Lucile was becoming bolder. With a pretty laugh she exclaimed: 'Oh! Brother Gorgias isn't worth much. He may well have a weight on his conscience, though all the same it would be as well to leave him quiet on account of religion.... But I've also read the newspapers, and they've made me reflect.' 'Ah! well,' concluded Fernand, 'one would never finish if one had to reflect after reading. It's far better to remain quiet in one's corner.' Marc was again about to protest when a sound of footsteps made him turn his head, and he perceived old Bongard and his wife, who also had just returned from the fields, with their daughter, Angèle. Bongard, who had heard his son's last words, at once addressed himself to the schoolmaster. 'What the lad says is quite true, Monsieur Froment. It's best not to worry one's mind with reading so much stuff.... In my time we did not read the papers at all, and we were no worse off. Isn't that so, wife?' 'Sure it is!' declared La Bongard energetically. But Angèle, who, in spite of her hard nut, had won a certificate at Mademoiselle Rouzaire's by force of stubbornness, smiled in a knowing manner. An inner light, fighting its way through dense matter, occasionally illumined the whole of her face, which with its short nose and large mouth remained at other moments so dull and heavy. In a few weeks' time Angèle was to marry Auguste Doloir, her sister-in-law Lucile's brother, a big strapping fellow, following, like his father, the calling of a mason, and the girl already indulged in ambitious dreams for him, some start in business on his own account when she should be beside him to guide his steps. In response to her father's words she quietly remarked: 'Well, for my part I much prefer to know things. One can never succeed unless one does. Everybody deceives and robs one.... You yourself, mamma, would have given three _sous_ too many to the tinker yesterday if I had not run through his bill.' They all jogged their heads; and then Marc, in a thoughtful mood, resumed his walk. That farmyard, where he had just lingered for a few minutes, had not changed since the now far-distant day of Simon's arrest, when he had entered it seeking for favourable evidence. The Bongards had remained the same, full of crass, suspicious, silent ignorance, like poor beings scarce raised from the soil, who ever trembled lest they should be devoured by others bigger and stronger than themselves. And the only new element was that supplied by the children, whose progress, however, was of the slightest; for if they knew a little more than their parents they had been weakened by the incompleteness of their education, and had fallen into other imbecilities. Yet, after all, they had taken a step forward, and the slightest step forward on mankind's long road must tend to hope.