I look forward. You and Marie will both be gone; and your
stepmother's friend, M. le Cure Gondin, does not make much society
for me. I sometimes think, when I am smoking a pipe up here all
alone, that this is the best of it all;--it will be when Marie has
gone.' If his father thus thought of it, why did he send Marie
away? If he thus thought of it, why had he sent his son away? Had
it not already been within his power to keep both of them there
together under his roof-tree? He had insisted on dividing them, and
dismissing them from Granpere, one in one direction, and the other
in another;--and then he complained of being alone! Surely his
father was altogether unreasonable. 'And now one can't even get
tobacco that is worth smoking,' continued Michel, in a melancholy
tone. 'There used to be good tobacco, but I don't know where it has
all gone.'

'I can send you over a little prime tobacco from Colmar, father.'

'I wish you would, George. This is foul stuff. But I sometimes
think I'll give it up. What's the use of it? A man sits and smokes
and smokes, and nothing comes of it. It don't feed him, nor clothe
him, and it leaves nothing behind,--except a stink.'

'You're a little down in the mouth, father, or you wouldn't talk of
giving up smoking.'

'I am down in the mouth,--terribly down in the mouth. Till it was
all settled, I did not know how much I should feel Marie's going.
Of course it had to be, but it makes an old man of me. There will
be nothing left. Of course there's your stepmother,--as good a
woman as ever lived,--and the children; but Marie was somehow the