Two years later his wife bore him a daughter. Nothing could surpass the affection of this child for her parents, and especially for her mother. As Renée grew up, she became the darling of the parish. Absolutely unconscious of any superiority due to her position and wealth, she would mingle in the games of the poorest children. Any day she might be seen teaching the little girls to trim their hats with woodbine, to play puss-in-the-corner, or hide-and-seek. Sometimes she would take them into the woods to hear the cuckoo, or the nightingale. It was entirely through her entreaties that her father induced the organist of the parish church to give singing lessons in the village choir, and she herself practised the violin that she might be able to give concerts to the villagers, who would assemble in an old barn and join lustily in the singing. There was one old fellow in particular named Caillot; he lived quite alone in a little cottage and was unable to work at a trade owing to a defect in his eyes which rendered him nearly blind. He picked up a scanty pittance by playing the violin, which he did with uncommon skill. Wherever she was you would invariably find the little man playing or singing, and he was of such a cheerful disposition that he got the nickname of "Le Pinson" (Chaffinch). His admiration for Renée amounted to worship, and the ne plus ultra of happiness was when Renée and her governess would consent to enter his little room and play a duet with him on the violin. To see the little Chaffinch chirping and hustling around, placing a soft cushion on a chair for Mam'selle Renée to sit on, and looking through his well-thumbed collection of music for some piece he knew she was especially fond of, was a proof of the most intense devotion. So absorbed and wrapped up was he in attending to Mam'selle Renée that the poor governess had to find a chair for herself as best she could, and it invariably ended in Renée refusing to play a note until Caillot had found a cushion and chair for her also. Whenever a marriage took place in the village, the Chaffinch was certain to be sent for, and Renée insisted on being allowed to deck him out with gay ribbons in the presence of the bride and bridegroom. "Viola, mon p'tit Papa Pinson," she would say with a smile, "you look the handsomest man in the village to-day, and here is a new five-franc piece which I persuaded my father to give me, because I told him I wanted you to put on your brightest smile. N'est ce pas, p'tit papa?" But one day the man fell ill, and was unable to earn his rent. Poor little man, he was all alone, and might have died of hunger and neglect if his illness had not by a pure accident reached the ears of Renée. "What!" she exclaimed when she heard the tale, "do you mean to say that they are going to turn mon pauvre Pinson out of his house, because he is unable to pay his rent? Oh! my poor Caillot!"