anted there. Do not take from your actions their true value. Come at
last to that saintly ignorance of the good you do which is the grace
supreme of human actions."

Madame Graslin had turned away to wipe the tears that told the rector
his words had touched the bleeding wound that was still unhealed in her
heart.

Farrabesche, Catherine, and Benjamin now came up to thank their
benefactress, but she made them a sign to go away and leave her alone
with the rector.

"See how that grieves them," she said to him as they sadly walked away.
The rector, whose heart was tender, recalled them by a sign.

"You shall be completely happy," she then said, giving to Farrabesche
a paper which she was holding in her hand. "Here is the ordinance
which gives you back your rights of citizenship and exempts you from
humiliating inspection."

Farrabesche respectfully kissed the hand held toward him and looked at
Veronique with an eye both tender and submissive, calm and devoted, the
expression of a devotion which nothing could ever change, the look of a
dog to his master.

"If Jacques has suffered, madame," said Catherine, her fine eyes
lighting with pleasure, "I hope I can give him enough happiness to make
up for his pain, for, no matter what he has done, he is not bad."

Madame Graslin turned away her head; she seemed overcome by the sight of
that happy family. The rector now left her to enter the church, whither
she dragged herself presently on the arm of Monsieur Grossetete.

After breakfast every one, even the aged people of the village,
assembled to see the beginning of the great work. From the slope leading
up to the chateau, Monsieur Grossetete and Monsieur Bonnet, between whom
was Veronique, could see the direction of the four first cuttings marked
out by piles of gathered stones. At each cutting five laborers were
digging out and piling up the good loam along the edges; clearing a
space about eighteen feet wide, the width of each road. On either side,
four other men were digging the ditches and also piling up the loam at
the sides to make a bank. Behind them, as the banks were made, two
men were digging holes in which others planted trees. In each of these
divisions, thirty old paupers, a score of women, and forty or more girls
and children were picking up stones, which special laborers piled in
heaps along the roadside so as to keep a record of the quantity gathered
by each group. Thus the work went on rapidly, with picke