Below him, bathed in sunlight, lay the plain of the Marais, where rushes, taking on their autumn array, formed golden circles round the meadows; there were farms distinguishable by their groups of poplars, inhabited islands in the desert of marshland, where he was leaving good friends, and the recollection of happy hours that come back in sorrow; his eyes scanned the crowded houses of Sallertaine and its church dominating them all, recalling bygone Sundays. Then, with his soul in his eyes, he bent them upon La Fromentière, as a bird would hover with wide extended wings. From the height on which he stood the lad could discern the whole of the farm, even to its slightest details. One by one he counted the windows, the doors and gates, the paths round the fields along which every evening, for the last two years especially, he had never failed to sing as he drove the cattle homewards. When his eyes lighted on the dwarf orchard, so distant that it looked no larger than a pea-pod, he quickly turned away; as he did so, his foot struck against something in the path, it was a dog lying down, quite still. "What, you, Bas-Rouge?" said Jean. "My poor doggie, you cannot follow me where I am going;" and, walking on, he stroked the dog's head between his ears, in the place where Rousille loved to fondle him. After some twenty paces, he said again: "You must go back, Bas-Rouge. I do not belong to you any more." Bas-Rouge trotted on a little further with his friend; but when they had reached the last hedge of La Fromentière, he stopped, and turned slowly homewards. CHAPTER IV. THE MICHELONNES. "Rousille," said her father, as shortly before noon she went into the house to help her sister prepare dinner, "you will not take your meals with us either to-day, or for some days to come. A girl like Eléonore, who respects herself, would be ashamed to eat her food beside a young woman who could allow a penniless _Boquin_ to make love to her. A pretty kind of lover! A fellow from I don't know where, who would not even have a wardrobe to furnish his house with! All very well for a serving-maid, such as they are in those parts; but the whole kit of them are not worth their salt in the Marais, those _dannions_! I am cured of taking them into my service. There must have been some fine tales going the round at my expense. And now, Rousille, mind that you conduct yourself properly; and take yourself out of my sight!" So the farmer spoke, far more harshly than he felt, because Mathurin had been talking to him a long time after Nesmy had gone, and had inspired him with some of his resentment.