Twice a week, someone would go up to see that he was all right. Joséphine offered to do it because she had a horse, and the excursion would do her good. Over the years, Le Simple had become a sort of farmhand, a servant available to everyone. Cheerful and reliable, he had been born to a woman from around Pasturat, near the river, who had been ashamed of her pregnancy. At first she had been able to hide it, and then she had hidden the baby himself and left him in a thicket on the riverbank down in the village. It had been like finding Moses that day, but there would be no Egyptian princess to adopt him and he would not later seek to become the leader of a people. No one had exactly decided to take charge of him, so he was passed from family to family while he was growing up and until he could be useful. Everyone acted as if they cared about the boy, so as not to appear heartless, and to demonstrate their faith in front of the priest. The boy had grown up without anyone to pay attention to his speech or to any part of his upbringing. By the time he was ten, they had all decided that he was, if not feeble-minded, at least different, and habitually predisposed always to say yes, but that was just the product of the way he had been raised. However, since the war, Le Simple had become precious to them, because now he was a man he was strong and hardy, he was very good with animals and he was an expert farmer. Le Simple was someone that the folly of nations had made into an exceptional person, a humble person who had become invaluable and irreplaceable.