the poor, his head bowed, sorrowful. People looked at him with pity and curiosity at once, and tried to unriddle the enigma he lived in, without success. For months and months the people of the village and the neighborhood had ceased grinding their wheat at his mill, and yet the sails of his mill still turned without pause. Every evening they saw him driving his donkey loaded with huge sacks of flour, and they would stop him:

"Good day, Master Cornille. Business still going at the mill?"

And he would answer:

"Always, my children, God be praised. We complain of every-thing except lack of work."

And if they asked him where all this work came from, he laid his finger on his lips and said:

"Hush!... I work for export."

No one could get more out of him than that. As for entering his mill, that was not a thing to be thought of. Even Vivette herself had no right to cross the threshold. The passerby saw the door locked by day and by night, the sails in perpetual motion, the decrepit, scrawny donkey cropping the grass in the yard, and a big cat pacing the window sill and casting its wicked eyes at you. All this cast an air of secrets that everyone tried, in vain, to dispel, so as to reach the heart of Master Cornille. But people agreed on one thing: that in the mill there were sacks of gold outnumbering, no doubt, its sacks of wheat.

*

Yet in time the matter came to light. One day there was a wedding in the village, and we all went to offer our congratulations and to drink wine and dance. And there I noticed my eldest

son circling around Vivette in a way whose meaning did not escape me. He loved her and she loved him. As for me, that did not displease me, for Master Cornille, in spite of everything, is among the most honorable of men. And then I pictured that little sparrow Vivette hopping and chirping about the house, and I said to myself, let that house be mine; and I feared that if things dragged on between them it might lead to what ought to be reckoned with in its proper season, lest I repent when repen-tance is of no use. So early the next morning I took myself off to the mill to broach the matter with Master Cornille... And do you know, sir, how he received me? In vain I begged him to open the door. I had to put my mouth to the crack and set out to him the reason for my coming, while that cursed cat never stopped spitting above my head like a devil. He did not let me finish, but gave me to understand that if

I was in a hurry to marry off my son, I had only to go to the steam mill, where girls were plentiful! You can imagine how the blood rose to my head at those ugly words. But I kept hold of myself, left the doting old man where he was, and went back to tell the boy and the girl the result of my errand.

The two gentle sweethearts could not believe that anything could stand in the way of their love, and they asked my leave to go together to the mill, saying they would undertake to persuade its owner. I said: it is your affair.

And the fates would have it that Master Cornille had gone out only a few minutes before they arrived. But he had left the ladder outside, and it occurred to them at once to climb in through the window and see what there could possibly be inside this strange mill.

What a wonder! The mill was

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