the mother dead; he came close in the shadow behind his father, leant over him, and kissed the old man's wrinkled brow.

"Dear boy!" said Toussaint Lumineau, kissing him in return.

"I will be off to bed," murmured AndrÉ. "I am done up."

He seized Mathurin's hand in a warm, hurried clasp. But he took some time to go the ten paces which separated him from the door leading into the kitchen where Rousille was washing up her dishes. As he shut the door he looked back once more into the room. Then he was heard talking to his sister. Then he was heard no more.

Deep night enveloped the farmstead, the last on which the roof of La FromentiÈre would shelter Driot. An hour after, any late wanderers along the road, seeing the mass of buildings standing out from the trees, darker even than the enveloping fog and as silent, would surely have thought that all within were sleeping soundly. But, save the farm-servant, all within were wide-awake. Mathurin, greatly excited, had not ceased talking and turning restlessly. The light extinguished, talking still continued between father and son, whose beds were ranged, near each other, beside the wall. Not daring to speak of AndrÉ's flight, the idea of which was ever present with him like a persistent nightmare, the cripple turned feverishly from one subject to another, and his father found it impossible to calm him.

"I assure you I did see the Boquin. I was some distance from him, but I detest him too much to make any mistake about the fellow; he has a sly way of running about like a ferret. He wore a brown suit, and had something tawny in his hat, like oak leaves."

"Go to sleep, Mathurin, you must be mistaken."

"Yes, of course they were oak leaves. When he was here he used to stick them in his hat every now and then out of bombast, to show that his province was richer and more wooded than ours. Ah, the dannion! If I could but have run!"

"You would not have found him, my poor boy! He is at home in his Bocage. What should have brought him to the Marquis' sale?"

"To see my sister, of course! He may even have spoken to her for all I know, for it was too dark for me to see Rousille plainly."

The father, lying in his large canopied bed, sighed, and said:

"Always your sister! You worry yourself too much about her. Go to sleep, Mathurin. They would not dare to speak to each other; they know I should not allow it."

The cripple was silent for a few seconds, then his mind reverted to the events of the day; he enumerated the neighbours who had spoken to him, and what they had said about the probable sale of La FromentiÈre; then, impelled by the one master-thought, he recapitulated the things to be done for the improvement of the farmstead, the conditions of the fresh lease to be arranged for with the owners, and added:

"You do think me better, don't you? My back is straighter. I am not so short of breath. Did yoo notice, as we came home to-night, how at every step I used my legs without needing my crutches?"

Several times in the middle of a sentence he had stopped short to listen, seeming to hear that which in imagination he never ceased to see; Driot for the last time leaving the room at the end of the house; Driot going stealthily through the courtyard that his footsteps might not be heard on the gravel; Driot passing the door close by, and going away for ever.

Towards eleven o'clock, Bas-Rouge, who had growled at times earlier in the night, began to bark violently to the right of the yard.

"What is the matter with him?" exclaimed Toussaint Lumineau; "one would think there were people moving about in our lane." Mathurin, growing cold, silently raised himself on his elbows. After a minute the farmer resumed:

"Do you hear how our dog is barking? There certainly must be someone near."

"Father," returned Mathurin, "he is as mad as a March hare at this time of year. I think he sees bernacles flying in the air." The barking sounded nearer, not angry but joyous, as of a dog being taken for a walk. Then a footstep was distinctly heard, and the animal began to howl.

"They are throwing stones at Bas-Rouge," exclaimed the farmer. "I must go."

"No; do not go. I will not have you go! Stay, father, stay!"

"Why?" asked Toussaint Lumineau. "I have done it scores of times before, and have taken no harm."

Sitting on the side of his bed, the old peasant listened yet for a few seconds, before hastily putting on his breeches and running to the door. A thought flashed through Mathurin's mind:

"It is AndrÉ. I have but to say one word, and my father will be with him in time. Shall I?" Six years of suffering and of being in subordinate position to the younger ones, answered: "No!" and letting himself fall back on his pillow, he said, as if reassured:

"It is not worth the trouble. The sounds are already further off." And, in truth, Bas-Rouge must have run out into the lane towards the main road. His barks were more faintly heard and at intervals; he evidently was seeing the intruder off the premises.

The farmer lay down again, and no longer hearing Mathurin move, fell asleep. It was a little past midnight.

