“And they call thee?”
“Jean Roussière, and Rousseyron—and Seyron for short.”
“How much do you ask?—it is for taking care of the beasts.”
“About fifteen louis.”
“I will give thee a hundred crowns.”
“All right for a hundred crowns.”
That is how I engaged Jean Roussière, he who taught me the old folk-melody of “Magali”—a jovial fellow and made on the lines of a Hercules. The last year that I lived at the farm, with my blind father, in the long watches of our solitude Jean Roussière never failed to keep me interested and amused, good fellow that he was. At his work he was excellent and always enlivened his beasts by some cheering song.
Naturally artistic in all he did, even if it was heaping a rick of straw or a pile of manure, or stowing away a cargo, he knew how to give the harmonious line or, as they say, the graceful sweep. But he had the defects of his qualities and was rather too fond of taking life in an easy and leisurely fashion, even passing part of it in an afternoon nap.
A charming talker at all times, it was worth hearing him as he spoke of the days when he led the big teams of horses on the towing-path, tugging the barges up the Rhône to Valence and to Lyons.
“Just fancy!” he said, “at the age of twenty, I led the finest turn-out on the banks of the Rhône! A turn-out of twenty-four stallions, four abreast, dragging six barges! Ah, what fine mornings those were, when we set out on the banks of the big river and silently, slowly, this fleet moved up the stream!”