.... And, mark you, I hope that this time ..."

She put down her breakfast-cup, which she had found in a cupboard, and,
leaning on her husband's arm:

"I say, the boy's coming ... with his wife. She's a dear girl and we're
very fond of her.... I want the house to look nice for them, bright and
full of flowers.... Go and pick the best you have in your garden."

He smiled:

"That's another way of saying that I'm boring you, eh? I can't help it.
I shall be just the same to my dying day. The wound is too deep ever to
heal."

They looked at each other for a while with a great gentleness, like two
old travelling-companions, who, from time to time, for no particular
reason, stop, exchange glances or thoughts and then resume their
journey.

He asked:

"Must I cut my roses? My Gloires de Dijon?"

"Yes."

"Come along then! I'll be a hero!"

*
* *

Morestal, the son and grandson of well-to-do farmers, had increased his
fathers' fortune tenfold by setting up a mechanical saw-yard at
Saint-Elophe, the big neighbouring village. He was a plain, blunt man,
as he himself used to say, "with no false bottom, nothing in my hands,
nothing up my sleeves;" just a few moral ideas to guide his course
through life, ideas as old and simple as could be. And those few ideas
themselves were subject to a principle that governed his whole existence
and ruled all his actions, the love of his country, which, in Morestal,
stood for regret for the past, hatred of the present and, especially,
the bitter recollection of defeat.

Elected Mayor of Saint-Elophe and a district-councillor, he sold his
works and built, within view of the frontier, on the site of a ruined
mill, a large house designed after his own plans and constructed, so to
speak, under his own eyes. The Morestals had lived here for the last ten
years, with their two servants: Victor, a decent, stout, jolly-faced
man, and Catherine, a Breton woman who had nursed Philippe as a baby.

They saw but few people, outside a small number of friends, of whom the
most frequent visitors were the special commissary of the government,
Jorance, and his daughter Suzanne.

The Old Mill occupied the round summit of a hill with slopes shelving
down in a series of fairly large gardens, which Morestal cultivated with
genuine enthusiasm. The property was surrounded by a high wall, the top
of which was finished off with an iron tr