ion of admiring affection. The
commandant followed his horse to see how things were to go with it. The
stable was clean, there was plenty of litter, and there was the same
peculiar air of sleek content about M. Benassis' pair of horses that
distinguished the cure's horse from all the rest of his tribe. A
maid-servant from within the house came out upon the flight of steps and
waited. She appeared to be the proper authority to whom the stranger's
inquiries were to be addressed, although the stableman had already told
him that M. Benassis was not at home.

"The master has gone to the flour-mill," said he. "If you like to
overtake him, you have only to go along the path that leads to the
meadow; and the mill is at the end of it."

Genestas preferred seeing the country to waiting about indefinitely
for Benassis' return, so he set out along the way that led to the
flour-mill. When he had gone beyond the irregular line traced by the
town upon the hillside, he came in sight of the mill and the valley, and
of one of the loveliest landscapes that he had ever seen.

The mountains bar the course of the river, which forms a little lake at
their feet, and raise their crests above it, tier on tier. Their many
valleys are revealed by the changing hues of the light, or by the more
or less clear outlines of the mountain ridges fledged with their dark
forests of pines. The mill had not long been built. It stood just where
the mountain stream fell into the little lake. There was all the charm
about it peculiar to a lonely house surrounded by water and hidden away
behind the heads of a few trees that love to grow by the water-side. On
the farther bank of the river, at the foot of a mountain, with a faint
red glow of sunset upon its highest crest, Genestas caught a glimpse
of a dozen deserted cottages. All the windows and doors had been taken
away, and sufficiently large holes were conspicuous in the dilapidated
roofs, but the surrounding land was laid out in fields that were highly
cultivated, and the old garden spaces had been turned into meadows,
watered by a system of irrigation as artfully contrived as that in use
in Limousin. Unconsciously the commandant paused to look at the ruins of
the village before him.

How is it that men can never behold any ruins, even of the humblest
kind, without feeling deeply stirred? Doubtless it is because they seem
to be a typical representation of evil fortune whose weight is felt so
differently by