“Very good, father.  I will try to like her and make her like me.”

“To do that you must go to see her.”

“At her home?  At Fourche?  That’s a long way, isn’t it? and we don’t have much time to run about at this season.”

“When a marriage for love is on the carpet, you must expect to waste time; but when it’s a marriage of convenience between two people who have no whims and who know what they want, it’s soon arranged.  Tomorrow will be Saturday; you can shorten your day’s ploughing a bit and start about two o’clock, after dinner; you will be at Fourche by night; there’s a good moon just now, the roads are excellent, and it isn’t more than three leagues.  Fourche is near Magnier.  Besides, you can take the mare.”

“I should rather go afoot in this cool weather.”

“True, but the mare’s a fine beast, and a suitor makes a better appearance if he comes well mounted.  You must wear your new clothes and carry a nice present of game to Pere Leonard.  You will say that you come with a message from me, you will talk with him, you will pass the Sunday with his daughter, and you will return with a yes or a no on Monday morning.”

“Very good,” replied Germain calmly, and yet he was not altogether calm.

Germain had always lived a virtuous life, as hard-working peasants do.  Married at twenty, he had loved but one woman in his life, and since he had become a widower, although he was naturally impulsive and vivacious, he had never laughed and dallied with any other.  He had faithfully cherished a genuine regret in his heart, and he did not yield to his father-in-law without a feeling of dread and melancholy; but the father-in-law had always managed his family judiciously, and Germain, who had devoted himself unreservedly to the common work, and consequently to him who personified it, the father of the family,—­Germain did not understand the possibility of rebelling against sound arguments, against the common interest of all.

Nevertheless, he was sad.  Few days passed that he did not weep for his wife in secret, and, although solitude was beginning to weigh upon him, he was more terrified at the thought of forming a new union, than desirous to escape from his grief.  He said to himself vaguely that love might have consoled him if it had taken him by surprise, for love does not console otherwise.  One cannot find it by seeking it; it comes to us when we do not expect it.  This project of marriage, conceived in cold blood, which Pere Maurice laid before him, the unknown fiancee, and, perhaps, even all the good things that were said of her common-sense and her virtue, gave him food for thought.  And he went his way, musing as a man muses who has not enough ideas to fight among themselves; that is to say, not formulating in his mind convincing reasons for selfish resistance, but conscious of a dull pain, and not struggling against an evil which it was necessary to accept.