tle
wicket gate. "My vines have flowered and not a shoot has been frosted.
There will be twenty puncheons or more to the acre this year; but then
look at all the dung that has been put on the land!"

"Father, I have come on important business."

"Very well; how are your presses doing? You must be making heaps of
money as big as yourself."

"I shall some day, father, but I am not very well off just now."

"They all tell me that I ought not to put on so much manure," replied
his father. "The gentry, that is M. le Marquis, M. le Comte, and
Monsieur What-do-you-call-'em, say that I am letting down the quality
of the wine. What is the good of book-learning except to muddle your
wits? Just you listen: these gentlemen get seven, or sometimes eight
puncheons of wine to the acre, and they sell them for sixty francs
apiece, that means four hundred francs per acre at most in a good
year. Now, I make twenty puncheons, and get thirty francs apiece for
them--that is six hundred francs! And where are they, the fools?
Quality, quality, what is quality to me? They can keep their quality
for themselves, these Lord Marquises. Quality means hard cash for me,
that is what it means, You were saying?----"

"I am going to be married, father, and I have come to ask for----"

"Ask me for what? Nothing of the sort, my boy. Marry; I give you my
consent, but as for giving you anything else, I haven't a penny to
bless myself with. Dressing the soil is the ruin of me. These two
years I have been paying money out of pocket for top-dressing, and
taxes, and expenses of all kinds; Government eats up everything,
nearly all the profit goes to the Government. The poor growers have
made nothing these last two seasons. This year things don't look so
bad; and, of course, the beggarly puncheons have gone up to eleven
francs already. We work to put money into the coopers' pockets. Why,
are you going to marry before the vintage?----"

"I only came to ask for your consent, father."

"Oh! that is another thing. And who is the victim, if one may ask?"

"I am going to marry Mlle. Eve Chardon."

"Who may she be? What kind of victual does she eat?"

"She is the daughter of the late M. Chardon, the druggist in
L'Houmeau."

"You are going to marry a girl out of L'Houmeau! _you_! a burgess of
Angouleme, and printer to His Majesty! This is what comes of
book-learning! Send a boy to school, forsooth! Oh! well, then she is
very rich, is she, my boy?" and the o