"It seems to me that this is a man and no mistake!" he went on,

speaking to himself.
"Oh! yes, sir, and a good man too! There is scarcely any one

hereabouts that does not put his name in their prayers, morning and
night!"

"That is for you, mother," said the soldier, as he gave her several
coins, "and that is for the children," he went on, as he added another

crown. "Is M. Benassis' house still a long way off?" he asked, when he
had mounted his horse.

"Oh! no, sir, a bare league at most."
The commandant set out, fully persuaded that two leagues remained

ahead of him. Yet after all he soon caught a glimpse through the trees
of the little town's first cluster of houses, and then of all the

roofs that crowded about a conical steeple, whose slates were secured
to the angles of the woodenframework by sheets of tin that glittered

in the sun. This sort of roof, which has a peculiar appearance,
denotes the nearness of the borders of Savoy, where it is very common.

The valley is wide at this particular point, and a fair number of
houses pleasantlysituated, either in the little plain or along the

side of the mountain stream, lend human interest to the well-tilled
spot, a stronghold with no apparentoutlet among the mountains that

surround it.
It was noon when Genestas reined in his horse beneath an avenue of

elm-trees half-way up the hillside, and only a few paces from the
town, to ask the group of children who stood before him for M.

Benassis' house. At first the children looked at each other, then they
scrutinized the stranger with the expression that they usually wear

when they set eyes upon anything for the first time; a different
curiosity and a different thought in every little face. Then the

boldest and the merriest of the band, a little bright-eyed urchin,
with bare, muddy feet, repeated his words over again, in child

fashion.
"M. Benassis' house, sir?" adding, "I will show you the way there."

He walked along in front of the horse, prompted quite as much by a
wish to gain a kind of importance by being in the stranger's company,

as by a child's love of being useful, or the imperativecraving to be
doing something, that possesses mind and body at his age. The officer

followed him for the entire length of the principal street of the
country town. The way was paved with cobblestones, and wound in and

out among the houses, which their owners had erected along its course
in the most arbitrary fashion. In one place a bake-house had been

built out into the middle of the roadway; in another a gable
protruded, partially obstructing the passage, and yet farther on a

mountain stream flowed across it in a runnel. Genestas noticed a fair
number of roofs of tarred shingle, but yet more of them were thatched;

a few were tiled, and some seven or eight (belonging no doubt to the
cure, the justice of the peace, and some of the wealthier townsmen)

were covered with slates. There was a total absence of regard for
appearances befitting a village at the end of the world, which had

nothing beyond it, and no connection with any other place. The people
who lived in it seemed to belong to one family that dwelt beyond the

limits of the bustling world, with which the collector of taxes and a
few ties of the very slenderest alone served to connect them.

When Genestas had gone a step or two farther, he saw on the mountain
side a broad road that rose above the village. Clearly there must be

an old town and a new town; and, indeed, when the commandant reached a
spot where he could slacken the pace of his horse, he could easily see

between the houses some well-built dwellings whose new roofs
brightened the old-fashioned village. An avenue of trees rose above

these new houses, and from among them came the confused sounds of
several industries. He heard the songs peculiar to busy toilers, a

murmur of many workshops, the rasping of files, and the sound of
falling hammers. He saw the thin lines of smoke from the chimneys of

each household, and the more copious outpourings from the forges of
the van-builder, the blacksmith, and the farrier. At length, at the

very end of the village towards which his guide was taking him,
Genestas beheld scattered farms and well-tilled fields and plantations

of trees in thorough order. It might have been a little corner of
Brie, so hidden away in a great fold of the land, that at first sight

its existence would not be suspected between the little town and the
mountains that closed the country round.

Presently the child stopped.
"There is the door of HIS house," he remarked.

The officer dismounted and passed his arm through the bridle. Then,
thinking that the laborer is worthy of his hire, he drew a few sous

from his waistcoat pocket, and held them out to the child, who looked
astonished at this, opened his eyes very wide, and stayed on, without

thanking him, to watch what the stranger would do next.
"Civilization has not made much headway hereabouts," thought Genestas;

"the religion of work is in full force, and begging has not yet come
thus far."

His guide, more from curiosity than from any interested motive,
propped himself against the wall that rose to the height of a man's

elbow. Upon this wall, which enclosed the yard belonging to the house,
there ran a black woodenrailing on either side of the square pillars

of the gates. The lower part of the gates themselves was of solid wood
that had been painted gray at some period in the past; the upper part

consisted of a grating of yellowish spear-shaped bars. These
decorations, which had lost all their color, gradually rose on either

half of the gates till they reached the centre where they met; their
spikes forming, when both leaves were shut, an outline similar to that

of a pine-cone. The worm-eaten gates themselves, with their patches of
velvet lichen, were almost destroyed by the alternate action of sun

and rain. A few aloe plants and some chance-sown pellitory grew on the
tops of the square pillars of the gates, which all but concealed the

stems of a couple of thornless acacias that raised their tufted
spikes, like a pair of green powder-puffs, in the yard.

The condition of the gateway revealed a certain carelessness of its
owner which did not seem to suit the officer's turn of mind. He

knitted his brows like a man who is obliged to relinquish some
illusion. We usually judge others by our own standard; and although we

indulgently forgive our own shortcomings in them, we condemn them
harshly for the lack of our special virtues. If the commandant had

expected M. Benassis to be a methodical or practical man, there were
unmistakable indications of absoluteindifference as to his material

concerns in the state of the gates of his house. A soldier possessed
by Genestas' passion for domesticeconomy could not help at once

drawing inferences as to the life and character of its owner from the
gateway before him; and this, in spite of his habits of

circumspection, he in nowise failed to do. The gates were left ajar,
moreover--another piece of carelessness!

Encouraged by this countrified trust in all comers, the officer
entered the yard without ceremony, and tethered his horse to the bars

of the gate. While he was knotting the bridle, a neighing sound from
the stable caused both horse and rider to turn their eyes

involuntarily in that direction. The door opened, and an old servant
put out his head. He wore a red woolenbonnet, exactly like the

Phrygian cap in which Liberty is tricked out, a piece of head-gear in
common use in this country.

As there was room for several horses, this worthy individual, after
inquiring whether Genestas had come to see M. Benassis, offered the

hospitality of the stable to the newly-arrived steed, a very fine
animal, at which he looked with an expression of admiring affection.

The commandant followed his horse to see how things were to go with
it. The stable was clean, there was plenty of litter, and there was

the same peculiar air of sleek content about M. Benassis' pair of
horses that distinguished the cure's horse from all the rest of his

tribe. A maid-servant from within the house came out upon the flight
of steps and waited. She appeared to be the proper authority to whom

the stranger's inquiries were to be addressed, although the stableman
had already told him that M. Benassis was not at home.

"The master has gone to the flour-mill," said he. "If you like to
overtake him, you have only to go along the path that leads to the

meadow; and the mill is at the end of it."
Genestas preferred seeing the country to waiting about indefinitely

for Benassis' return, so he set out along the way that led to the
flour-mill. When he had gone beyond the irregular line traced by the