At that hour Rousille was still at work in her room, with doors bolted and window shut, waiting for him who had promised to come. The thought of seeing her lover once more, of what she should say to him, and the idea that there might be some danger to Jean Nesmy, were he surprised by her father, had occupied the long hours during which the murmur of voices from the adjoining room had not ceased to reach her. "What can they have to say to each other?" she thought. On the side towards the barn she had carefully closed the shutter of a narrow little window, cut in the thickness of the wall, breast high, and protected by an iron bar. Sitting on the chest at the foot of the bed, she was hemming some coarse kitchen aprons. The candle standing near lit up the bowed head of the young girl and the more distant panels of the five wardrobes, the polished pillars of the bedsteads, and the sides of the chests, each of which gave a different softened reflection; there was the violet of wild cherry wood, the dark-red of the cherry-tree, the golden-brown of walnut and oak, and finally the ghostly reflection of one, made for a somewhat eccentric great grandmother, of the finest ash wood; and in the same room and atmosphere that had surrounded her ancestresses, industrious as was their descendant, now sat Rousille, the last daughter of the Lumineaus, with eyes modestly bent upon her needlework.

Rousille was never idle. However, in this self-imposed night-watch, it sometimes happened that she would pause with thread outstretched, or would rise and go with slippered feet to listen at the door of the room nearest to the house-place whence voices were still audible.

When nothing more was heard, neither the barking of the dog, nor the vague sound of voices, she still listened, but she had ceased to ply her needle. Looking round the room with the eye of a housekeeper, she thought:

"Will he find it in good order, and as he would like his house to be kept?" Rousille tied the kerchief she wore as protection from the cold more closely; then a little shudder of fear ran through her at the thought that her father might suddenly appear; and her face grew grave and stern, as before, when she had had to do battle for Jean Nesmy; then, rising, she placed her candlestick on the deep window-sill, which by reason of the thickness of the wall was triangular, like the loophole of a fortress. After that she opened back the shutter on its hinges. A breath of icy fog enveloped the flame, nearly extinguishing it; almost on tip-toe, with both hands shading her eyes, Rousille endeavoured to distinguish objects from out the darkness. Was he there? She only saw the bare branches of two gooseberry-bushes trained against the wall. There was no sound of footsteps; no sign of anyone; she only heard the dull thud of mist-drops falling from the slates on to the turf beneath. A minute passed.

Suddenly the branches were pushed aside, a dark head emerging from the total darkness was framed in the window between the wall and the iron bar. The face was pale, but the eyes laughing, half-closed, dazzled by the candle-flame.

"I thought," said Jean Nesmy, "that you were not coming. I was chilled to the bone. I was going!" He looked so radiant as he said it, his eyes gradually opening, revealing the rapture of perfect delight.

Rousille, more grave, for she had within her the recollection of her past meditations, said:

"We must talk quickly. Father has only just fallen asleep. If he were to awake! If he were to come upon us!"

But Jean Nesmy seemed in nowise to share her fears. Nor did he look about the room to see if all was in order. He only looked at Rousille, so agitated under her little coif. The light placed between them illuminated their eyes to the very depths.

"You are as pretty as ever," replied the lad. "One might well walk miles to catch a sight of you! Mother Nesmy did not want me to come on account of the expense; but I said to her: 'I would rather go without my bread,' and it was true, my Rousille."

She could not help smiling.

"You always know how to pay compliments, Jean Nesmy; and really I see no change in you."

"There is none," he returned, showing his white teeth.

And now she forgot all her previous uneasiness, and it seemed to them both, as though they had never been apart, so natural was the interchange of ideas; the candle quivered under the mutual stream of question and answer.

"Tell me, Rousille, how are things going? Are you happy?"

"Not very. At La FromentiÈre we have more sorrow than happiness. Now, as you know, our master the Marquis has had all his furniture sold. Such a pity!"

"Our nobles of Le Bocage would not have done such a thing," said the Boquin, throwing back his head.

"Besides," resumed Rousille, "since FranÇois left us nothing goes right. Driot is inconsolable at his absence."

"Even now?"

"Even now. We thought him so lively when he first came home. Well, this evening he actually cried. Why could it have been? Was it fear that the farm would be sold over our heads? Was it anything else? With him one never knows."

"Perhaps he is thinking of a sweetheart about here?"

"I wish indeed it were so, Jean, for his sake and ours, because his marriage would be the signal for our own. You see, all our hope is in AndrÉ. I have thought many a time, indeed why not tell you—every day since the one on which you went: If AndrÉ does not marry, my poor Jean, I shall be quite white-haired before our banns are published in your church and mine. Father will not let me go unless there is a housekeeper here to take my place. And as for our coming to live here with Mathurin—he hates us both too much. There would be bad blood at La FromentiÈre. Father would never put us on the farm with Mathurin."

"Does he ever speak of me when he is ploughing?" asked Jean.

"I never go into the fields," replied Rousille. "But one evening I heard him say to my eldest brother, 'Do not speak ill of the Boquin, Lumineau! I refused him my daughter, and in that I did well; but he was a good worker, he had a love for soil.'"

Behind the iron bar the face of the former farm-hand coloured with pride.

"It is true that I loved everything about the place for your sake, Rousille. And so AndrÉ will not marry?" "I do not say that. He is still in such low spirits; but time will cure that. We shall have him on our side, that good AndrÉ; he spoke so kindly to me the day of the letter. He promised to help me; but did not explain in what way."

