ntry of the valley
des Aigues.

The keepers still complained of finding a great many branches cut with
shears in the deeper parts of the wood and left to dry, evidently as
a provision for winter. They watched for the delinquents without ever
being able to catch them. The count, assisted by Groison, had given
certificates of pauperism to only thirty or forty of the real poor of
the district; but the other two mayors had been less strict. The more
clement the count showed himself in the affair at Conches the more
determined he was to enforce the laws about gleaning, which had now
degenerated into theft. He did not interfere with the management of
three of his farms which were leased to tenants, nor with those whose
tenants worked for his profit, of which he had a number; but he managed
six farms himself, each of about two hundred acres, and he now published
a notice that it was forbidden, under pain of being arrested and made
to pay the fine imposed by the courts, to enter those fields before
the crop was carried away. The order concerned only his own immediate
property. Rigou, who knew the country well, had let his farm-lands in
portions and on short leases to men who knew how to get in their own
crops, and who paid him in grain; therefore gleaning did not affect
him. The other proprietors were peasants, and no nefarious gleaning was
attempted on their land.

When the harvest began the count went himself to Michaud to see how
things were going on. Groison, who advised him to do this, was to
be present himself at the gleaning of each particular field. The
inhabitants of cities can have no idea what gleaning is to the
inhabitants of the country; the passion of these sons of the soil for
it seems inexplicable; there are women who will give up well-paid
employments to glean. The wheat they pick up seems to them sweeter than
any other; and the provision they thus make for their chief and most
substantial food has to them an extraordinary attraction. Mothers take
their babes and their little girls and boys; the feeblest old men drag
themselves into the wheat-fields; and even those who own property are
paupers for the nonce. All gleaners appear in rags.

The count and Michaud were present on horseback when the first tattered
batch entered the first fields from which the wheat had been carried. It
was ten o'clock in the morning. August had been a hot month, the sky was
cloudless, blue as a periwinkle; the earth was baked, the