"Have the people from the cities done so much harm in your country districts, pray? That is a fact that I know nothing of and am not responsible for, as this is my first visit."
"You are going to Gargilesse. I suppose of course you are going to see Monsieur Cardonnet? You are either a relation or friend of his, I am sure?"
"Who is this Monsieur Cardonnet, whom you seem to hold in ill-will?" asked the young man, after a moment's hesitation.
"Enough, monsieur," the peasant replied; "if you don't know him anything that I could say would hardly interest you, and if you are rich you have nothing to fear from him. The poor people are the only ones he has a grudge against."
"But after all," rejoined the traveller, with a sort of restrained emotion, "it may be that I have reasons for wanting to know what people in this country think of this Monsieur Cardonnet. If you refuse to give any reason for your bad opinion of him, it must be because you have some personal spite against him, not at all creditable to yourself."
"I am accountable to nobody," retorted the peasant, "and my opinion is my own. Good-night, monsieur. See, the rain is a little less violent. I am sorry to be unable to offer you a shelter; but I have only the château you see yonder, which is not mine. However," he added, after taking a few steps, and as if regretting that he had not shown more respect for the duties of hospitality, "if your heart should prompt you to come and ask a bed for the night, I can answer for it you would be welcome."
"Is yonder ruin occupied?" asked the traveller, who had to descend the ravine to cross the Creuse, and had walked along beside the peasant, supporting his horse by the rein.
"It is a ruin, in truth," his companion replied, repressing a sigh; "but although I am not so very old, I have seen that château in perfect repair, and so magnificent, outside as well as inside, that a king would have been well lodged there. The owner didn't spend a great deal, but it didn't require much repairing, it was so solid and well built; and the walls were so well laid, the stone mantels and window frames so beautifully carved that it would have been impossible to make it any finer than the architects and masons did when they built it. But everything goes, riches like all the rest, and the last lord of Châteaubrun has just repurchased the château of his ancestors for four thousand francs."
"Is it possible that such a mass of stone, even in its present condition, is worth so little?"
"What is left would still be worth a good deal if one could take it down and carry it away; but where in this vicinity can he find workmen and machines capable of pulling down those old walls? I don't know what they built with in old times, but that cement is so hard that you would say the towers and high walls are made of a single stone. And then, you see how it was planted on the very top of a mountain, with precipices on all sides! What carts and what horses could carry down such materials? Unless the hill crumbles they will stay there as long as the rock that holds them, and there are still ceilings enough left to cover one poor gentleman and one poor girl."