does not wish to. Try to make her grant
you what she has denied me."

"Don't be afraid, father, I shall make her say yes. Little Marie does
everything that I wish."

He walked away with the young girl. Germain stood alone, sadder and more
irresolute than ever.

XI -- The Belle of the Village

AND after all, when he had brushed the dust of travel from his clothes
and from his horse's harness, when he had mounted the gray, and when he
had learned the road, he felt that there was no retreat and that he must
forget that anxious night as though it had been a dangerous dream.

He found Father Leonard seated on a trim bench of spinach-green. The six
stone steps leading up to the door showed that the house had a cellar.
The walls of the garden and of the hemp-field were plastered with lime
and sand. It was a handsome house, and might almost have been mistaken
for the dwelling of a bourgeois.

Germain's future father-in-law came forward to meet him, and having
plied him, for five minutes, with questions concerning his entire
family, he added that conventional phrase with which one passer-by
addresses another concerning the object of his journey: "So you are
taking a little trip in this part of the country?"

"I have come to see you," replied the husbandman, "to give you this
little present of game with my father's compliments, and to tell you
from him that you ought to know with what intentions I come to your
house."

"Oh, ho!" said Father Leonard, laughing and tapping his capacious
stomach, "I see, I understand, I am with you, and," he added with a
wink, "you will not be the only one to pay your court, young man. There
are three already in the house dancing attendance like you. I never turn
anybody away, and I should find it hard to say yes or no to any of them,
for they are all good matches. Yet, on account of Father Maurice and for
the sake of the rich fields you till, I hope that it may be you. But my
daughter is of age and mistress of her own affairs. She will do as
she likes. Go in and introduce yourself. I hope that you will draw the
prize."

"I beg your pardon," answered Germain, amazed to find himself an extra
when he had counted on being alone in the field. "I was not aware that
your daughter was supplied already with suitors, and I did not come to
quarrel over her."

"If you supposed that because you were slow in coming, my daughter would
be left unprovided for, you were greatly mistaken, my son,"