CHAPTER I.

Produced by Clare Graham & Marc D'Hooghe at Free Literature

(Images generously made available by the Internet Archive.)

THE SOIL.

_(LA TERRE.)_

A REALISTIC NOVEL.

BY

ÉMILE ZOLA.

WITH A FRONTISPIECE DESIGNED BY H. GRAY.

LONDON:

_VIZETELLY & Co. 16 HENRIETTA STREET,

COVENT GARDEN._

1888.

[Illustration: Hold your tongue or I strike. Am I not the master?

_P. 27._]

CONTENTS

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

PART II.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

PART III.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

PART IV.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

PART V.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

NOTES.

THE SOIL.

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

That morning Jean, with a seed-bag of blue linen tied round his waist,

held its mouth open with his left hand, while with his right, at every

three steps, he drew forth a handful of corn, and flung it broadcast.

The rich soil clung to his heavy shoes, which left holes in the ground,

as his body lurched regularly from side to side; and each time he

threw you saw, amid the ever-flying yellow seed, the gleam of two red

stripes on the sleeve of the old regimental jacket he was wearing out.

He strode forward in solitary state; and behind him, to bury the grain,

there slowly came a harrow, to which were harnessed two horses, driven

by a waggoner, who cracked his whip over their ears in long, regular

sweeps.

The patch of ground, scarcely an acre and a quarter in extent, was

of such little importance that Monsieur Hourdequin, the master of La

Borderie, had not cared to send the drill-plough, which was in use

elsewhere. Jean, then journeying due north over the field, had the

farm-buildings exactly in front of him, a mile and a quarter off. On

reaching the end of the furrow, he raised his eyes with a vacant look

as he paused for a moment to take breath.

Before him were the low farm walls, and a patch of old slate, isolated

on the outskirts of the plain of La Beauce, which stretched towards

Chartres. Under a dull, late October sky lay ten leagues of arable

land, where, at that time of year, great ploughed squares of bare,

rich, yellow soil alternated with green expanses of lucern and clover;

there was here not a slope, not a tree; the plain extended into the dim

distance, curving down beyond the horizon, which was level as at sea.

Westward, a small wood just edged the sky with a band of russet. In

the centre a road--the road from Châteaudun to Orleans--of chalk-like

whiteness, stretched four leagues straight ahead, displaying as it

went a geometrical row of telegraph-posts. Nothing else but three or

four wooden mills on log foundations, with their sails at rest; some

villages forming islets of stone; and a distant steeple emerging from a

depression in the landscape, the church itself being hidden among the

gentle undulations of the wheat-fields.

Jean turned and lurched back again due south, his left hand holding

the seed-bag, and his right slashing the air with an unbroken sheet of

grain. He now had in front of him, quite near, and cutting trench-like

through the plain, the narrow valley of the Aigre, beyond which the

district of La Beauce resumed its unconfined course on to Orleans.

Meadows and shady places could only be inferred from a range of tall

poplars, the yellowish tops of which rose out of the dell, looking, as

they just cleared the edge, like short bushes. Of the little village

of Rognes, built upon the declivity, a few roofs only were in view,

near the church, which raised on high its grey stone steeple, the

dwelling-place of ancient families of ravens. And eastward, beyond the

valley of the Loir,--where Cloyes, the chief town of the _canton_[1]

nestled at two leagues' distance,--the far-off hills of Le Perche were

visible, tinged with violet in the slate-grey light. There the old

Dunois, now become the _arrondissement_ of Châteaudun, lay between Le

Perche and La Beauce, on the very frontier of the latter, at a spot

which has obtained the name of Beauce the "Lousy," the soil there being

less fertile. When Jean got to the end of the field, he stopped again,

and glanced down along the stream of the Aigre, rippling bright and

clear through the meadows, side by side with the road to Cloyes, which

on that Saturday was furrowed by the carts of peasants going to market;

then he turned up again.

And still, with the same step, with the same gesture, he set out

north and returned south, wrapped in a living dust-cloud of seed;

while, behind him the whip cracked and the harrow buried the germs,

at the same quiet, contemplative rate. Heavy rains had retarded the

autumn sowing; the season's manuring had been done in August, and the

deep-lying fallows, duly cleared of weeds, had long been ready for

a fresh yield of corn, after the clover and oats of the triennial

rotation. Now the farmers were urged on by fear of coming frost,

which threatened after the storms. The weather had suddenly turned

cold and gloomy: there was no breath of wind, and but a dull light

was distributed over all this ocean of land. Seed was being sown on

all sides; there was a sower to the left, three hundred yards away;

another farther off to the right; others, and yet others, lost to sight

in the receding vista of the level fields. They formed little black

silhouettes, mere strokes which became slimmer and slimmer, till they

vanished in the distance. All made the same gesture, as they strewed

the seed, which the mind's eye still saw encircling them, as with a

wave of life. It was like a quiver passing over the plain, even into

the dim distance, where the scattered sowers could no longer be seen.

Jean was coming down for the last time when he perceived, approaching

from Rognes, a large red and white cow, the halter of which was held by

a young girl, almost a child. The little peasant-girl and the animal

were coming along the path which skirted the valley at the top of the

plateau; and, with his back turned to them, he had gone up and finished

the field, when a sound of running, mingled with stifled cries, made

him look round, just as he was untying his seed-bag to depart. It was

the cow running away, galloping over a field of lucern, and followed by

the girl, who was exhausting her strength in trying to keep it back.

Fearing an accident, he shouted:

"Leave go; why don't thee?"

But she did nothing of the kind, only panting and abusing her cow in

angry, frightened tones.

"Coliche! Would you, then, Coliche? Ah, you foul brute! Ah, you cursed

beast!"

So far, running and leaping to the full extent of her little legs, she

had managed to follow. But she stumbled, fell once, then rose only to

fall again farther on; and from that point, the animal growing frantic,

she was dragged along. Then she began to shriek, while her body left a

furrow in the lucern.

"Leave go, in God's name!" Jean continued shouting. "Leave go, why

don't thee?"

He shouted thus mechanically, out of fright; for he also had started

running, grasping, at length, the situation. The rope had evidently got

entangled round her waist, and was being more closely twined at each

fresh effort. Fortunately he took a short cut across a ploughed field,

and made for the cow with such speed that the frightened and perplexed

animal stopped dead. Jean was already undoing the rope, and seating the

girl upon the grass.

"Thou hast broken nothing?" he asked.

No; she had not so much as swooned. She stood up, felt herself all

over, and coolly lifted her petticoats up to her thighs, to look at her

knees, which smarted. Meanwhile, she was still so breathless that she

could not speak.

"See, it's there it hurts me," she said at last. "All the same, I'm

alive and kicking; there's nothing the matter. Oh! I was frightened.

Over on the road there I was a regular jelly!"

And, examining the circle of red on her strained wrist, she moistened

it with spittle and applied her lips to it; then, comforted and

restored, she added with a deep sigh:

"She's not vicious, Coliche. Only since yesterday she has plagued us

to death, because she's in heat. I'm taking her to the bull at La

Borderie."

"At La Borderie?" repeated Jean. "That's capital; I'm going back there;

I'll go with thee."

He still used the second person singular, treating her as a little

urchin, so slight was she for her fourteen years of age. She, raising

her chin, looked seriously at the big, ruddy, crop-haired, full-faced,

regular-featured young fellow, whose twenty-nine years made him in her

eyes an old man.

"Hullo! I know you. You are Corporal, the carpenter who stopped as

farm-hand with Monsieur Hourdequin."

Hearing the nickname, which the peasants had given him, the young

fellow smiled; and he contemplated her in turn, surprised to find her

almost a woman so soon, with her little bust firm and taking shape,

her oval face, her deep, black eyes; and full lips, fresh and rosy as

ripening fruit. She was clad in a grey skirt and black woollen bodice;

on her head there was a round cap; and she had a very dark skin,

scorched and burnished by the sun.

"Why, thou'rt old Mouche's youngest!" cried he. "I didn't call thee to

mind. Isn't that so? Thy sister was keeping company with Buteau last

spring, when he worked with me at La Borderie?"

She replied simply:

"Yes, I'm Françoise. My sister Lise went with cousin Buteau, and is now

six months with child. He's bolted; he's down Orgères way, at the farm

of La Chamade."

"That's it," concluded Jean; "I have seen them together."

And they remained an instant mute, face to face; he smiling at having

one evening surprised the two lovers behind a mill, she still sucking

her bruised wrist, as if the moisture of her lips allayed its smarting;

whilst, in an adjoining field, the cow quietly plucked tufts of lucern.

The waggoner and the harrow had gone off by a roundabout way, to reach

the road. Two ravens, which kept wheeling round and round the steeple,

were heard to caw. The three notes of the angelus rang through the

still air.

"Hullo! Twelve o'clock already!" cried Jean. "Let's make haste!"

Then, noticing La Coliche in the field: "Eh, but thy cow is doing

damage! Suppose any one saw her! Wait a bit, I'll make it lively for

her!"

"Nay, let be," said Françoise, stopping him. "The plot is ours. Our

folk own the whole bank as far as Rognes. We reach from here up to

yonder; the next to that is uncle Fouan's; then comes aunt Grande's."

While indicating the patches she had led the cow back into the path.

And not till then, when she again held her, fearlessly, by the rope,

did she think of thanking the young fellow.

"Anyhow, I owe you a pretty debt of gratitude! Thanks, you know,

thanks, very much!"

They had started walking along the narrow road which skirted the valley

before cutting through the fields. The final peal of the angelus had

just died away, the ravens alone kept on cawing. They trudged on behind

the cow tugging at her rope, neither of the two conversing, for they

had relapsed into the silence of rustics who travel for leagues, side

by side, without exchanging a word. On their right their glance fell on

a drill-plough, the horses of which turned close by them; the ploughman

bade them good-day, and they answered him in the same sober tone. Down

on their left, along the road to Cloyes, carts continued to file by,

the market not opening till one o'clock. These vehicles jolted heavily

along on their two wheels, like jumping insects, so diminished in

the distance as to leave merely the white specks of the women's caps

distinguishable.

"There's uncle Fouan and aunt Rose over there, on their way to the

notary's," said Françoise, gazing at a conveyance the size of a

nutshell, which sped along nearly a mile off.

She had a sailor's eye, the long sight of those bred in the country,

trained in details, and capable of identifying man or beast even when

they were but little moving specks afar off.

"Oh, yes; I've been told so," resumed Jean. "So it's settled that the

old man divides his property among his daughter and two sons?"

"It's settled. They've all agreed to meet to-day at Monsieur

Baillehache's."

She again watched the cart in its course, and then resumed:

"We don't care one way or the other; it won't make us any fatter or

thinner. Only, on account of Buteau, sister thinks he'll marry her,

perhaps, when he gets his share. He says one can't start housekeeping

on nothing."

Jean laughed.

"Me and Buteau were pals, hang him! Oh, he don't think twice about

telling girls lies! And he must have 'em, by hook or by crook; he gets

at 'em by foul means, if they won't by fair."

"He's a pig, that's flat!" declared Françoise, peremptorily. "People

have no business to play dirty tricks like that, putting their cousins

in the family-way and then leaving 'em in the lurch."

But suddenly, in a fit of rage, she exclaimed:

"You wait, Coliche! I'll make you dance! There she is at it again;

she's mad, the brute, when she gets that way."

She had violently jerked the cow back. At that spot the road left the

edge of the plateau, and the cart disappeared from view, while they

both continued their walk on the level, now having in front of them,

and on either side, only the endless expanse of arable land. Between

the fallows and the artificial meadows the path ran flat and bushless,

terminating at the farm, which you might have thought within reach of

the hand, but which kept receding under the ashen-grey sky. They had

relapsed into silence again, no longer opening their mouths, as if

impressed by the contemplative gloominess of La Beauce, so sad and yet

so fruitful.

When they arrived, the large square yard of La Borderie, shut in on

three sides by cow-sheds, sheep-cots, and barns, was deserted. But

there immediately appeared upon the kitchen door-step a short, bold,

pretty-looking young woman.

"How's this, Jean, you're not eating this morning?"

"I'm just going to, Madame Jacqueline."

Since the daughter of Cognet, the Rognes road-labourer,--_La Cognette_,

as they called her when she washed up the farm dishes at twelve years

of age--had been raised to the honours of servant-mistress, she

despotically required that every one should treat her as a lady.

"Oh, it is you, Françoise," she resumed. "You've come for the

bull. Well, you must wait. The neatherd is at Cloyes with Monsieur

Hourdequin. But he'll be back; he ought to be here now."

And as Jean was making for the kitchen, she took him round the waist

and fondled him smilingly, regardless of spectators, hungering, as it

were, for love, and not satisfied with having the master.

Françoise, left alone, waited patiently, sitting on a stone bench

in front of the manure-pit, which took up a third of the yard. She

was listlessly watching a group of fowls, pecking and warming their

feet in the broad low layer of manure, which in the cold air began to

steam with a slight bluish vapour. At the end of half-an-hour, when

Jean re-appeared, finishing a slice of bread and butter, she had not

stirred. He sat down near her, and as the cow fidgeted, lashed its tail

and lowed, he finally said:

"It's tiresome he doesn't come back."

The girl shrugged her shoulders, as though to say that she was in no

hurry. Then, after a fresh silence:

"So, Corporal, they call you Jean, and nothing else?"

"Why, no; Jean Macquart."

"And you don't belong to our part of the country?"

"No, I'm a Provençal, from Plassans, a town over yonder."

She had raised her eyes to examine him, surprised that any one could

come from so far off.

"After Solferino," continued he, "eighteen months since, I came back

from Italy with my discharge, and a fellow-soldier brought me here.

Then, d'ye see, my old trade of carpenter no longer suited me, and,

what with one thing and another, I stopped at the farm."

"Ah!" said she, simply, without taking her big, black eyes off him,

"it's curious, all the same."

At that moment, as La Coliche gave a prolonged, despairing low of

desire, a hoarse murmur came from the cow-house, the door of which was

shut.

"Hullo!" cried Jean, "that brute of a Cæsar has heard her. Hark! he's

talking inside there. Oh, he knows his business. You can't bring one

of 'em into the yard but he smells her out, and knows what he's wanted

for."

Then, breaking off:

"I say, the neatherd must have stopped with Monsieur Hourdequin. If

thee liked, I would bring thee the bull, and thee needn't come back

again. We could manage it all right by ourselves."

"Not half a bad idea," said Françoise, getting up.

As he opened the door of the cow-house, he paused to ask:

"Must thy animal be tied up?"

"Tied up? No, no! not worth while. She is quite ready; she won't so

much as stir."

When the door was opened you saw, in two rows on either side of the

central path, the thirty farm cows, some lying in the litter, others

crunching the beets in their manger; and, from the corner where he

stood, one of the bulls, a black Dutch, spotted with white, stretched

out his head in anticipation of his task.

As soon as he was untied, he slowly emerged. Then stopping short, as

though surprised by the fresh air and sunlight, he remained motionless

for a minute, bracing himself up, his sinewy tail swinging, his neck

inflated, his muzzle outstretched to sniff. La Coliche, without

stirring, turned towards him her large, fixed eyes, and lowed more

softly. Then he advanced, pressed against her, and laid his head on her

hind-quarters, abruptly and roughly; with his tongue, which was hanging

out, he put her tail aside, and licked her as far as the thighs; she

letting him do as he pleased, and keeping quite still, save for a

slight quivering of her skin. Jean and Françoise waited gravely, their

arms hanging beside them.

