"He answered without hesitation:

"'With Louise, Madame le Baronne.'

"My mother said with the utmost gravity: 'We must try to arrange this
matter the best way we can.'

"So Louise was sent for and questioned by my mother; and she said in
reply that she knew all about Jean's liking for her, that in fact Jean
had spoken to her about it several times, but that she did not want him.
She refused to say why.

"And two months elapsed during which my father and mother never ceased to
urge this girl to marry Jean. As she declared she was not in love with
any other man, she could not give any serious reason for her refusal. My
father at last overcame her resistance by means of a big present of
money, and started the pair of them on a farm--this very farm. I did
not see them for three years, and then I learned that Louise had died of
consumption. But my father and mother died, too, in their turn, and it
was two years more before I found myself face to face with Jean.

"At last one autumn day about the end of October the idea came into my
head to go hunting on this part of my estate, which my father had told me
was full of game.

"So one evening, one wet evening, I arrived at this house. I was shocked
to find my father's old servant with perfectly white hair, though he was
not more than forty-five or forty-six years of age. I made him dine with
me, at the very table where we are now sitting. It was raining hard. We