A thought came into the rector’s mind as he looked at this fine spectacle, mute in other ways,--for not a tree rustled, not a bird chirped, death was on the plain, silence in the forest; here and there a little smoke from the village chimneys, that was all. The chateau seemed as gloomy as its mistress. By some strange law all things about a dwelling imitate the one who rules there; the owner’s spirit hovers over it. Madame Graslin--her mind grasped by the rector’s words, her soul struck by conviction, her heart affected in its tenderest emotions by the angelic quality of that pure voice--stopped short. The rector raised his arm and pointed to the forest. Veronique looked there. “Do you not think it has a vague resemblance to social life?” he said. “To each its destiny. How many inequalities in that mass of trees! Those placed the highest lack earth and moisture; they die first.” “Some there are whom the shears of the woman gathering fagots cut short in their prime,” she said bitterly. “Do not fall back into those thoughts,” said the rector sternly, though with indulgence still. “The misfortune of this forest is that it has never been cut. Do you see the phenomenon these masses present?” Veronique, to whose mind the singularities of the forest nature suggested little, looked obediently at the forest and then let her eyes drop gently back upon the rector. “You do not notice,” he said, perceiving from that look her total ignorance, “the lines where the trees of all species still hold their greenness?” “Ah! true,” she said. “I see them now. Why is it?”