When Cæsar was ready, he got upon La Coliche with a jerk, and with such

weighty force as to shake the ground. She had not given way, and he

compressed her flanks with his two feet. But she, a strapping animal

from the Cotentin, was so tall, so broad for him, who was of a smaller

breed, that he could not reach. He was conscious of it, and made a vain

effort to raise himself and to bring her nearer.

"He is too small," said Françoise.

"Yes, a little," said Jean. "But that don't matter; he'll do it all the

same."

She shook her head in doubt; and, as Cæsar still fumbled about, and

seemed to be getting exhausted, she came to a resolution.

"No, he must be helped," she said. "If he goes wrong, it'll be waste of

time."

Calmly and carefully, as if bent on a serious piece of work, she had

drawn near. Her intentness made the pupils of her eyes retreat, left

her red lips half open, and kept her features motionless. Raising her

arm with a sweep she aided the animal in his efforts, and he, gathering

up his strength, speedily accomplished his purpose. It was done.

Firmly, with the impassive fertility of land which is sown with seed

the cow had unflinchingly received the fruitful stream of the male.

Indeed, she had not even trembled at the shock; and he had already

dropped again to the ground, shaking the earth once more.

Françoise having withdrawn her hand, remained with her arm in the air.

Finally she lowered it, saying:

"That's all right."

"Yes, and neatly done," replied Jean, with an air of conviction,

mingled with a good workman's satisfaction at seeing work well and

expeditiously performed.

It did not occur to him to indulge in any of the spicy remarks with

which the farm-servants used to chaff the girls who brought their cows

for this purpose. The child seemed to consider it all so simple and

necessary that there was, indeed, nothing to laugh at fairly. It was

Nature.

However, Jacqueline had been standing at the door again for an instant

or so, and with a chuckle which was habitual to her, she cried

jestingly:

"Eh! poke your nose everywhere! So you hold the candle now!"

Jean having burst into a horse-laugh, Françoise suddenly flushed all

over, quite confused; and to hide her embarrassment--while Cæsar

returned of his own accord into the cow-house, and La Coliche munched

a stalk of oats which had grown in the manure-pit--she dived into her

pockets, fumbled about, eventually produced her handkerchief, untied

the corner of it, in which she had wrapped up the two-franc fee, and

said:

"Here! There's the money! And good day to you!"

She set out with her cow, and Jean took his bag again and followed her,

telling Jacqueline that he was going to the Poteau field, according to

the instructions issued by Monsieur Hourdequin, for the day.

"Good!" she replied. "The harrow ought to be there."

Then as the young man came up with the girl, and they went off in

single file down the narrow path, she called out to them again, in her

coarse, bantering voice:

"No danger, eh? If you lose yourselves together the chit knows her way

about."

Behind them the farmyard was again deserted. Neither had laughed this

time. They walked on slowly, and the only sound was that of their shoes

striking against the stones. All that Jean noticed of Françoise was the

nape of her child-like neck, over which curled some short black hair

under her round cap. At last, after going some fifty paces:

"She does wrong to chaff others about the men," said Françoise,

sedately. "I might have answered her----"

And turning towards the young fellow with a mischievous upward glance:

"It's true, isn't it, that she is false to Monsieur Hourdequin, just as

if she were already his wife? You know as much about that, maybe, as

most people."

His eyes fell, and he looked sheepish. "Lord! she does as she likes;

it's her affair," he answered.

Françoise had turned her back and was pursuing her road.

"That's true enough. I was only in fun, because you're old enough to be

my father, and because it's of no consequence one way or the other. But

there's one thing, since Buteau played that dirty trick on my sister,

I've taken an oath that I'd rather be cut in two than have a lover."

Jean bent his head, and they spoke no more. The little Poteau field lay

at the bottom of the path, half way to Rognes. When the young fellow

got there he stopped. The harrow was waiting for him, and a sack of

seed had been emptied out into a furrow. He filled his bag, saying:

"Good-bye, then!"

"Good-bye," replied Françoise. "Thanks again!"

But, in sudden apprehension, he drew himself up and called out:

"I say! suppose La Coliche began again; shall I go with you all the

way?"

She was already some distance off, but she turned round, and through

the deep stillness of the country air came the sound of her calm,

steady voice:

"No, no! There's no need, it's all right! She's got quite as much as

she can carry!"

Jean, with his seed-bag at his waist, had started down the piece of

plough land, with his ceaseless gesture of throwing the grain; he

raised his eyes and looked at Françoise diminishing in height among the

fields, looking quite small behind her lazy cow, which was swinging

heavily from side to side. When he turned up again, he ceased to see

her; but, as he came back, there she was again, but smaller still, so

slim as to seem like some new kind of dandelion, with her slight figure

and her white cap. Thrice she dwindled thus; then, when he once more

looked for her, she had apparently turned down by the church.

Two o'clock struck. The sky remained grey, dull, and cold, as if the

sun were buried under spadefuls of ashes for weary months, till the

spring-time returned. The dreariness of the clouds was relieved by one

lighter patch towards Orleans, as if the sun were shining somewhere in

that direction, leagues away; and against that glimmering patch the

steeple of Rognes stood out, the village itself sloping down from

view into the fold made by the valley of the Aigre. But on the north,

towards Chartres, the level line of the horizon clearly separated the

leaden uniformity of the waste sky from the endless vista of La Beauce,

like an ink-stroke across a monochrome sketch. Since the mid-day meal,

the number of sowers seemed to have increased. Now each patch of the

little farm-lands had one to itself; they multiplied and teemed like

black laborious ants roused to activity by some heavy piece of work,

and straining every nerve over a mighty task, giant-like in size as

compared with their littleness. And still you might descry, even in the

most remote, the one persistent never-varying gesture; still did the

pertinacious insect-like sowers wrestle with the vast earth, and become

eventually the victors over space and life.

Till night-fall Jean sowed. After the Poteau field there were the

Rigoles and the Quatre-Chemins. To and fro, to and fro, he paced the

fields, with long, rhythmical steps, till the corn in his bag came to

an end; while, in his wake, the seed strewed all the soil.

CHAPTER II.

The house of Maître Baillehache, notary at Cloyes, was situated in the

Rue Grouaise, on the left hand going to Châteaudun. A little white,

one-storey house it was, at the corner of which a bracket was riveted

for the rope of the single lantern which lighted this broad, paved

street, deserted during the week, but on Saturday nights crowded with a

living tide of peasants coming to market. From afar might be seen the

gleam of the two professional escutcheons against the chalk-like wall

of the low buildings; and, behind, a narrow garden stretched down to

the Loir.

On that Saturday, in the room which served as an office, and which

looked out upon the street to the right of the entrance hall, the

youngest clerk, a pale, wizened boy of fifteen, had drawn up one of

the muslin curtains to see the people pass. The other two clerks--one

old, corpulent, and very dirty; one younger, scraggy, and a hopeless

victim to liver complaint--were writing at a double desk of ebonised

deal, there being no other furniture except seven or eight chairs and a

cast-iron stove, which was never lit till December, even if it snowed a

month before. Rows of pigeon-holes decorated the walls, with greenish

pasteboard boxes, broken at the corners and full to repletion with

bundles of yellow papers, and the room was pervaded with an unwholesome

smell of ink gone bad and dust-eaten documents.

However, seated side by side, two peasants, man and wife, were waiting

in deep respect, like statues of Patience. So many papers, and,

more than all, the gentlemen who wrote so fast, with their pens all

scratching away at once, sobered them by evoking vague visions of

law-suits and money. The woman, aged thirty-four, very dark, with a

countenance which would have been pleasant but for a large nose, had

her horny, toil-worn hands crossed over her black cloth, velvet-edged

body, and was scanning every corner with her keen eyes, evidently

musing on the many title-deeds which reposed here. In the meanwhile

the man, five years older, red-haired and stolid, in black trousers

and a long, bran-new blue linen blouse, held his round felt hat on

his knees, with not a spark of intelligence illuminating his broad,

clean-shaven, terra-cotta-like face, which was perforated with two

large eyes of porcelain blue, having a fixed stare that reminded one of

a somnolent ox.

A door opened, and Maître Baillehache, who had just breakfasted with

his brother-in-law, farmer Hourdequin, made his appearance; ruddy and

fresh-complexioned despite his fifty-five years, with thick lips and

crow's feet, which gave him a perpetually amused expression. He carried

a double eye-glass, and had a lunatic habit of always pulling at his

long, grizzled whiskers.

"Ah! it's you, Delhomme," said he. "So, old Fouan has consented to

divide the property?"

The reply came from the woman.

"Yes, sure, Monsieur Baillehache. We have all made an appointment, so

that we may come to an agreement, and that you may tell us how we are

to proceed."

"Good, good, Fanny; we'll see about it. It's hardly more than one

o'clock, we must wait for the others."

The notary stopped an instant to chat, asking about the price of corn,

which had fallen during the last two months, and showing Delhomme the

friendly consideration due to a farmer who owned fifty acres of land,

and kept a servant and three cows. Then he returned to his inner room.

The clerks had not raised their heads, but were scratching away with

their pens more vigorously than ever; and, once more, the Delhommes

waited motionless. Fanny had been a lucky girl to marry a respectable,

rich lover without even getting into the family-way beforehand, she

whose only expectations had been some seven or eight acres of land

from old Fouan. Her husband, however, had not repented of his bargain,

for he could not anywhere have found a more active or intelligent

housekeeper. Hence he followed her lead in everything, being of a

narrow mind, but so steady and straightforward as to be frequently

selected as an umpire by the Rognes people.

At that moment the little clerk, who was looking out into the street,

stifled a laugh behind his hand, and murmured to his old, corpulent,

and very dirty neighbour: "Here's Hyacinthe the saint coming!"

Fanny bent down quickly to whisper to her husband: "Now, leave

everything to me. I am fond enough of papa and mamma, but I won't have

them rob us; and keep a sharp eye on Buteau and that rascal Hyacinthe."

She referred to her two brothers, having seen one of them approach

as she looked out of the window: Hyacinthe, the elder, whom the whole

neighbourhood knew as an idler and a drunkard, and who, at the close of

his military service, after going through the Algerian campaigns, had

taken to a vagabond life, refusing all regular work, and subsisting by

poaching and pillage, as if he were still extortioner-in-ordinary among

a terrified people of Bedouins.

A tall, strapping fellow came in, rejoicing in the brawny strength of

his forty years; he had curly hair, and a pointed, long, unkempt beard,

with the face of a saint laid waste, a saint sodden with strong drink,

addicted to forcing girls, and to robbing folks on the highway. He had

already got tipsy at Cloyes since the morning, and wore muddy trousers,

a filthily-stained blouse, and a ragged cap stuck on the back of his

neck. He was smoking a damp, black, pestilential halfpenny cigar. Yet,

in the depths of his fine liquid eyes lurked a spirit of fun free from

ill-feeling, the open-heartedness of good-natured blackguardism.

"So father and mother haven't turned up yet?" he asked.

When the thin, jaundiced clerk responded testily by a shake of the

head, he stared for an instant at the wall, while his cigar smouldered

in his hand. He had not so much as glanced at his sister and his

brother-in-law, who, themselves, did not appear to have seen him enter.

Then, without a word, he left the room, and went to hang about on the

pavement.

"Hyacinthe! Hyacinthe!" droned the little clerk, turning streetwards,

and seeming to find infinite amusement in this name, which brought many

a funny tale back to his memory.

Hardly five minutes had passed before the Fouans made their tardy

appearance, two old folk of slow, prudential gait. The father, once

very robust, now seventy years of age, had shrivelled and dwindled

down under such hard work, such a keen land-hunger, that his form was

bowed as if in a wild impulse to return to that earth which he had

coveted and possessed. Nevertheless, in all save the legs, he was still

hale and well-knit, with spruce little white mutton-chop whiskers,

and the long family nose, which lent an air of keenness to his thin,

leathery, deeply-wrinkled face. In his wake, following him as closely

as his shadow, came his wife; shorter and stouter, swollen as if by an

incipient dropsy, with a drab-coloured face perforated with round eyes,

and a round mouth pursed up into an infinity of avaricious wrinkles. A

household drudge, endowed with the docile, hard-working stupidity of a

beast of burden, she had always stood in awe of the despotic authority

of her husband.

"Ah, so it's you!" cried Fanny, getting up. Delhomme, also, had risen

from his chair. Behind the old people, Hyacinthe had just lounged in

again without a word. Compressing the cigar end to put it out, he

thrust the pestiferous stump into a pocket of his blouse.

"So we're here," said Fouan. "There's only Buteau missing. Never in

time, never like other people, the beast!"

"I saw him in the market," asserted Hyacinthe in a husky voice due to

drink. "He's coming."

Buteau, the younger son, owed his nickname to his pigheadedness, being

always up in arms in obstinate defence of his own ideas, which were

never those of anybody else. Even when an urchin, he had not been able

to get on with his parents; and, later on, having drawn a lucky number

in the conscription, he had run away from home to go into service,

first at La Borderie, subsequently at La Chamade.

While his father was still grumbling, he skipped cheerfully into the

room. In him, the large Fouan nose was flattened out, while the lower

part of his face, the maxillaries, projected like the powerful jaws of

a carnivorous beast. His temples retreated, all the upper part of his

head was contracted, and, behind the boon-companion twinkle of his grey

eyes, there lurked deceit and violence. He had inherited the brutish

desires and tenacious grip of his father, aggravated by the narrow

meanness of his mother. In every quarrel, whenever the two old people

heaped reproaches upon his head, he replied: "You shouldn't have made

me so!"

"Look here, it's five leagues from La Chamade to Cloyes," replied he to

their complaints; "and besides, hang it all, I'm here at the same time

as you. Oh, at me again, are you?"

They all disputed, shouted in shrill, high-pitched voices, and argued

over their private matters exactly as if they had been at home. The

clerks, disturbed, looked at them askance, till the tumult brought in

the notary, who re-opened the door of his private office.

"You are all assembled? Then come in!"

This private office looked on to the garden, a narrow strip of ground

running down to the Loir, the leafless poplars along which were visible

in the distance. On the mantelpiece, between some packets of papers,

there was a black marble clock; the furniture simply comprised the

mahogany writing-table, a set of pasteboard boxes, and some chairs.

Monsieur Baillehache at once installed himself at his writing-table,

like a judge on the bench, while the peasants who had entered in a file

hesitated and squinted at the chairs, feeling embarrassed as to where

and how they were to sit down.

"Come, seat yourselves!" said the notary.

Then Fouan and Rose were pushed forward by the rest on to the two

front chairs; Fanny and Delhomme got behind, also side by side; Buteau

established himself in an isolated corner against the wall; while

Hyacinthe alone remained standing, in front of the window, blocking

out the light with his broad shoulders. The notary, out of patience,

addressed him familiarly.

"Sit down, do, Hyacinthe!"

He had to broach the subject himself.

"So, Fouan, you have made up your mind to divide your property before

your death, between your two sons and your daughter?"

The old man made no reply. The rest were as if frozen to stone; there

was deep silence.

