"Why, to be sure, if the price suits us."

"In that case, I will show you around myself."

"What an original creature!" whispered Adeline to her husband; "I will bet that it is some old money-lender, who went into retirement here, and can't resist the desire to do business in the capital again."

They went over the house from the ground floor to the attic; the little man spared them nothing, and Edouard, who was very glad to see his former home once more, listened patiently to all the details which the old fellow gave them concerning the advantages of his abode.

From time to time, our young man glanced at his wife and smiled.

"Yes," he said as he entered each room, "I recognize this room, this closet, these wardrobes."

Thereupon the old gentleman would glance at his servant and smile in his turn: they seemed to understand each other.

"So you used to live here, did you, monsieur?" the master of the house asked him.

"Yes, monsieur, yes, I pa.s.sed a large part of my youth here."

"This is mighty queer!" muttered the concierge.

"This is surprising!" said the little proprietor to himself.

Madame Germeuil considered the house convenient and the air good.

Adeline was enchanted. Edouard asked permission to inspect the garden; the little man apologized for not accompanying them, for he was tired already; he asked them to follow the concierge, and the young people were not at all sorry to be rid of him for a moment.

The peasant walked ahead; Madame Germeuil followed him, and Adeline and Edouard brought up the rear, hand in hand. Edouard called his wife's attention to all the spots which reminded him of some period of his life.

"This is the place," said Edouard, "where I used to read with my father; it was on this path that my Brother Jacques used to like to run about and climb these fine apricot trees."

"Poor Brother Jacques! you have never heard from him?"

"No! Oh! he died in some foreign country! Otherwise he would have returned, he would have tried to see our parents again."

"That," said Madame Germeuil, "is what comes of not watching over children! Perhaps he came to a bad end."

Edouard made no reply; the memory of his brother always made him sad and thoughtful; he was almost persuaded that poor Brother Jacques was no more, and perhaps his self-esteem preferred to nourish that idea, in order to banish those which suggested that Jacques might be wandering about, wretched and debased. It was especially since his marriage with Adeline that Edouard had often thought with dread of meeting his brother amid the mult.i.tude of unfortunate wretches; he thought that that might injure him in the estimation of Madame Germeuil; and whenever a beggar of about his brother's age stopped in front of Edouard, he felt the blood rise to his cheeks and he walked rapidly away, without glancing at the poor devil who begged of him, for fear of recognizing his Brother Jacques in him. And yet Edouard was not heartless; he would have shrunk from turning his back upon his brother, and he dreaded to find him in a degraded condition. That is how men are const.i.tuted; their infernal self-esteem often stifles the most generous sentiments; a man blushes for his brother, or his sister! Indeed, there are some who blush for their father or mother; such people apparently think that they are not sufficiently estimable in themselves to do without a genealogical tree.

But let us return to our young bride and groom, who investigated every nook and corner of the garden, and smiled and squeezed each other's hands as they pa.s.sed a dark grotto, or a dense clump of shrubbery. The concierge stopped for a moment to buckle his dog's collar; Madame Germeuil and her children walked on. They reached the end of the garden, on that side which adjoined the open country and was surrounded by a very high wall; but an opening had been made for the convenience of the tenants, and the gate which closed that opening was covered with boards, so that people who were pa.s.sing could not look into the garden.

But these boards were half rotten and had fallen away in places; and when the visitors pa.s.sed the gate, they saw a man's face against the iron bars, gazing earnestly into the garden, through a place where the boards were broken.

Madame Germeuil could not restrain a cry of surprise; Adeline was conscious of a secret thrill of emotion, and Edouard himself was moved at the sight of that face which he did not expect to find there.

The features of the man who was gazing into the garden were in fact calculated to cause a sort of terror at a first glance; black eyes, an olive-brown complexion, heavy moustaches, and a scar which started from the left eyebrow and extended across the forehead, all these imparted to the face a savage aspect which did not prepossess one in favor of the man who bore it.

"Ah! mon Dieu! what on earth is that?" said Madame Germeuil, suddenly stopping.

"Why, it is a man who is amusing himself looking through this gate,"

replied Edouard, gazing at the stranger, who did not move but continued to examine the garden.

"I am almost afraid," said Adeline under her breath.

"Almost, my dear child! you are very lucky! For my own part, I admit that I do not feel comfortable yet."

As Madame Germeuil spoke, she walked away from the gate and moved closer to her son-in-law.

"What children you are, mesdames! What is there surprising in the fact that a man as he pa.s.ses a garden which looks like a fine one should amuse himself by examining it for a moment? We have done that twenty times!"

"Yes, no doubt. But we haven't faces with moustaches like that, well calculated to make any one shudder! Just look! he doesn't move in the least! He doesn't seem to pay the slightest attention to us."

At that moment the concierge joined the party. As he approached the gate opening into the fields, he saw the face which had frightened the ladies. Thereupon he made a very p.r.o.nounced grimace, and muttered:

"Still here! so that infernal man won't go away, it seems!"

The stranger looked up at the concierge, and the ladies read in the glance that he cast at the peasant an expression of wrath and contempt.

Then, after examining for a moment the other persons in the garden, he drew back his head from the bars and disappeared.

"I would like right well to know who that man is," said Adeline, looking at her husband.

"Faith! I augur no good for him," said Madame Germeuil, who breathed more freely since the face had withdrawn from the gate.

"That man looked as if he had evil intentions, did he not, Edouard?"

"Oh! my dear mamma, I don't go as far as you do! If we had seen the whole man, perhaps his face would have seemed less strange than it did above those old boards."

"My husband is right, mamma; I think that the way in which we look at things depends upon the situation in which they strike our eyes at first. A man clothed in rags often arouses our suspicions; if he should appear before us well-dressed, we should have no feeling of dread at his aspect. Darkness, silence, moonlight, and the shadows thrown upon objects, all these conditions change our way of seeing things and make our imagination work very rapidly."

"You may say whatever you please, my dear girl, but that face was not the face of a man looking into a garden from mere curiosity."

"That may be, but I should have liked to see this stranger's figure."

"Parbleu!" said the concierge, "you wouldn't have seen anything very fine, I a.s.sure you."

"Do you know that man?" asked Adeline quickly.

"I don't know him, but I have seen him once before this morning; he looks to me like a scamp who is prowling round about the village to commit some deviltry. But he better not come back here, or I will set my dog on him!"

"And you don't know what he wants in the village?"

"Faith! I don't care. So long as he don't come to the house, that's all I ask."

As they were in front of the house at that moment, and as the proprietor was waiting for them in his doorway, Adeline did not prolong her conversation with the concierge.

"Well! what do you think of these gardens?" the old man asked Adeline.

"Oh! they are very pretty, monsieur; and they will suit us, will they not, mamma?"

"Yes, yes, perhaps they will suit us."