Certainly, Mademoiselle Vincart was right in saying that he did not know the language of these people.
He ate without appetite the breakfast on which Manette had employed all her culinary art, barely tasted the roast partridge, and to Zelie's great astonishment, mingled the old Burgundy wine with a large quantity of water.
"You will inform Madame Sejournant," said he to the girl, as he folded his napkin, "that I am not a great eater, and that one dish will suffice me in future." He left her to clear away, and went out to look at the domain which he was to call his own.

It did not take him very long.

The twenty or thirty white houses, which constituted the village and lay sleeping in the wooded hollow like eggs in a nest, formed a curious circular line around the chateau.

In a few minutes he had gone the whole length of it, and the few people he met gave him only a passing glance, in which curiosity seemed to have more share than any hospitable feeling.

He entered the narrow church under the patronage of Our Lady; the gray light which entered through the moldy shutters showed a few scattered benches of oak, and the painted wooden altar.