On his part, the notary, accustomed to such sluggishness, did not hurry

himself. His office had been in his family two hundred and fifty years.

Baillehache, son, had succeeded Baillehache, father, at Cloyes, the

line being of ancient Beauceron extraction, and they had contracted

from their rustic connection that ponderous reflectiveness, that artful

circumspection, which protract the most trivial debates with long

pauses and irrelevant talk. Having taken up a penknife the notary began

paring his nails.

"Haven't you? It would appear that you have made up your mind," he

repeated at length, looking hard at the old man.

The latter turned, looked round at everybody, and then said,

hesitatingly:

"Yes; that may be so, Monsieur Baillehache. I spoke to you about it at

harvest-time. You told me to think it over; and I have thought it over,

and I can see that it will have to come to that."

He explained the why and wherefore, in faltering phrases, interspersed

with constant digressions. But there was one thing which he said

nothing about, but which was obvious from the repressed emotion which

choked his utterance--and that was the infinite distress, the smothered

rancour, the rending asunder, as it were, of his whole frame, which

he felt in parting with the property so eagerly coveted before his

father's death, cultivated later on with the violent avidity of lust,

and then added to, bit by bit, at the cost of the most sordid avarice.

Such-and-such a plot represented months of bread and cheese, tireless

winters, summers of scorching toil, with no other sustenance than a few

gulps of water. He had loved the soil as it were a woman who kills,

and for whose sake men are slain. No spouse, nor child, nor any human

being; but the soil! However, being now stricken in years, he must hand

his mistress over to his sons, as _his_ father, maddened by his own

impotence, had handed her over to him.

"You see, Monsieur Baillehache, one has to look at things as they are.

My legs are not what they used to be; my arms are hardly better; and,

of course, the land suffers accordingly. Things might still have gone

on if one could have come to an understanding with one's children."

He glanced at Buteau and Hyacinthe, who made no sign, however; their

eyes were looking into vacancy, as though they were a hundred miles

away from him and his words.

"Well, am I to be expected to take strange people under our roof, to

pick and steal? No, servants now-a-days cost too much; they eat one

out of house and home. As for me, I am used up. This year, look you,

I have hardly had the strength to cultivate a quarter of the nineteen

_setiers_[2] I possess; just enough to provide corn for ourselves and

fodder for the two cows. So, you understand, it's breaking my heart to

see good land spoiled by lying idle. I had rather let everything go

than look on at such sinful waste."

His voice faltered; his gestures were those of resigned anguish. Near

him listened his submissive wife, crushed by more than half a century

of obedience and toil.

"The other day," he continued, "Rose, while making her cheeses, fell

into them head first. It wears me out only to jog to market. And then,

we can't take the land away with us when we go. It must be given

up--given up. After all, we have done enough work, and we want to die

in peace. Don't we, Rose?"

"That's true enough; true as we sit here," said the old woman.

There fell a new and prolonged silence. The notary finished trimming

his nails, and at last he put the knife back on his desk, saying:

"Yes, those are very good reasons; one is frequently forced to resolve

on a deed of gift. I should add that it saves expense, for the legacy

duties are heavier than those on the transference of property."

Buteau, despite his affectation of indifference, could not help

exclaiming:

"Then it's true, Monsieur Baillehache?"

"Most certainly. You will save some hundreds of francs."

There was a flutter among the others; even Delhomme's countenance

brightened, while the parents also shared in the general satisfaction.

The moment they knew it was cheaper, the thing was as good as done.

"It remains for me to make the usual observations," continued the

notary. "Many thoughtful persons condemn such transfers of property,

and regard them as immoral, in that they tend to sever family ties.

Deplorable instances might, in fact, be mentioned, children having

sometimes behaved very badly, when their parents had stripped

themselves of all."

The two sons and the daughter listened to him, open-mouthed, with

trembling eyelids and quivering cheeks.

"Let papa keep everything himself, if those are his ideas," brusquely

interrupted the very susceptible Fanny.

"We have always been dutiful," said Buteau.

"And we're not afraid of work," added Hyacinthe.

With a wave of his hand Maître Baillehache restored calm.

"Pray, let me finish! I know you are good children, and honest workers;

and, in your case, there is not the slightest danger of your parents

ever repenting of their resolution."

He spoke without a tinge of irony, repeating the conciliatory phrases

which five-and-twenty years of professional practice had made smooth

upon his tongue. However, the mother, although seeming not to

understand, glanced with her small eyes from her daughter to her two

sons. She had brought them up, without any show of fondness, amid the

chill parsimony which reproaches the little ones with diminishing the

household savings. She had a grudge against the younger son for having

run away from home just when he was capable of earning wages; the

daughter she had never been able to get on with, encountering in her a

strain too like her own, a robust activity made haughty and unyielding

by the intermingled intelligence of the father; and her gaze only

softened as it rested upon the elder son, the ruffian who took neither

after her nor after her husband--the ill weed sprung none knew whence,

and, perhaps, excused and favoured on that account.

Fouan also had looked at his children, one after the other, with an

uneasy mistrust of the uses they might make of his property. The

laziness of the drunkard was not so keen an anguish to him as the

covetous yearning of the two others for possession. However, he bent

his trembling head. What was the good of kicking against the pricks?

"The partition being thus resolved upon," resumed the notary, "the

question becomes one of terms. Are you agreed upon the allowance which

is to be paid?"

Everybody suddenly relapsed into mute rigidity. Their sun-burnt faces

assumed a stony look, an air of impenetrable gravity, like that of

diplomatists entering on the appraisement of an empire. Then they threw

out tentative glances one to another, but nobody spoke. At last the

father once more explained matters.

"No, Monsieur Baillehache, we have not entered on the subject; we were

waiting till we met all together, here. But it's quite simple, isn't

it? I have nineteen setiers, or, as people now say, nine hectares and

a half (about twenty-three acres). So that, if I rented them out, it

would come to nine hundred and fifty francs, at a hundred francs per

hectare (two and a half acres)."

Buteau, the least patient, leapt from his chair.

"What! A hundred francs per hectare! Do you take us for fools, papa?"

And a preliminary discussion began on the question of figures. There

was a setier of vineyard; that, certainly, would let for fifty francs.

But would that price ever be got for the twelve setiers of plough-land,

still less for the six setiers of natural meadow-land, the fields along

the Aigre, the hay of which was worth nothing? The plough-land itself

was hardly of good quality, especially at the end which edged the

plateau, for the arable layer got thinner and thinner as it neared the

valley.

"Come, come, papa," said Fanny, reproachfully, "you mustn't take an

unfair advantage of us."

"It's worth a hundred francs a hectare," repeated the old man

stubbornly, slapping his thigh. "I could let it out to-morrow at a

hundred francs if I wanted to. And what's it worth to you, now? Just

let's hear what it's worth to you?"

"It's worth sixty francs," said Buteau, but Fouan, greatly put out,

sustained his price, and launched into fervent eulogy of his land--such

fine land as it was, yielding wheat of itself--when Delhomme, silent

till then, declared in his blunt, honest way: "It's worth eighty

francs, not a copper more, and not a copper less."

The old man immediately calmed down.

"All right, say eighty. I don't mind making a sacrifice for my

children."

Rose, twitching at a corner of his blouse, expressed in one word the

outraged instincts of her mean nature--"No!"

Hyacinthe held himself aloof. Land had been no object to him since

the five years he had spent in Algeria. He had but one aim: to get

his share at once, whatever it might be, and to turn it into money.

Accordingly, he went on swinging to and fro with an air of amused

superiority.

"I said eighty," cried Fouan, "and eighty it is. I have always been a

man of my word; I swear it. Nine hectares and a half, look you, come to

seven hundred and sixty francs, or, in round numbers, eight hundred.

Well, the allowance shall be eight hundred francs, that's fair enough?"

Buteau burst into a violent fit of laughter, while Fanny protested by a

shake of the head, as if dumbfounded. Monsieur Baillehache, who, since

the discussion began, had been looking vacantly into the garden, again

turned to his clients and seemed to listen, tugging in his lunatic way

at his whiskers, and dreamily digesting the excellent meal he had just

made.

This time the old man was right, it was fair. But the children, heated

and possessed by the one idea of concluding the bargain on the lowest

possible terms, grew absolutely ferocious, and haggled and cursed with

the bad faith of yokels buying a pig.

"Eight hundred francs!" sneered Buteau. "Seems you want to live like

gentle folks----Oh, indeed! Eight hundred francs, when you might live

on four! Why not say at once that you want to gorge till you burst?"

Fouan had not yet lost his temper, considering the higgling natural,

and simply facing the expected storm, himself excited, but making

straight for the goal he had in view.

"Stop a bit! that's not all. Till the day of our death we keep the

house and garden, of course. Then, as we shall no longer get anything

from the crops, or have our two cows, we want every year a cask of wine

and a hundred faggots; and every week eight quarts of milk, a dozen

eggs, and three cheeses."

"Oh, papa!" groaned Fanny in piteous consternation. "Oh, papa!"

As for Buteau, he had done with discussion. He had sprung to his feet,

and was striding brusquely to and fro; he had even jammed his cap on

his head as if he were about to go. Hyacinthe also had likewise got up

from his chair, disquieted by the idea that this fuss might prevent

the partition after all. Delhomme alone remained impassive, with

his finger laid against his nose, in an attitude of deep thought and

extreme boredom.

At this point Maître Baillehache felt it necessary to help matters

forward a little. Rousing himself up, and fidgeting more energetically

with his whiskers:

"You know, my friends," said he, "that wine, faggots, cheese, and eggs

are customary."

But he was cut short by a volley of bitter phrases.

"Eggs with chickens inside, perhaps!"

"We don't drink our wine, do we? We sell it!"

"It's jolly convenient not to do a blasted thing and be made warm and

comfortable, while your children are toiling and moiling!"

The notary, who had heard the same thing often enough before, continued

unmoved:

"All that is no argument. Come, come, Hyacinthe, sit down, will you?

You're keeping out the light; you're a perfect nuisance! So that's

settled, isn't it, all of you? You will pay the dues in kind, because

otherwise you would become a by-word. We have, therefore, only to

discuss the amount of the allowance."

Delhomme at length indicated that he had something to say. Everybody

having resumed his place, he began slowly, amid general attention:

"Excuse me; what the father asks seems fair: he might be allowed eight

hundred francs on the ground that he could let the property for eight

hundred francs--only we don't reckon like that on our side. He is not

letting us the land, but giving it to us, and what we have to calculate

is: how much do he and his wife require to live on? That is all. How

much do they require to live on?"

"That is, certainly," chimed in the notary, "the usual basis of

calculation."

Another endless dispute set in. The two old folks' lives were

dissected, exposed, and discussed, need by need. Bread, vegetables,

and meat were weighed out; clothing appraised, linen and woollen,

to the utmost farthing; even such trivial luxuries as the father's

tobacco--cut down, after interminable recriminations, from two sous a

day to one--were not beneath notice. When people were beyond work, they

ought to reduce their expenditure. The mother, again; could she not do

without her black coffee? It was like their twelve-year-old dog, who

ate, and ate, and made no return; he ought to have had a bullet put

through his head long ago! The calculation was no sooner finished than

it was begun all over again, on the chance of finding some other item

to suppress: two shirts or six handkerchiefs in the year. And thus, by

cutting closer and closer, by pinching and scraping in the paltriest

matters, they got down to five hundred and fifty odd francs, which left

the children in a state of uncontrollable agitation, for they had set

their hearts upon not giving more than five hundred.

Fanny, however, was growing tired. She was not a bad sort, having more

of the milk of human kindness than the men, and not yet having had her

heart or her skin hardened by rough life in the open air. Accordingly

she spoke of making an end of it, and resigned herself to some

concessions. Hyacinthe, for his part, shrugged his shoulders, in a most

liberal, not to say maudlin mood; ready to offer, out of his own share,

any little balance which, be it remarked, he would never have paid.

"Come," asked the daughter, "shall we let it go at five hundred and

fifty?"

"Right you are!" answered he. "The old 'uns must have a little pleasant

time!"

The mother turned to her elder son with a smiling and yet almost

tearful look of affection, while the father continued his contention

with the younger. He had only given way step by step, disputing every

reduction, and making a stubborn stand on certain items. But, beneath

his ostensibly cool pertinacity, his wrath rose high within him as he

confronted the mad desire of his own flesh and blood to fatten on his

flesh, and to drain his blood dry while he was yet alive. He forgot

that he had thus fed upon his own father. His hands had begun to

tremble; and he growled out:

"Ah, the rascals! To think that one has brought 'em up, and then they

turn round and take the bread out of one's mouth! On my word, I'm

sick of it. I'd rather be already rotting under ground. So there's no

getting you to behave decently; you won't give more than five hundred

and fifty?"

He was about to accept the sum, when his wife again twitched his blouse

and whispered:

"No, no!"

"And that's not all," resumed Buteau, after a little hesitation. "How

about the money you have saved up? If you've any money of your own you

don't want ours, do you?"

He looked steadily at his father, having reserved this shot for the

last. The old man had grown very pale.

"What money?" he asked.

"Why, the money invested; the money you hold bonds for."

Buteau, who only suspected the hoard, wanted to make sure. One evening,

he had thought he saw his father take a little roll of papers from

behind a looking-glass. The next day and the days following he had

been on the watch, but nothing had turned up; the empty cavity alone

remained.

Fouan's pallor now suddenly changed to a deep red as his torrent of

wrath at length burst forth. He rose up, and shouted with a furious

gesture:

"Great heaven! You go rummaging in my pockets now. I haven't a sou, a

copper invested; you've cost too much for that, you brute. But, in any

case, is it any business of yours? Am I not the master, the father?"

He seemed to grow taller in the re-assertion of his authority. For

years everybody, wife and children alike, had quailed before him, under

his rude despotism as chief of the family. If they fancied all that at

an end, they made a mistake.

"Oh, papa!" began Buteau, with an attempt at a snigger.

"Hold your tongue, in God's name!" resumed the old man, with his hand

still uplifted. "Hold your tongue, or I strike!"

The younger son stammered, and shrank into himself on his chair. He

had felt the blow approaching and had raised his elbow to ward it off,

seized once more with the terrors of infancy.

"And you, Hyacinthe, leave off smirking! And you, Fanny, look me in the

face, if you dare! True as the sun's shining, I'll make it lively for

some of you; see if I don't!"

He stood, threateningly, over them all. The mother shivered, as if

apprehensive of stray buffets. The children neither stirred nor

breathed, they were conquered and submissive.

"Understand, the allowance shall be six hundred francs; or else I shall

sell my land and invest in an annuity. Yes, an annuity! All shall

be spent, and you sha'n't come into a copper. Will you give the six

hundred francs?"

"Why, papa," murmured Fanny, "we will give whatever you ask."

"Six hundred francs. Right!" said Delhomme.

"What suits the rest, suits me," declared Hyacinthe.

Buteau, setting his teeth viciously, gave the consent of silence.

Fouan still held them in check, with the stern look of one accustomed

to obedience. Finally, he sat down again, saying: "Good! Then we are

agreed."

Maître Baillehache had begun to doze again, unconcernedly awaiting the

issue of the quarrel. Now, opening his eyes, he brought the interview

to a peaceful close.

