along if we should have to part at the door, the aunt's welcome not having given us much hope.
"Here's Remi and his friend," said the father, entering the house.
We sat down to supper. The meal did not last long, for the aunt, who was a gossiper, was only serving delicatessen that evening. The hard-working miner ate his delicatessen supper without a word of complaint. He was an easy going man who, above all, liked peace: He never complained; if he had a remark to pass it was said in a quiet, gentle way. The supper was soon over.
Uncle Gaspard told me that I could sleep with Alexix that night, and told Mattia that if he would go with him into the bakehouse he would make him up a bed there.
That evening and the greater part of the night Alexix and I spent talking.
Everything that Alexix told me excited me strangely. I had always wanted to go down in a mine, but when I spoke of it the next day to Uncle Gaspard he told me that he could not possibly take me down as only those who worked in the colliery were permitted to enter.
"If you want to be a miner," he said, "it will be easy. It's not worse than any other job. It's better than being a singer on the streets. You can stay here with Alexix. We'll get a job for Mattia also, but not in playing the cornet, oh no."
I had no intention of staying at Varses; there was something else I had set myself to do. I was
