Christophe sighed patiently. He fetched up a flat piece of planed pine board and his charcoal stick. The old man had a surprisingly fine and fluid handwriting, as if he’d been taught by nuns. He wrote, " Quand la montagne brûle, tout le monde le sait; quand le coeur brûle, qui le sait ?" He wrote the sentence blindly, while he turned his head aside, and spoke pleasantly to the child on his knee.