"See now, here were you day by day sinking lower in the scale, day by day growing liker to the peasant that is so little better than a brute. I should know what he is for I was of the breed till your father, and yet more your mother, drew me from the mud to what I am. Don't think I boast, for I don't. Bad's my best, but it's chalk or charcoal compared with a woman fly-trap! Well then; your land was gone--not your doing, but bread of a father's baking is of ten sour in the children's mouth. For three generations Hellewyls of Solignac have played the fool, always riding the wrong wave till bit by bit they were dashed to pieces. One followed Austria, and France getting the upper hand wrenched a lordship from him as the price of pardon. The next followed France, and Burgundy seized and held what France let go as a makeweight in the next treaty. The last followed Burgundy, and Austria said 'oh ho! Solignac was a fief of mine in the good old days,' and Burgundy in part bought peace with Solignac as a counter in the deal. Now what is left? Ten acres of bad grass, a belt of woods, and a forlorn house; a house fit for a Seigneurie and dripping dank with wet and mould for lack of service, and the last Hellewyl of Solignac philandering after a goatherd's daughter--pray God she's his daughter, her mother had just such another coarse, pretty face of her own--philandering, I say, after a goatherd's daughter by way of mending his fortunes. But Jan Meert has changed all that. Brigitta can sell her red cheeks, her plump white flesh and big black eyes to better advantage elsewhere, and so I say may God show mercy to Jan Meert the day I show him none." "I don't understand." "Not understand? And yet it is all so simple. D'you really think that your Brigitta of the bold face would bury herself in a burned house with singed owls and scorched rats for company, all for the sake of a man with a ragged coat? And where are you to live Monsieur Gaspard? With the pigs in the swineherd's mud hut? You! Hellewyl of Solignac! No, no; don't you see that whether you like it or not you're flung out into the world? Or is it by mouldering in the burnt shell of Solignac that you would seek strength to yourself to take Jan Meert by the throat? Shame, Monsieur Gaspard, shame! Five and twenty, sound in limb and head--yes, and in heart too, in spite of the swineherd in petticoats; you, God's own image of a man, and yet content to live like a snipe, sucking mud from a bog!" "Why did you wait till to-day to throw my _laisser-aller_ in my teeth? and why to-day of all unfortunate days? Is that like a friend?"