e who are being
dieted?"

"The peasants are incorrigible," Benassis went on, speaking to Genestas.
"If a patient has eaten nothing for two or three days, they think he is
at death's door, and they cram him with soup or wine or something. Here
is a wretched woman for you that has all but killed her husband."

"Kill my husband with a little mite of a sop in wine!"

"Certainly, my good woman. It amazes me that he is still alive after the
mess you cooked for him. Mind that you do exactly as I have told you."

"Yes, dear sir, I would far rather die myself than lose him."

"Oh! as to that I shall soon see. I shall come again to-morrow evening
to bleed him."

"Let us walk along the side of the stream," Benassis said to Genestas;
"there is only a footpath between this cottage and the next house where
I must pay a call. That man's little boy will hold our horses."

"You must admire this lovely valley of ours a little," he went on;
"it is like an English garden, is it not? The laborer who lives in the
cottage which we are going to visit has never got over the death of one
of his children. The eldest boy, he was only a lad, would try to do a
man's work last harvest-tide; it was beyond his strength, and before the
autumn was out he died of a decline. This is the first case of really
strong fatherly love that has come under my notice. As a rule, when
their children die, the peasant's regret is for the loss of a useful
chattel, and a part of their stock-in-trade, and the older the child,
the heavier their sense of loss. A grown-up son or daughter is so much
capital to the parents. But this poor fellow really loved that boy of
his. 'Nothing cam comfort me for my loss,' he said one day when I came
across him out in the fields. He had forgotten all about his work, and
was standing there motionless, leaning on his scythe; he had picked up
his hone, it lay in his hand, and he had forgotten to use it. He has
never spoken since of his grief to me, but he has grown sad and silent.
Just now it is one of his little girls who is ill."

Benassis and his guest reached the little house as they talked. It stood
beside a pathway that led to a bark-mill. They saw a man about forty
years of age, standing under a willow tree, eating bread that had been
rubbed with a clove of garlic.

"Well, Gasnier, is the little one doing better?"

"I do not know, sir," he said dejectedly, "you will see; my wife is
sitting with her. In spite of all your car