and suited to surroundings more notable, though the rural life Carmen had
led since the Antoine went down and her fortunes came up, had coarsened
her beauty a very little.

"There's something stirring in the coverts," said the Judge to himself as
he was introduced to the mother and child. By a hasty gesture Zoe gave a
command to M. Fille to help her down. With a hand on his shoulder she
dropped to the ground. Her object was at once apparent. She made a
pretty old-fashioned curtsey to the Judge, then held out her hand, as
though to reassert her democratic equality.

As the Judge looked at Madame Barbille, he was involuntarily, but none
the less industriously, noting her characteristics; and the sum of his
reflections, after a few moments' talk, was that dangers he had seen
ahead of Jean Jacques, would not be averted by his wife, indeed might
easily have their origin in her.

"I wonder it has gone on as long as it has," he said to himself; though
it seemed unreasonable that his few moments with her, and the story told
him by the Clerk of the Court, should enable him to come to any definite
conclusion. But at eighty-odd Judge Carcasson was a Solon and a Solomon
in one. He had seen life from all angles, and he was not prepared to
give any virtue or the possession of any virtue too much rope; while
nothing in life surprised him.

"How would you like to be a judge?" he asked of Zoe, suddenly taking her
hand in his. A kinship had been at once established between them, so
little has age, position, and intellect to do with the natural
gravitations of human nature.