abundance of corn. The little gardens had seldom yielded so rich a
produce. The cattle and the flocks were in excellent health. There had
never been a season of greater promise and prosperity for the little
traffic that the village and its farms drove in sending milk and sheep
and vegetable wealth to that great city which was to it as a dim,
wonderful, mystic name without meaning.

One evening in this gracious and golden time the people sat out as usual
when the day was done, talking from door to door, the old women knitting
or spinning, the younger ones mending their husbands' or brothers'
blouses or the little blue shirts of their infants, the children playing
with the dogs on the sward that edged the stones of the street, and
above all the great calm heavens and the glow of the sun that had set.

Reine Allix, like the others, sat before the door, for once doing
nothing, but with folded hands and bended head dreamily taking pleasure
in the coolness that had come with evening, and the smell of the
limes that were in blossom, and the blithe chatter of Margot with the
neighbours. Bernadou was close beside them, watering and weeding those
flowers that were at once his pride and his recreation, making the face
of his dwelling bright and the air around it full of fragrance.

The little street was quiet in the evening light, only the laughter of
the children and the gay gossip of their mothers breaking the pleasant
stillness; it had been thus at evening with the Berceau centuries
before their time; they thought that it would thus likewise be when the
centuries should have seen the youngest-born there in his grave.

Suddenly came along the road between the trees an old man and a mule;
it was Mathurin, the miller, who had been that day to a little town