"Well, then, as you're agreed, that's enough! Now I know the terms, I

will draw up the deed. For your part, get the surveying done, portion

out the lots, and tell the surveyor to forward me a note containing the

description of the lots. Then, when you've drawn your numbers, all we

shall have to do will be to write the number drawn against each name,

and sign."

He had risen from his arm-chair to see them out. But they, hesitating,

and reflecting, would not stir. Was it really over? Was nothing

forgotten? Had they not made a bad bargain, which there was yet time,

perhaps, to cancel?

Four o'clock struck; they had been there nearly three hours.

"Aren't you going?" said the notary to them at last. "There are others

waiting."

He precipitated their decision by hustling them into the next room,

where, indeed, a number of patient rustics were sitting still and rigid

upon their chairs, while the small clerk watched a dog-fight out of

the window, and the two others still drove their pens, sulkily and

scratchily, over stamped paper.

Once outside, the family stood for a moment stock-still in the middle

of the street.

"If you like," declared the father, "the measuring shall take place on

the day after to-morrow--Monday."

They nodded assent, and went down the Rue Grouaise in scattered file.

Then, old Fouan and Rose, having turned down the Rue du Temple, towards

the church, Fanny and Delhomme went off through the Rue Grande. Buteau

had stopped on the Place Saint-Lubin, wondering if his father had a

hidden hoard or not; and Hyacinthe, left by himself, relighted his

cigar-end, and went into the Jolly Ploughman café.

CHAPTER III.

The Fouans house was the first in Rognes, on the high-road from Cloyes

to Bazoches-le-Doyen, which passes through the village. On Monday,

the old man was going out at seven o'clock in the morning to keep the

appointment in front of the church, when, in the next doorway, he

perceived his sister, "La Grande," who was already astir, despite her

eighty years.

These Fouans had propagated and grown there for centuries, like

some sturdy luxuriant vegetation. Serfs in the old times of the

Rognes-Bouquevals--of whom not a trace survived save the few

half-buried stones of a ruined château--they had been emancipated, it

appeared, under Philip the Fair; becoming thenceforward landowners of

an acre or so, which they had bought from the lord of the manor when in

difficulties, and paid for with tears and blood at ten times the value.

Then had set in the long struggle of four hundred years to defend and

enlarge the property, in a frenzy of passion transmitted from father

to son: odd corners were lost and bought back, the ownership was

unremittingly called into question, the inheritances were subject to

such a list of dues that they almost ate their own heads off; but in

spite of all, both arable and plough-lands grew, bit by bit, in the

ever-prevailing, stubborn craving for possession. Generations passed

away, the lives of many men enriched the soil; but when the Revolution

of '89 set its seal upon his rights, the Fouan of the time, Joseph

Casimir, possessed about twenty-six acres, wrested in the course of

four centuries from the old seignorial manor.

In '93, this Joseph Casimir was twenty-seven years of age, and on the

day when what remained of the manor was declared national property and

sold in lots by auction, he yearned to acquire a few acres of it. The

Rognes-Bouquevals, ruined and in debt, after letting the last tower

of the château crumble into dust, had long since given up to their

creditors the right of receiving the revenues of La Borderie, three

quarters of which property lay fallow. In particular, adjacent to one

of Fouan's bits of land there was a large field, on which he looked

with the fierce covetousness of his race. But the harvest had been

poor, and in the old pipkin behind his oven he had barely a hundred

crowns saved up. Moreover, although it had momentarily occurred to him

to borrow off a Cloyes money-lender, a distrustful prudence had stood

in the way: he was afraid to touch these lands of the nobility; who

knew whether they would not be claimed again later on? So it happened

that, divided between desire and apprehension, he had the agony of

seeing La Borderie bought at auction, field by field, and for a tenth

of its value, by Isidore Hourdequin, a townsman of Châteaudun, formerly

employed in the collection of excise duties.

Joseph Casimir Fouan, in his old age, had divided his twenty-six acres

equally among his eldest child, Marianne, and his two sons, Louis

and Michel; a younger daughter Laure, brought up to dressmaking and

employed at Châteaudun, being indemnified in hard cash. But marriage

destroyed this equality. While Marianne Fouan, surnamed "La Grande,"

wedded a neighbour, Antoine Péchard, with about twenty-two acres;

Michael Fouan, surnamed "Mouche," encumbered himself with a sweetheart

who only expected from her father two and a half acres of vineyard. On

the other hand, Louis Fouan, joined in matrimony to Rose Maliverne,

the heiress to fifteen acres, had acquired that total of twenty-three

acres or so, which, in his turn, he was about to divide among his three

children.

La Grande was respected and dreaded in the family, not for her advanced

age, but for her fortune. Still very upright, tall, thin, wiry, and

large-boned, she had the fleshless head of a bird of prey set on a

long, shrivelled, blood-coloured neck. In her, the family nose curved

into a formidable beak; she had round fixed eyes, with not a trace

of hair under the yellow silk handkerchief she always wore, though

she possessed her full complement of teeth, and jaws that might have

masticated flints. She never went out without her thornwood stick,

which she held on high as she walked, only making use of it to strike

animals and human beings. Left a widow at an early age, she had turned

her one daughter out of doors, because the wretch had insisted, against

her mother's will, on marrying a poor youth, Vincent Bouteroue; and

even when this daughter and her husband had died of want, leaving

behind them a grand-daughter and a grandson, Palmyre and Hilarion,

aged respectively thirty-two and twenty-four, she had refused her

forgiveness and let them starve to death, allowing no one so much as to

remind her of their existence. Since her goodman's death she presided

in person over the cultivation of her land; she had three cows, a pig,

and a farm-hand, all fed out of a common trough; and she was obeyed by

those about her with the most abject submission.

Fouan, seeing her on her threshold, had drawn near out of respect.

She was ten years older than he, and he regarded her sternness, her

avarice, her obstinate resolution to possess and to live, with an

admiring deference, shared by the whole village.

"I was just wanting to tell you about it, La Grande," said he. "I have

made up my mind, and am going up yonder to see about the division."

She made no reply, but tightened her grasp upon the stick which she was

flourishing.

"The other night I wanted to ask your advice again, but I knocked and

no one answered."

Then she broke out in shrill tones:

"Idiot! Advice, indeed! I gave you advice. The fool, the poltroon you

must be to give your property up as long as you can get about. They

might have bled _me_ to death, but, under the knife, I would still have

refused. To see what belongs to one in the hands of others, to turn

one's self out of doors for the benefit of rascally children.--No! No!

No!"

"But," put in Fouan, "if you're incapable of farming, and the land

suffers accordingly."

"Well, let it suffer. Rather than lose half an acre of it, I would go

and watch the thistles grow every morning."

She drew herself up grimly, in her featherless, old vulture-like way,

and, drumming on his shoulder with her stick, as if to impress her

words upon him more deeply, she resumed:

"Listen, and mark me. When you have nothing and they have everything,

your children will refuse you a mouthful of bread. You'll end with a

beggar's wallet, like a road-tramp. And when that happens, don't come

knocking at my door, for I give you fair warning, it'll be the worse

for you. Would you like to know what I shall do, eh? Would you?"

He waited submissively, as behoved a younger brother; and she returned

indoors, banging the door behind her and screaming:

"I shall do that! Die in a ditch!"

Fouan stood for an instant motionless before the closed door. Then,

with a gesture of resigned decision, he went up the path leading to the

Place de l'Église. On that very spot stood the old family residence

of the Fouans, which, in the division of property, had fallen to his

brother Michel, called Mouche; his own house, lower down along the

road, had come to him from his wife Rose. Mouche, who had long been

a widower, lived alone with his two daughters, Lise and Françoise,

embittered by disappointments, still humiliated by his lowly marriage,

and accusing his brother and sister, after forty years, of having

cheated him when the allotments were drawn for. He was for ever telling

the tale how the worst lot had been left for him at the bottom of the

hat; and, in the course of time, this seemed to have become true, for

he proved so excellent at excuses and such a sluggard at work that his

share lost half its value in his hands. "The man makes the land," as

folks say in La Beauce.

That morning Mouche also was on the watch at his door when his brother

came round the corner of the square. The division roused his spleen,

reviving old grudges, although he had nothing to expect from it.

However, to demonstrate his utter indifference, he, too, turned his

back and shut the door with a slam.

Fouan had suddenly caught sight of Delhomme and Hyacinthe, who were

waiting twenty yards apart from each other. He made for the former,

while the latter made for him. The three, without speaking, scanned the

path which skirted the edge of the plateau.

"There he is," said Hyacinthe, at last. "He" was Grosbois, the local

surveyor, a peasant from Magnolles, a little village near Cloyes. His

knowledge of reading and writing had ruined him. When summoned from

Orgères to Beaugency, on surveying business, he used to leave to his

wife the management of his property, and he had contracted during his

constant pilgrimages such drunken habits that he was now never sober.

Very stout, very sturdy for his sixty years, he had a broad red face

budding all over into purple pimples; and, despite the early hour, he

was, on the day in question, in a state of abominable intoxication,

the result of a merry-making held the night before by some Montigny

vine-growers in honour of a divided inheritance. But that mattered

nothing: the tipsier he was, the clearer his brain. He never measured

incorrectly, and never added up incorrectly. He was held in deference

and honour, advisedly, for he had the reputation of being extremely

spiteful.

"All here, eh?" said he. "Then come along."

A dirty, bedraggled urchin of twelve was in attendance, carrying the

chain under his arm and the stand and the staves over his shoulder,

while with his free hand he swung the square, which was in an old burst

cardboard case.

They all set out without waiting for Buteau, whom they had just

descried in the distance, standing still before the largest field of

the holding. That field, some five acres in extent, was immediately

adjacent to the one along which La Coliche had dragged Françoise a

few days before. Buteau, thinking it useless to proceed further, had

stopped there in a brown study. When the others arrived, they saw him

stoop down, take up a handful of earth, and gradually filter it through

his fingers, as though to estimate its weight and flavour.

"There," resumed Grosbois, taking a greasy memorandum-book from his

pocket: "I have already drawn up an accurate little plan of each lot,

as you asked me to do, Fouan. It now devolves upon us to divide the

whole into three portions; and that, my children, we will do together,

eh? Just tell me how you intend it to be done."

The day had worn on. A ripping wind was driving continuous masses of

thick clouds across the pale sky; and La Beauce lay sullen and gloomy,

lashed by the keen air. Yet not one of them seemed conscious of that

breeze from the offing, which inflated their blouses and threatened

to carry off their hats. Not one of the five, in holiday attire, as

befitted the gravity of the occasion, spoke a word. As they stood on

the confines of the field, amid the boundless expanse, their lineaments

had a dreamy, frozen fixedness, the musing expression of mariners who

live alone in large open spaces. La Beauce, flat and fertile, easily

tilled but demanding continuous effort, has made the Beauceron calm and

reflective, without passion save for the land itself.

"It'll all have to be divided into three," said Buteau at length.

Grosbois shook his head, and a discussion set in. An apostle of

progress, by virtue of his connection with large farms, he occasionally

went so far as to set himself up against his smaller clients, by

condemning extreme subdivision. Would not the labour and cost of

transport from place to place become a ruinous thing, when there

were only odds and ends of land left that might be covered by a

handkerchief? Was it farming at all, with paltry garden-plots on

which it was impossible either to improve the system of crops or to

introduce machinery? No: the only sensible thing to do was to make a

mutual arrangement, not to adopt the murderous course of chopping a

field up like so much pastry. If one of them would be content with the

plough-land, another might manage with the meadows; the portions could

eventually be equalised, and the distribution decided by lot.

Buteau, with the natural liveliness of youth, adopted a jocose tone.

"And, with only some meadow-land, what shall I have to eat? Grass, I

suppose? No, no; I want some of everything, hay for cow and horse, corn

and grape for myself."

Fouan, who was listening, nodded assent. For generations, such had

been the mode of partition; and fresh acquisitions, by marriage or

otherwise, had subsequently swollen the plots anew.

Delhomme, passing rich with his fifty acres or so, had broader views;

but he was in a conciliatory mood, and had indeed only come, in his

wife's interest, to see that she was not cheated in the measurements.

As for Hyacinthe, he had gone off in pursuit of a flight of larks,

with his hands crammed full of pebbles. Whenever one of the birds,

distressed by the wind, stopped still a couple of seconds in mid-air

with quivering wings, he felled it to the ground with the skill of a

savage. Three fell, and he thrust them bleeding into his pocket.

"Come, stop your talk, and let's have it cut up into three!" said the

lively Buteau, addressing the surveyor familiarly; "and not into six,

mind, for you seem to me this morning to have both Chartres and Orleans

in your eye at once."

Grosbois, feeling hurt, drew himself up with much dignity.

"When you've had as much to drink as I have, young shaver, see whether

you can keep your eyes open at all. Which of you clever people would

like to take the square instead of me?"

As no one ventured to take up the challenge, he called out harshly and

triumphantly to the boy, who was rapt with admiration of Hyacinthe's

pebble-shooting. The square duly installed on its stand, the stakes

were being set up, when a new dispute arose over the method of dividing

the field. The surveyor, supported by Fouan and Delhomme, wanted to

divide the five acres into three strips parallel with the Aigre valley;

while Buteau insisted on the strips being taken perpendicular to the

valley, on the plea that the arable layer got thinner and thinner as

it neared the slope. In this way every one would have his share of

the worse end; whereas, in the other case, the third lot would be

altogether of inferior quality.

But Fouan grew heated; swore that the depth was the same everywhere,

and reminded them that the former partition between himself, Mouche,

and La Grande had been made in the direction he indicated; in proof of

which, Mouche's five acres lay adjacent to the third of the proposed

lots. Delhomme, on his side, made a decisive remark: even admitting

that the one lot was inferior, the owner would be benefited as soon as

the authorities decided to open the road that was to skirt the field at

that point.

"Oh, yes; I daresay!" cried Buteau. "The celebrated road from Rognes to

Châteaudun, by way of La Borderie! And a jolly long time you'll have to

wait for it!"

His importunity being, nevertheless, disregarded, he entered a protest

from between his clenched teeth.

Hyacinthe himself had drawn near, and they were all absorbed in

watching Grosbois trace out the lines of division. They kept a sharp

eye on him, as if they suspected him of trying by unfair means to make

one share half-an-inch bigger than the others. Three times did Delhomme

put his eye to the slit in the square, to make quite sure that the line

fairly intersected the stave. Hyacinthe swore at the "d----d youngster"

because he did not hold the chain right. But Buteau, in particular,

followed the process step by step, counting the feet, and going over

the calculations again in his own way with trembling lips. With this

consuming desire to possess, with the joy he felt at getting at last

a grip of the land, his bitterness and sullen rage at not being able

to keep the whole grew and grew. Those five acres, all of one piece,

made such a fine field. He had insisted on the division, so that no

one might have what he couldn't get; and yet the wholesale destruction

drove him distracted. He again tried to find frivolous causes of

quarrel.

Fouan, standing in a listless attitude, had been looking on at the

dismemberment of his property without a word.

"It's finished!" said Grosbois. "And look at it how you will, you won't

find a pound difference between the lots."

There were still, on the plateau, ten acres of plough-land divided

into a dozen plots, none of which were much more than an acre in size.

Indeed, one was only about a rood, and the surveyor having inquired,

with a sneer, whether that also was to be sub-divided, a fresh dispute

arose.

