When Paule had gone Mme. Guibert gazed at a group-photograph of her children. There had been six of them then. Now there were only five. Étienne, the eldest, was an engineer in Tonkin. Marcel an officer in the Tirailleurs. Marguerite was a Sister of Charity. François, after failing to pass his examinations, had joined his brother in the Far East. And Paule was the last jewel in her crown of life. What separations, she thought--some of them eternal--had she endured in the course of sixty years! Paule returned from the farm with the news that Trélaz was ready. She put on her hat in an instant and could not refrain from protesting against her mother’s impatience. She glanced at the old clock which mocked the dock-makers and despite innumerable repairs preserved its own independence of spirit. “We shall have to wait nearly an hour at the station,” she said. “I should not like to be late,” insisted Madame Guibert. And as she left the house she turned to the old servant, who was putting on her spectacles in order that no details of the start might escape her. “Marie, mind that there are no tramps about!” She lifted herself with an effort into the rustic carriage which had drawn up in front of the steps. When she had settled down she smiled sweetly at her daughter, and the fleeting expression brought back to her face for just an instant the softness that had been so attractive in her youth. Paule stepped up lightly beside her. “Now, Trélaz! You will have to drive rather quickly. But don’t use the whip, and be careful going down hill.” “We always get there somehow,” replied the farmer philosophically. The carriage started. It was an old time vehicle, of a long-forgotten make. The seats ran lengthwise, and on them the passengers sat back to back, with their feet in a wooden frame. The oddity of its build was a never failing source of jest as people took their places in it. The mare no less venerable, her hoof now and again striking the rattling wheel as she descended the avenue of chestnuts and heavy foliaged plane-trees at a walking pace and passed through the ever open gate--necessarily so indeed, on account of its useless rusty hinges. She turned into the Vimines road under the shadow of the oak-woods, and, leaving behind a level-crossing, came out on the high road from Lyons to Chambéry, which runs through the village of Cognin. There, the road being easier, the old brown mare stepped less cautiously as though she no longer cared how she went, and finished by breaking into a swinging trot which seemed much too fast for the timid Madame Guibert. The sun had already disappeared behind the Beacon, one of the peaks of the Lépine range, but the clear light of the summer evening hung over the countryside for quite a long time after. “Mother, look at the mountains,” said Paule.