All through supper the bishop never once asks his guest where he comes from or what sent him to prison.
What he talks about instead is the cheese-makers around Pontarlier. The farmers up in the hills put their cows together, he explains, hire one cheese-maker between them, and share out the milk. The work starts at the end of April, and by the middle of June they drive the cows up the mountain; he lays it all out, piece by piece, with obvious pleasure.
Baptistine later describes that evening in a letter to a friend. Her brother gave the man no sermon and no lecture, she writes, and never even let him know he was a bishop. Once, starting to say that the mountain people were happy because they were innocent, he stopped himself in the middle of the sentence.