Complete and unabridged, with 3 full-page plates by Jules Breton and Jean-François Millet. An old country curé loses his patrons when the château is sold to Americans, and prepares to hate them — then meets the two young women who have bought it. Halévy wrote the words the nineteenth century sang: with Meilhac he made the libretti for Offenbach and for Carmen. This 1882 novel was the gentlest thing he did, sold enormously, and got him into the Académie. Three plates after Millet and Breton, their peasant labours and evening fields, carry the novel's quiet countryside into paint.