landowner. He had bought himself a few acres of ground, and their
produce was sufficient not only to feed his family, but also to enable
him to lay by each year a little sum wherewith to enlarge his
property. For some time, prosperous in all his undertakings, Francois
was really happy, and at the age of forty could reasonably look
forward to passing a quiet, comfortable old age; but, as so often
occurs in life, at the very moment when the man deemed himself most
secure in his ease, misfortunes began to rain upon him. Dazzled by the
accounts of some successful ventures made by neighbors, Derblay began
to dream of doubling his capital by speculation, and accordingly
invested the two or three thousand francs of his savings in shares
which were to bring him fifteen per cent., but which ultimately left
him without a sixpence. To make matters worse, his land was bought by
a railway company, and this sale, by placing in his hands a round sum
of ready money, prompted him with the delusive hope of regaining his
losses: he speculated again, and this time as unhappily as the first,
swamping all his funds in some worthless enterprise, which on the
strength of its prospectus he had believed "safe as the Bank of
France." To fill the cup of his sorrows to the brim, four of his five
children were carried off by illness, the only one spared being Henri,
the youngest. At forty-eight, Francois and his wife, but five years
younger than himself, were thus obliged to begin life again, poorer
than at first, for they had no longer youth, as when they married.
They were not disheartened, however: they had their boy to live for,
and set to work so bravely that after ten years' struggle they found
themselves owners of the cottage and field I have described. Still,
they were not happy, for a painful anticipation was constantly
dwelling on their minds and souring every moment of their existence.
Henri, their only boy, had reached his twentieth year, and the time
had come when he must "draw for the conscription;" that is, stake upon
the chances of a lottery-ticket the seven best years of his own life
and all the happiness of theirs. This thought it was which, like a
heavy storm-cloud, was day and night hanging over their peace, and
throwing them into a tremor of doubt and sickening anxiety that made
them watch the flight of each hour which brought them nearer to the
minute they dreaded with aching, panting hearts. How _should_ they
bear it, how _co