You are adored about here ; do you know
that.*'



192 THE ABB* 0ON8TANTIN.
** I was born here — all these good people
have known me from my infancy, and are-
grateful to me for what my grandfather and
father did for them ; and then I am of their
race, the race of the peasants; my great-
grandfather was a labourer at Bargecourt, a
village two miles from here."

" Oh I oh I you appear very proud of
that I "

" Neither proud nor ashamed."

"I beg your pardon, you made a little-
movement of pride. Well, I can tell you
that my mother's greatgrandfather was a
farmer in Brittany. He went to Canada at
the end of the last century, when Canada
was still French. And you love very much
this place where you were born ? **

"Very much. Perhaps I shall soon be
obliged to leave it."

" Why ? "

" When I get promotion, I shall have to



THE abb6 oonstantin. 193

exchange into another regiment, and I shall
wander from garrison to garrison, but cer-
tainly, when I am an old commandant or old
colonel, on half pay, I shall come back, and
live and die here, in the little house that was
my father's."

"Always quite alone ? "

" Why quite alone ? I certainly hope
not/*

" You intend to marry."

" Yes, certainly,

" You are trying to get married ? "

" No, one may think of marrying, but one
ought not to try to marry."

" And yet there are people who do try.
