The farmer pondered for a considerable time over Mathurin's words, endeavouring to harmonise them with the inky map, then shook his head.
"I cannot picture to myself where he is," he said sadly, "but I see that there is sea, and that he is lost to us...."
Mathurin slowly shut his book and said:
"They were both bad sons; they have forsaken you."
The farmer did not seem to have heard him; turning to Rousille, he said gently, far more gently than was his wont: "Rousille, have a cup of coffee ready for me the first thing to-morrow morning. I will go and find out François." And accordingly at ten o'clock the next morning, the fourth day after Driot's departure, the farmer of La Fromentière alighted from the train at the station of La Roche-sur-Yon. The moment he set foot on the platform, he began looking for his son amongst the porters engaged in shutting the carriage doors, or taking the luggage from the van. Taller by a head than most of the passengers who were hurrying hither and thither, he would stop every ten paces to follow with his eyes some porter with young, full face like François. He wanted to see his son again, but was nervous at meeting him in so public a place. He, clad in his black cloth suit, with blue waistband, his new hat bound with velvet set well at the back of his head, free to come and go at his own time—he, the master of his working and leisure hours, felt a kind of shame at the thought that among that group of paid servants, hustled about by their superiors, clad in a uniform they had no right to exchange for ordinary clothes, was a Lumineau of La Fromentière.
Not finding François on the platform, he was proceeding to a part of the line where carriages were uncoupled, and was watching a gang of men push a loaded truck along with their shoulders, thinking the while, "Why, they are doing the work of our oxen at home," when a voice called out:
"Hey! Where are you going?"
"To find my boy."
"Who is he?"
"You may perhaps know him," replied the farmer, touching the brim of his hat. "He is employed on the line; his name is François Lumineau."