"If you don't mind, M'sieu le Baron, I'm going to bed. I am not used to
staying up late."

The baron extended his hand toward him and said: "Go, my friend," in so
cordial a tone that I said, as soon as the man had disappeared:

"He is devoted to you, this farmer?"

"Better than that, my dear fellow! It is a drama, an old drama, simple
and very sad, that attaches him to me. Here is the story:

"You know that my father was colonel in a cavalry regiment. His orderly
was this young fellow, now an old man, the son of a farmer. When my
father retired from the army he took this former soldier, then about
forty; as his servant. I was at that time about thirty. We were living in
our old chateau of Valrenne, near Caudebec-en-Caux.

"At this period my mother's chambermaid was one of the prettiest girls
you could see, fair-haired, slender and sprightly in manner, a genuine
soubrette of the old type that no longer exists. To-day these creatures
spring up into hussies before their time. Paris, with the aid of the
railways, attracts them, calls them, takes hold of them, as soon as they
are budding into womanhood, these little sluts who in old times remained
simple maid-servants. Every man passing by, as recruiting sergeants did
formerly, looking for recruits, with conscripts, entices and ruins them
--these foolish lassies--and we have now only the scum of the
female sex for servant maids, all that is dull, nasty, common and
ill-formed, too ugly, even for gallantry.

"Well, this girl was charming, and I often gave her a kiss in dark