Twenty lads and as many girls took up the chorus:

And the ronde invaded both rooms. At the same time Félicité Gauvrit, who had refused to take her place in the chain of dancers, drew near the table where Mathurin was sitting. He at once rose, throwing down his cards to the man sitting next him.

"Stay where you are, Mathurin," she exclaimed. "Do not trouble about me. I have come to watch the dancers."

But she drew a chair into a corner of the room, assisted Mathurin to it, and then sat down beside him. Neither spoke. They were sitting in the half shade of a projecting piece of furniture; the cripple was not looking at Félicité, nor she at him. Side by side they sat in the shade of the cherry wood wardrobe, apparently engrossed in watching the dancers as they passed in and out of the room. But what they really saw was something very different; one saw the past love meetings, the plighted troth, the return that night in the waggon, the awful suffering stretching out through years, the desertion—now at this very moment—at an end. The other saw the possible, perhaps, near future; the farmstead of La Fromentière where she would reign; the bench in church where she would sit; the greetings that would be hers from the proudest girls round about; and the husband she would have—André Lumineau—who was now dancing the ronde with the little girl of fifteen, the singer of the couplets.

Mathurin began speaking in a low voice, words broken by long periods of silence; he was very pale and in fear that this brief happiness would too soon come to an end.

Grave and reserved, her hands crossed upon her apron, the daughter of La Seulière spoke without haste words heard by none but themselves. Many eyes were turned upon this strange pair of once betrothed lovers.

The dance went on, the refrain echoed from the walls.

The clear, laughing voice of the little Maraîchine sang:

The dance grew faster and more furious. The big Maraîchins seized their partners and sprang them so high that their muslin coifs touched the ceiling. The mothers drank a final cup of coffee. The card-players watched the sarabande through the dusty atmosphere by the uneven light of the smoking lamps. Mathurin and Félicité, sitting closer together, still talked on. But the daughter of La Seulière had suffered one of her hands to be taken between those of the cripple, and it was the huge hairy hands that trembled, and the little white hand that seemed not to understand, or to be unwilling to respond.

The ronde came to an end:

For the first time Félicité, looking at Mathurin said confidentially, with a laugh:

"That song is Rousille's story."

"Do you know what she wanted?" returned Mathurin hotly, "to marry our farm-servant; to become mistress of La Fromentière! But I was on the watch. I had that fellow Jean Nesmy turned out, and I swear to you it will be long before he dare show his face there again. And now...."

Here he lowered his voice and bent forward until the tawny hair touched the outer rim of the muslin coif, which did not draw back—"And now, if you will still have me, Félicité, it is you who shall be the mistress of La Fromentière." She had not time to answer. She had risen, the last refrain of the ronde had ended in a murmur of surprise. A man, whose white head towered above those of the assembled guests, had abruptly entered and advanced into the middle of the first room, without removing the hat he wore on his entrance, or making any salutation. His clothes were coated with ice; on his left arm he carried an old brown cloak that swept the ground as he walked. Severe of countenance, with eyes half closed from coming suddenly into the glare of light, he was evidently seeking someone.

All made way for the farmer of La Fromentière, "Are my lads here?" he asked.

"Yes, of course," returned a voice behind him. "Here I am, father."

"That's right, Driot," said the old man without looking back, "I am not afraid for you, though this is not the place for my sons. But it is freezing so hard that it seems likely that the whole Marais will be frozen before sunrise; and it may be the death of Mathurin, crippled as he is. Why did you bring him?"

In the general silence the farmer's eyes swept the larger room; a movement of some of those present showed him Mathurin sitting in the inner one; and the father saw his crippled son, and beside him the girl who had been the cause of so much suffering and sorrow.

"That girl!" he muttered, "lying in wait for him again!" With imperious gesture he forced a passage through the dancers, shouldering them to right and left. "Gauvrit," he exclaimed, nodding to the host, who had risen and was staggering towards him, "Gauvrit, I have no wish to offend you; but I must take away my lads. The Marais is a deathtrap in weather such as this."

"I couldn't prevent your sons coming," stammered Gauvrit. "I assure you, Toussaint Lumineau...."

