“Yes.”

“How long will he stay?”

“Faith, I do not know:  What does it matter to you?”

“What does it matter to me, sir?  Oh! very well, what does it matter to me?  Did any one ever hear the like!  And the provisions and all that and——­”

At any other time she would have overwhelmed her master with reproaches for his breach of trust, but now she followed him into the kitchen before the torrent of words had come to an end.  She had guessed that there was a prospect of a boarder, and was eager to see Genestas, to whom she made a very deferential courtesy, while she scanned him from head to foot.  A thoughtful and dejected expression gave a harsh look to the soldier’s face.  In the dialogue between master and servant the latter had appeared to him in the light of a nonentity; and although he regretted the fact, this revelation had lessened the high opinion that he had formed of the man whose persistent efforts to save the district from the horrors of cretinism had won his admiration.

“I do not like the looks of that fellow at all!” said Jacquotte to herself.

“If you are not tired, sir,” said the doctor to his supposed patient, “we will take a turn round the garden before dinner.”

“Willingly,” answered the commandant.

They went through the dining-room, and reached the garden by way of a sort of vestibule at the foot of the staircase between the salon and the dining-room.  Beyond a great glass door at the farther end of the vestibule lay a flight of stone steps which adorned the garden side of the house.  The garden itself was divided into four large squares of equal size by two paths that intersected each other in the form of a cross, a box edging along their sides.  At the farther end there was a thick, green alley of hornbeam trees, which had been the joy and pride of the late owner.  The soldier seated himself on a worm-eaten bench, and saw neither the trellis-work nor the espaliers, nor the vegetables of which Jacquotte took such great care.  She followed the traditions of the epicurean churchman to whom this valuable garden owed its origin; but Benassis himself regarded it with sufficient indifference.

The commandant turned their talk from the trivial matters which had occupied them by saying to the doctor: 

“How comes it, sir, that the population of the valley has been trebled in ten years?  There were seven hundred souls in it when you came, and to-day you say that they number more than two thousand.”

“You are the first person who has put that question to me,” the doctor answered.  “Though it has been my aim to develop the capabilities of this little corner of the earth to the utmost, the constant pressure of a busy life has not left me time to think over the way in which (like the mendicant brother) I have made ‘broth from a flint’ on a large scale.  M. Gravier himself, who is one of several who have done a great deal for us, and to whom I was able to render a service by re-establishing his health, has never given a thought to the theory, though he has been everywhere over our mountain sides with me, to see its practical results.”