If being made much of, and petted and patted and admired and wondered at, make up the sum of human bliss, Barty came in for as full a share of felicity during that festive week as should last an ordinary mortal for a twelvemonth. _Figaro quà, Figaro là_, from morning till night in three departments of France! But he didn't seem to care very much about it all; he would have been far happier singing and tumbling and romancing away to his charbonniers by the pond in the Forest of la Tremblaye. He declared he was never quite himself unless he could feel the north for at least an hour or two every day, and all night long in his sleep--and that he should never feel the north again--that it was gone forever; that he had drunk it all away at that fatal breakfast--and it made him lonely to wake up in the middle of the night and not know which way he lay! "dépaysé," as he called it--"désorienté--perdu!" And laughing, he would add, "Ayez pitié d'un pauvre orphelin!" * * * * * Then back to Le Gué des Aulnes. And one evening, after a good supper at Grandmaman Laferté's, the diligence de Paris came jingling and rumbling through the main street of La Tremblaye, flashing right and left its two big lamps, red and blue. And we three boys, after the most grateful and affectionate farewells, packed ourselves into the coupé, which had been retained for us, and rumbled back to Paris through the night. There was quite a crowd to see us off. Not only Lafertés, but others--all sorts and conditions of men, women, and children--and among them three or four of Barty's charcoal-burning friends; one of whom, an old man with magnificent black eyes and an immense beard, that would have been white if he hadn't been a charcoal-burner, kissed Barty on both cheeks, and gave him a huge bag full of some kind of forest berry that is good to eat; also a young cuckoo (which Barty restored to liberty an hour later); also a dormouse and a large green lizard; also, in a little pasteboard box, a gigantic pale green caterpillar four inches long and thicker than your thumb, with a row of shiny blue stars in relief all along each side of its back--the most beautiful thing of the kind you ever saw. "Pioche bien ta géométrie, mon bon petit Josselin! c'est la plus belle science au monde, crois-moi!" said M. Laferté to Barty, and gave him the hug of a grizzly-bear; and to me he gave a terrific hand-squeeze, and a beautiful double-barrelled gun by Lefaucheux, for which I felt too supremely grateful to find suitable thanks. I have it now, but I have long given up killing things with it. I had grown immensely fond of this colossal old "bourru bienfaisant," as he was called in La Tremblaye, and believe that all his moroseness and brutality were put on, to hide one of the warmest, simplest, and tenderest hearts in the world. Before dawn Barty woke up with such a start that he woke me: "Enfin! ça y est! quelle chance!" he exclaimed.