Neither better nor worse than the average of men home from military training, he had brought back with him to La Fromentière a remembrance of illicit pleasures that followed him everywhere; defiance of all authority, a disgust for the hard, uncertain, often unproductive work of farming, which he contrasted with vague notions about civil employment of which the leisure and privileges had been vaunted to him. How far off was he now from the simple son of the marshes, with fearless eyes, the inseparable companion, model and protector of André, who, twirling his tamarind stick, would make the round of the canals to see if the cows had strayed from the meadows, or to search for any ducks which might have wandered into the ditches! With unwilling spirit, and because he had nothing better to do, he had returned to the care of the animals and to follow the plough. The proximity of Chalons, its wine shops and taverns was a temptation to him; urged on by his companions, weak and passive, he suffered himself to be led away. On Tuesdays, particularly, market day, the poor old father too often saw his son of seven-and-twenty start off from the farm under various pretexts before it was dawn, to come back late at night, stupefied, insensible to reproaches. It was an ever abiding grief to the father. François had made La Fromentière no longer the sacred abode beloved by, defended by all, which no one had dreamed of deserting. In that room where they were now assembled what a long line of mothers and children, of grandsires and grandames, united or resigned, had lived and died! In those high beds ranged against the walls how many children had been born, fed, and at last had slept their last sleep! There had been sorrow and weeping there, but never ingratitude. A whole forest might have been re-planted if all the wood burned in that chimney, by those bearing the same name, could have re-taken root. What was in store for his descendants hereafter? The old farmer had noticed for months past that François and Eléonore were plotting something; they received letters, one and the other, of which they never spoke; they talked together in corners; sometimes of a Sunday, Eléonore would write a letter on plain paper, not such as she would use when writing to a friend. And the thought had come to him that his two children, weary of rule and scoldings, were on the look-out for a farm in some neighbouring parish, where they would be their own masters--it was a thought he dared not dwell upon; he cast it from him as unjust. Still it haunted his mind, for the future of La Fromentière was his one chief care, and, since his eldest son's misfortune, François was the heir. When work went well, the father would think joyfully, "After all, the lad is buckling to again."