However, in different ways, the vintage attracted everybody. Monsieur Joseph and Henriette were there, very busy among the vines; these people would help them another day. A party strolled across from Lancilly; Monsieur and Madame de Sainfoy, idly admiring the pretty scene; Captain Georges, casting superior glances, Sophie and Lucie hanging on their splendid brother's looks and words. They were allowed to walk with him, and were very happy, Mademoiselle Moineau having been left behind in charge of Hélène. The La Marinière vineyards were not considered safe ground for that young culprit. She had to be contented with a distant view, and could see from her window the white horses crawling up and down the steep hill. Some patronising notice was bestowed by the people from the château on Martin Joubard, who moved slowly about among the old neighbours, a hero to them all, whatever their political opinions might be. For, after all, he went to the wars against his will; and when there he had done his duty; and his enthusiasm for the Emperor was a new spirit in that country, which roused curiosity, if nothing more. No one could fail to rejoice with old Joubard and his wife. Whatever they themselves thought, and hardly dared to say, was said for them by their neighbours. Few indeed had come back, of the conscript lads of Anjou. How much better, people said, to have Martin maimed than not at all. What was a wooden leg? a very useful appendage, on which Martin might limp actively about the farms; and the loss of an arm did not matter so much, for, by his father's account, he could do everything but hold and fire a gun with the one left to him. His mother had dressed him in clean country clothes, laying aside his tattered old uniform in a chest, for he would not have it destroyed. All the girls in the two villages were running after Martin, who had always been popular; all the men wanted to hear his tales of the war. He was certainly the hero of Monsieur Urbain's vintage, the centre figure of that sunny day. Angelot felt himself drawn to the soldier, whose return home had touched him with so strange a thrill. There was a spark of the heroic in this young fellow. Angelot found himself watching him, listening to him, perhaps as a kind of refuge from the cold looks of his relations; for even Riette dared not run after him as of old.