was just as dear and sleep was just as sweet whichever of the three was
uppermost."

Bernadou, who had never known but the flag of three colours, believed
her, as indeed he believed every word that those kindly and resolute old
lips ever uttered to him.

He had never been in a city, and only once, on the day of his first
communion, in the town four leagues away. He knew nothing more than this
simple, cleanly, honest life that he led. With what men did outside his
little world of meadow-land and woodland he had no care nor any concern.
Once a man had come through the village of the Berceau, a travelling
hawker of cheap prints,--a man with a wild eye and a restless
brain,--who told Bernadou that he was a downtrodden slave, a clod, a
beast like a mule, who fetched and carried that the rich might fatten,
a dolt, an idiot, who cared nothing for the rights of man and the wrongs
of the poor. Bernadou had listened with a perplexed face; then with
a smile, that had cleared it like sunlight, he had answered, in his
country dialect, "I do not know of what you speak. Rights? Wrongs? I
cannot tell, But I have never owned a sou; I have never told a lie; I
am strong enough to hold my own with any man that flouts me; and I am
content where I am. That is enough for me."

The peddler had called him a poor-spirited beast of burden, but had said
so out of reach of his arm, and by night had slunk away from the Berceau
de Dieu, and had been no more seen there to vex the quiet contentment of
its peaceful and peace-loving ways.

At night, indeed, sometimes, the little wine-shop of the village would
be frequented by some half-dozen of the peasant proprietors of the