“I have passed, and passed too well, for I wish to go into the army, and not the civil service; however, if I keep my place in the school, that will be the business of one of my comrades; he will have my chance.”

It happened so in the end.  Jean Reynaud did better than keep his place; the pass-list showed his name seventh, but instead of entering ’l’Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees’, he entered the military college at Fontainebleau in 1878.

He was then just twenty-one; he was of age, master of his fortune, and the first act of the new administration was a great, a very great piece of extravagance.

He bought for old Clemence and little Rosalie two shares in Government stock of 1,500 francs each.  That cost him 70,000 francs, almost the sum that Paul de Lavardens, in his first year of liberty in Paris, spent for Mademoiselle Lise Bruyere, of the Palais Royal Theatre.

Two years later Jean passed first at the examination, and left Fontainebleau with the right of choosing among the vacant places.  There was one in the regiment quartered at Souvigny, and Souvigny was three miles from Longueval.  Jean asked for this, and obtained it.

Thus Jean Reynaud, lieutenant in the ninth regiment of artillery, came in the month of October, 1880, to take possession of the house that had been his father’s; thus he found himself once more in the place where his childhood had passed, and where every one had kept green the memory of the life and death of his father; thus the Abbe Constantin was not denied the happiness of once again having near him the son of his old friend, and, if the truth must be told, he no longer wished that Jean had become a doctor.

When the old Cure left his church after saying mass, when he saw coming along the road a great cloud of dust, when he felt the earth tremble under the rumbling cannon, he would stop, and, like a child, amuse himself with seeing the regiment pass, but to him the regiment was—­Jean.  It was this robust and manly cavalier, in whose face, as in an open book, one read uprightness, courage, and goodness.

The moment Jean perceived the Cure, he would put his horse to a gallop, and go to have a little chat with his godfather.  The horse would turn his head toward the Cure, for he knew very well there was always a piece of sugar for him in the pocket of that old black soutane—­rusty and worn—­the morning soutane.  The Abbe Constantin had a beautiful new one, of which he took great care, to wear in society—­when he went into society.

The trumpets of the regiment sounded as they passed through the village, and all eyes sought Jean—­“little Jean"-for to the old people of Longueval he was still little Jean.  Certain wrinkled, broken-down, old peasants had never been able to break themselves of the habit of saluting him when he passed with, “Bonjour, gamin, ca va bien?”

He was six feet high, this gamin, and Jean never crossed the village without perceiving at one window the old furrowed parchment skin of Clemence, and at another the smiling countenance of Rosalie.  The latter had married during the previous year; Jean had given her away, and joyously on the wedding-night had he danced with the girls of Longueval.