to himself, and of no
use to the boy, who neither could nor would learn anything. In
reality, he was by no means unwilling to abandon the iron rules he had
established, and which pressed with severity on himself as well as on
the child. Ida, or rather Charlotte, made no remonstrance. She preferred
to think her boy incapable of study rather than endure the daily scenes,
and the incessant lectures and tears of this educational experiment.

Above everything she longed for peace. Her aims were as restricted as
her intellect, and she lived solely in the present, and any future,
however brilliant, seemed to her too dearly purchased at the price of
present tranquillity.

Jack was very happy when he no longer saw under his eyes that placard:
"Rise at six. From six to seven, breakfast; from seven to weight," &c.
The days seemed to him longer and brighter. As if he understood that his
presence in the house was often an annoyance, he absented himself for
the whole day with that absolute disregard of time natural to children
and loungers.

He had a great friend in the forester. As soon as he was dressed in the
morning he started for Father Archambauld's, just as the old man's wife,
before going to her Parisians, as she called her employers, served her
husband's breakfast in a fresh, clean room hung with a light green paper
that represented the same hunting-scene over and over again.

When the forester had finished his meal, he and little Jack started
out on a long tramp. Father Archambauld showed the child the pheasants'
nests, with their eggs like large pearls, built in the roots of the
trees; the haunts of the partridges, the frightened hares, and the young
kids. The hawthorn's white blossoms perfumed the air, and a variety of
wild flowers enamelled the turf. The forester's duty was to protect the
birds and their young broods from all injury, and to destroy the moles
and snakes. He received a certain sum for the heads or tails of these
vermin, and every six months carried to Corbiel a bag of dry and dusty
relics. He would have been better pleased could he have taken also the
heads of the poachers, with whom he was in constant conflict. He had
also a great deal of trouble with the peasants who injured his trees.

A doe could be replaced, a dead pheasant was no great matter; but a
tree, the growth of years, was a vastly different affair. He watched
them so carefully that he knew all their maladies. One species of
fir was attac