"Oh! Jean! Jean! you needn't pay much attention to his croaking. He's a man who has _ennuis_, and he sees everything crooked lately, although he isn't an unkind man, not at all. But he's the only man hereabout who talks like that; everybody else is all in favor of Monsieur Cardonnet. He isn't stingy, I tell you. He talks a little hard, he pushes his workmen a little, but bless me! he pays; you ought to see the wages he pays! and if you do break your back working, if you're well paid you ought to be satisfied, eh, monsieur?" The young man stifled a sigh. He did not absolutely agree with Monsieur Sylvain Charasson's theory of economic compensations, and, however much he might desire to approve his father's course, he could not see very clearly how wages could replace the loss of health and life. "I'm surprised not to see him on his workmen's backs," added the page of Châteaubrun ingenuously and with no malicious intent, "for he isn't in the habit of giving them much time to breathe. Ah, indeed! he's a man to push work ahead! He isn't like Mère Janille at our house, who's always making a noise and never lets other people do anything. He doesn't seem to move about, but anyone would say he did the work with his eyes. When a workman speaks or puts down his pick to light his pipe, or just takes a little bit of a nap at noon in the heat of the day, he'll say, without losing his temper: 'Look here, you can't smoke or sleep comfortably here; go home, you'll be more comfortable.'--And that's all. He won't employ him again for a week, and the second time it's a month, and the third he's done for good." Emile sighed again: he recognized his father's inflexible severity in these details, and he had to turn his thoughts toward the presumed object of his efforts in order to be reconciled to his methods. "Ah! _pardine_! there he is," cried the boy, pointing to Monsieur Cardonnet, whose tall figure and dark clothes were discernible on the other bank. "He's looking at the water; perhaps he's afraid of the _dribe_, although he usually says it's all nonsense." "So the _dribe_ is a freshet, is it?" queried Emile, beginning to understand the word, a corruption of _dérive_. "Yes, monsieur, it's like a waterspout, that comes with great storms. But the storm has passed and the _dribe_ hasn't come, and I believe Jean was all wrong in his prophesying. And yet, monsieur, look at the water, how low it is! it's almost dried up since yesterday and that's a bad sign. Let's hurry across, it may come any minute."