"However, these features," said Croustillac, feeling his heart beat with doubt, anxiety, fear and despair all at once, "these charming features recall to me--but no--it is impossible--impossible. By what probability? Decidedly, I am an old fool. Farmers? Come, that sabre cut I got on the head at the siege of Azof has deranged my brain. After all, there are chances so strange (and surely, more than any one else, I should believe in the oddities of chance; I should be an ingrate to deny it); yes, chance might occasion peasants to give their children certain names rather than others, but chance does not make these resemblances--come, it is impossible. After all, I can ask them, and in asking them I shall laugh at myself; it is stupid. My children, tell me, what is your father's name?" "James, sir." "Yes, James--but James--what?" "James, sir." "James? nothing more?" "Yes, sir," answered the boy, regarding Croustillac with surprise. "This is more and more strange," said Croustillac, reflecting. "Has he been long in France?" "He has always been here, sir." "Come, I was mad; decidedly, I was mad. Has your father ever been a soldier, my children?" Angela and James looked at each other with astonishment. The young boy answered: "No, sir, he has always been a farmer." At this moment the door which communicated with the abbey opened and one of the lay brothers appeared at the top of the stairway. This brother was the type of an ignoble monk, gross and sensual. He made a sign to the children, who tremblingly approached. "Come here, little one," said he to the girl. The poor child, after casting a doubtful look at her brother, whom she could not make up her mind to leave, timidly mounted the steps. The monk took her insolently by the chin with his coarse hand, turned up her face which she held down, and said to her: "Pretty one, you will warn your father that if he does not pay eight days from now his rent in kind and the hundred crowns which he owes, there is a farmer who is more solvent than he who wants the farm and who will obtain it. As your father is a good fellow, they will give him eight days--but for that, they would have turned him out to-day." "My God! my God!" said the children, weeping and clasping their hands, "there is no money at home. Our poor father is sick. Alas! what shall we do?" "You will do what you can," said the monk, "that is the order of the prior;" and he made a sign to the young girl to go. The two children threw themselves into each other's arms, sobbing, and saying: "Our father will die of this--he will die!" Croustillac, half-hidden by a post of the shed, had been at once touched and angered by this scene. At the moment the monk was about to close the door, the Gascon said to him: "Reverend Father, a word--is this the Abbey of St. Quentin?" "Yes, and what of it?" said the monk rudely. "You will willingly give me a lodging till to-morrow, will you not?"