Genestas obtained a distant view of a wide circular space, planted with trees, a fountain surrounded by poplars stood in the middle of it.  Round the enclosure were high banks on which a triple line of trees of different kinds were growing; the first row consisted of acacias, the second of Japanese varnish trees, and some young elms grew on the highest row of all.

“That is where we hold our fair,” said Benassis.  “That is the beginning of the High Street, by those two handsome houses that I told you about; one belongs to the notary, and the other to the justice of the peace.”

They came at that moment into a broad road, fairly evenly paved with large cobble-stones.  There were altogether about a hundred new houses on either side of it, and almost every house stood in a garden.

The view of the church with its doorway made a pretty termination to this road.  Two more roads had been recently planned out half-way down the course of the first, and many new houses had already been built along them.  The town-hall stood opposite the parsonage, in the square by the church.  As Benassis went down the road, women and children stood in their doorways to wish him good-evening, the men took off their caps, and the little children danced and shouted about his horse, as if the animal’s good-nature were as well known as the kindness of its master.  The gladness was undemonstrative; there was the instinctive delicacy of all deep feeling about it, and it had the same pervasive power.  At the sight of this welcome it seemed to Genestas that the doctor had been too modest in his description of the affection with which he was regarded by the people of the district.  His truly was a sovereignty of the sweetest kind; a right royal sovereignty moreover, for its title was engraven in the hearts of its subjects.  However dazzling the rays of glory that surround a man, however great the power that he enjoys, in his inmost soul he soon comes to a just estimate of the sentiments that all external action causes for him.  He very soon sees that no change has been wrought in him, that there is nothing new and nothing greater in the exercise of his physical faculties, and discovers his own real nothingness.  Kings, even should they rule over the whole world, are condemned to live in a narrow circle like other men.  They must even submit to the conditions of their lot, and their happiness depends upon the personal impressions that they receive.  But Benassis met with nothing but goodwill and loyalty throughout the district.

CHAPTER III

THE NAPOLEON OF THE PEOPLE

“Pray, come in, sir!” cried Jacquotte.  “A pretty time the gentlemen have been waiting for you!  It is always the way!  You always manage to spoil the dinner for me whenever it ought to be particularly good.  Everything is cooked to death by this time——­”

“Oh! well, here we are,” answered Benassis with a smile.