“What! do you still prowl round the mill?” said Mathieu.  “I had forbidden you to do so.  As you know that there are white roses in the enclosure you must have gone in, eh?”

“No; I looked over the wall.”

“You climbed up the wall, that’s the finishing touch!  So you want to land me in trouble with those Lepailleurs, who are decidedly very foolish and very malicious people.  There is really a devil in you, my boy.”

That which Gregoire left unsaid was that he repaired to the enclosure in order that he might there join Therese, the miller’s fair-haired daughter with the droll, laughing face, who was also a terribly adventurous damsel for her thirteen years.  True, their meetings were but childish play, but at the end of the enclosure, under the apple trees, there was a delightful nook where one could laugh and chat and amuse oneself at one’s ease.

“Well, just listen to me,” Mathieu resumed.  “I won’t have you going to play with Therese again.  She is a pretty little girl, no doubt.  But that house is not a place for you to go to.  It seems that they fight one another there now.”

This was a fact.  When that young scamp Antonin had recovered his health, he had been tormented by a longing to return to Paris, and had done all he could with that object, in view of resuming a life of idleness and dissipation.  Lepailleur, greatly irritated at having been duped by his son, had at first violently opposed his plans.  But what could he do in the country with that idle fellow, whom he himself had taught to hate the earth and to sneer at the old rotting mill.  Besides, he now had his wife against him.  She was ever admiring her son’s learning, and so stubborn was her faith in him that she was convinced that he would this time secure a good position in the capital.  Thus the father had been obliged to give way, and Antonin was now finally wrecking his life while filling some petty employment at a merchant’s in the Rue du Mail.  But, on the other hand, the quarrelling increased in the home, particularly whenever Lepailleur suspected his wife of robbing him in order to send money to that big lazybones, their son.  From the bridge over the Yeuse on certain days one could hear oaths and blows flying about.  And here again was family life destroyed, strength wasted, and happiness spoilt.

Carried off by perfect anger, Mathieu continued:  “To think of it; people who had everything needful to be happy!  How can one be so stupid?  How can one seek wretchedness for oneself with such obstinacy?  As for that idea of theirs of an only son, and their vanity in wanting to make a gentleman of him, ah! well, they have succeeded finely!  They must be extremely pleased to-day!  It is just like Lepailleur’s hatred of the earth, his old-fashioned system of cultivation, his obstinacy in leaving his bit of moorland barren and refusing to sell it to me, no doubt by way of protesting against our success!  Can you imagine