Buteau, with his instinctive gesture, had stooped down and taken up a

handful of earth, which he raised to his face as if to try its flavour.

A complacent wrinkling of his nose seemed to pronounce it better than

all the rest; and, after gently filtering it through his fingers, he

said that if they left the lot to him it was all right, otherwise he

insisted on a division. Delhomme and Hyacinthe angrily refused, and

likewise wanted their share. Yes, yes! A third of a rood each; that was

the only fair way. By sub-dividing every plot, they were sure that

none of the three could have anything which the other two lacked.

"Come on to the vineyard," said Fouan, and as they turned towards the

church, he threw a last glance over the vast plain, pausing for an

instant to look at the distant buildings of La Borderie. Then, with a

cry of inconsolable regret, alluding to the old lost opportunity of

buying up the national property:

"Ah!" said he, "if father had only chosen, Grosbois, you would now be

measuring all that!"

The two sons and the son-in-law turned sharply round, and there was a

new halt and a lingering look at the seven hundred and fifty acres of

the farm spread out before them.

"Ugh!" grunted Buteau, as he set off again: "Much good it does us, that

story! It's always our fate to be the prey of the townsfolk."

Ten o'clock struck. The main part of the work was over. But they

hastened their steps, for the wind had fallen, and a heavy dark cloud

had just discharged itself of a premonitory shower. The various Rognes

vineyards were situated beyond the church, on the hill-side which

sloped down to the Aigre. In former times, the château had stood

there with its grounds; and it was barely more than a century since

the peasantry, encouraged by the success of the Montigny vineyards,

near Cloyes, had decided to plant vines on this declivity, though

it was specially adapted for the purpose by its Southern aspect and

the steepness of its slope. The wine it yielded was thin but of a

pleasantly acid taste, and resembled the minor Orléanais vintages. Each

owner only secured a few casks, Delhomme, the wealthiest, possessing

some seven acres of vine-land; the rest of the country-side was

entirely given up to cereals and plants for fodder.

They turned down behind the church, skirted the old ruined presbytery

which had been turned into a lodging for the rural constable, and

gained the narrow chequered patches. As they crossed a piece of stony

ground, covered with shrubs, a shrill voice cried through a gap:

"Father, it's raining! and I've brought out my geese."

It was the voice of "La Trouille,"[3] Hyacinthe's daughter, a girl of

twelve, thin and wiry like a holly branch, with fair towzled hair. Her

large mouth had a twist to the left, her green eyes stared so boldly

that she might have been taken for a boy, and her dress consisted of an

old blouse of her father's, tied round her waist with some string. The

reason everybody called her La Trouille--although she bore, by right,

the fair name of Olympe--was that Hyacinthe, who used to yell at her

from morning till night, could never say a word to her without adding:

"Just wait, you dirty troll, and I'll make it hot for you!"

He had begotten this wilding of a drab, whom he had picked up in a

ditch after a fair, and whom he had installed in his den, to the great

scandal of all Rognes. For nearly three years the household had been

at sixes-and-sevens, and one harvest evening the baggage went off the

way she came, in company with another man. The child, then scarcely

weaned, had grown apace after the manner of ill weeds; and, as soon as

she could walk, she got the meals ready for her father, whom she both

dreaded and worshipped. Her chief passion, however, was for geese. At

first she had only had two, male and female, stolen when quite young

from behind a farm hedge. Then, thanks to her maternal care, the flock

had increased, and she now possessed twenty birds, which she fed by

pillage.

When La Trouille made her appearance, with her brazen, goat-like look,

driving the geese before her with a stick, Hyacinthe flew into a temper.

"Be sure you're back for dinner, or else you'll catch it! And mind

you keep the house carefully locked up, you dirty troll, for fear of

robbers!"

Buteau sniggered, and even Delhomme and the others could not help

laughing, they were so tickled at the idea of Hyacinthe being robbed.

His house was a sight; an old cellar consisting of three walls crumbled

to their original clay, a regular fox-hole, amid heaps of fallen stones

and under a cluster of old lime-trees. It was all that remained of the

château; and when our poaching friend, falling out with his father,

had ensconced himself in this stony corner belonging to the village,

he had had to close up the cellar by building a fourth wall of rough

stones, in which he left two openings for window and door. The place

was overgrown with brambles, and a large sweet briar hid the window.

The country folk called it the Château.

A new deluge poured down. Luckily the acre or so of vineyard was close

by, and the division into three was effected straightforwardly, without

any new ground for a quarrel arising. There now only remained seven or

eight acres of meadow down by the river side; but at this moment the

rain became so heavy, and fell in such torrents, that the surveyor,

passing the gate of a residence, suggested that they should go in.

"What if we took shelter for a minute at Monsieur Charles's?"

Fouan had come to a standstill, wavering, full of respect for his

brother-in-law and sister, who had made their fortune, and lived in a

retired way in this middle-class residence.

"No, no," he muttered; "they breakfast at twelve. It would disturb

their arrangements."

But Monsieur Charles put in an appearance on his stone steps under the

verandah, taking an interest in the fall of rain, and, on recognising

them, he called out:

"Come in, come in, do!"

Then, as they were all dripping wet, he bade them go round and enter

by the kitchen, where he joined them. He was a fine man of sixty-five

summers, close-shaven, with heavy eyelids over his lack-lustre eyes,

and the solemn, sallow face of a retired magistrate. He was clad in

deep-blue swan-skin flannel, with furred shoes, and an ecclesiastical

skull-cap, which he wore with the dignified air of one whose life had

been spent in duties of delicacy and authority.

When, at the age of twenty-five, Laure Fouan, then a dressmaker in a

shop at Châteaudun, married Charles Badeuil, the latter kept a little

café in the Rue d'Angoulême. The young pair, ambitious, and eager to

make a rapid fortune, soon left there for Chartres. But, at first,

nothing succeeded with them; all they put their hands to came to grief.

They vainly tried another eating-house, a restaurant, even a salt-fish

shop; and they despaired of ever having a copper to call their own,

when Monsieur Charles, being of an enterprising nature, had the idea

of buying one of the "licensed houses" in the Rue aux Juifs, which

had greatly declined, owing to an unsatisfactory staff and notorious

uncleanliness. He took in the situation at a glance: the requirements

of Chartres, and the void to be supplied in a large town which lacked

a respectable establishment, abreast of modern progress as regards

safety and comfort. Indeed, before two years had passed, Number 19,

re-decorated, fitted with curtains and mirrors, and provided with a

highly select staff, became so very favourably known that the number

of women had to be increased to six. All the officers, all the public

functionaries--in short, society in general--went nowhere else. This

success was kept up, thanks to the strong right arm of Monsieur Charles

and his unflagging paternal administration; while Madame Charles proved

herself extraordinarily active, keeping her eye on everything, letting

nothing go to waste, and yet shrewd enough to overlook, when necessary,

the petty larcenies of rich customers.

In less than twenty-five years the Badeuils saved three hundred

thousand francs, and they then thought of fulfilling the dream of

their lives: an idyllic old age, face to face with nature, amid trees,

flowers, and birds. But they were kept two years longer by their

inability to find a purchaser for Number 19 at the high price they

valued it. And what a heartrending thing it was! An establishment

furnished by themselves on the best scale, bringing in a larger income

than a farm, and yet about to pass, perforce, into strange hands, in

which, possibly, it would degenerate. On his settling in Chartres a

daughter had been born to Monsieur Charles, by name Estelle, whom he

sent to the nuns of the Visitation, at Châteaudun, when he moved into

the Rue aux Juifs. In this devout, rigidly moral boarding school, he

left the young girl till the age of twenty, to further purify her

purity; sending her some distance off for her holidays, and keeping her

in ignorance of the business in which he made his money. He only took

her away on the day he wedded her to Hector Vaucogne, a young fellow

employed on the local excise staff, whose excellent natural gifts were

marred by extraordinary laziness. Estelle was close on thirty, and had

a daughter, Elodie, aged seven, when, being at length acquainted with

the facts by hearing that her father's business was in the market, she

went to him of her own accord and asked him to give her the preference.

Why should so safe and flourishing a business go out of the family? All

was duly arranged. The Vaucognes took the place over, and the Badeuils,

before a month had elapsed, had the fond satisfaction of ascertaining

that their daughter, although brought up to other ideas, had turned

out a first-rate manageress, which, happily, compensated for their

son-in-law's supineness and lack of administrative power. They had

lived in retirement at Rognes for five years, and had the supervision

of their grand-daughter, Elodie, who, in her turn, had been sent to the

nuns of the Visitation at Châteaudun, there to be religiously trained

in principles of the strictest morality.

When Monsieur Charles came into the kitchen, where a maid was whipping

some eggs, while she kept her eye upon a pan of larks fizzing in

butter, they all of them, even old Fouan and Delhomme, uncovered their

heads, and seemed extremely flattered at shaking hands with him.

"Bless me!" said Grosbois, to make himself agreeable, "What a charming

property this is of yours! And to think that you picked it up for a

mere song. Oh, you artful dog, you!"

The other puffed himself out like a turkey-cock.

"A bargain, a windfall. We took a fancy to it, and, besides, Madame

Charles had set her heart on ending her days in her own part of the

country. As for me, where the heart is engaged I have always been

indulgent."

Roseblanche, as the property had been christened, was the "folly" of a

townsman of Cloyes, who had just laid out upon it nearly fifty thousand

francs, when a fit of apoplexy struck him down before the paint was

dry on the walls. The house, very trim, and situated on the slope of

the plateau, stood in a garden of some seven acres, which reached down

to the Aigre. In that out-of-the-way spot, on the confines of sombre

Beauce, no purchaser could be found, and Monsieur Charles had got the

place for twenty thousand francs. There he blissfully satisfied all his

tastes, fishing the stream for superb trout and eels, making beloved

collections of rose-trees and carnations, and keeping a large aviary

full of wood warblers, which no one but himself tended. There the fond

old pair ran through an income of twelve thousand francs, in a state of

perfect happiness, which they looked upon as the rightful recompense of

their thirty years of toil.

"Eh?" added Monsieur Charles. "At least people know who we are, here."

"Undoubtedly you are known," replied the surveyor. "Your money is

sufficient recommendation."

All the rest assented.

"True; quite true."

Then Monsieur Charles bade the servant bring some glasses, he himself

going into the cellar to fetch up two bottles of wine. With their noses

turned towards the frying-pan, in which the larks were browning, they

all sniffed the savoury smell, and solemnly drank, rolling the wine

round in their mouths.

"Gracious! It don't come from this part of the country, I know!

Capital!"

"Another drop. Your health!"

"Yours!"

As they laid down their glasses, Madame Charles, an estimable-looking

matron of sixty-two, with snowy frontlets, made her appearance. In her

the thick, large-nosed visage of the Fouans was of a pale, pink hue;

hers was the calm, sweet, monastic complexion of an aged nun who had

led a sequestered life. Clinging to her with awkward shyness followed

Elodie, who was spending a two days' holiday at Rognes. Preyed upon by

chlorosis, and over-tall for a girl of twelve, her flabby ugliness, and

her thin, blanched hair bespoke an impoverished system; and she had

been, moreover, kept in such restraint during her course of training

for spotless maidenhood that she was half an imbecile.

"Ha! you here!" said Madame Charles, shaking hands with her brother and

nephew, slowly and impressively, in token of the distance between them.

Then, turning round, and giving no further heed to such fellows, she

added:

"Come in, come in, Monsieur Patoir; the animal is here."

Patoir was the Cloyes veterinary--short, stout, full-blooded, and

purple; with the aspect of a trooper, and wearing heavy moustaches. He

had just driven up in a mud-splashed gig through the pelting rain.

"This poor darling," she went on, taking out of a warm oven a basket

in which an old cat lay in the throes of death; "this poor darling

was seized yesterday with a shivering fit, and it was then I wrote to

you. Ah! he's not young; he is nearly fifteen. We had him ten years

at Chartres, but last year my daughter had to get rid of him, and I

brought him here because he misbehaved himself in every corner of the

shop."

"Shop" was for Elodie's benefit, she being told that her parents kept

a confectionery business, amid such a press of work, that they could

not receive her there. The country-folk, however, did not even smile,

for the expression was current in Rognes, where people said that "even

Hourdequin's farm was not so profitable as Monsieur Charles's shop."

The men stared at the shrivelled, old, yellow, mangy, miserable cat;

the old cat who had purred in all the beds in the Rue aux Juifs, the

cat stroked and fondled by the plump hands of five or six generations

of women. Long had he been pampered and petted, the spoiled darling

of the saloon and retiring-rooms, licking up unconsidered trifles of

pomade, drinking the water in the toilet-glasses, a mute, abstracted

spectator of what went on, seeing everything with his slender pupils

set in gold.

"Monsieur Patoir, pray cure him," concluded Madame Charles.

The veterinary distended his eyelids, and screwed up his nose and

mouth, all his bluff, coarse, bull-dog physiognomy being set in motion.

And he cried:

"What? You've brought me all this way for _that_! I'll cure him for

you! Tie a stone round his neck and chuck him into the water!"

Elodie burst into tears, and Madame Charles became purple in the face

with indignation.

"Why, he stinks, this pet of yours! Keeping a horrid thing like that,

to give the house cholera! Chuck the beast into the water!"

Nevertheless, the old lady being really angry, he eventually sat down

at the table and grumblingly wrote out a prescription.

"Oh! all right, if you enjoy being plague-stricken. So long as I'm

paid, what on earth can it matter to me? Look here; get this down his

throat, a spoonful at a time, every hour; and here's another mixture

for two baths, one this evening, the other to-morrow."

For the last instant or so Monsieur Charles had been restless feeling

disconsolate at seeing the larks burn, while the maid, tired of beating

up the omelette, stood idly by. So he briskly gave Patoir his six

francs 'consulting fee, and urged the others to empty their glasses.

"Anyhow, the breakfast's got to be eaten. Ah! see you again soon. The

rain has given over."

They left reluctantly, and the veterinary, getting into his rickety old

trap, said once more:

"A cat that isn't worth the cord to chuck him into the water with!

Well, that's just how it is, when people are well off!"

But all of them, even Buteau, who had grown pale with sullen envy,

shook their heads in protest; and Delhomme the wise declared:

"Say what you will, people who have managed to put by an income of

twelve thousand francs can't be either idlers or fools."

The veterinary had whipped up his horse, and the others made for the

Aigre, through pathways now converted into torrents. They had got to

the seven or eight acres of meadow that were to be divided, when the

rain came down again in a perfect deluge. But this time they stuck

obstinately to the task, being desperately hungry, and anxious to get

it over. Only one dispute delayed them, with reference to the third

lot, which was treeless, whereas a copse happened to be distributed

between the other two. However, all now seemed settled and sanctioned.

The surveyor promised them he would forward the memoranda to the

notary, to enable him to draw up the deed; and it was agreed to defer

the drawing of the lots till the following Sunday, when it should take

place at ten o'clock, at the father's house.

As they returned into Rognes, Hyacinthe jerked out an oath:

"Wait, wait, you dirty troll, and I'll make it pretty hot for you!"

By the grassy wayside, La Trouille was leisurely driving her geese

under the muttering downpour. At the head of the dripping, delighted

flock, walked the gander, and when he turned his big yellow beak to the

right, all the other big yellow beaks went to the right too. The child,

taking fright at her father's words, sped home to see to the dinner,

followed by a file of long-necks, which were all stretched out in the

rear of the outstretched neck of the gander.