Without heeding him, the farmer raised his voice:

"Out of this, Mathurin!" said he. "Take the wrap I have brought you," and he threw the shabby old cloak over the cripple's shoulders, who rising, meek as a child, followed his father without a word. The guests looked on, some mockingly, others with emotion, at the sight of the fine old man who had come that bitter night across the Marais to rescue his son from the wiles of La Seulière. Some of the girls said to each other, "He had not a word for Félicité." Others, "How handsome he must have been as a young man." And one voice murmured, and it was that of the young girl who had sung the ronde, "André is the image of his father."

Toussaint Lumineau and his sons heard nothing of this. The door of La Seulière had shut behind them, and they were out in the darkness and the icy wind.

The clouds were very high; as they scudded along in huge irregular bodies they formed a succession of black patches, their edges silvered by the moon. The cold was so intense it seemed to pierce through the stoutest clothing, and chill to the very marrow of the bones. It was indeed death to any but the strongest. The farmer, who knew the danger, hurriedly untied the two punts, and getting into the first motioned Mathurin to lie down in the bottom of the boat, then pushed out into the middle of the canal. Again the cripple obeyed, curling himself up on the boards; wrapped in his brown cloak, motionless, he looked like a mass of sea-wrack. But, unnoticed by the others, he had lain down with his face turned towards La Seulière, and raising his cloak with one finger, was looking back towards the farm. As long as distance and the canal banks allowed him to distinguish the light proceeding from the chinks of the door, he remained with eyes fixed upon the paling ray that recalled to him a new hope. Then the cloak fell back into its place, covering the radiant, tearful face of the crippled man.

André followed in the second punt. By the same dykes, past the same meadows they returned, struggling against the strong gusts of wind that blew. The storm that had burst had prevented the sheet of ice from covering the water. The farmer, unaccustomed to punting, did not make rapid progress. From time to time he would ask:

"You are not too cold, Mathurin?"

Then in a louder voice:

"Are you following, André?"

And in their wake a cheery voice would reply:

"I am all right."

The strain was tremendous, but with it was mingled the joy of taking back his two sons.

Although there was no apparent reason, and he had not thought of her for weeks, the farmer's thoughts flew to his dead wife: "She would be pleased with me," he mused, "for taking Mathurin away from La Seulière." And at times in the turn of a canal he would seem to see a pair of blue eyes like those of his old wife smiling upon him, which gradually sank until they rested among the reeds under the punt. And he would dry his eyelids with his sleeve, shake himself free from the overmastering drowsiness, and say again to his youngest son:

"Are you following?"

The younger son was not dreaming. He was thinking over what he had seen and heard: Mathurin's senseless infatuation, his violence, which, when their father should be no more, would make life very difficult to the head at La Fromentière. The events of that evening had increased the temptation of pastures new to this disturbed mind. In course of time both punts had reached the duck meadow.

CHAPTER XII.

ROUSILLE'S LOVE DREAM.

Rousille knew nothing of the attraction that led her brother so far afield. One day she affectionately reproached him with leaving her so much alone. At first he had laughed, then suddenly had grown serious and said:

"Don't reproach me with leaving you so much alone, Rousille. Perhaps you will reap the benefit of my tramps one of these days; I am acting in your interests."

Thus on the fourth Sunday in January La Fromentière was in charge of Rousille. But Rousille did not find time hang heavy on her hands; she had taken refuge in the threshing-floor at the back of the farm, and was sitting at the foot of a great heap of straw, her face turned towards the Marais, visible through a break in the hedge. She would have been frozen in the north wind that was blowing, had not the straw all about her kept in the warmth like a nest. Leaning her head back against it, she had buried her elbows in the soft depths of some loose straw that had been forked out from the compact mass and not yet taken away.

