“And how about Louise?” asked Benassis.  Butifer paused and turned thoughtful.

“Eh! learn to read and write, my lad,” said Genestas; “come and enlist in my regiment, have a horse to ride, and turn carabineer.  If they once sound ‘to horse’ for something like a war, you will find out that Providence made you to live in the midst of cannon, bullets, and battalions, and they will make a general of you.”

“Ye-es, if Napoleon was back again,” answered Butifer.

“You know our agreement,” said the doctor.  “At the second infraction of it, you undertook to go for a soldier.  I give you six months in which to learn to read and write, and then I will find some young gentleman who wants a substitute.”

Butifer looked at the mountains.

“Oh! you shall not go to the Alps,” cried Benassis.  “A man like you, a man of his word, with plenty of good stuff in him, ought to serve his country and command a brigade, and not come to his end trailing after a chamois.  The life that you are leading will take you straight to the convict’s prison.  After over-fatiguing yourself, you are obliged to take a long rest; and, in the end, you will fall into idle ways that will be the ruin of any notions of orderly existence that you have; you will get into the habit of putting your strength to bad uses, and you will take the law into your own hands.  I want to put you, in spite of yourself, into the right path.”

“So I am to pine and fret myself to death?  I feel suffocated whenever I am in a town.  I cannot hold out for more than a day, in Grenoble, when I take Louise there——­”

“We all have our whims, which we must manage to control, or turn them to account for our neighbor’s benefit.  But it is late, and I am in a hurry.  Come to see me to-morrow, and bring your gun along with you.  We will talk this over, my boy.  Good-bye.  Go and sell your chamois in Grenoble.”

The two horsemen went on their way.

“That is what I call a man,” said Genestas.

“A man in a bad way,” answered Benassis.  “But what help is there for it?  You heard what he said.  Is it not lamentable to see such fine qualities running to waste?  If France were invaded by a foreign foe, Butifer at the head of a hundred young fellows would keep a whole division busy in Maurienne for a month; but in a time of peace the only outlets for his energy are those which set the law at defiance.  He must wrestle with something; whenever he is not risking his neck he is at odds with society, he lends a helping hand to smugglers.  The rogue will cross the Rhone, all by himself, in a little boat, to take shoes over into Savoy; he makes good his retreat, heavy laden as he is, to some inaccessible place high up among the hills, where he stays for two days at a time, living on dry crusts.  In short, danger is as welcome to him as sleep would be to anybody else, and by dint of experience he has acquired a relish for extreme sensations that has totally unfitted him for ordinary life.  It vexes me that a man like that should take a wrong turn and gradually go to the bad, become a bandit, and die on the gallows.  But, see, captain, how our village looks from here!”