"They're good for nothing but to give you an appetite. Would you like something else? you have only to speak." "Thanks, Master Audiffret. I'll just go and look after Blanchet in the stable and then come back. I won't go to the _jass_ to-night. I'll sleep in the hay-loft with the horses." Master Audiffret, with his pipe between his lips, rose and followed Renaud as far as the door of the stable, and from there watched him rub down his horse. "Whenever you please, Master Audiffret, you can take him back for Livette. I don't find any faults in him; far from it. He is a good horse, and very gentle." "He is quiet with you because you tire him out, you see; but she didn't use him every day, not by any means; I am always afraid for her. If she takes a fancy to ride him sometimes, you can lend him to her, and take the first horse that comes along for yourself. By the way, I hope you will soon have your Cabri again. Somebody saw Rampal yesterday in Crau. He was riding your horse, so he hasn't sold him, at all events. It's fair to suppose he means to bring him back to you." "Oh! I will go to meet him," said Jacques, "for as to thinking he will bring him back to me--oh! no; he would have done that before now!--Can you tell me, Audiffret, where Rampal was seen yesterday?" "Between Tibert's farm and Icard's in Crau. Right there, as you know, in the middle of a bog, is a hut you can only get to by a plank walk built on piles and covered by the water--you can only tell where it is, when you know the place, by stakes sticking up at intervals the whole length of the walk. I have an idea he means to go in hiding there, the beggar, like the deserter who went there to pass his time of service----" "Aha! he has gone to the Conscript's Hut, has he? Very good; I will go to see him there, never fear!" said Renaud. Blanchet, having been well rubbed down, was grinding the good lucern between his teeth. Renaud went out of the stable, and with Audiffret sat down beside Livette and the grandmother. All four kept silence for a long moment. Nothing could be heard but the unceasing, melancholy croaking of the frogs, and beneath it, but indistinguishable, the dull murmuring of the two Rhônes and the sea. The sky was swarming with innumerable tiny stars, which seemed to answer the various noises of the palpitating moor; and, just as the waters of the Rhône, after it rushes into the blue ocean, pursue their own course for a long while therein, unmingled, without losing their earthy color; so the Milky-Way, made of a dust of stars, pursued its course, easily distinguishable, through the ocean of starry worlds. Renaud had a feeling of constraint.