Rousille watched him as he went round the corner, and on into the courtyard. What was the matter with him? What meant those mysterious words? Why had he spoken the last so sadly? For a moment she wondered; but the trouble was evanescent. Scarce had solitude returned about her, than Rousille heard again the words of her love-letter singing their soft refrain to her. They came into her heart, one by one, like transparent waves, each opening out in its turn and covering the shore. "It cannot be a very important secret," thought she, "since Driot will continue to till the ground, that will make father happy, and I shall be happy too." She recalled the smile that had passed over her brother's face, and thought: "It is nothing," and peace, entire, unquestioning, returned to her. In the twilight of that winter afternoon on the borders of the Marais of Sallertaine, for one short hour there was a girl who smiled at life, and deemed that bad times were past and gone. She was still smiling, still sheltered in her retreat amid the straw, when André accosted his father, coming in from the Sunday tour of inspection, with: "Everything is certainly going to the bad, father." The farmer, his head full of the promise of hay and wheat harvests he had just been examining, answered contentedly: "No, everything is coming up well. The spring crop of oats is promising; what is going to the bad?" "I heard at Saint Jean-de-Mont that there is to be a sale of the furniture at the Château, father!" For a moment Toussaint Lumineau could not take it in. "Yes, all the furniture," repeated André. "It is advertised in the papers. See, if you don't believe me, here's the list. Everything is to be sold." He drew a paper from his pocket, and pointed with his finger to an advertisement, from which the old farmer laboriously read: "On Sunday, February 20th, Maître Oulry, notary at Chalons, will proceed to sell the furniture of the Château de la Fromentière. There will be sold: the entire drawing-room and dining-room furniture, old tapestries, oak chests, pictures, beds, tables, china and glass, wines, guns, contents of the library, wardrobes, etc." "Well?" exclaimed André. "Oh," returned his father, "who would have foretold this eight years ago? Have they become poor, then, in Paris?" He fell into silence, not willing to judge his master too hardly. "It is ruin," said André. "After the furniture, they will be for selling the land, and us with it!" The head of La Fromentière, the successor of so many farmers under the same masters, was standing in the middle of the room; he raised his weary eyes until they rested upon the little copper crucifix hanging at the head of his bed, then let them fall again in sign of acceptance. "It will be a great misfortune," he said, "but it will not hinder our working!" And he went out, perhaps to shed tears. CHAPTER XIII. THE AUCTION.