med an enviable one. Trouble had set its
unmistakable mark on them, but petty cares had left no traces there.

"Well, my good Father Moreau, I suppose there is no help for it, and you
must always be working?"

"Yes, M. Benassis, there are one or two more bits of waste that I
mean to clear for you before I knock off work," the old man answered
cheerfully, and light shone in his little black eyes.

"Is that wine that your wife is carrying? If you will not take a rest
now, you ought at any rate to take wine."

"I take a rest? I should not know what to do with myself. The sun and
the fresh air put life into me when I am out of doors and busy grubbing
up the land. As to the wine, sir, yes, that is wine sure enough, and it
is all through your contriving I know that the Mayor at Courteil lets us
have it for next to nothing. Ah, you managed it very cleverly, but, all
the same, I know you had a hand in it."

"Oh! come, come! Good-day, mother. You are going to work on that bit of
land of Champferlu's to-day of course?"

"Yes, sir; I made a beginning there yesterday evening."

"Capital!" said Benassis. "It must be a satisfaction to you, at times,
to see this hillside. You two have broken up almost the whole of the
land on it yourselves."

"Lord! yes, sir," answered the old woman, "it has been our doing! We
have fairly earned our bread."

"Work, you see, and land to cultivate are the poor man's consols. That
good man would think himself disgraced if he went into the poorhouse or
begged for his bread; he would choose to die pickaxe in hand, out in
the open, in the sunlight. Faith, he bears a proud heart in him. He has
worked until work has become his very life; and yet death has no terrors
for him! He is a profound philosopher, little as he suspects it. Old
Moreau's case suggested the idea to me of founding an almshouse for the
country people of the district; a refuge for those who, after working
hard all their lives, have reached an honorable old age of poverty.

"I had by no means expected to make the fortune which I have acquired
here; indeed, I myself have no use for it, for a man who has fallen
from the pinnacle of his hopes needs very little. It costs but little to
live, the idler's life alone is a costly one, and I am not sure that the
unproductive consumer is not robbing the community at large. There was
some discussion about Napoleon's pension after his fall; it came to his
ears, and he said that five francs a da