found Duhamel's door open, and he stepped across the threshold into
the chief room of the house. But there he paused, and hesitated. The
chamber was crowded with people in holiday attire, and the centre of
attraction was a well-set-up peasant with a happy, sun-tanned face,
whose golden locks were covered by a huge round hat decked with a score
of gaily-coloured ribbons.

At sight of him La Boulaye remembered that it was Charlot's wedding-day.
Popular amongst the women by virtue of his comeliness, and respected
by the men by virtue of his strength, Charlot Tardivet was a general
favourite of the countryside, and here, in the room of old Duhamel, the
schoolmaster, was half the village gathered to do him honour upon his
wedding morn. It was like Duhamel, who, in fatherliness towards the
villagers, went near out-rivalling M. le Cure, to throw open his house
for the assembling of Charlot's friends, and La Boulaye was touched by
this fresh sign of kindliness from a man whose good heart he had not
lacked occasion to observe and appreciate. But it came to the secretary
that there was no place for him in this happy assemblage. His advent
would, probably, but serve to cast a gloom upon them, considering the
conditions under which he came, with the signs of violence upon his face
to remind them of the lords of life and death who dwelt at the Chateau
up yonder. And such a reminder must fall upon them as does the reminder
of some overhanging evil clutch suddenly at our hearts in happy moments
of forgetfulness. To let them be happy that day, to leave their feasts
free of a death's head, La Boulaye would have withdrawn had he not
already been too late. Duhamel had espied him, and the little, wizened
old man came hurrying forward, his horn-rimmed spectacles perched on
the very end of his nose, his keen little eyes beaming with delight and
welcome.

"Ah, Caron, you are very choicely come," he cried, holding out both
hands to La Boulaye. "You shall embrace our happy Hercules yonder, and
wish him joy of the wedded life he has the audacity to exploit." Then,
as he espied the crimson ridge across the secretary's countenance, "Mon
Dieu!" he exclaimed, "what have you done to yourself, Caron?"

"Pish! It is nothing," answered La Boulaye hurriedly, and would have had
the subject dismissed, but that one of the onlooking peasants swore
by the memory of some long-dead saint that it was the cut of a whip.
Duhamel's eyes kindled and his parchment