the essential and to nothing beyond. External perfection he has no
conception of. An unerring judge of the necessary in all things, he
thoroughly understands degrees of strength, and knows very well when
working for an employer how to give the least possible for the most he
can get. This contemptible-looking gun will be found to play a serious
part in the life of the family inhabiting this cottage, and you will
presently learn how and why.

Have you now taken in all the many details of this hovel, planted about
five hundred feet away from the pretty gate of Les Aigues? Do you see it
crouching there, like a beggar beside a palace? Well, its roof covered
with velvet mosses, its clacking hens, its grunting pig, its straying
heifer, all its rural graces have a horrible meaning.

Fastened to a pole, which was stuck in the ground beside the entrance
through the fence, was a withered bunch of three pine branches and some
old oak-leaves tied together with a rag. Above the door of the house a
roving artist had painted, probably in return for his breakfast, a huge
capital "I" in green on a white ground two feet square; and for the
benefit of those who could read, this witty joke in twelve letters:
"Au Grand-I-Vert" (hiver). On the left of the door was a vulgar sign
bearing, in colored letters, "Good March beer," and the picture of
a foaming pot of the same, with a woman, in a dress excessively
low-necked, on one side, and an hussar on the other,--both coarsely
colored. Consequently, in spite of the blooming flowers and the fresh
country air, this cottage exhaled the same strong and nauseous odor of
wine and food which assails you in Paris as you pass the door of the
cheap cook-shops of the faubourg.

Now you know the surroundings. Behold the inhabitants and hear their
history, which contains more than one lesson for philanthropists.

The proprietor of the Grand-I-Vert, named Francois Tonsard, commends
himself to the attention of philosophers by the manner in which he had
solved the problem of an idle life and a busy life, so as to make the
idleness profitable, and occupation nil.

A jack-of-all-trades, he knew how to cultivate the ground, but for
himself only. For others, he dug ditches, gathered fagots, barked the
trees, or cut them down. In all such work the employer is at the mercy
of the workman. Tonsard owned his plot of ground to the generosity of
Mademoiselle Laguerre. In his early youth he had worked by the day for