“What is the matter, sonny?  Do you want me to do anything?”

“No, sir,” returned the poet; “but as you are our friend, I can tell you about it; my mother has just given her consent to my sister’s engagement to David Sechard.”

For all answer, Postel shut the window with a bang, in despair that he had not asked for Mlle. Chardon earlier.

David, however, did not go back into Angouleme; he took the road to Marsac instead, and walked through the night the whole way to his father’s house.  He went along by the side of the croft just as the sun rose, and caught sight of the old “bear’s” face under an almond-tree that grew out of the hedge.

“Good day, father,” called David.

“Why, is it you, my boy?  How come you to be out on the road at this time of day?  There is your way in,” he added, pointing to a little wicket gate.  “My vines have flowered and not a shoot has been frosted.  There will be twenty puncheons or more to the acre this year; but then look at all the dung that has been put on the land!”

“Father, I have come on important business.”

“Very well; how are your presses doing?  You must be making heaps of money as big as yourself.”

“I shall some day, father, but I am not very well off just now.”

“They all tell me that I ought not to put on so much manure,” replied his father.  “The gentry, that is M. le Marquis, M. le Comte, and Monsieur What-do-you-call-’em, say that I am letting down the quality of the wine.  What is the good of book-learning except to muddle your wits?  Just you listen:  these gentlemen get seven, or sometimes eight puncheons of wine to the acre, and they sell them for sixty francs apiece, that means four hundred francs per acre at most in a good year.  Now, I make twenty puncheons, and get thirty francs apiece for them—­that is six hundred francs!  And where are they, the fools?  Quality, quality, what is quality to me?  They can keep their quality for themselves, these Lord Marquises.  Quality means hard cash for me, that is what it means, You were saying?——­”

“I am going to be married, father, and I have come to ask for——­”

“Ask me for what?  Nothing of the sort, my boy.  Marry; I give you my consent, but as for giving you anything else, I haven’t a penny to bless myself with.  Dressing the soil is the ruin of me.  These two years I have been paying money out of pocket for top-dressing, and taxes, and expenses of all kinds; Government eats up everything, nearly all the profit goes to the Government.  The poor growers have made nothing these last two seasons.  This year things don’t look so bad; and, of course, the beggarly puncheons have gone up to eleven francs already.  We work to put money into the coopers’ pockets.  Why, are you going to marry before the vintage?——­”

“I only came to ask for your consent, father.”

“Oh! that is another thing.  And who is the victim, if one may ask?”