He seemed to have lost all thought of his surroundings--all
consciousness of previous events. He pursued his way, lost in his
reflections, guided only by force of habit.

Two or three times his daughter, Marie-Anne, who was walking by his
side, addressed him; but an "Ah! let me alone!" uttered in a harsh tone,
was the only response she could draw from him.

Evidently he had received a terrible blow; and undoubtedly, as often
happens under such circumstances, the unfortunate man was reviewing all
the different phases of his life.

At twenty Lacheneur was only a poor ploughboy in the service of the
Sairmeuse family.

His ambition was modest then. When stretched beneath a tree at the hour
of noonday rest, his dreams were as simple as those of an infant.

"If I could but amass a hundred pistoles," he thought, "I would ask
Father Barrois for the hand of his daughter Martha; and he would not
refuse me." A hundred pistoles! A thousand francs!--an enormous sum
for him who, in two years of toil and privation had only laid by eleven
louis, which he had placed carefully in a tiny box and hidden in the
depths of his straw mattress.

Still he did not despair. He had read in Martha's eyes that she would
wait.

And Mlle. Armande de Sairmeuse, a rich old maid, was his god-mother;
and he thought, if he attacked her adroitly, that he might, perhaps,