"No," the man continued, "they have more money. You are poor, as I can plainly see; perhaps you are not even curé. Ah, if Heaven were just you ought to be a curé." "Heaven is more than just," said my brother. A moment after he added,-- "Monsieur Jean Valjean, I think you said you were going to Pontarlier?" "I am compelled to go there." Then he continued, "I must be off by sunrise to-morrow morning; it is a tough journey, for if the nights are cold the days are hot." "You are going to an excellent part of the country," my brother resumed. "When the Revolution ruined my family I sought shelter first in Franche Comté, and lived there for some time by the labor of my arms. I had a good will, and found plenty to do, as I need only choose. There are paper-mills, tanneries, distilleries, oil-mills, wholesale manufactories of clocks, steel works, copper works, and at least twenty iron foundries, of which the four at Lods, Chatillon, Audincourt, and Beure are very large." "I am pretty sure I am not mistaken, and that they are the names my brother mentioned; then he broke off and addressed me. "My dear sister, have we not some relatives in those parts?" "My answer was, 'We used to have some; among others Monsieur de Lucinet, who was Captain of the gates at Pontarlier, under the ancient régime." "Yes," my brother continued, "but in '93 people had no relatives, but only their arms, and so I worked. In the country to which you are going, Monsieur Valjean, there is a truly patriarchal and pleasing trade. My dear sister, I mean their cheese manufactures, which they call _fruitières_." "Then my brother, while pressing this man to eat, explained in their fullest details the _fruitières_ of Pontarlier, which were divided into two classes--the large farms which belong to the rich, and where there are forty or fifty cows, which produce seven to eight thousand cheeses in the summer, and the partnership _fruitières_, which belong to the poor. The peasants of the central mountain district keep their cows in common and divide the produce. They have a cheese-maker, who is called the _grurin_; he receives the milk from the partners thrice a day, and enters the quantities in a book. The cheese-making begins about the middle of April, and the dairy farmers lead their cows to the mountains toward midsummer.