"Now, Jean," and here the old man assumed a confidential air, "to be a good habitant one must have a good wife. Do not blush, my lad, it is only a matter of business. Without that no habitant can succeed. One’s marriage should help one along, should it not? Assuredly. That goes without saying. Well, there is my daughter Blanchette, for example. I do not say that she is very young, nor more beautiful than others, but how capable, how accomplished! And she will have a dowry, of course, something generous, you may be sure. All the other children are well provided for, and I am not yet a pauper, no indeed. There. I have said it. Consider it well, at your leisure. There is no haste to decide. I will see your mother and all can be arranged without embarrassment. _Au revoir_, Jean. Come to see us when you can." Jean did not like the advice of Bonhomme Laroche, but part of it, at least, he was obliged to take, for there was no alternative, and at sunrise on the following day he was in the fields with the hired man, dexterously swinging a long scythe and laying low great swathes of timothy and red clover. He was in perfect physical condition, with every nerve and muscle surging with energy, so that the work did not tire him, but only served to release the pent-up emotion of his soul. For the soul of Jean Baptiste was full of wrath, and as he gripped the handles of the scythe and swung the keen blade through the grass with a venomous hiss, he seemed to be cutting down an army of enemies and mercilessly trampling them underfoot. The neighbours, those ignorant, spiteful people with their vicious gossip--how he despised them all! They hated to see a person rise above them in the slightest degree, and were always reaching out envious hands to pull him down. They wanted to make a habitant of him? Well, a habitant he would be, and beat them at their own game. Of what good was all his education if he could not use it in the growing of potatoes and the raising of pigs? Yes, pigs. The neighbours were well satisfied with a yearling hog that weighed a hundred and fifty pounds, when it might as well be two hundred pounds or three hundred even. It was a question of breed and care, as it was with cattle, horses, sheep, fowl, and every other animal on the farm. As to chickens, for example, they laid eggs in plenty all summer, at fifteen cents a dozen, but laid none at all in winter when the price rose to sixty cents and more. Why such stupidity? A question of management, merely, of knowledge and attention to business. In fact, the more Jean thought of habitant life the greater seemed the possibilities of improvement in every direction. Besides, it was a life not to be despised, that of a successful cultivator, the happiest, most independent man on earth.