“The farmer made some effort to keep me; he spoke of the rain, of the darkness, and of the length of the way.  I replied to all by the absolute necessity there was for my being at Montargis that very night; and thanking him for his brief hospitality, I set off again in a haste which might well have confirmed the truth of my words to him.

“However, the freshness of the night and the exercise of walking did not fail to change the directions of my thoughts.  When away from the objects which had awakened such lively disgust in me, I felt it gradually diminishing.  I began to smile at the susceptibility of my feelings, and then, in proportion as the rain became heavier and colder, these strictures on myself assumed a tone of ill-temper.  I silently accused myself of the absurdity of mistaking sensation for admonitions of my reason.  After all, were not the farmer and his sons free to live alone, to hunt, to keep dogs, and to kill a pig?  Where was the crime of it?  With less nervous susceptibility, I should have accepted the shelter they offered me, and I should now be sleeping snugly on a truss of straw, instead of walking with difficulty through the cold and drizzling rain.  I thus continued to reproach myself, until, toward morning, I arrived at Montargis, jaded and benumbed with cold.

“When, however, I got up refreshed, toward the middle of the next day, I instinctively returned to my first opinion.  The appearance of the farmhouse presented itself to me under the same repulsive colors which the evening before had determined me to make my escape from it.  Reason itself remained silent when reviewing all those coarse details, and was forced to recognize in them the indications of a low nature, or else the presence of some baleful influence.

“I went away the next day without being able to learn anything concerning the farmer or his sons; but the recollection of my adventure remained deeply fixed in my memory.

“Ten years afterward I was travelling in the diligence through the department of the Loiret; I was leaning from the window, and looking at some coppice ground now for the first time brought under cultivation, and the mode of clearing which one of my travelling companions was explaining to me, when my eyes fell upon a walled inclosure, with an iron-barred gate.  Inside it I perceived a house with all the blinds closed, and which I immediately recollected; it was the farmhouse where I had been sheltered.  I eagerly pointed it out to my companion, and asked who lived in it.

“‘Nobody just now,’ replied he.

“‘But was it not kept, some years ago, by a farmer and his two sons?’

“‘The Turreaus;’ said my travelling companion, looking at me; ’did you know them?’

“‘I saw them once.’

“He shook his head.

“‘Yes, yes!’ resumed he; ’for many years they lived there like wolves in their den; they merely knew how to till land, kill game, and drink.  The father managed the house, but men living alone, without women to love them, without children to soften them, and without God to make them think of heaven, always turn into wild beasts, you see; so one morning the eldest son, who had been drinking too much brandy, would not harness the plow-horses; his father struck him with his whip, and the son, who was mad drunk, shot him dead with his gun.’”