know YOUR business, it is evident we do not know ours, and therefore
'tis best for both our sakes to make an end of sheer Stupidity!'"

He chuckled at his own reasoning, and moistening his hands
vigorously, seized his spade and began to bank up a ridge of celery,
singing "Bon jour, Monsieur le bon Dieu!" under his breath without
the slightest idea of irreverence. And looking up at the bright sky
occasionally, he wished he had seen the stray boy rescued from the
streets by Cardinal Bonpre.

"That he will be a trouble, there is no doubt," he said as he turned
and patted the rich dark earth--"Never was there a boy born yet into
the world that was not a trouble except our Lord, and even in His
case His own people did not know what to make of Him!"

Meantime, while Jean Patoux dug in his garden, and sang and
soliloquized, his two children, Henri and Babette, their school
hours being ended, had run off to the market, and were talking
vivaciously with a big brown sturdy woman, who was selling poultry
at a stall, under a very large patched red umbrella. She was Martine
Doucet, reported to have the worst temper and most vixenish tongue
in all the town, though there were some who said her sourness of
humour only arose from the hardships of her life, and the many
troubles she had been fated to endure. Her husband, a fine handsome
man, earning good weekly wages as a stone-mason, had been killed by
a fall from a ladder, while engaged in helping to build one of the
new houses on the Boulevards, and her only child Fabien, a boy of
ten had, when a baby, tumbled from the cart in which his mother was
taking her poultry to market, and though no injury was apparent at
the time, had, from the effects of the fall, grown into a poor