eet of Troyes in the garb of a goddess.
Her father had forced her to marry Michu, whose bad reputation was
then increasing, and she feared him too much to be able to judge him.
Nevertheless, she knew that he loved her, and at the bottom of her heart
lay the truest affection for this awe-inspiring man; she had never known
him to do anything that was not just; never did he say a brutal word,
to her at least; in fact, he endeavored to forestall her every wish. The
poor pariah, believing himself disagreeable to his wife, spent most
of his time out of doors. Marthe and Michu, distrustful of each other,
lived in what is called in these days an "armed peace." Marthe, who
saw no one, suffered keenly from the ostracism which for the last seven
years had surrounded her as the daughter of a revolutionary butcher, and
the wife of a so-called traitor. More than once she had overheard the
laborers of the adjoining farm (held by a man named Beauvisage, greatly
attached to the Simeuse family) say as they passed the pavilion, "That's
where Judas lives!" The singular resemblance between the bailiff's head
and that of the thirteenth apostle, which his conduct appeared to carry
out, won him that odious nickname throughout the neighborhood. It was
this distress of mind, added to vague but constant fears for the future,
which gave Marthe her thoughtful and subdued air. Nothing saddens so
deeply as unmerited degradation from which there seems no escape. A
painter could have made a fine picture of this family of pariahs in
the bosom of their pretty nook in Champagne, where the landscape is
generally sad.

"Francois!" called the bailiff, to hasten his son.

Francois Michu, a child of ten, played in the park and forest, and
levied his little tithes like a master; he ate the fruits; he chased
the game; he at least had neither cares nor troubles. Of all the family,
Francois alone was happy in a home thus isolated from the neighborhood
by its position between the park and the forest, and by the still
greater moral solitude of universal repulsion.

"Pick up these things," said his father, pointing to the parapet, "and
put them away. Look at me! You love your father and your mother, don't
you?" The child flung himself on his father as if to kiss him, but Michu
made a movement to shift the gun and pushed him back. "Very good. You
have sometimes chattered about things that are done here," continued the
father, fixing his eyes, dangerous as those of a