the gardener at Les Aigues; and he really had not his equal in
trimming the shrubbery-trees, the hedges, the horn-beams, and the
horse-chestnuts. His very name shows hereditary talent. In remote
country-places privileges exist which are obtained and preserved with
as much care as the merchants of a city display in getting theirs.
Mademoiselle Laguerre was one day walking in the garden, when she
overheard Tonsard, then a strapping fellow, say, "All I need to live on,
and live happily, is an acre of land." The kind creature, accustomed
to make others happy, gave him the acre of vineyard near the gate of
Blangy, in return for one hundred days' work (a delicate regard for his
feelings which was little understood), and allowed him to stay at Les
Aigues, where he lived with her servants, who thought him one of the
best fellows in Burgundy.

Poor Tonsard (that is what everybody called him) worked about thirty
days out of the hundred that he owed; the rest of the time he idled
about, talking and laughing with Mademoiselle's women, particularly
with Mademoiselle Cochet, the lady's maid, though she was ugly, like
all confidential maids of handsome actresses. Laughing with Mademoiselle
Cochet signified so many things that Soudry, the fortunate gendarme
mentioned in Blondet's letter, still looked askance at Tonsard after
the lapse of nearly twenty-five years. The walnut wardrobe, the bedstead
with the tester and curtains, and the ornaments about the bedroom were
doubtless the result of the said laughter.

Once in possession of his care, Tonsard replied to the first person
who happened to mention that Mademoiselle Laguerre had given it to him,
"I've bought it deuced hard, and paid well for it. Do rich folks ever
give us anything? Are one hundred days' work nothing? It has cost me
three hundred francs, and the land is all stones." But that speech never
got beyond the regions of his own class.

Tonsard built his house himself, picking up the materials here and
there as he could,--getting a day's work out of this one and that one,
gleaning in the rubbish that was thrown away, often asking for things
and always obtaining them. A discarded door cut in two for convenience
in carrying away became the door of the stable; the window was the sash
of a green-house. In short, the rubbish of the chateau, served to build
the fatal cottage.

Saved from the draft by Gaubertin, the steward of Les Aigues, whose
father was prosecuting-attorney of