The slight breath of joyous and renewed life which had animated him on leaving the Vincart farm, had suddenly evaporated.  His anticipations collapsed in the face of these bristling realities, among which he felt his isolation more deeply than ever before.  He recalled the cordiality of Reine’s reception, and how she had spoken of the difficulties he should have to encounter.  How little he had thought that her forebodings would come true the very same day!  The recollection of the cheerful and hospitable interior of La Thuiliere contrasted painfully with his cold, bare Vivey mansion, tenanted solely by hostile domestics.  Who were these people—­this Manette Sejournant with her treacherous smile, and this fellow Claudet, who had, at the very first, subjected him to such offensive questioning?  Why did they seem so ill-disposed toward him?  He felt as if he were completely enveloped in an atmosphere of contradiction and ill-will.  He foresaw what an amount of quiet but steady opposition he should have to encounter from these subordinates, and he became alarmed at the prospect of having to display so much energy in order to establish his authority in the chateau.  He, who had pictured to himself a calm and delightful solitude, wherein he could give himself up entirely to his studious and contemplative tastes.  What a contrast to the reality!

Rousing himself at last, he proceeded mechanically to arrange his belongings in the room, formerly inhabited by his cousin de Buxieres.  He had hardly finished when Zelie made her appearance with some plates and a tablecloth, and began to lay the covers.  Seeing the fire had gone out, the little servant uttered an exclamation of dismay.

“Oh!” cried she, “so the wood didn’t flare!”

He gazed at her as if she were talking Hebrew, and it was at least a minute before he understood that by “flare” she meant kindle.

“Well, well!” she continued, “I’ll go and fetch some splinters.”

She returned in a few moments, with a basket filled with the large splinters thrown off by the woodchoppers in straightening the logs:  she piled these up on the andirons, and then, applying her mouth vigorously to a long hollow tin tube, open at both ends, which she carried with her, soon succeeded in starting a steady flame.

“Look there!” said she, in a tone implying a certain degree of contempt for the “city Monsieur” who did not even know how to keep up a fire, “isn’t that clever?  Now I must lay the cloth.”

While she went about her task, arranging the plates, the water-bottle, and glasses symmetrically around the table, Julien tried to engage her in conversation.  But the little maiden, either because she had been cautioned beforehand, or because she did not very well comprehend M. de Buxieres’s somewhat literary style of French, would answer only in monosyllables, or else speak only in patois, so that Julien had to give up the idea of getting any information out of her.  Certainly, Mademoiselle Vincart was right in saying that he did not know the language of these people.