132 STORIES FROM DAUDET

Gaffer Cornille was an old miller
who had lived in the flour for sixty
years and taken a pride in his trade.
The erection of the steam-mills nearly
drove him mad. For a whole week
he was seen running about the village
stirring up the villagers, and shouting
with all his might that the steam flour
mills would poison Provence.

‘Don’t go down there,’ he screamed.
‘Those thieves down there use steam
to make bread, which is an invention
_of the devil; whilst I work with the
north and north-west winds, which are
the breath of God.’

And he found a crowd of fine
phrases in praise of windmills, but not
a soul regarded him.

Then, with concentrated rage, the
old man shut himself up in his mill
and lived all alone like a wild animal.
He would not even suffer his grand-
daughter Vivette, a child of fifteen,
who, since the death of her parents,
had no one but her grandfather in the