1. Read the following passage carefully:

Before going out the next day, he soaked in a bucket of water the acorns that he had so carefully chosen and counted. He carried an iron rod too, as a walking stick. He invited me to come along with him. Having arrived at the place he had been heading for, he began to pound his iron rod into the ground. This made a hole in which he placed an acorn, and covered the hole again. He was planting oak trees. In this way, he planted one hundred acorns with great care. He told me that for three years now, he had been planting trees in this solitary way. He had planted one hundred thousand. Of these he had lost ten thousand, twenty thousand had come up. It was at this moment that I began to know the age. He was clearly more than fifty. Fifty-five, he told me. His name was Elzéard Bouffier. He had owned a farm in the plains, where he lived most of his life. He had lost his only son, and then his wife. He had retired into this solitude, where he took pleasure in living slowly, with his flock of sheep and dog. He had concluded that his country was dying for lack of trees. He added that, having nothing more important to do, he had resolved to remedy the situation.