Page:Colas breugnon.djvu/202

188 for repayment, and that is a sort of thing that sticks in the throat of a man who has never owed anything to anybody but himself. I want to be master in my own house, to come and go without question; and it would kill me to think that some one was counting every mouthful I ate; I should soon become a broken-down, good-for-nothing old man. Far rather would I live on the charity of strangers than on that of my children, never being sure that they kept me of their own free will. I would rather die outright than be such a burden to them, ... I sat there for a long time, like an old tree that has been cut down at the roots; and there was precious little of my boasted philosophy left. I suffered in my pride, and in my affections; in what was best and worst in me; accumulations from the past, and hopes for the future, had all gone up in smoke, but I knew that I must walk in the path before me, however thorny it might prove; there could be no escape.

Not far off above the tops of the trees, my sad eyes lighted on the towers of the Chateau of Cuncy, and I felt that there they had found something on which they might rest with pleasure. For many years I had worked for the good lord Philibert de Cuncy; and the castle was full of fine furniture, woodwork, and stairways, which I had