The first words he addressed to the young man showed him to be the farmer himself.  He related how he had lost himself, and learned from the countryman that he was on the road to Pithiviers.  Montargis was three leagues behind him.

The fog had insensibly changed into a drizzling rain, which was beginning to wet the young clerk through; he seemed afraid of the distance he had still to go, and the horseman, who saw his hesitation, invited him to come into the farmhouse.

It had something of the look of a fortress.  Surrounded by a pretty high wall, it could not be seen except through the bars of the great gate, which was carefully closed.  The farmer, who had got off his horse, did not go near it, but, turning to the right, reached another entrance closed in the same way, but of which he had the key.

Hardly had he passed the threshold when a terrible barking resounded from each end of the yard.  The farmer told his guest to fear nothing, and showed him the dogs chained up to their kennels; both were of an extraordinary size, and so savage that the sight of their master himself could not quiet them.

A boy, attracted by their barking, came out of the house and took the farmer’s horse.  The latter began questioning him about some orders he had given before he left the house, and went toward the stable to see that they had been executed.

Thus left alone, our clerk looked about him.

A lantern which the boy had placed on the ground cast a dim light over the courtyard.  All around seemed empty and deserted.  Not a trace was visible of the disorder often seen in a country farmyard, and which shows a temporary cessation of the work which is soon to be resumed again.  Neither a cart forgotten where the horses had been unharnessed, nor sheaves of corn heaped up ready for threshing, nor a plow overturned in a corner and half hidden under the freshly-cut clover.  The yard was swept, the barns shut up and padlocked.  Not a single vine creeping up the walls; everywhere stone, wood, and iron!

He took up the lantern and went up to the corner of the house.  Behind was a second yard, where he heard the barking of a third dog, and a covered wall was built in the middle of it.

Our traveller looked in vain for the little farm garden, where pumpkins of different sorts creep along the ground, or where the bees from the hives hum under the hedges of honeysuckle and elder.  Verdure and flowers were nowhere to be seen.  He did not even perceive the sight of a poultry-yard or pigeon-house.  The habitation of his host was everywhere wanting in that which makes the grace and the life of the country.

The young man thought that his host must be of a very careless or a very calculating disposition, to concede so little to domestic enjoyments and the pleasures of the eye; and judging, in spite of himself, by what he saw, he could not help feeling a distrust of his character.