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his raised hand on the chain of the bellows, put his left fist on his hip and look at us, laughing.
    Then the heavy, noisy thumping would resume.
    It was in one of these breaks that we saw Millie through the double door, wearing a tight scarf against the strong wind and going by, carrying lots of small parcels.
    The farrier asked, ‘Is Monsieur Charpentier coming soon?’
    ‘Tomorrow, with my grandmother,’ I replied. ‘I’m going to meet them in the trap from the 4.02 train.’
    ‘In Fromentin’s trap, is it?’
    I answered, ‘No, Old Martin’s.’
    ‘Well, now, you’ll never be back.’ And both of them, the farrier and his man, began to laugh.
    For the sake of saying something, the assistant said, slowly, ‘With Fromentin’s mare, you could have fetched them from Vierzon. The train stops there for an hour. It’s fifteen kilometres.You’d have been home before Old Martin’s ass was even harnessed up.’
    ‘Now that,’ said the farrier, ‘is a mare that covers some ground.’
    ‘And I’m sure Fromentin would be happy to lend it.’
    That’s where the conversation stopped. The forge was once more a place full of sparks and noise where everyone thought his own thoughts.
    But when the time came to leave, and I got up to signal to Meaulnes, he didn’t notice me at first. Leaning back against the door, head bowed, he seemed to be thinking deeply about what had been said. Seeing him there, lost in meditation and peering, as though through a deep bank of fog, at these people intent on their work, I suddenly thought of the picture in Robinson Crusoe where you see the English boy, before his great adventure, ‘standing at a basket-maker’s’. 5
    I have often thought of it since.

IV
    ESCAPE
    At one o’clock in the afternoon on the following day, the classroom of the Upper School is as distinct against the frosted landscape as a boat on the surface of the sea. It doesn’t smell of brine and sump oil, like a fishing boat, but of grilled herrings on the stove and the scorched wool of the boys who have come in and warmed themselves too close to the fire.
    The end of the year is getting closer and the essay books have been handed round. While M. Seurel is writing up the questions on the blackboard, there is a partial silence, broken by whispered conversations, little, stifled cries and sentences cut short which are meant to terrify the boy next to the speaker: ‘Sir, sir! So-and-so has…’
    As he writes out his questions, M. Seurel is thinking of other things. From time to time, he turns round, giving all of us a look that is at the same time stern and vague. The furtive whispering and shuffling stop dead for a moment, then resume, subdued at first, like a gathering drone.
    I alone am silent in the midst of all this agitation. As I am at the end of a table in the section reserved for the youngest in the class, near the large windows, I have only to sit up a little to see the garden, with the stream at the bottom, and then the fields.
    From time to time, I stand on tiptoe, looking anxiously towards the farm of La Belle-Etoile. As soon as the class started, I noticed that Meaulnes had not come back after the midday break. The boy who shares his desk must of course have noticed it too. So far he has not said anything, because he has been taken up too much with his work. But as soon as he looks up,the news will spread through the whole room and someone, as usual, will certainly shout out the first words of the sentence: ‘Please, sir, Meaulnes…’
    I know that Meaulnes has gone. Or, to be more precise, I suspect him of having escaped. As soon as lunch was finished, he must have jumped over the little wall and struck out across the fields, over the stream at La Vieille-Planche as far as La Belle-Etoile. He would have asked for the mare to go and fetch Monsieur and Madame Charpentier. He would be getting it harnessed up at that moment.
    La Belle-Etoile is a large farm on the side of the hill, over beyond the