“And I will ask you, Marie,” said Germain, “to ask yourself the question, whether, when it comes to defending a woman and punishing a knave, a man of twenty-eight isn’t too old?  I’d like to know if Bastien, or any other pretty boy who has the advantage of being ten years younger than I am, wouldn’t have been crushed by that man, as Petit-Pierre calls him:  what do you think about it?”

“I think, Germain, that you have done me a very great service, and that I shall thank you for it all my life.”

“Is that all?”

“My little father,” said the child, “I didn’t think to tell little Marie what I promised you.  I didn’t have time, but I’ll tell her at home, and I’ll tell grandma, too.”

This promise on his child’s part gave Germain abundant food for reflection.  The problem now was how to explain his position to his family, and while setting forth his grievances against the widow Guerin, to avoid telling them what other thoughts had predisposed him to be so keen-sighted and so harsh in his judgment.

When one is happy and proud, the courage to make others accept one’s happiness seems easily within reach; but to be rebuffed in one direction and blamed in another is not a very pleasant plight.

Luckily, Pierre was asleep when they reached the farm, and Germain put him down on his bed without waking him.  Then he entered upon such explanations as he was able to give.  Pere Maurice, sitting upon his three-legged stool in the doorway, listened gravely to him, and, although he was ill pleased with the result of the expedition, when Germain, after describing the widow’s system of coquetry, asked his father in-law if he had time to go and pay court to her fifty-two Sundays in the year with the chance of being dismissed at the end of the year, the old man replied, nodding his head in token of assent:  “You are not wrong, Germain; that couldn’t be.”  And again, when Germain told how he had been compelled to bring little Marie home again without loss of time to save her from the insults, perhaps from the violence, of an unworthy master, Pere Maurice again nodded assent, saying:  “You are not wrong, Germain; that’s as it should be.”

When Germain had finished his story and given all his reasons, his father-in-law and mother-in-law simultaneously uttered a heavy sigh of resignation as they exchanged glances.

Then the head of the family rose, saying:  “Well!  God’s will be done! affection isn’t made to order!”

“Come to supper, Germain,” said the mother-in-law.  “It’s a pity that couldn’t be arranged better; however, it wasn’t God’s will, it seems.  We must look somewhere else.”

“Yes,” the old man added, “as my wife says, we must look somewhere else.”

There was no further sound in the house, and when Petit-Pierre rose the next morning with the larks, at dawn, being no longer excited by the extraordinary events of the last two days, he relapsed into the normal apathy of little peasants of his age, forgot all that had filled his little head, and thought of nothing but playing with his brothers, and being a man with the horses and oxen.