CHAPTER IV.

The following Sunday happened to fall just on All Saints' Day, the

first of November; and, on the stroke of nine, the Abbé Godard, who was

priest of Bazoches-le-Doyen, with subordinate charge of the ancient

parish of Rognes, reached the top of the slope which led down to the

little bridge over the Aigre. Rognes, more important in days of yore,

but now reduced to a population of barely three hundred souls, had

had no priest of its own for years, and seemed completely indifferent

to the fact, insomuch that the municipal council had lodged the rural

constable in the half-ruined parsonage.

So, every Sunday, the Abbé Godard walked the two miles between

Bazoches-le-Doyen and Rognes. Being stout and dumpy, with a neck red

at the nape and so swollen at the throat as to tilt his head backward,

he compelled himself to this exercise for the sake of his health. On

this particular Sunday, finding himself late, he was puffing terribly,

with his mouth wide open in his apoplectic face, the fat of which half

smothered his small snub nose and tiny grey eyes; and, despite the

livid, snow-laden sky, and the premature frost which had followed the

storms of the week, he was swinging his hat in his hand, having bared

the thick tangles of his grizzled, carroty hair.

The road made an abrupt descent, and on the left bank of the Aigre,

before reaching the stone bridge, there were only a few houses, a

sort of suburb, through which the Abbé rushed tempestuously. He did

not even cast a glance, either up or down stream, on the slow, limpid

river winding through the meadows amid clumps of willows and poplars.

On the right bank began the village proper, a double row of frontages

edging the high road, while others climbed at random up the slope; and

just past the bridge one found the municipal offices and the school,

an old barn raised a floor higher and white-washed. For an instant the

Abbé hesitated, and then craned his neck into the empty entrance-hall

of the school. When he turned round, he cast a searching glance into

two taverns facing him: the one having a neat shop-front, filled with

flasks, and surmounted by a little yellow wooden sign bearing the

inscription: _Macqueron, grocer,_ in green letters; the other merely

having its door decorated with a holly-branch, and displaying in black

upon a roughly-whitened wall the words: _Lengaigne. Tobacco._ The

priest was making up his mind to enter a steep lane between these two

houses, a short ascent leading straight to the front of the church,

when he caught sight of an old peasant and stopped.

"Aha! so it's you, Fouan. I'm in a hurry, but I wanted to see you.

Tell me, what's doing? It's out of the question for your son, Buteau,

to leave Lise in the plight she's in, with her figure unmistakably on

the increase. She is one of the 'Handmaidens of the Virgin.' It's a

disgrace, a disgrace!"

The old man listened, with an air of deferential politeness.

"Why, your reverence, what do you expect me to do, if Buteau holds out?

And, besides, the lad's right, so far as that goes; he can't marry at

his age on nothing."

"But there's a baby!"

"To be sure there is. Only the baby's not yet born, and one can never

tell. That's just where it is: a baby's not an encouraging thing when

you can't afford a shift for its back."

He made these remarks sagely, as became an old man who knew life. Then

he added, in the same measured tone:

"Besides, an arrangement may, perhaps, be made. I am dividing my

property. The lots will be drawn for presently, after mass. Then, when

Buteau gets his share, he will, I hope, see about marrying his cousin."

"Good!" said the priest. "That's enough. Fouan, I rely upon you."

The pealing of a bell curtailed his speech, and he asked,

apprehensively:

"That's the second bell, isn't it?"

"No, your reverence, the third."

"Good gracious! that brute of a Bécu at it again! Ringing without

waiting for me!"

He cursed, and ran violently up the pathway. At the top he all but had

a fit; he was puffing away like a blacksmith's bellows.

The bell rang on, while the ravens it had disturbed flew cawing

round the steeple, a fifteenth-century spire, which bore witness

to the ancient importance of Rognes. In front of the wide, open

door a group of peasants were waiting, among whom the innkeeper,

Lengaigne, a freethinker, was smoking his pipe. Farther on, against

the churchyard wall, farmer Hourdequin, the mayor--a well-built man,

with strongly-marked features--chatted with his assessor, the grocer

Macqueron. When the priest had passed by with a salute, they all

followed him, excepting Lengaigne, who ostentatiously turned his back,

pulling at his pipe.

Inside the church, to the right of the porch, there was a man hanging

on to a rope, which he still went on pulling.

"That'll do, Bécu!" said the Abbé Godard, beside himself. "I've told

you twenty times to wait for me before you ring the third time."

The rural constable, who was also the bell-ringer, fell to his feet,

aghast at his own disobedience. He was a little man of fifty, with

the square, bronzed physiognomy of an old soldier, grey moustache and

goatee, and a rigid neck, seeming as if he were continually choked by

a tight collar. Already very tipsy, he stood to attention, without

venturing to excuse himself.

Moreover, the priest had already made off, and was crossing the

nave, with a glance at the seats. There was a scanty attendance. On

the left, he as yet saw only Delhomme, present in his capacity of

municipal councillor. On the right, the women's side, there were at

the most a dozen. He recognised Cœlina Macqueron, shrivelled, sinewy,

and overbearing; Flore Lengaigne, buxom, mild, and good-humoured; and

Bécu's good woman, a lanky, very dirty, dark brunette. But what put the

finishing touch to his wrath was the behaviour of the "Handmaidens of

the Virgin" in the front row. Françoise was there between two of her

friends--the Macquerons' daughter, Berthe, a handsome brunette, brought

up as a lady at Cloyes, and the Lengaignes' daughter, Suzanne, a fair,

plain, bold-faced hussy, whom her parents were about to apprentice to

a dressmaker at Châteaudun. All the three were indulging in unseemly

laughter. And, beside them, poor Lise, plump and cheerful, faced the

altar, exposing her scandalous condition to public comment.

Finally, the Abbé Godard was going into the sacristy, when he came

across Delphin and Nénesse pushing each other about in play, whereas

they were supposed to be getting the wine vases ready for mass. The

first-named, Bécu's son, aged eleven, was a sun-burnt youngster,

already well-knit, and just leaving school to become a ploughman; while

Ernest, Delhomme's eldest, of the same age, fair, slim, and given to

loafing, always carried a looking-glass in his pocket.

"Now, then, you mischievous imps," cried the priest, "do you think

you're in a cow-shed?"

And turning towards a tall, thin, young man, whose sallow face bristled

with a few light hairs, and who was arranging some books on the shelf

of a cupboard, he added:

"Really, Monsieur Lequeu, you might keep them quiet when I am out of

the way!"

This was the schoolmaster, a peasant's son, whose education had taught

him to hate those of his own station. He resorted to violence with his

boys, treating them like brute beasts, and cloaked Republican ideas

under a scrupulously formal demeanour towards the priest and the mayor.

He sang well in the choir, and even looked after the sacred books; but

he had refused point-blank to ring the bell, in spite of custom, such a

task being unworthy of a free man.

"I am not entrusted with maintaining order in church," he responded,

dryly. "At my place, though, wouldn't I just box their ears!"

And as the Abbé, without answering, hastily shuffled into his alb and

stole, he went on:

"Low mass, isn't it?"

"Yes, to be sure, and be quick! I've got to be at Bazoches by half-past

ten for high mass."

M. Lequeu, who had taken an old missal from the cupboard, closed the

latter and went out to place the book on the altar.

"Make haste, make haste," repeated the priest, hurrying Delphin and

Nénesse.

And, still perspiring, still panting, with the chalice in his hand, he

went back into the church and began the mass, at which the two urchins

officiated with sly, quizzical side-looks. The church had but one

aisle, with a vaulted, oak-panelled roof, falling to pieces through the

obstinate refusal of the municipal council to allow any funds. The rain

dripped through the broken slates of the roofing, deep stains marked

the advanced state of decay of the woodwork, and beyond the choir, shut

off by a railing, a greenish leakage aloft disfigured the fresco of the

apsis, cutting the figure of an Eternal Father, worshipped by angels,

atwain.

When the priest turned, open armed, towards the congregation, he calmed

down a bit on observing that some people had come in--the mayor, his

assessor, some municipal councillors, old Fouan, and Clou the farrier,

who played the trombone when there was a musical service. Lequeu had

remained, with a stately air, in the front row. Bécu, although drunk,

stood bolt upright in the background. On the women's side, especially,

the seats had filled up, Fanny, Rose, La Grande, and others had come,

so that the "Handmaidens of the Virgin," now poring over their books in

an exemplary way, had had to crowd closer together. What particularly

flattered the priest was to perceive Monsieur and Madame Charles, with

their grand-daughter Elodie; he in a black frock-coat, she in a green

silk dress, both of them solemn and splendiferous, setting a good

example.

Nevertheless, he hurried over his mass, mangling the Latin and maiming

the rites. In his address, not going into the pulpit, but sitting on

a chair in the middle of the choir, he made a miserable exhibition of

himself, lost the thread of his discourse, and gave up as hopeless

the task of ever finding it again. Eloquence was not his strong

point; he stumbled over his words, and hum'd and ha'd without ever

being able to finish his sentences, which explained why his lordship

the Bishop had overlooked him for twenty-five years in his little

cure of Bazoches-le-Doyen. The rest of the service was vamped; the

bell-ringing, during the elevation of the Host, sounded like electric

signals gone mad, and the priest dismissed the congregation with an

"_Ite missa est_," as smart as the crack of a whip.

The church was barely empty when the Abbé Godard re-appeared, with his

hat hastily put on wrong side foremost. Before the door stood a group

of women--Cœlina, Flore, and old mother Bécu--all much annoyed at

having been raced along at that pace. It was making very light of them

to give them no more on a high holiday.

"I say, your reverence," asked Cœlina, in her shrill voice, as she

stopped him: "You've got a spite against us, packing us off just like a

bundle of rags."

"Why, it's like this," he replied; "my own people are waiting for me.

I can't be both at Bazoches and at Rognes. Get a priest of your own if

you want high masses."

This was always a sore point between Rognes and the Abbé, the villagers

insisting on special attention, and he strictly confining himself

to what he was obliged to do for a village which refused to repair

its church, and where, moreover, constant scandals discouraged him.

Indicating the "Handmaidens of the Virgin," who were leaving together,

he resumed:

"And, besides, is it decent to go through ceremonies with young folks

who have no respect whatever for God's commandments?"

"You don't mean that for my girl, I hope?" asked Cœlina, between her

teeth.

"Nor for mine, _I'm_ sure?" added Flore.

Then he lost all patience and burst out:

"I mean it for those it concerns. It's as plain as a pike-staff.

White dresses, indeed. A pretty thing! I never have a procession here

without one of them being in the family way. No, no; you'd tire out God

Almighty himself."

He left them; and Bécu's wife, who had remained silent, had to make

peace between the two mothers, who, in considerable excitement, were

heaping reproaches on each other on their daughters' account. But her

peace-making was of such a bitterly insinuating character that the

quarrel rose higher.

Oh yes! They would see how Berthe would turn out, with her velvet

bodices and her piano! And Suzanne, what a first-rate idea to send her

to the milliner's at Châteaudun, so that she might go the pace with the

best of them!

The Abbé Godard was rushing off, when he came full upon Monsieur and

Madame Charles. A broad, beaming smile overspread his face, and his

hat performed a sweeping obeisance. Monsieur bowed majestically.

Madame made her best curtsey. It was fated that the priest should

never get off, for no sooner had he cleared the square than he was

brought up by another chance encounter. This was with a tall woman of

thirty, who looked quite fifty, with thin hair and a flat, flabby,

bran-yellow face. Broken down and worn out by excessive exertion, she

was staggering under the weight of a faggot of brushwood.

"Palmyre," he asked, "why didn't you come to mass on All Saints' Day?

It's disgraceful."

"No doubt, your reverence," she groaned, "but what's to be done? My

brother is cold, and we are freezing at home. So I've been picking up

these along the hedges."

"La Grande is still as hard as ever, then?"

"Rather! She'd die before she'd chuck us a crust or a log."

In a dolorous voice she repeated her own and her brother's story: how

their grandmother had turned them out of doors, how she had had to take

refuge with her brother in an old deserted stable. Poor Hilarion, bandy

and hare-lipped, lacked intelligence; indeed, despite his twenty years

of age, he was so idiotic that no one would give him employment. And so

she was bringing herself to death's door in working for him, tending

him with the impassioned care and untiring tenderness of a mother.

As the Abbé Godard listened to her, his coarse, perspiring face assumed

a look of the purest kindness, his little angry eyes grew beautiful

with charity, his large mouth took a sweetly sad expression. This

formidable scold, always being whirled to and fro by gusts of wrath,

was passionately devoted to the wretched, and gave them everything--his

money, linen, and clothes. To such a point that in all La Beauce you

would not find a priest with a rustier or a more extensively darned

cassock.

He fumbled anxiously in his pockets, and slipped a five-franc piece

into Palmyre's hand.

"Here! Put it away; I've none for anybody else. I shall have to talk

again to La Grande, since she's so wicked."

This time he got clear off. Luckily, as he was puffing and blowing up

the slope on the other side of the Aigre, the Bazoches butcher, on

his way back, gave him a lift in his cart; and he all but vanished

as he gained the level of the plain, jolting along with the dancing

silhouette of his three-cornered hat alone standing out against the

leaden sky.

Meantime the church square had emptied, and Fouan and Rose had just

gone down home, where they found Grosbois already waiting. A little

before ten, Delhomme and Hyacinthe arrived in their turn; but Buteau

was waited for in vain till twelve.

The eccentric rascal never could be punctual. Doubtless he had stopped

on the road somewhere to breakfast. It was proposed to go on without

him; then, a vague fear inspired by his hot-headedness led to the

decision that the lots should not be drawn for till two o'clock, after

breakfast. Grosbois, accepting a bit of bacon and a glass of wine from

the Fouans, finished up one bottle, started on another, and relapsed

into his usual state of intoxication.

Two o'clock, and still no Buteau appeared. So Hyacinthe, languishing

for debauch, like the rest of the village, that Sunday feast-day, went

lounging past Macqueron's. This succeeded: the door was flung open, and

Bécu appeared shouting:

"Come along, you rascally baggage, and let me treat you to a glass."

Bécu had got stiffer still, assuming more and more dignity as his

intoxication increased. A drunken, old-soldierly fellowship, a secret

affection, drew him towards the poacher; but he avoided recognising

him when he was on duty with his badge on his arm, being always on the

point of catching him _flagrante delicto_, and struggling between duty

and inclination. In the tavern, however, when he was tipsy, he stood

him treat like a brother.

"Take a hand at piquet, eh?" said he; "and, by God, if the Bedouins

bore us, we'll slit their ears for 'em!"

They installed themselves at a table, and played cards boisterously,

while quart after quart of wine was served them.

Macqueron, with his fat, moustachioed face, sat huddled up in a corner,

twiddling his thumbs. Since he had been gaining money by speculating

in the light wines of Montigny, he had fallen into idle ways--hunting,

fishing, and playing the gentleman; though he remained filthy and

ragged, while his daughter Berthe flounced to and fro in silk. If his

wife had heeded him they would have shut up shop, giving up both the

grocery and the refreshment business; for he was growing conceited,

and had dim ambitions, as yet unrecognised by himself. But she was

ferociously eager for gain, and he, although concerning himself

personally about nothing, was content to let her go on serving tipple,

just to annoy his neighbour Lengaigne, who kept the tobacco shop, and

also dealt in drink. 'Twas a long-standing rivalry, ever smouldering,

and ever ready to burst into a blaze.

