The officer reached the stony path by the mill-pond before he could hit upon an explanation of this deserted village.  The miller’s lad was sitting on some sacks of corn near the door of the house.  Genestas asked for M. Benassis.

“M.  Benassis went over there,” said the miller, pointing out one of the ruined cottages.

“Has the village been burned down?” asked the commandant.

“No, sir.”

“Then how did it come to be in this state?” inquired Genestas.

“Ah! how?” the miller answered, as he shrugged his shoulders and went indoors; “M.  Benassis will tell you that.”

The officer went over a rough sort of bridge built up of boulders taken from the torrent bed, and soon reached the house that had been pointed out to him.  The thatched roof of the dwelling was still entire; it was covered with moss indeed, but there were no holes in it, and the door and its fastenings seemed to be in good repair.  Genestas saw a fire on the hearth as he entered, an old woman kneeling in the chimney-corner before a sick man seated in a chair, and another man, who was standing with his face turned toward the fireplace.  The house consisted of a single room, which was lighted by a wretched window covered with linen cloth.  The floor was of beaten earth; the chair, a table, and a truckle-bed comprised the whole of the furniture.  The commandant had never seen anything so poor and bare, not even in Russia, where the moujik’s huts are like the dens of wild beasts.  Nothing within it spoke of ordinary life; there were not even the simplest appliances for cooking food of the commonest description.  It might have been a dog-kennel without a drinking-pan.  But for the truckle-bed, a smock-frock hanging from a nail, and some sabots filled with straw, which composed the invalid’s entire wardrobe, this cottage would have looked as empty as the others.  The aged peasant woman upon her knees was devoting all her attention to keeping the sufferer’s feet in a tub filled with a brown liquid.  Hearing a footstep and the clank of spurs, which sounded strangely in ears accustomed to the plodding pace of country folk, the man turned to Genestas.  A sort of surprise, in which the old woman shared was visible in his face.

“There is no need to ask if you are M. Benassis,” said the soldier.  “You will pardon me, sir, if, as a stranger impatient to see you, I have come to seek you on your field of battle, instead of awaiting you at your house.  Pray do not disturb yourself; go on with what you are doing.  When it is over, I will tell you the purpose of my visit.”

Genestas half seated himself upon the edge of the table, and remained silent.  The firelight shone more brightly in the room than the faint rays of the sun, for the mountain crests intercepted them, so that they seldom reached this corner of the valley.  A few branches of resinous pinewood made a bright blaze, and it was by the light of this fire that the soldier saw the face of the man towards whom he was drawn by a secret motive, by a wish to seek him out, to study and to know him thoroughly well.  M. Benassis, the local doctor, heard Genestas with indifference, and with folded arms he returned his bow, and went back to his patient, quite unaware that he was being subjected to a scrutiny as earnest as that which the soldier turned upon him.