-in-law have looked after them as well as they could, and loved
them as they ought. There's Petit-Pierre, he's what you might call
educated; he can drive oxen very handily already; he knows enough to
keep the cattle in the meadow, and he's strong enough to drive the
horses to water. So he isn't the one to be a burden to us; but the other
two--we love them, God knows! poor innocent creatures!--cause us much
anxiety this year. My daughter-in-law is about lying-in, and she still
has a little one in her arms. When the one we expect has come, she won't
be able to look after your little Solange, and especially your little
Sylvain, who isn't four years old and hardly keeps still a minute day or
night. His blood is hot, like yours: he'll make a good workman, but he's
a terrible child, and my old woman can't run fast enough now to catch
him when he runs off toward the ditch or in among the feet of the
cattle. And then, when my daughter-in-law brings this other one into the
world, her last but one will be thrown on my wife's hands for a month,
at least. So your children worry us and overburden us. We don't like to
see children neglected; and when you think of the accidents that may
happen to them for lack of watching, your mind's never at rest. So you
must have another wife, and I another daughter-in-law. Think it over, my
boy. I've already warned you more than once; time flies, and the years
won't wait for you. You owe it to your children and to us, who want to
have everything go right in the house, to marry as soon as possible."

"Well, father," the son-in-law replied, "if you really want me to do it,
I must gratify you. But I don't propose to conceal from you that it will
cause me a great deal of annoyance, and that I'd about as lief drown
myself. You know what you've lost, and you don't know what you may
find. I had an excellent wife, a good-looking wife, sweet and brave,
good to her father and mother, good to her husband, good to her
children, a good worker, in the fields or in the house, clever about her
work, good at everything, in fact; and when you gave her to me, when I
took her, it wasn't one of the conditions that I should forget her if I
had the bad luck to lose her."

"What you say shows a good heart, Germain," rejoined Pere Maurice; "I
know you loved my daughter, that you made her happy, and that if you
could have satisfied Death by going in her place, Catherine would be
alive at this moment and you in the cemetery