making a tree grow; he trims the tree and cuts out
the dead wood, and ties it up into bundles for the poor. All the poor
people know they can get their wood from him all cut and ready to burn;
so they go and ask him for it, instead of taking it themselves and
injuring your forest. He is another kind of _chauffeur_ now, and
warms his poor neighbors to their comfort and not to their harm. Oh,
Farrabesche loves your forest! He takes care of it as if it were his own
property."

"And he lives--all alone?" exclaimed Madame Graslin, adding the two last
words hastily.

"Excuse me, not quite alone, madame; he takes care of a boy about
fifteen years old," said Maurice Champion.

"Yes, that's so," said Colorat; "La Curieux gave birth to the child some
little time before Farrabesche was condemned."

"Is it his child?" asked Madame Graslin.

"People think so."

"Why didn't he marry her?"

"How could he? They would certainly have arrested him. As it was, when
La Curieux heard he was sentenced to the galleys the poor girl left this
part of the country."

"Was she a pretty girl?"

"Oh!" said Maurice, "my mother says she was very like another girl
who has also left Montegnac for something the same reason,--Denise
Tascheron."

"She loved him?" said Madame Graslin.

"Ha, yes! because he _chauffed_; women do like things that are out of
the way. However, nothing ever did surprise the community more than
that love affair. Catherine Curieux lived as virtuous a life as a holy
virgin; she passed for a pearl of purity in her village of Vizay,
which is really a small town in the Correze on the line between the two
departments. Her father and mother are farmers to the Messieurs Brezac.
Catherine Curieux was about seventeen when Farrabesche was sent to the
galleys. The Farrabesches were an old family from the same region, who
settled in the commune of Montegnac; they hired their farm from the
village. The father and mother Farrabesche are dead, but Catherine's
three sisters are married, one in Aubusson, another in Limoges, and a
third in Saint-Leonard."

"Do you think Farrabesche knows where Catherine Curieux is?" asked
Madame Graslin.

"If he did know he'd break his parole. Oh! he'd go to her. As soon as he
came back from the galleys he got Monsieur Bonnet to ask for the little
boy whom the grandfather and grandmother were taking care of; and
Monsieur Bonnet obtained the child."

"Does no one know what became of the mother?"