“I understand—­you advise me to be conciliatory.  Such sentiments are purely Jacobin.  If His Majesty listens to the advice of such as you, all these sales of confiscated estates will be ratified.  Zounds! our interests are the same.  If the Revolution has deprived the nobility of their property, it has also impoverished the clergy.”

“The possessions of a priest are not of this world, Monsieur,” said the cure, coldly.

M. de Sairmeuse was about to make some impertinent response, when M. Lacheneur appeared, followed by his daughter.

The wretched man was ghastly pale, great drops of perspiration stood out upon his temples, his restless, haggard eyes revealed his distress of mind.

Marie-Anne was as pale as her father, but her attitude and the light that burned in her eyes told of invincible energy and determination.

“Ah, well! friend,” said the duke, “so we are the owner of Sairmeuse, it seems.”

This was said with such a careless insolence of manner that the cure blushed that they should thus treat, in his own house, a man whom he considered his equal.

He rose and offered the visitors chairs.

“Will you take a seat, dear Monsieur Lacheneur?” said he, with a politeness intended as a lesson for the duke; “and you, also, Mademoiselle, do me the honor——­”

But the father and the daughter both refused the proffered civility with a motion of the head.

“Monsieur le Duc,” continued Lacheneur, “I am an old servant of your house——­”

“Ah! indeed!”

“Mademoiselle Armande, your aunt, accorded my poor mother the honor of acting as my godmother——­”

“Ah, yes,” interrupted the duke.  “I remember you now.  Our family has shown great goodness to you and yours.  And it was to prove your gratitude, probably, that you made haste to purchase our estate!”

The former ploughboy was of humble origin, but his heart and his character had developed with his fortunes; he understood his own worth.

Much as he was disliked, and even detested, by his neighbors, everyone respected him.

And here was a man who treated him with undisguised scorn.  Why?  By what right?

Indignant at the outrage, he made a movement as if to retire.

No one, save his daughter, knew the truth; he had only to keep silence and Sairmeuse remained his.

Yes, he had still the power to keep Sairmeuse, and he knew it, for he did not share the fears of the ignorant rustics.  He was too well informed not to be able to distinguish between the hopes of the emigres and the possible.  He knew that an abyss separated the dream from the reality.

A beseeching word uttered in a low tone by his daughter, made him turn again to the duke.

“If I purchased Sairmeuse,” he answered, in a voice husky with emotion, “it was in obedience to the command of your dying aunt, and with the money which she gave me for that purpose.  If you see me here, it is only because I come to restore to you the deposit confided to my keeping.”