"I understand, Germain," said Léonard calmly; "you changed your mind when you saw my daughter with her lovers. That's as you please. It seems that what attracts one repels another, and you have the right to withdraw as long as you haven't spoken yet. If you really want to buy my oxen, come and look at them in the pasture; we'll talk it over, and whether we strike a bargain or not, you'll come and take dinner with us before you go back." "I don't want you to put yourself out," replied Germain, "perhaps you have business here; I'm a little tired of watching them dance and of doing nothing. I'll go to look at your cattle, and join you later at your house." Thereupon, Germain slipped away and walked toward the meadows, where Léonard had pointed out some of his beasts in the distance. It was true that Père Maurice wanted to buy, and Germain thought that if he should take back a good yoke at a moderate price, he would be pardoned more readily for having voluntarily failed to accomplish the real object of his journey. He walked fast, and was soon within a short distance of Ormeaux. Thereupon he felt that he must go and kiss his son and see little Marie once more, although he had lost the hope and banished from his mind the thought of owing his happiness to her. All that he had seen and heard--the vain, giddy woman; the father, at once cunning and shallow, who encouraged his daughter in her pride and disingenuous habits; the imitation of city luxury, which seemed to him an offence against the dignity of country manners; the time wasted in indolent, foolish conversation, that household so different from his own, and, above all, the profound discomfort that the husbandman feels when he lays aside his laborious habits; all the _ennui_ and annoyance he had undergone within the last few hours--made Germain long to be once more with his child and his little neighbor. Even if he had not been in love with the latter, he would have sought her none the less for distraction, and to restore his mind to its accustomed channels. But he looked in vain in the neighboring fields, he saw neither little Marie nor little Pierre; and yet it was the time when the shepherds are in the fields. There was a large flock in a pasture; he asked a young boy who was tending them if the sheep belonged to the farm of Ormeaux. "Yes," said the child. "Are you the shepherd? do boys tend woolly beasts for the farmers in your neighborhood?" "No. I'm tending 'em to-day because the shepherdess has gone away: she was sick." "But haven't you a new shepherdess who came this morning?" "Oh! yes! she's gone, too, already." "What! gone? didn't she have a child with her?" "Yes, a little boy; he cried. They both went away after they'd been here two hours." "Where did they go?" "Where they came from, I suppose. I didn't ask 'em." "But what did they go away for?" said Germain, with increasing anxiety. "Why, how do I know?"