Marc felt relieved when, on the morrow, he once more found himself in his school at Maillebois among the children whose minds and hearts he was striving to awaken. Doubtless his work progressed very slowly, but the result achieved lent him the strength to persevere. Unfortunately, the parents of his boys gave him no help. His advance would have been more rapid if the lads had found in their homes some continuance of the principles inculcated during their school hours. But the contrary happened at times. In Achille and Philippe Savin, Marc detected the sullen, jealous bitterness of their father, and he could only endeavour to check their propensity for falsehood, slyness, and tale-bearing. Again, though the Doloirs were intelligent enough if they had only been minded to learn, they showed little real improvement. Auguste was very inattentive and quarrelsome, and Charles followed in his elder brother's footsteps. With Fernand Bongard the difficulty was different; he was exceptionally obtuse, and it was only with an incredible amount of trouble that one could make him understand and remember the slightest thing. Yet there was some improvement among the boys in their _ensemble_ since Marc had brought them under a regimen of reason and truth. Besides, the young man did not hope to change the world with one generation of schoolboys. The elementary master's task requires the greatest patience and abnegation; and Marc's one desire was to furnish an example by giving his whole life to the obscure work of preparing the future. If others would only perform their duty one might hope that in three or four generations a new liberating France might be created, such as might emancipate the world. And the young man was ambitious of no immediate reward, no personal success, though to his great delight he did receive a recompense for his efforts in the satisfaction which one of his pupils, little Sébastien Milhomme, gave him. That gentle and remarkably intelligent lad had become passionately attached to truth. Not only was he the first of his class, but he also displayed much sincerity and uprightness, at once boyishly and charmingly uncompromising in character. His schoolfellows often chose him as umpire in a difficulty, and when he had pronounced judgment he would not admit that any should free themselves from the effects of his decision. Marc always felt happy when he saw Sébastien at his desk, with his long and somewhat pensive face crowned by fair and curly hair, and lighted by fine blue eyes, which, fixed on the master with an ardent desire to learn, drank in every lesson. And it was not only Sébastien's rapid progress which won Marc's heart; he was still fonder of the boy on account of all the good and generous qualities which he divined in him. Indeed, Sébastien's was an exquisite little nature which Marc took pleasure in wakening, one of those child-natures in which all the florescence of noble thoughts and noble deeds was beginning to bud.