The rascal was continually poaching, and with nothing to fear from it.  The intimacies of his wife with Gaubertin and the keepers and the rural authorities, together with the laxity of the times, secured him impunity.  As soon as his children were large enough he made them serviceable to his comfort, caring no more for their morality than for that of his wife.  He had two sons and two daughters.  Tonsard, who lived, as did his wife, from hand to mouth, might have come to an end of this easy life if he had not maintained a sort of martial law over his family, which compelled them to work for the preservation of it.  When he had brought up his children, at the cost of those from whom his wife was able to extort gifts, the following charter and budget were the law at the Grand-I-Vert.

Tonsard’s old mother and his two daughters, Catherine and Marie, went into the woods at certain seasons twice a-day, and came back laden with fagots which overhung the crutch of their poles at least two feet beyond their heads.  Though dried sticks were placed on the outside of the heap, the inside was made of live wood cut from young trees.  In plain words, Tonsard helped himself to his winter’s fuel in the woods of Les Aigues.  Besides this, father and sons were constantly poaching.  From September to March, hares, rabbits, partridges, deer, in short, all the game that was not eaten at the chateau, was sold at Blangy and at Soulanges, where Tonsard’s two daughters peddled milk in the early mornings,—­coming back with the news of the day, in return for the gossip they carried about Les Aigues, and Cerneux, and Conches.  In the months when the three Tonsards were unable to hunt with a gun, they set traps.  If the traps caught more game than they could eat, La Tonsard made pies of it and sent them to Ville-aux-Fayes.  In harvest-time seven Tonsards—­the old mother, the two sons (until they were seventeen years of age), the two daughters, together with old Fourchon and Mouche—­gleaned, and generally brought in about sixteen bushels a day of all grains, rye, barley, wheat, all good to grind.

The two cows, led to the roadside by the youngest girl, always managed to stray into the meadows of Les Aigues; but as, if it ever chanced that some too flagrant trespass compelled the keepers to take notice of it, the children were either whipped or deprived of a coveted dainty, they had acquired such extraordinary aptitude in hearing the enemy’s footfall that the bailiff or the park-keeper of Les Aigues was very seldom able to detect them.  Besides, the relations of those estimable functionaries with Tonsard and his wife tied a bandage over their eyes.  The cows, held by long ropes, obeyed a mere twitch or a special low call back to the roadside, knowing very well that, the danger once past, they could finish their browsing in the next field.  Old mother Tonsard, who was getting more and more infirm, succeeded Mouche in his duties, after Fourchon, under pretence