They went up the village of Bennecourt, whose yellow houses straggle along the river bank for about a couple of thousand yards. All the villagers were in the fields; they only met three cows, led by a little girl. He, with an outstretched arm, told her all about the locality; seemed to know whither he was going, and when they had reached the last house--an old building, standing on the bank of the Seine, just opposite the slopes of Jeufosse--turned round it, and entered a wood of oak trees. It was like the end of the world, roofed in with foliage, through which the sun alone penetrated in narrow tongues of flame. And there they could stroll and talk and kiss in freedom. When at last it became necessary for them to retrace their steps, they found a peasant standing at the open doorway of the house by the wood-side. Claude recognised the man and called to him: ‘Hallo, Porrette! Does that shanty belong to you?’ At this the old fellow, with tears in his eyes, related that it did, and that his tenants had gone away without paying him, leaving their furniture behind. And he invited them inside. ‘There’s no harm in looking; you may know somebody who would like to take the place. There are many Parisians who’d be glad of it. Three hundred francs a year, with the furniture; it’s for nothing, eh?’ They inquisitively followed him inside. It was a rambling old place that seemed to have been cut out of a barn. Downstairs they found an immense kitchen and a dining-room, in which one might have given a dance; upstairs were two rooms also, so vast that one seemed lost in them. As for the furniture, it consisted of a walnut bedstead in one of the rooms, and of a table and some household utensils in the kitchen. But in front of the house the neglected garden was planted with magnificent apricot trees, and overgrown with large rose-bushes in full bloom; while at the back there was a potato field reaching as far as the oak wood, and surrounded by a quick-set hedge. ‘I’d leave the potatoes as they are,’ said old Porrette. Claude and Christine looked at each other with one of those sudden cravings for solitude and forgetfulness common to lovers. Ah! how sweet it would be to love one another there in the depths of that nook, so far away from everybody else! But they smiled. Was such a thing to be thought of? They had barely time to catch the train that was to take them back to Paris. And the old peasant, who was Madame Faucheur’s father, accompanied them along the river bank, and as they were stepping into the ferry-boat, shouted to them, after quite an inward struggle: ‘You know, I’ll make it two hundred and fifty francs--send me some people.’ On reaching Paris, Claude accompanied Christine to Madame Vanzade’s door. They had grown very sad. They exchanged a long handshake, silent and despairing, not daring to kiss each other there.