"Civilization has not made much headway hereabouts," thought Genestas;
"the religion of work is in full force, and begging has not yet come
thus far."

His guide, more from curiosity than from any interested motive,
propped himself against the wall that rose to the height of a man's
elbow. Upon this wall, which enclosed the yard belonging to the house,
there ran a black wooden railing on either side of the square pillars
of the gates. The lower part of the gates themselves was of solid wood
that had been painted gray at some period in the past; the upper part
consisted of a grating of yellowish spear-shaped bars. These
decorations, which had lost all their color, gradually rose on either
half of the gates till they reached the centre where they met; their
spikes forming, when both leaves were shut, an outline similar to that
of a pine-cone. The worm-eaten gates themselves, with their patches of
velvet lichen, were almost destroyed by the alternate action of sun
and rain. A few aloe plants and some chance-sown pellitory grew on the
tops of the square pillars of the gates, which all but concealed the
stems of a couple of thornless acacias that raised their tufted
spikes, like a pair of green powder-puffs, in the yard.

The condition of the gateway revealed a certain carelessness of its
owner which did not seem to suit the officer's turn of mind. He
knitted his brows like a man who is obliged to relinquish some
illusion. We usually judge others by our own standard; and although we
indulgently forgive our own shortcomings in them, we condemn them
harshly for the lack of our special virtues. If the commandant had
expected M. Benassis to be a methodical or practical man, there were
unmistakable indications of absolute indifference as to his material