The Charentonne in its meanderings forms a number of islets. The stream is in itself inconsiderable, but it spreads itself through its shallow valley like a tangled skein, and cuts up the meadows with threads of water easily crossed on plank-bridges. Much of the land in the bottom is marsh, into which a rill dives and disappears, but other portions are firm alluvial soil, producing rich crops of grass, flax, and here and there patches of corn. On one of these islands, if islands they may be called, above the hamlet of La Couture, stood a cottage, in style resembling those we meet with in the southern counties of England, constructed of black timber and white plaster, and thatched. To the south, at its back, lay a dense growth of willow and poplar, screening the house from the sun, and giving it in winter a moist and mouldy appearance, but in summer one cool and refreshing. A considerable flower-garden occupied the front of the cottage, filled with superb roses, white, yellow, and red. Tall white and scarlet lilies leaned against the house, whose thatch was golden with house-leek, so that in the flower season the Isle des Hirondelles attracted the admiration of all who passed along the road to Ferrières. In this cottage lived Matthias André, father of Gabrielle, whom the two priests are conducting across the foot-bridge towards him. He was cleaning out the cow-house as they approached, littering fresh straw in the stall from which he had forked the manure. He was a middle-sized man, clad in knee-breeches and blue worsted half-stockings that covered the calves, but were cut short at the ankles. His sabots, which shod his otherwise bare feet, were stained and clotted with soil. His coarse linen shirt was open at the throat, exposing his hairy breast, and the sleeves were rolled to the elbows, so as to give free play to his brown muscular arms. A large felt hat, out of which the sun had extracted the colour, lay on the bench before the door, and his head was covered with a blue knitted conical cap, the peak and tassel of which hung over his right ear. Labour and exposure had bronzed and corrugated the features of Matthias, oppression and want had stamped on them an expression of sullen despair. His brow was invariably knit, and his eyes were permanently depressed. He muttered to himself as he worked: he never sang, for his heart was never light. How can the heart be light that is weighed down, and galled with chains? The life of the peasant before the French Revolution was the life of a slave; he could not laugh, he could not even smile, for he had to struggle for bare existence with exactions which strangled him. He and his sons were like Laocoon and his children in the coils of the serpent that was laced round their limbs, that breathed poison into their lungs, and sucked the lifeblood from their hearts; and that serpent was the _Ancien Régime_.