Madame Graslin rode silently after that for two or three miles. The sun had now set, the moon was lighting the gray plain, which looked like an open sea. Champion and Colorat began to wonder at Madame Graslin, whose silence seemed strange to them, and they were greatly astonished to see the shining track of tears upon her cheeks; her eyes were red and full of tears, which were falling drop by drop as she rode along. “Oh, madame,” said Colorat, “don’t pity him! The lad has had his day. He had pretty girls in love with him; and now, though to be sure he is closely watched by the police, he is protected by the respect and good-will of the rector; for he has really repented. His conduct at the galleys was exemplary. Everybody knows he is as honest as the most honest man among us. Only he is proud; he doesn’t choose to expose himself to rebuff; so he lives quietly by himself and does good in his own way. He has made a nursery of about ten acres for you on the other side of the Roche-Vive; he plants in the forests wherever he thinks there’s a chance of making a tree grow; he trims the tree and cuts out the dead wood, and ties it up into bundles for the poor. All the poor people know they can get their wood from him all cut and ready to burn; so they go and ask him for it, instead of taking it themselves and injuring your forest. He is another kind of _chauffeur_ now, and warms his poor neighbors to their comfort and not to their harm. Oh, Farrabesche loves your forest! He takes care of it as if it were his own property.” “And he lives--all alone?” exclaimed Madame Graslin, adding the two last words hastily. “Excuse me, not quite alone, madame; he takes care of a boy about fifteen years old,” said Maurice Champion. “Yes, that’s so,” said Colorat; “La Curieux gave birth to the child some little time before Farrabesche was condemned.” “Is it his child?” asked Madame Graslin. “People think so.” “Why didn’t he marry her?” “How could he? They would certainly have arrested him. As it was, when La Curieux heard he was sentenced to the galleys the poor girl left this part of the country.” “Was she a pretty girl?” “Oh!” said Maurice, “my mother says she was very like another girl who has also left Montegnac for something the same reason,--Denise Tascheron.” “She loved him?” said Madame Graslin.