"I was born here--all these good people have known me from my infancy,
and are grateful to me for what my grandfather and father did for them;
and then I am of their race, the race of the peasants; my great-
grandfather was a laborer at Bargecourt, a village two miles from here."

"Oh! oh! you appear very proud of that!"

"Neither proud nor ashamed."

"I beg your pardon, you made a little movement of pride. Well, I can
tell you that my mother's great-grandfather was a farmer in Brittany.
He went to Canada at the end of the last century, when Canada was still
French. And you love very much this place where you were born?"

"Very much. Perhaps I shall soon be obliged to leave it."

"Why?"

"When I get promotion, I shall have to exchange into another regiment,
and I shall wander from garrison to garrison; but certainly, when I am an
old commandant or old colonel, on half-pay, I shall come back, and live
and die here, in the little house that was my father's."

"Always quite alone?"

"Why quite alone? I certainly hope not."

"You intend to marry?"

"Yes, certainly."