When she was riding home with her father, he did not fail to say to her: "Well, my child, do you not see now that Mario, that charming youth, is a Papist of the old stock, like his own father, who served the Spaniard against us? And some day, ashamed of his old uncle's inanity, he will make war on us! Then what will you say, when you see your husband in one camp and your father in the other, shooting bullets at each other, or fighting hand to hand?" "Really, father," said Lauriane, "you speak as if I had evinced a desire to remain a widow; but I have never determined upon that. I cannot see, however, why Monsieur d'Ars is not equally exposed to the evil fate which you predict. Is not he a Catholic and a devoted partizan of the royal power?" "Monsieur d'Ars has no will of his own," replied De Beuvre, "and I will answer for it that we shall be able to bend him to all our purposes, on every occasion. More bigoted men than he have changed sides when the prospects of the Reformation seemed bright." "If Monsieur d'Ars has no will," rejoined Lauriane, "so much the worse for him; he is no man; and yet he is a man in years!" Lauriane was not mistaken. Guillaume was a weak character; but he was a handsome fellow, a pleasant neighbor, brave as a lion, and very generous to his friends. He was mild and easy-going with the peasantry, and allowed himself to be robbed without paying the slightest heed; but he followed the example of the nobles of his time: he allowed the peasantry to wallow in ignorance and poverty. It seemed to him a very fine thing that Lauriane's vassals were neat and well-fed, and very amusing that Bois-Doré's were stout; but when he was told that, at Saint-Denis-de-Touhet, the peasants died like flies during the epidemics; that at Chassignoles and Magny they did not know the taste of wine and meat--hardly that of bread; and that, in the Brenne country, they ate grass, while in other even more unhappy provinces they ate one another, he would say: "What do you expect to do about it? Everybody cannot be happy!" And he did not exert his mind beyond its powers to find a remedy. It had never occurred to him to live on his estate, as Bois-Doré did, and to share his well-being with all those who were dependent upon him. He passed as much time as he could at Bourges and Paris, and aspired to a rich marriage, in order that he might lead a more joyous life than ever, with a woman whom he would probably make perfectly happy on condition that she had no more brain and sensitiveness than he. He was the type of his caste and his epoch, and no one thought of blaming him.