The air was so clear that she could see away to the clock tower of Perrier, to the most remote farmsteads of the Marais, and even to the ruddy streaks, but rarely visible, of the pine-grown downs that bordered the sea more than three leagues distant. She was looking before her, but her mind was travelling beyond her father's meadows, beyond the great Marais, beyond the horizon—for Jean Nesmy had written to her. Rousille had the letter in her pocket—was feeling it with the tips of her fingers. Since morning she had known it by heart, had said it over to herself many a time, that letter of Jean Nesmy; the smile it called forth did not leave her lips, save to light up her eyes. All care was driven away, forgotten. Little Rousille was still loved by someone; the letter testified to it. It said:

One by one, like the beads of a rosary being told, and that pass between the fingers of the devotee, the sentences of the letter passed through the mind of Marie-Rose, and her eyes gazing intently on the landscape, saw only the image of Jean Nesmy. The young girl saw him in his coat with the horn buttons, his high cheek-bones, his eager eyes that only laughed for her and for good work done, when at the close of day, his scythe slung on to his bare arm, he scanned the corn he had cut, and the sheaves he had tied standing upright in the stubble.

"Father no longer talks against him," thought she. "He even defended him once to Mathurin. As for me, he has never found me complain, nor refuse to do the work I had to do, and I think he is pleased with me for having done my best. If André were to settle down now, and to bring a wife to La Fromentière, perhaps father would not refuse to let me marry. And I begin to think that Master André has his reasons for absenting himself on Sundays, and going off to Saint Jean, Perrier, and Saint Gervais, as he does...."

She smiled. Her eyes had taken the colour of the fresh straw that surrounded her. Far away, on the road to the meadows, she saw a fine strapping youth walking with swaying movement, carrying over one shoulder a pole to jump the dykes with.

"Driot," she murmured. "I will tease him about his Sunday walks."

Soon she saw André come up the hill, skirt the dwarf orchard, then pass between the leafless hedges in the road. When he was at a little distance, she coughed to attract his attention. He looked up. His face which had worn an anxious expression cleared; instead of continuing his way to the courtyard of La Fromentière, he jumped over into a small field that ran beside it, passed the row of hives where the bees were sleeping their winter sleep, and stopped beside Rousille in the threshing-floor, leaning on his pole. As he did so, he endeavoured to assume the half-bantering, half-protecting air he usually adopted towards his sister, thinking himself obliged to laugh with her as with a child.

"I was looking for you," he said.

"Oh, you were looking for me very badly then. Your head was bent down. I believe you were thinking of someone else than me."

"Indeed!"

"Yes. Where do you come from with your pole, you roamer? Not from vespers?"

"No, from Saint Jean. The water is grand, and jolly cold. On the other side of Le Perrier there are inundations on both sides of the road."

"You have been calling at the farms, I suppose. Did you stop at La Seulière?"

"You do not know me one bit; do you think I should go against...."

He was about to say "against the intrigues of Mathurin, who has returned to his former infatuation," but he stopped short.

So happy herself that she did not notice his reticence, she resumed:

"To the Levrelles? No? Then to the mill of Moque-Souris, where there is that pretty little Marie Dieu-donnée, the prettiest miller's daughter between here and Beauvoir?"

"Still wrong."

Trying to be grave, but without succeeding in hiding the joy that pervaded her whole soul, she resumed:

"You see, I want you so much to marry, André. And such a dear boy as you are, I think it would be easy. Indeed, you have no idea how greatly I wish it!"

André's face grew careworn again as before, and he said:

"On the contrary I know very well...."

"No. You always think of me as a child. But I am twenty, Driot. I know when others are unhappy. You, for instance, are grieving over our François; you miss him even more than father does. If you were to marry, you would forget your sorrow a little. Settled down at La Fromentière, married to a girl you love, your thoughts would no longer be brooding over the past as now."

"And above all," put in André, "there would be a housekeeper here, and little Rousille could marry her faithful swain."

Pressing herself back against the rick with a girlish movement of shoulders, head, and arms, Rousille raised herself and knelt forward the better to reach her pocket. Bending over the aperture hidden amongst the innumerable folds of her dress, she extracted the letter and gently held up the square of paper to her brother, raising it to the level of her head and following it with her eyes as she did so.

"I would show it to no one but you, André ... read my letter ... I want to prove that I have confidence in you. And then you will understand how light it makes one's heart to receive such a dear letter, so light that one feels like air. It will make you want to receive such an one yourself."

André took the letter without showing the slightest impatience, and without a word of thanks. But as he read, he grew moved, not with jealousy of such love, but with pity for the girl, who was dreaming her dream of happiness between two misfortunes.

