Old M. Duval called on the police for protection. “The police.” That sounds very fine, but the police of Fressy meant a solitary old garde-champêtre whose wife was the most pious woman in town, and whose only daughter was the cook in the house of the fiercely legitimatist Mayor. It is not surprising that the next morning, the scoffing unbeliever from overseas found that somehow marauders had eluded “the police,” and laid waste his promising kitchen-garden. They intended (they proclaimed it openly) to drive out from their sanctified midst, the man who flaunted his prosperity as the result of a wicked and godless life. But they had not counted on M. Brodard and on his unparalleled capacity for making a noise. He stormed out to Fressy to see the old man, thoroughly frightened by this time; heard his story, exploding at intervals into fiery rockets of indignation; clasped him in his arms, as though M. Duval had been his own kin; and swore that he would prove to him that justice and freedom existed in France to-day as always. The old man’s nerves were shaken by his troubled nights and his harried sense of invisible enemies all about him. Until that moment it had seemed to him that all the world was against him. His relief was immense. He returned M. Brodard’s embrace emotionally, his trembling old arms clasped hard about M. Brodard’s great neck, the tears in his scared old eyes. Then M. Brodard hurried back to Morvilliers, tore the throttle open, and let her go ... to the great discomfort of Mme. Brodard and the girls, the two elder of whom were now very reluctantly preparing themselves to teach, for they had not been able to organize the longed-for escape. That was the situation when I visited them. Of course in due time the intemperate publicity about the matter put an end to the attacks on M. Duval. The rattling crackle of M. Brodard’s quick-fire protests rose in the air, till they reached the ears of the Sous-Prefect, from whose exalted office orders to “see to that matter” were issued, and came with imperative urgence even to the royalist Mayor of Fressy. He very grudgingly issued certain unofficial orders, which meant quiet in old M. Duval’s life. There was even a victim sacrificed to shut M. Brodard’s too-articulate mouth. The garde-champêtre lost his position and his chance for a pension, which was very hard on an excellent, honest man whose only intention had been to do his duty as he saw it. By the time that I was back in America in college, Clotilde wrote me that all that disturbance had died down, that M. Duval, horrid old thing, had come on his shaking old legs to make a visit to Papa, to thank him with deep emotion for the intense peace and comfort of his present life. I could read between the lines that Clotilde thought they might very well have a little more of those commodities in their own life.