man, who was standing with his face turned toward the fireplace. The
house consisted of a single room, which was lighted by a wretched
window covered with linen cloth. The floor was of beaten earth; the
chair, a table, and a truckle-bed comprised the whole of the
furniture. The commandant had never seen anything so poor and bare,
not even in Russia, where the moujik's huts are like the dens of wild
beasts. Nothing within it spoke of ordinary life; there were not even
the simplest appliances for cooking food of the commonest description.
It might have been a dog-kennel without a drinking-pan. But for the
truckle-bed, a smock-frock hanging from a nail, and some sabots filled
with straw, which composed the invalid's entire wardrobe, this cottage
would have looked as empty as the others. The aged peasant woman upon
her knees was devoting all her attention to keeping the sufferer's
feet in a tub filled with a brown liquid. Hearing a footstep and the
clank of spurs, which sounded strangely in ears accustomed to the
plodding pace of country folk, the man turned to Genestas. A sort of
surprise, in which the old woman shared was visible in his face.

"There is no need to ask if you are M. Benassis," said the soldier.
"You will pardon me, sir, if, as a stranger impatient to see you, I
have come to seek you on your field of battle, instead of awaiting you
at your house. Pray do not disturb yourself; go on with what you are
doing. When it is over, I will tell you the purpose of my visit."

Genestas half seated himself upon the edge of the table, and remained
silent. The firelight shone more brightly in the room than the faint
rays of the sun, for the mountain crests intercepted them, so that
they seldom reached this corner of the valley. A few branches of
resinous pinewood made a bright blaze, and it was by the light of this
fire that the soldier saw the face of the man towards whom he was