For he had definitely decided to leave the farmstead and La Vendée. Some tidings, in a measure foreseen, dreaded for some time past, very serious for La Fromentière, had caused him to come to a decision that very afternoon. He had returned home, sorrow stricken, weighing all the pain he was about to cause; and now coming upon this joy, this hope of Rousille's, those eyes that persisted in smiling at life, that flower of the ruined farmstead, the feeling came over him that he must spare the child, at least, that one evening, and not tell her at once all he knew.

Having read the letter he slowly folded it, and gave it back to Rousille, who, impatient for an appreciative comment, her whole soul in her eyes, her lips breaking into a smile, asked:

"Do you think that father would consent, if you were to marry, and if you spoke for my Jean?"

"Would you go to live in the Bocage, Rousille?"

"I should have to on account of Mathurin, who would never suffer us near him."

She was surprised at the manner in which André looked at her, so gravely and so tenderly. Taking her hand in both of his, her hand which still held the letter, he said:

"No, little Rousille, I will not speak for you. But I will shortly do something else, of which I cannot tell you now, and which will avail you. The day I do it, your marriage will be assured, unless father breaks up everything.... And it will not be at the Bocage that you will make your home, but at La Fromentière, in our mother's place—the dear mother with whom we were so happy in the days of our childhood. Put your faith in what I say, and do not worry about Mathurin."

Letting go her hand, which fell to her side, he added:

"I have an idea that you, at least, will be happy, Rousille."

She opened her lips to speak; he made her a sign that he would say no more. All the same Rousille asked hurriedly, seeing him move away:

"One thing only, André, tell me only one thing. Promise me that you will always till the ground, for father would be so grieved...."

And he answered:

"I promise you, I will."

Rousille watched him as he went round the corner, and on into the courtyard. What was the matter with him? What meant those mysterious words? Why had he spoken the last so sadly? For a moment she wondered; but the trouble was evanescent. Scarce had solitude returned about her, than Rousille heard again the words of her love-letter singing their soft refrain to her. They came into her heart, one by one, like transparent waves, each opening out in its turn and covering the shore. "It cannot be a very important secret," thought she, "since Driot will continue to till the ground, that will make father happy, and I shall be happy too."

She recalled the smile that had passed over her brother's face, and thought: "It is nothing," and peace, entire, unquestioning, returned to her.

In the twilight of that winter afternoon on the borders of the Marais of Sallertaine, for one short hour there was a girl who smiled at life, and deemed that bad times were past and gone. She was still smiling, still sheltered in her retreat amid the straw, when André accosted his father, coming in from the Sunday tour of inspection, with:

"Everything is certainly going to the bad, father."

The farmer, his head full of the promise of hay and wheat harvests he had just been examining, answered contentedly:

"No, everything is coming up well. The spring crop of oats is promising; what is going to the bad?"

"I heard at Saint Jean-de-Mont that there is to be a sale of the furniture at the Château, father!"

For a moment Toussaint Lumineau could not take it in.

"Yes, all the furniture," repeated André. "It is advertised in the papers. See, if you don't believe me, here's the list. Everything is to be sold."

He drew a paper from his pocket, and pointed with his finger to an advertisement, from which the old farmer laboriously read:

"On Sunday, February 20th, Maître Oulry, notary at Chalons, will proceed to sell the furniture of the Château de la Fromentière. There will be sold: the entire drawing-room and dining-room furniture, old tapestries, oak chests, pictures, beds, tables, china and glass, wines, guns, contents of the library, wardrobes, etc."

"Well?" exclaimed André.

"Oh," returned his father, "who would have foretold this eight years ago? Have they become poor, then, in Paris?" He fell into silence, not willing to judge his master too hardly.

"It is ruin," said André. "After the furniture, they will be for selling the land, and us with it!"

The head of La Fromentière, the successor of so many farmers under the same masters, was standing in the middle of the room; he raised his weary eyes until they rested upon the little copper crucifix hanging at the head of his bed, then let them fall again in sign of acceptance.

"It will be a great misfortune," he said, "but it will not hinder our working!"

And he went out, perhaps to shed tears.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE AUCTION.

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.