The felling which offended Monsieur de Boisguilbault so deeply had been done on the bank of the little stream, and the slender poplars, the old willows and the majestic elms, falling in confusion, had formed a sort of bridge of verdure over that narrow current. While the oxen were dragging some of the trees with ropes to the carts that were to haul them away, the sturdy carpenter, running about on the trunks that blocked the stream, busied himself cutting away the tangled branches whose resistance neutralized the efforts of the cattle. Intent upon his task and zealous in the work of destruction of which his trade reaps the benefit, he exerted his skill and daring with a sort of frenzy. The river was deep and swift at that point, and Jean's post was so dangerous that no one else dared to share it with him. Running with a young man's lightness of foot and self-possession to the flexible extremities of the trees that lay across the stream, he turned sometimes to cut the very branch on which he was balancing himself, and, when a loud cracking told him that his support was on the point of giving way under his feet, he would jump nimbly to a branch near by, electrified by the danger and the amazement of his comrades. His gleaming axe whirled in lightning flashes around his head, and his resonant voice stimulated the other workmen, surprised to find how simple was a task which the intelligence and energy of a single man directed, simplified and performed as by a miracle. If Monsieur de Boisguilbault had not been excited, he would have admired with the rest, aye, and would have felt a certain respect for the man who imported the power of genius into the accomplishment of that commonplace task. But the sight of a noble tree, full of sap and life, cut down by the axe in the midst of its development, angered him and tore his heart, as if he had witnessed a murder, and when that tree belonged to him, he defended it as if it were a member of his family. "What are you doing there, you stupid fools!" he cried, brandishing his cane, and in a high tone which anger made as shrill and ear-piercing as the note of a fife. "And you, villain!" he shouted to Jean Jappeloup, "have you taken an oath to wound me and outrage my feelings all the time?"