He dared not go there every day, although he might have done so without fear that Monsieur Antoine would receive him less warmly. But there is in love a shrinking modesty which takes fright at happiness at the moment of grasping it. So he wandered about in every direction, and hid in the woods, where he could gaze at the ruins of Châteaubrun through the branches, as if he were afraid of being caught in the act of adoration. At night, when Jean Jappeloup had finished his day's work, as he did not as yet earn enough to hire a house and did not choose to be a burden to his friends, and as the nights were warm and pleasant, he repaired to a small abandoned chapel, on the hill which formed the centre of the village, and before lying down on the straw with which he had made a bed, went to say his prayers at the pretty little church of Gargilesse. He went down, from preference, into the Roman crypt which still bears traces of the curious frescoes of the fifteenth century. From the daintily-carved window of that underground apartment one overlooks walls of rock and the green ravines through which the Gargilesse flows. The carpenter had been deprived longer than he liked of the sight of his dear native place, and he often interrupted his placid, pensive prayer to gaze on the landscape, still half-praying, half-musing, in that peculiar frame of mind characteristic of simple-hearted folk, peasants, especially after the fatigue of the day. It was then that Emile, when he had dined and walked a while with his mother, came to join the carpenter, to admire the pretty structure with him, and then to chat on the hill-top of everything that he could not talk about at home--of Châteaubrun, Monsieur Antoine, Janille, and, lastly, of Gilberte. There was one person who loved Gilberte almost as dearly as Emile, but with another kind of love: that person was Jean. He did not precisely look upon her as his daughter, for, blended with the paternal sentiment, there was a sort of respect for a nature so adorable, a sort of unpolished enthusiasm which he would not have had for his own children. But he was proud of her beauty, of her goodness, of her common sense and of her courage, like a man who knows the value of those qualities, and feels keenly the honor of a noble attachment. The familiarity with which he expressed himself concerning her, dropping the title of mademoiselle in accordance with his habit of calling every one by his or her name, in no wise detracted from his instinctive veneration for her, and Emile's ears were not wounded thereby, although he would never have dared do the same. The young man took keen delight in hearing of Gilberte's childish sports and pretty ways, of her kindly impulses, of her generous and delicate attentions to the friend who, but for her, would have lacked everything.