But when she went back to the Château, and met him again, his pleasant manners and smiling face reassured her. Children were good judges, she told herself, of a person's sincerity and truth, and Alain seemed happy and content when with him. Monsieur Dragominsk spent his off time in Orleans. He had a motor-cycle, and would often spend his evenings there, returning very late at night. Adrienne tried hard to be friendly towards him, but he seemed to her never entirely at ease in her company. One evening she asked him to dine with them, and after dinner, as they sat in the hall over the big fire, they began talking a little about Russia. "It is extraordinary to me," Guy was saying, "how quickly and deeply and widely this Bolshevism has taken root. Up till quite lately this part of France has been particularly free of all Bolshevism and revolutionary talk. But now it is creeping over the provinces as well as in the towns. I suppose you, Monsieur Dragominsk, have nothing to fear from Lenin's tools, but of course you are aware that there is a great deal of Bolshevist propaganda in Orleans?" "I believe there is," said the tutor with a serious face; "but I take good care to steer clear of them. They can do nothing to me. They have killed all my relatives and taken our lands and possessions. They want no more from me." "I suppose," said Guy slowly, "that the peasants get contaminated with it when they go into the towns. We have been a very contented village here for many years; but lately discontent seems rife. I have had to discharge four farm-hands this week. And I came across some pernicious leaflets in the forge the other day. I taxed your landlord with the distribution of them. He is a great talker. Tailors generally are. He was handing them round as I came up, so I asked if I might have some, and he could not refuse me." "I have noticed," said Adrienne, "that some of our people are getting sullen and unfriendly. I wonder why?" "They seem all under your control," said Monsieur Dragominsk; "wonderfully so. These French country villages are as ours used to be, very old-fashioned and feudal." "Excuse me," said Guy quickly, "we are republican in theory, only sometimes it is difficult to carry it out in practice. And our peasants cannot be compared with yours as regards intelligence. They are shrewd and wide awake and never can be driven by force—only won by persuasion." "Oh, I know our peasants are little better than the beasts of the earth," responded the tutor; "but they seem to be waking up now with a vengeance. And the next generation will produce a new race of men in Russia." When Monsieur Dragominsk had taken leave of them, Guy said to Adrienne: