ke Fleuriot with you, and go in
search of their carriage which has been swamped in the Planche-au-Vacher.
That is settled. Now, Monsieur de Buxieres, will you proceed to
table--and your coachman also? Upon my word, I do not know whether our
supper will be to your liking. I can only offer you a plate of soup, a
chine of pork, and cheese made in the country; but you must be hungry,
and when one has a good appetite, one is not hard to please."

Every one had been seated at the table; the servants at the lower end,
and Reine Vincart, near the fireplace, between M. de Buxieres and the
driver. La Guite helped the cabbage-soup all around; soon nothing was
heard but the clinking of spoons and smacking of lips. Julien, scarcely
recovered from his bewilderment, watched furtively the pretty, robust
young girl presiding at the supper, and keeping, at the same time, a
watchful eye over all the details of service. He thought her strange; she
upset all his ideas. His own imagination and his theories pictured a
woman, and more especially a young girl, as a submissive, modest, shadowy
creature, with downcast look, only raising her eyes to consult her
husband or her mother as to what is allowable and what is forbidden. Now,
Reine did not fulfil any of the requirements of this ideal. She seemed to
be hardly twenty-two years old, and she acted with the initiative genius,
the frankness and the decision of a man, retaining all the while the
tenderness and easy grace of a woman. Although it was evident that she
was accustomed to govern and command, there was nothing in her look,
gesture, or voice which betrayed any assumption of masculinity. She
remained a young girl while in the very act of playing the virile part of
head of the house. But what astonished Julien quite as much was that she
seemed to have received a degree of education superior to that of people
of her condition, and he wondered at the amount of will-power by which a
nature highly cultivated, relatively speaking, could conform to the
unrefined, rough surroundings in which she was placed.

While Julien was immersed in these reflections, and continued eating with
an abstracted air, Reine Vincart was rapidly examining the reserved,
almost ungainly, young man, who did not dare address any conversation to
her, and who was equally stiff and constrained with those sitting near
him. She made a mental comparison of him with Claudet, the bold huntsman,
alert, resolute, full of dash and