"Go on, Janille, go on!" cried Monsieur Antoine; "I ask your pardon for having kept you from talking so long!"
X
A GOOD ACTION
"According to Monsieur Antoine," said Janille, "we were entirely without means; but if that was the case, it didn't last long. After a few years, when the Châteaubrun estate had been sold in small lots, the debts paid, and all that rubbish cleared away, we found that monsieur still had a little capital left, which, if well invested, would bring him in about twelve hundred francs a year. Oh! that wasn't to be despised. But, with monsieur's kindness of heart and generosity, it would probably have disappeared a little fast. Then it was that my dear Janille, who is talking to you now, saw that she must take the reins into her hands. It was she who looked after the investment of the funds, and she didn't manage so very badly. Then what did she say to monsieur? Do you remember, monsieur, what I said to you at that time?"
"I remember very well, Janille, for you talked very wisely. Repeat it yourself."
"I said to you: 'Well, Monsieur Antoine, there's enough for you to live on with your arms folded. But that would be a burden to you, you've taken a liking to work. You are still young and well, so you can work for some years to come. You have a daughter, a real treasure, who bids fair to be as bright as she is pretty; you must think about giving her an education. We will take her to Paris, put her at boarding-school, and you will be a carpenter a few years longer.' Monsieur Antoine asked nothing better. Oh! I must do him the justice to say that he didn't complain of his work; but, by associating with these peasants, his ideas had become a little too countrified to suit me. He said that as he was destined to become a workingman in the country, it would be wiser to bring up his daughter in accordance with his position in life, to make an honest village lass of her, to teach her to read, sew, spin and keep house; but deuce take me if I looked at it in that light! Could I allow Mademoiselle de Châteaubrun to fall below her rank and not be brought up like the nobly-born maid she is? Monsieur yielded, and our Gilberte was educated at Paris, and nothing was spared to give her wit and talents. She made the most of it like a little angel, and when she was about seventeen years old I says one day to monsieur: 'I say, Monsieur Antoine, don't you want to come and take a little walk with me over Châteaubrun way?' Monsieur, let me bring him here, but, when we were in the middle of the ruins, he got very depressed.
"'Why did you bring me here, Janille?' he says with a deep sigh. 'I knew they had destroyed my poor family nest; I had seen that from a distance, but I have never had the heart to come in and see all this ruin close. I hadn't any feeling of pride about the château, but I was fond of it because I passed my youthful years here; because I was happy here and my parents died here. If anyone had bought it to live in, if I could see it in good repair and well kept, I should be half-consoled, for we love things as we ought to love persons—a little more on their account than our own. But what pleasure can it give you to show me what speculators have done to the house of my ancestors?'
"'Monsieur,' I answered, 'it was necessary for us to come and see what the damage is, so that we can tell how much we have to spend, and how we must go to work to repair it. Just imagine that your estate was ruined by a hurricane in one night; with such a character as I know yours to be, instead of crying over it, you would go right to work to rebuild it.'
"'But there's no rhyme nor reason in your comparison,' says Monsieur Antoine. 'I haven't the means to repair the château, and even if I had I should be no better off, for even this carcass no longer belongs to me.'
"'Wait a bit,' says I. 'How much did they ask you when you offered to buy back just the house and the little piece of land next to it, the orchard, the garden, the hill, and the little meadow on the bank of the river?'