department of the Loiret; I was leaning from the window, and looking at
some coppice ground now for the first time brought under cultivation, and
the mode of clearing which one of my travelling companions was explaining
to me, when my eyes fell upon a walled inclosure, with an iron-barred
gate. Inside it I perceived a house with all the blinds closed, and
which I immediately recollected; it was the farmhouse where I had been
sheltered. I eagerly pointed it out to my companion, and asked who lived
in it.

"'Nobody just now,' replied he.

"'But was it not kept, some years ago, by a farmer and his two sons?'

"'The Turreaus;' said my travelling companion, looking at me; 'did you
know them?'

"'I saw them once.'

"He shook his head.

"'Yes, yes!' resumed he; 'for many years they lived there like wolves in
their den; they merely knew how to till land, kill game, and drink. The
father managed the house, but men living alone, without women to love
them, without children to soften them, and without God to make them think
of heaven, always turn into wild beasts, you see; so one morning the
eldest son, who had been drinking too much brandy, would not harness the
plow-horses; his father struck him with his whip, and the son, who was
mad drunk, shot him dead with his gun.'"