tempt into which he is cast by your social code.

I knew the young man and the beautiful child; I knew their history, for
they had a history. Everybody has his own, and could make the romance
of his life interesting, if he could but understand it. Although but a
peasant and a laborer, Germain had always been aware of his duties and
affections. He had related them to me clearly and ingenuously, and I had
listened with interest. After some time spent in watching him plow, it
occurred to me that I might write his story, though that story were as
simple, as straightforward, and unadorned as the furrow he was tracing.

Next year that furrow will be filled and covered by a fresh one. Thus
disappear most of the footprints made by man in the field of human life.
A little earth obliterates them, and the furrows we have dug succeed one
another like graves in a cemetery. Is not the furrow of the laborer of
as much value as that of the idler, even if that idler, by some absurd
chance, have made a little noise in the world, and left behind him an
abiding name?

I mean, if possible, to save from oblivion the furrow of Germain,
the skilled husbandman. He will never know nor care, but I shall take
pleasure in my talk.

II -- Father Maurice

"GERMAIN," said his father-in-law one day, "you must decide about
marrying again. It is almost two years now since you lost my daughter,
and your eldest boy is seven years old! You are almost thirty, my boy,
and you know that in our country a man is considered too old to go to
housekeeping again after that age; you have three nice children, and
thus far they have not proved a burden to us at all. My wife and my
daughter-in-law have looked after them as well as they could, and loved
them as they ought. Here is Petit-Pierre almost grown up. He goads the
oxen very well; he knows how to look after the cattle; and he is strong
enough to drive the horses to the trough. So it is not he that worries
us. But the other two, love them though we do, God knows the poor little
innocents give us trouble enough this year; my daughter-in-law is about
to lie in, and she has yet another baby to attend to. When the child
we are expecting comes, she will not be able to look after your little
Solange, and above all your Sylvain, who is not four years old, and who
is never quiet day or night. He has a restless disposition like yours;
that will make a good workman of him, but it makes a dreadful child, and
my ol