Yet sometimes they were at peace for weeks together; and, as it

happened, Lengaigne then came in with his son Victor, a tall, awkward

youth, who was to draw for the conscription the next year. Lengaigne

himself, a lanky, frozen-looking man, with a little owl's head set upon

broad, brawny shoulders, had remained a peasant and tilled the soil,

while his wife weighed out the tobacco and drew the wine. He derived

a special importance from the fact that he was barber and hair-cutter

to the whole village, an avocation which he had brought back from his

regiment, and which he plied either at his shop, amid the eaters and

drinkers, or else, if his customers preferred it, at their own homes.

"Well, this beard of yours, is it to be done to-day, my boy?" he asked,

from the door.

"Bless me! Right you are, I told you to come," cried Macqueron. "This

very moment, if you like."

He reached an old shaving-dish from its hook, and took some soap and

warm water, while the other drew from his pocket a razor the size of a

cutlass, which he set about sharpening on a strop fixed to the case. A

squeaky voice now issued from the adjacent grocery department:

"I say," cried Cœlina, "are you going to mess the tables which people

drink at? Well, then, you sha'n't! I won't have hair found in the

glasses at _my_ house."

This was an attack on the cleanliness of the rival tavern, where

customers ate more hair than they drank genuine wine, she said.

"Sell your salt and pepper, and hold your row!" replied Macqueron,

annoyed by this public curtain-lecture. Hyacinthe and Bécu tittered.

"An extinguisher for the good lady that!" They ordered of her a

fresh quart of wine, which she brought in speechless fury. Then they

shuffled the cards, and dashed them violently on to the table, as if to

exasperate each other. Trump, trump, and trump!

Lengaigne had already lathered his customer, and was holding him by the

nose, when Lequeu, the schoolmaster, pushed the door open.

"Good-day, everybody!"

He stood silently in front of the stove, warming his loins, while young

Victor, stationed behind the players, became absorbed in watching their

game.

"By the by," resumed Macqueron, taking advantage of a moment when

Lengaigne was wiping the lather off the razor on to his shoulder, "just

now, before mass, Monsieur Hourdequin spoke to me again about the road.

Things must be settled some way or another."

The road in question was the famous one direct from Rognes to

Châteaudun, which was to shorten the distance by about two leagues,

for vehicles were now forced to pass through Cloyes. Of course, the

farm was much interested in this new route, and to carry the point the

mayor relied greatly on his assessor--himself interested in a speedy

settlement. There was a question of facilitating the approach of

vehicles to the church, which could now only be reached by goat-paths,

and the projected line of route followed the steep lane that wound

its narrow way between the two taverns. Only broaden that, and level

down the ascent a bit, and the grocer's grounds--which would be by the

road-side, and of easy access--would increase tenfold in value.

"Yes," he continued, "it would seem that the Government, before giving

us any help, is waiting for us to vote something. That's so, isn't it?

You are in it."

Lengaigne, who was a municipal councillor, but who had not as much as a

square inch of garden behind his house, replied:

"I don't care a curse! What the deuce has your road to do with me?"

Then, making an attack on the other cheek, which he rasped as with a

nutmeg-grater, he fell foul of the farm. These latter-day gentlefolks

were even worse than the nobles of old. Why, they had kept everything

to themselves in the distribution of the land, made laws merely for

their own advantage, and they lived only on the distress of poor folks.

The others listened, constrained, yet inwardly pleased by his temerity,

for they had the peasant's immemorial, unconquerable hatred of the

landowner.

"It's a good thing we are among ourselves," muttered Macqueron,

glancing uneasily at the schoolmaster. "I am on the Government side. So

is our deputy, Monsieur de Chédeville, who is, they say, a friend of

the Emperor's."

Lengaigne began furiously shaking his razor.

"And that's another pretty rogue of a fellow! Oughtn't a rich man like

him, possessing more than two thousand acres of land over there towards

Orgères, oughtn't he to make you a present of your road, instead of

trying to wring coppers out of the village? The low beast!"

The grocer, alarmed this time, protested. "No, no. He's very

straightforward, and not proud. But for him you wouldn't have had your

tobacco-counter. What would you say if he took it away from you again?"

Abruptly calming down, Lengaigne went on scraping the other's chin. He

had lost his temper and gone too far; his wife was right in saying that

his ideas would play him false. At that moment a quarrel was heard to

threaten between Bécu and Hyacinthe. The former was in an ill-tempered,

pugnacious state of drunkenness, while the other, on the contrary, grim

and overbearing though he was when sober, grew more and more maudlin

with every glass of wine, subsiding into the genial meekness of a tipsy

apostle. Add to this their radical difference of opinion: the poacher

being a Republican--a Red, as people said--who boasted of having made

the gentlefolks dance the rigadoon at Cloyes in '48; and the rural

constable being a wild Bonapartist and worshipping the Emperor, with

whom he pretended to be acquainted.

"I swear it! We had partaken of a red herring salad together, when he

said to me: 'Not a word. I am the Emperor.' I knew him at a glance,

because of his likeness on the five-franc pieces."

"Maybe! Anyhow, he's a low fellow, who beats his wife and never loved

his mother!"

"Hold your tongue, in God's name! or I'll break your jaw for you!"

The quart bottle which Bécu was brandishing had to be taken from him;

whilst Hyacinthe, with tearful eyes, sat awaiting the blow in cheerful

resignation. Then they resumed their game, like brothers. Trump, trump,

and trump!

Macqueron, rendered uneasy by the assumed indifference of the

schoolmaster, finished by asking him:

"And you, Monsieur Lequeu, what do _you_ say?"

Lequeu, who was warming his slender, sallow hands against the

stove-pipe, smiled the bitter smile of a superior person who is

compelled by his position to remain silent.

"I say nothing," he answered. "It's none of my business."

Macqueron soused his face in a basin of water, and while spluttering

and wiping himself dry, replied:

"Well, mark my words! I mean to do something. If the road's voted, by

God, I'll let 'em have my ground for nothing."

This declaration stupefied the audience. Even Hyacinthe and Bécu

looked up, despite their intoxication. There was a pause. They gazed

at Macqueron as if he had suddenly gone mad; and he, spurred on by the

effect produced, yet with his hands trembling at the engagement he was

taking, added:

"There'll be something like half an acre. The man who goes back on his

word is a scoundrel! I've sworn it!"

Lengaigne departed with his son Victor, exasperated and disgusted by

his neighbour's munificence. Land didn't cost him much, the way he

robbed people.

Macqueron, despite the cold, now took his gun, and went out to see if

he could come across a rabbit he had noticed in his vineyard the day

before. In the tavern there only remained Lequeu--who spent his Sundays

there without taking anything to drink--and the two gamblers, who were

poring over their cards. Hours elapsed, while other peasants came and

went.

Towards five o'clock the door was roughly pushed open, and Buteau

appeared, followed by Jean. Immediately he saw Hyacinthe, he cried:

"I'd have wagered five francs. Don't you care a damn for anybody? We're

waiting for you."

The drunkard, slobbering and merry, replied:

"That's a good 'un! I'm waiting for _you_. You've kept us hanging about

since morning, and I think it cool of you to complain."

Buteau had stopped at La Borderie, where Jacqueline, whom, at the age

of fifteen, he had knocked head over heels in the hay, had kept him to

eat some hot buttered toast with Jean. Farmer Hourdequin having gone to

breakfast at Cloyes after mass, the two sparks had kept it up pretty

late, and had only just reached the village in each other's company.

Meantime, Bécu yelled out that he would pay for the five quarts, but

that the game was to stand over; while Hyacinthe, reluctantly unfixing

himself from his chair, followed his brother, chuckling to himself,

with his eyes swimming in mildness.

"Wait there," said Buteau to Jean, "and in half an hour come and pick

me up. You know you dine with me at father's."

When the two brothers had entered the sitting-room of the Fouans'

house, they found the company assembled in full. The father was

standing up with bent head. The mother, seated near the table in the

middle, was mechanically knitting. Opposite her was Grosbois, who

had eaten and drunk so much as to be in a state of doze, with his

eyes half-open; while, farther off, Fanny and Delhomme were waiting

patiently on two low chairs. There were some unwonted articles in the

smoky room, with its shabby old furniture and its utensils worn by

scrubbing: a blank sheet of paper, an ink-bottle, and a pen stood on

the table beside the surveyor's hat--a monumental, rusty-black hat with

which he had trudged through rain and sunshine for ten years past.

Night was falling, and through the narrow window came an expiring,

murky glimmer, in which the flat brim and urn-like body of the hat

loomed strangely.

Grosbois, always ready for business in spite of his intoxication, woke

up and stammered out:

"Now we're right. I told you the deed was ready. I called yesterday at

Monsieur Baillehache's, and he showed it me. Only the numbers of the

lots are left blank after your names. So we will draw, and the notary

need then only write in the lots and you can sign on Saturday at his

place."

He roused himself and raised his voice: "Come, I will get the tickets

ready."

Fouan's children abruptly approached, making no secret of their

distrust. They watched Grosbois, and kept a sharp eye on his slightest

movements, as on those of a conjuror capable of juggling away the

shares. First he had cut the sheet of paper into three with his

drink-sodden, shaking fingers; now he was writing the figures 1, 2, 3,

and enormous, strongly-marked figures they were. The others watched

his pen over his shoulders, the parents themselves nodding their

satisfaction on seeing the impossibility of deception. The tickets were

slowly folded up and thrown into the hat. A solemn stillness reigned.

At the expiration of two long minutes Grosbois exclaimed:

"Well, you must make up your minds. Who begins?"

No one stirred. The night deepened, and the hat seemed to grow larger

in the gloom.

"By order of seniority, eh?" proposed the surveyor. "You begin,

Hyacinthe, you're the eldest."

Hyacinthe, the amiable, came forward, but he lost his balance, and all

but fell sprawling. He had violently shoved his fist into the hat as

though with the purpose of extracting a mass of rock from it. When he

had secured one of the tickets, he had to go to the window to see.

"Two!" cried he, evidently finding something exceedingly humorous in

the figure, for he choked with laughter.

"Your turn, Fanny," now called Grosbois.

When Fanny had got her hand to the bottom, she did not hurry. She

fumbled about, stirred the papers round, and seemed to weigh them one

after the other.

"Picking and choosing's not allowed," said Buteau, savagely. He was

suffocating with passion, and had turned pale on ascertaining the

number drawn by his brother.

"Eh? Why not?" replied Fanny. "I'm not looking; surely I may feel."

"Get on," murmured the father; "there's nothing to choose between 'em;

one's as heavy as the other."

At last she made up her mind, and ran to the window.

"One!"

"Well, then, Buteau has number three," resumed Fouan. "Draw it, my boy."

In the growing darkness they had not seen how the face of the young man

changed. He burst out in wrath:

"Never, never!"

"What?"

"If you think I'm going to assent to this, you're wrong! The third

lot, eh? The bad one! I told you over and over again that I wanted

a different division. But you pooh-pooh'd me! Besides, can't I see

through your trickery? Oughtn't the youngest to have drawn first? No, I

won't draw, since there's been cheating!"

The parents gazed at his wild movements as he gesticulated and stamped

about.

"My poor boy, you're going crazy," said Rose.

"Oh, yes, mamma, I know well enough you never liked me. You'd strip

the skin off my back to give it to my brother. You'd all of you eat me

alive."

Fouan sternly interrupted him. "Enough of this folly! Will you draw?"

"It'll have to be done all over again."

At this there was a general protest. Hyacinthe and Fanny clutched

their papers as if a forcible attempt were being made upon them.

Delhomme declared that the drawing had been fair, and Grosbois, much

aggrieved, threatened to leave if his honesty were called in question.

"Then papa shall add a thousand francs to my share out of his hoard,"

said Buteau.

The old man, taken aback for an instant, stammered. Then he drew

himself up and advanced threateningly.

"What's that you say? So you're anxious to get me assassinated, you

brute? Raze the house to the ground and you won't find a copper. Take

that paper, or, by God, you shall have nothing at all!"

Buteau, with a hardened and obstinate brow, did not quail before his

father's raised fist.

"No!"

An awkward silence again fell. The huge hat was now an encumbrance and

obstruction, with this solitary scrap of paper, which nobody would

touch, inside it. The surveyor, to cut things short, advised the old

man to draw it out himself. He did so, gravely, and went to the light

to read it, as if the number were still unknown.

"Three! You've the third lot, d'ye hear? The deed is ready, and it's

quite certain that Monsieur Baillehache won't alter it, for once done

can't be undone. As you're sleeping here, I give you the night to think

it over in. So that's done with. Let's say no more about it."

Buteau, wrapped in shadow, made no reply. The others noisily assented,

while the mother at last made up her mind to light a candle so as to

lay the cloth.

At that moment Jean, who was coming to meet his comrade, espied two

intertwined shadows watching, from the dark deserted road, the progress

of events at the Fouans. Feathery snow-flakes were beginning to flutter

across the slate-grey sky.

"Oh, Monsieur Jean," said a soft voice, "how you frightened us!"

Then he recognised Françoise's long face and thick lips. She was

nestling against her sister Lise, and had one arm round her waist,

while she leant her head on her shoulder. The two sisters adored each

other, and were always seen about like this, hanging on each other's

neck. Lise taller, and of pleasant aspect, despite her large features

and the incipient development of her whole plump person, bore her

misfortune with equanimity.

"You were spying, eh?" Jean inquired gaily.

"Why, what's going on in there has an interest for me," replied Lise,

freely and openly. "It's a point whether it will make Buteau come to a

decision."

Françoise, with her other arm, had now caressingly encircled her

sister's swollen figure.

"What a shame, the brute! When he's got some land, p'raps he'll be

looking out for some one better off."

But Jean gave them hope. The drawing of the lots must have come to an

end, and the rest was matter of arrangement. When he told them he was

to sup at the old folks' house, Françoise added, as she turned away:

"Well, we shall see you presently; we're going to the evening meeting."

He watched them disappear in the darkness. The snow was thickening and

embroidering their mingled dresses with fine white down.

CHAPTER V.

At seven o'clock, after dinner, the Fouans, Buteau, and Jean went to

share the cow-house with the two cows which Rose had decided to sell.

The animals, fastened up at the farther end, near the trough, kept

the closed shed warm with the powerful exhalation from their bodies

and their litter; whereas the kitchen, containing only three meagre,

smouldering logs, left there after the cooking, was already chilled

by the early November frost. So, in the winter, the evening meeting

was held in the cow-house, on the trampled earth, snugly and warmly,

with no other preparation than carrying in a small round table and a

dozen old chairs. Each neighbour brought a candle in rotation. Tall

shadows flickered over the bare, dust-begrimed walls, reaching up to

the cobwebs on the beams; and from the rear came the warm breath of the

cattle, that lay and chewed the cud.

