"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 Francois; you miss him even more than father does. If you were to marry, you would forget your sorrow a little. Settled down at La Fromentiere, married to a girl you love, your thoughts would no longer be brooding over the past as now."

"And above all," put in Andre, "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, Andre ... 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."

Andre 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 Vendee.

Some tidings, in a measure foreseen, dreaded for some time past, very serious for La Fromentiere, 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 Andre 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 a.s.sured, unless father breaks up everything.... And it will not be at the Bocage that you will make your home, but at La Fromentiere, 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, Andre, 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 sh.o.r.e. "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 pa.s.sed 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 Andre 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 Chateau, father!"

For a moment Toussaint Lumineau could not take it in.

"Yes, all the furniture," repeated Andre. "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 advertis.e.m.e.nt, from which the old farmer laboriously read:

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

"Well?" exclaimed Andre.

"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 Andre. "After the furniture, they will be for selling the land, and us with it!"

The head of La Fromentiere, 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.

In the ensuing week the coming sale at the Chateau was the frequent subject of discussion among the men of La Fromentiere. Andre openly attacked the masters.

"They are ruined," he said. "All the n.o.bles 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 Andre. "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."