“Well-doing,” he replied, “is a passion as superior to that of love as humanity is superior to the individual creature.  Now, you have not done this thing from the sole impulse and simplicity of virtue.  You have fallen from the heights of humanity to the indulgence of the individual creature.  Your benevolence to Farrabesche and Catherine carries with it so many memories and forbidden thoughts that it has lost all merit in the eyes of God.  Tear from your heart the remains of the javelin evil planted there.  Do not take from your actions their true value.  Come at last to that saintly ignorance of the good you do which is the grace supreme of human actions.”

Madame Graslin had turned away to wipe the tears that told the rector his words had touched the bleeding wound that was still unhealed in her heart.

Farrabesche, Catherine, and Benjamin now came up to thank their benefactress, but she made them a sign to go away and leave her alone with the rector.

“See how that grieves them,” she said to him as they sadly walked away.  The rector, whose heart was tender, recalled them by a sign.

“You shall be completely happy,” she then said, giving to Farrabesche a paper which she was holding in her hand.  “Here is the ordinance which gives you back your rights of citizenship and exempts you from humiliating inspection.”

Farrabesche respectfully kissed the hand held toward him and looked at Veronique with an eye both tender and submissive, calm and devoted, the expression of a devotion which nothing could ever change, the look of a dog to his master.

“If Jacques has suffered, madame,” said Catherine, her fine eyes lighting with pleasure, “I hope I can give him enough happiness to make up for his pain, for, no matter what he has done, he is not bad.”

Madame Graslin turned away her head; she seemed overcome by the sight of that happy family.  The rector now left her to enter the church, whither she dragged herself presently on the arm of Monsieur Grossetete.

After breakfast every one, even the aged people of the village, assembled to see the beginning of the great work.  From the slope leading up to the chateau, Monsieur Grossetete and Monsieur Bonnet, between whom was Veronique, could see the direction of the four first cuttings marked out by piles of gathered stones.  At each cutting five laborers were digging out and piling up the good loam along the edges; clearing a space about eighteen feet wide, the width of each road.  On either side, four other men were digging the ditches and also piling up the loam at the sides to make a bank.  Behind them, as the banks were made, two men were digging holes in which others planted trees.  In each of these divisions, thirty old paupers, a score of women, and forty or more girls and children were picking up stones, which special laborers piled in heaps along the roadside so as to keep a record of the quantity gathered by each group.  Thus the work went on rapidly, with picked workmen full of ardor.  Grossetete promised Madame Graslin to send her some trees and to ask her other friends to do the same; for the nurseries of the chateau would evidently not suffice to supply such an extensive plantation.  Toward the close of the day, which was to end in a grand dinner at the chateau, Farrabesche requested Madame Graslin to grant him an audience for a few moments.