This "rentiere," or person living upon independent means, did not match
her sordid surroundings. Although toil-worn, tanned and wrinkled, her
face "brown as the ribbed sea-sand," there was a certain refinement
about look, speech and manner, distinguishing her from the good man her
neighbour. After a little conversation I soon found out that she had
literary tastes.

"Living alone and finding the winter evenings long I hire books from a
lending library at Fontainebleau," she said.

I opened my eyes in amazement. Seldom indeed had I heard of a peasant
proprietor in France caring for books, much less spending money upon
them.

"And what do you read?" I asked.

"Anything I can get," was the reply. "Madame's husband," here she looked
at my friend, "has kindly lent me several."

Among these I afterwards found had been Zola's "Rome" and "Le Desastre"
by the brothers Margueritte.

Like the Pere A---- she had married children and entertained precisely the
same notion of parental duty. The few sous spent upon such beguilement
of long winter nights were most likely economized by some little
deprivation. There is something extremely pathetic in this patriarchal
spirit, this uncompromising, ineradicable resolve to hand down a little
patrimony not only intact but enlarged.

"Our peasants live too sordidly," observed a Frenchman to me a day or