The little boy, however, had incurred the enmity of many of the peasants, who saw him constantly with the forester, to whom they had sworn eternal hatred. Cowardly and sulky, they touched their hats respectfully enough to Jack when they met him with Father Archambauld, but when he was alone, they shook their fists at him with horrible oaths. There was one old woman, brown as an Indian squaw, who haunted the very dreams of the child. On his way home at sunset, he always met her with her fagots on her back. She stood in the path and assailed him with her tongue; and sometimes, merely to frighten him, ran after him for a few steps. Poor little Jack often reached his mother’s side breathless and terrified, but, after all, this only added another interest to his life. Sometimes Jack found his mother in the kitchen talking in a low voice; no sound was to be heard in the house save the ticking of the great clock in the dining-room. “Hush, my dear,” said his mother; “He is up-stairs. He is at work!” Jack sat down in a corner and watched the cat lying in the sun. With the awkwardness of a child who makes a noise merely because he knows he ought not to do so, he knocked over something, or moved the table. “Hush, dear,” exclaimed Charlotte, in distress, while Mother Archambauld, laying the table, moved on the points of her big feet—moved as lightly as possible, so as not to disturb “her master who was at work.” He was heard up-stairs—pushing back his chair, or moving his table. He had laid a sheet of paper before him; on this paper was written the title of his book, but not another word. And yet he now had all that formerly he had said would enable him to make a reputation,—leisure, sufficient means, freedom from interruption, a pleasant study, and country air. When he had had enough of the forest, he had but to turn his chair, and from another window he obtained an admirable view of sky and water. All the aroma of the woods, all the freshness of the river, came directly to him. Nothing could disturb him, unless it might be the cooing and fluttering of the pigeons on the roof above. “Now to work!” cried the poet. He opened his portfolio, and seized his pen, but not one line could he write. Think of it! To live in a pavilion of the time of Louis XV., on the edge of a forest in that beautiful country about Etiolles, to which the memory of the Pompadour is attached by knots of rose-colored ribbons and diamond buckles. To have around him every essential for poetry,—a charming woman named in memory of Goethe’s heroine, a Henri II. chair in which to write, a small white goat to follow him from place to place, and an antique clock to mark the hours and to connect the prosaic Present with the romance of the Past! All these were very imposing, but the brain was as sterile as when D’Argenton had given lessons all day and retired to his garret at night, worn out in body and mind.