M. Bastian slipped down among the ferns, and shrugging his shoulders, and shaking his head--like some one who will hear no more--went downwards to his day workers. When he had passed between the rows of the cut hops and reprimanded each of the workers, there was no more laughing, and the girls of Alsheim, and the farmer's sons, and the farmer himself, stooping under the burning sun, went on in silence with their work, which had been so joyously begun. Already M. Ulrich was going up to his hermitage on Sainte Odile, distressed, asking himself what serious effect the refusal of M. Bastian was going to have on Jean's destiny, and anxious to tell his nephew the news. Without hoping, without believing that there was any chance of it, he would try to make Odile's father give way, and plans hummed round him, like the gadflies in the pine woods, drunk with the sun, and following the traveller in his lonely climb. The streams were singing. There were flocks of thrushes, harbingers crossing the ravines, darting through the blue air to get to the vines and fruits of the plain. It was in vain--he was utterly downcast. He could think of nothing but of his nephew, so badly rewarded for his return to Alsheim. Between the trees and round the branches he gazed at the house of the Oberlés. Any one going into that house just then would have found it extraordinarily quiet. Every one there was suffering. M. Philippe Oberlé, as usual had lunched in his room. Madame Oberlé, at the express wish of her husband, had consented to come out of her room when M. von Kassewitz should be announced. "All the same, I repeat," she said, "that I shall not go out of my way to entertain him. I will be there because by your orders I am bound to receive this person. But I shall not go beyond what is strictly necessary." "Right," said M. Oberlé, "Lucienne, Jean, and I will talk to him. That will suffice." And after his meal he had gone at once to his workroom, at the end of the park. Jean, who had shown no enthusiasm, had gone out, for his part, promising to return before three o'clock. Lucienne was alone in the big yellow drawing-room. Very well dressed in a grey princess dress, which had for its only ornament a belt buckle of two shades of gold, like the decorations in the dining-room; she was placing roses in crystal glasses and slender vases of transparent porcelain, which contrasted well with the hard, definite colour of the velvet furniture. Lucienne had the collectedness of a gambler who sees a game coming to an end, and knows she has won. She had herself, in two recent soirées at Strasburg carried the business through, which now wanted only the signatures of the contracting parties; the official candidature promised to M. Joseph Oberlé in the first vacant district.