"Did he mean soon?"

"I think so," said Rousille, "for his manner was very decided, and he was very sure about the step he was going to take."

Suddenly she lowered her voice—"Did you hear that?" she asked.

"No, nothing."

"Something moved in the bakery."

"Look at me, Rousille. Nothing moved," returned Jean.

Obedient, victorious over all fear for love of him, she bent once more towards the window, even began to laugh as she said:

"It is easy to see that you have no fear of anything. Where were you hidden, just now, before I opened the shutter?"

"Among the layers of straw. The wind was as keen as on one of my worst wild-fowl expeditions; it stupefied me, and seeing no light I must have fallen asleep for a while."

"Really? and what woke you?"

"Bas-Rouge, going after your farm-servant."

"Going after the farm-servant?" exclaimed Rousille in astonishment. "I heard the dog bark, but I thought he was after a tramp, there are so many about on these roads; or that he had recognised you——"

"You know very well, Rousille, that he never barks at me, since I used to take him out with me when I went shooting. No, I am certain that it was the farm-servant.... I heard the latch fall, and the distinct sound of footsteps on the gravel at the back of the house. I tell you it was the servant, or else your brother.... I am convinced that a man went out from here."

She blanched a little and then drew herself up:

"No!" she replied, "AndrÉ does not go out shooting like you; nor does he go off to Chalons as FranÇois did! Can Mathurin have got up to spy upon us while father was asleep? Oh, do take care of yourself, Jean Nesmy! Listen!"

Seizing the candlestick from the window-sill, she held it out at arm's-length towards the other end of the room, the light shining on the polished furniture as she moved it.

"You are right, someone is moving about in the bakery," said Jean Nesmy. Now the door was gently pushed from the outer side, and the bolt shaken in its socket. Rousille grew white. But she had brave blood in her veins, and still holding the light as far forward as possible, she noiselessly crossed the room, cautiously slid back the bolt, and flung open the door. A shadow moving about in the room sprang towards Rousille, and she saw it was Bas-Rouge. "What are you doing here—where do you come from?" she said.

A rush of air came whistling in from the adjoining room. Had the outer door not been fastened? The girl glanced towards the window, and saw Jean Nesmy still there; then she went into the bakery: the straw baskets, the kneading trough, the ladder reaching to the hayloft, the faggots for next baking day, all was there; but the door leading into the furthermost room, AndrÉ's, was wide open. Rousille went on, the wind nearly extinguishing the light which she was obliged to shade with her hand. It blew in unimpeded from the courtyard. Yes, AndrÉ had gone out.... She ran to the bed; it was untouched.... A doubt seized her that, at first, she repelled. She thought of FranÇois; of AndrÉ's tears that evening—his agitation....

"Oh, my God," she murmured.

Rapidly she stooped and lowered the candle to see under the bed where AndrÉ kept his boots and shoes; they had gone. She opened his trunk, it was empty. Going back into the bakery, she clambered up into the loft. There to the right, beside a heap of wheat, she ought to find a little black portmanteau he had brought home from Africa. She lifted the candle, the portmanteau was not there.

Everything pointed to the one fact. There was no manner of doubt concerning the misfortune that had befallen them. Terrified, she hastily descended the ladder, and unable to keep the secret, she screamed:

"Father!"

A voice, muffled by the intervening walls, replied:

"What is it?"

"Driot has gone!" she cried, as she ran through the rooms. Outside the barred window, her eyes seeking him, she thought she discerned a shadow.

"Farewell, Jean Nesmy," she called, without stopping. "Never come back any more. All is lost to us," and she disappeared into the kitchen, to the door of her father's room.

Toussaint had sprung out of bed, and now came, barefoot, hurriedly buttoning his work-day clothes over his night-shirt. Startled out of his first sleep, only half understanding the purport of her words, stern of countenance, he came forth into the light shed by his daughter's candle.

"What are you screaming about?" he said. "He cannot be far off."

Then seeing her terrified face he, too, thought of FranÇois, and trembling, followed her.

They traversed the whole length of the house, and on into AndrÉ's room; there Rousille made way for her father to enter first. He did not go far into the room; he looked at the undisturbed bed, and that sufficed to make him understand.

For a moment he remained motionless, tears blinding him; then, staggering, turned towards the courtyard, on the threshold, clinging to the doorposts for support, he took a long breath, as if to call into the night, but only a stifled, scarce audible sound escaped him:

"My Driot!"

And the noble old man, struck by the bitter cold, fell backwards in a swoon.

At that instant from the other end of the house Mathurin, swearing, and striking head and crutches against the walls and furniture, came struggling along.

"Lend me a hand, Rousille," he cried, "I must see what is going on!" Rousille was kneeling beside her father, kissing him amid her tears. The farm-servant, roused by the noise, came through the yard with a lantern.