La Grande was the first to arrive, with a piece of knitting. She never

brought a candle, presuming on her great age, and she was held in such

awe that her brother dared not remind her of the custom. She forthwith

took the best place, drew the candlestick towards her, and kept it to

herself, on the score of her failing eyes. She had rested the stick,

which never left her, against her chair. Glittering flakes of snow were

melting on the bristles which stuck up over her fleshless, bird-like

head.

"It's coming down?" asked Rose.

"It is," she replied in her curt tones. And setting straightway to work

with her knitting, she compressed her thin lips, never prodigal of

speech, and cast a searching glance at Jean and Buteau.

The others made their appearance behind her. First Fanny, her son,

Nénesse--Delhomme never came to the meetings--then, almost immediately,

Lise and Françoise, who laughingly shook off the snow which covered

them. The sight of Buteau made the former faintly blush. He looked at

her unmoved.

"Been all right, Lise, since we last met?"

"Pretty well, thanks."

"Glad to hear it."

Palmyre, meanwhile, had stolen in through the half-open door, and

she was shrinkingly placing herself as far as possible from her

grandmother, the redoubtable La Grande, when a tumult outside made her

start up. Furious stammerings, tears, laughter, and yells were heard.

"Those rascally children are at him again!" cried she.

She had made a spring forward, and opened the door again. With a bold

rush, and growling like a lioness, she rescued her brother Hilarion

from the mischievous clutches of La Trouille, Delphin, and Nénesse.

The last-named had just joined the other two, who were hanging round

the cripple and yelling. Hilarion, breathless and scared, shambled in

on his twisted legs. His hare's lip made him dribble at the mouth.

He stuttered unintelligibly, was decrepit-looking for his age, and

brutishly hideous like the cretin that he was.

He was in a very spiteful mood, quite furious at not being able

to catch and clout the urchins who were teasing him. Once more he

complained that he had been pelted with a volley of snow-balls.

"Oh! what a story!" said La Trouille, with an air of surpassing

innocence. "He's bitten my thumb; look!"

At this Hilarion all but choked in his struggle to get his words out;

while Palmyre soothed him, and, wiping his face with her handkerchief,

called him her darling boy.

"There, that'll do," said Fouan at length. "You ought to be pretty well

able to prevent his catching you. Sit him down, anyhow, and let him

keep quiet. Silence, you brute, or you'll be sent back home with a flea

in your ear."

As the cripple continued to stutter, with the intention of putting

himself in the right, La Grande, with her eyes flashing fire, seized

her stick and brought it down on the table so sharply as to make every

one jump. Palmyre and Hilarion collapsed in affright and stirred no

more.

Then the evening began. The women, gathered round the single candle,

knitted, spun, or did needlework, that they never so much as looked at.

The men, stolid and taciturn, smoked in the rear, while the children

pushed and pinched each other in a corner, amid suppressed giggling.

Sometimes they told stories: that of the Black Pig which guarded a

treasure with a red key in its mouth; or that of the Orleans beast,

which had a man's face and bat's wings, with hair down to the ground,

two horns, and two tails (one to lay hold with and the other to kill

with), which monster had devoured a Rouen traveller, of whom nothing

remained but his hat and boots.

At other times they told tales about the wolves which, for centuries,

had devastated La Beauce. In days of old, when La Beauce, now stripped

and bare, had a few clumps of trees left out of its primeval forests,

countless packs of wolves, urged by hunger, issued forth in winter time

to prey upon the flocks. Women and children were devoured, and the old

country-folk remembered how, in heavy falls of snow, the wolves would

enter the towns. At Cloyes, they would be heard howling in the Place

Saint-Georges; at Rognes, they would sniff round the imperfectly closed

doors of the cow-houses and sheep-pens. Then came a succession of

hackneyed anecdotes: of the miller surprised by five large wolves, and

putting them to flight by lighting a match; of the little girl chased

for two leagues by a she-wolf, and eaten up just at her own door, where

she tripped and fell; legends upon legends of wer-wolves, men changed

to animals, who leaped upon the necks of belated travellers, and ran

them to death.

But what froze the blood of the girls gathered round the slim

candle, what made them take wildly to flight and scan the darkness

apprehensively as they left the house, was the villany of the

_Chauffeurs_,[4] the notorious Orgères band of sixty years ago, at the

thought of which the whole country-side still trembled.

There were hundreds of them, tramps, beggars, deserters, spurious

pedlars--men, women, and children, all living by robbery, murder, and

debauchery. They were the descendants of the old armed and disciplined

troops of brigands, and, taking advantage of the revolutionary

disturbances, they laid formal siege to lonely houses, into which they

burst like bomb-shells, breaking the doors in with battering-rams. When

night came on, they issued forth like wolves from the forest of Dourdan

and the copses of La Conie, the wooded lairs wherein they lurked; and,

with the darkening shadows, terror fell upon the farmers of La Beauce,

from Etampes to Châteaudun, and from Chartres to Orleans.

Of their many legendary atrocities, the one which was most popular

at Rognes was the pillage of the Millouard farm, only a few leagues

distant, in the Canton of Orgères. Beau-François, their noted

chief, the successor of Fleur d'Epine, had with him that night

his lieutenant, Rouge d'Auneau, Grand-Dragon, Breton-le-cul-sec,

Lonjumeau, Sans-Pouce, and fifty others, all with blackened faces.

First, they bayonetted into the cellar the farm people, the servants,

the waggoners, and the shepherd. Then they "warmed" old Fousset, the

farmer, whom they had kept by himself. Having stretched his feet

over the glowing coals of the fireplace, they set his beard and all

the hair on his body on fire with burning straw. Then they reverted

to his feet, which they notched with the point of a knife for the

flames to penetrate the better. At length the old man, having decided

to reveal where his money was, they let him go and carried off

considerable booty. Fousset, who had strength enough to drag himself to

a neighbouring house, did not die till later on. The tale invariably

concluded with the trial and execution of the Chauffeurs at Chartres,

after they had been betrayed by Borgne-le-Jouy. Eighteen long months

were devoted to preparing the case against the prisoners, and in the

meanwhile sixty-four of the latter died in prison of a plague brought

on by their filthy habits. Still the trial before the Assize Court

dealt with a hundred and fifteen accused, thirty-three of whom were

contumacious; seven thousand eight hundred questions were submitted to

the jury, and finally there were twenty-three condemnations to death.

On the night after the execution, the headsmen of Chartres and Dreux

had a fight over the criminals' clothes, beneath the scaffold still red

with blood.

Fouan, in alluding to a murder Janville way, thus once more recounted

the abominations done at the Millouard farm; and he had got as far as

the song of complaint composed in prison by Rouge d'Auneau, when the

women were alarmed by strange noises in the road--footsteps, struggles,

and oaths. They grew pale, and listened in terrified expectation of

seeing a gang of blackened men come in like bomb-shells. Buteau,

however, bravely went and opened the door.

"Who goes there?"

He at last perceived Bécu and Hyacinthe, who, at the conclusion of a

quarrel with Macqueron, had just left the tavern, carrying with them

the cards and a candle to finish their game elsewhere. They were so

tipsy, and the company had been so frightened, that every one began to

laugh.

"Come in, anyhow, and mind you behave yourself," said Rose, smiling at

her tall vagabond son. "Your children are here, you can take them back

with you."

Hyacinthe and Bécu sat down on the ground near the cows, placed the

candle between them, and went on with their game. "Trump, trump, and

trump!" The conversation had changed; the others were now talking of

the youths in the neighbourhood who had to draw in February for the

conscription--Victor Lengaigne and two others. The women had grown

grave, and spoke slowly and sadly.

"It's no joke," resumed Rose: "no joke for any one."

"War, war!" murmured Fouan. "Oh, the harm it does! It's simply

destruction to culture. When the youths leave us, our best hands go,

as is easily seen when work-time comes. And when they come back, why,

they're altered, and their heart is no longer with the plough. Cholera

even is better than war!"

Fanny left off knitting.

"I won't have Nénesse go," she declared. "Monsieur Baillehache

explained a sort of lottery dodge to us. Several people club together,

each of them lodging in his hands a sum of money, and those who have

unlucky numbers are bought off."

"People must be well off to do that," said La Grande, drily.

Bécu had caught a stray word or so between two tricks.

"War! Heart alive!" said he. "There's nothing like it for making _men_!

When you've not been in it, you can't know. There's nothing like taking

shot and steel as they come! How about yonder, among the blackamoors?"

He winked his left eye, while Hyacinthe simpered knowingly. They had

both served in Algeria, the rural constable in the early days of the

conquest, the other more recently, at the time of the late revolts.

Accordingly, in spite of the difference in period, they had some

reminiscences in common; of Bedouins' ears cut off and strung into

chaplets; of oily-skinned Bedouin women seized behind hedges and corked

up in every orifice. Hyacinthe, in particular, had a tale, which set

the bellies of the peasants shaking with tempestuous laughter, a tale

of a big lemon-coloured cow of a woman whom they had set a-running

quite naked, with a pipe stuck in her.

"Zounds!" resumed Bécu, addressing Fanny: "You want Nénesse to grow up

a girl, then? However, Delphin shall wear regimentals in no time, I

promise you!"

The children had left off playing, and Delphin raised his hard

bullet-like head, already even redolent of the soil.

"Sha'n't!" he said, bluntly and stubbornly.

"Hallo!" rejoined his father, "what's that? I shall have to teach you

what bravery is, my traitor Frenchman."

"I won't go away; I'll stop at home."

The rural constable raised his hand, but was checked by Buteau.

"Let the child alone! He's right. Is he wanted? There are others. Why

on earth should we be supposed to come into this world just to leave

home and go and get our heads broken, on account of a lot of nonsense

we don't care a copper about? I've never left the neighbourhood, and

I'm none the worse for it."

He had, in fact, drawn a lucky number, and was a regular stay-at-home,

attached to the land, and only acquainted with Orleans and Chartres,

never having seen an inch beyond the flat horizon of La Beauce. He

seemed to plume himself on having thus grown in his own soil, with the

limited, lush energy of a tree. He had risen to his feet and the women

were gazing at him.

"When they come back from serving their term, they're all so thin!"

ventured Lise, in an undertone.

"And you, did you go far, corporal?" asked old Rose.

Jean was smoking in silence, like a contemplative young man who

preferred listening. He slowly took his pipe out of his mouth.

"Yes, pretty far, one might say. But not to the Crimea. I was about to

start when Sebastopol was taken. Later on, though, I was in Italy."

"And what's Italy like?"

The question seemed to perplex him. He hesitated, and ransacked his

memory.

"Why, Italy's like home. There's farming there, and woods with rivers.

It's the same everywhere."

"Then you fought?"

"Fought? Rather."

He had again begun to pull at his pipe, and did not hurry himself.

Françoise, who had looked up, remained with her mouth half open,

expecting a story. And, indeed, all of them were interested; La Grande

herself thumped the table afresh to silence Hilarion, who was grunting,

La Trouille having devised a little diversion by slyly sticking a pin

into his arm.

"At Solferino 'twas warm work; yet, gracious! how it rained! I hadn't a

dry thread on me; the water was running down my back and trickling into

my shoes. Wet through we were, and no mistake!"

Everybody still waited, but he said no more about the battle. That was

all he had seen of it. After a minute's silence, however, he resumed in

his matter-of-course way:

"Goodness me! War isn't so bad as people think. The lot falls upon one,

doesn't it? and one must do one's duty. I left the service because I

liked other things better. But it may have its advantages for those who

are sick of their trade, and who feel furious when the foe comes and

tramples on us in France."

"It's a beastly thing, all the same," wound up old Fouan. "Each man

ought to defend his own homestead, and nothing more."

A fresh silence fell. It was very warm, with a damp animal warmth,

accentuated by the strong smell of the litter. One of the two cows

got up and relieved herself, and the dung splashed down softly and

rhythmically. From the gloom of the rafters came the melancholy chirp

of a cricket, and along the walls the lissom fingers of the women,

plying their knitting-needles, played in shadow to and fro, looking

amid the darkness like gigantic spiders.

Palmyre, taking the snuffers to trim the candle with, snuffed it so low

as to extinguish it. A tumult followed. The girls laughed, the children

stuck their pin into poor Hilarion's buttocks; and the meeting would

have been quite upset if the candle brought by Hyacinthe and Bécu, who

were nodding over their cards, had not served to re-kindle the other

one, despite its long wick, which had swollen at the top into a kind of

red mushroom. Conscience-stricken at her awkwardness, Palmyre quaked

like a naughty child in terror of the lash.

"Come," said Fouan, "who will read us a bit of this, to finish the

evening? Corporal, _you_ ought to read print very well, now!"

He had been to fetch a greasy little book, one of the books of

Bonapartist propaganda with which the Empire had flooded the

country-side. It had come out of a pedlar's pack, and was a violent

onslaught upon the old monarchy: a dramatised history of the peasant

before and since the Revolution, with the lament-like title of "The

Misfortune and Triumph of Jacques Bonhomme."

Jean had taken the book, and instantly, without waiting to be pressed,

he began to read in a colourless, stumbling, schoolboy tone, heedless

of punctuation. They listened to him devoutly.

He started with the free Gaul reduced to slavery by the Romans, and

then vanquished by the Franks, who transformed slaves into serfs, by

establishing the feudal system. Then began the protracted martyrdom

of Jacques Bonhomme, tiller of the soil, slave-driven and worked to

death, century after century. Many towns-people revolted, founding

corporations and acquiring the right of citizenship, but the enthralled

peasantry, isolated and dispossessed of everything, only managed to

free themselves at a later period, buying their manhood and their

liberty for money. And what a delusive liberty it was! They were

overwhelmed by exorbitant and ruinous taxes; their rights of ownership

were ceaselessly called into question, and the soil was burdened with

so many charges as to leave one merely flints to feed upon! Next began

the terrible enumeration of the impositions that lay so heavy on the

poor peasant No one could draw up a full and accurate list, the taxes

poured in so abundantly from king, bishop, and baron all at once. Three

beasts of prey tore at the same carcase. The king had the poll-tax and

tallage, the bishop the tithes, the baron laid a tax on everything, and

turned everything into gold. The peasant had nothing left him to call

his own--neither earth, water, fire, nor even the air he breathed. He

paid for this, and he paid for that; paid to live, paid to die; paid

for his contracts, flocks, business, and pleasure. Paid for having the

rain-water from the ditches diverted on to his grounds; paid for the

highway dust kicked up by his sheep in the drought of summer. Who ever

could not pay was obliged to give his body and his time, taxable and

taskable without limit; forced to till the soil, to garner and reap,

to trim the vines, clean out the château moat, make and repair the

roads. Then there were the dues in kind; and the manor mill, oven, and

wine-press, where he was forced to leave a quarter of his crop; and

the imposition of watch and ward, which survived in money even after

the demolition of the feudal keeps; and the imposition of shelter

and purveyance, which, whenever the king or baron passed by, sacked

the cottages, dragged mattresses and coverlets from beds, and drove

the owner out of his house--lucky not to have his doors and windows

torn from their fastenings if he were at all dilatory in turning out.

But the most execrated imposition, the remembrance of which still

rankled in the hamlets, was the salt-tax; with public store-houses

for salt, and every family rated at a certain quantity, which they

were, willy-nilly, compelled to purchase of the king; and the system

of collection was so iniquitous and despotic that it roused France to

rebellion and drowned her in blood.

"My father," interrupted Fouan, "saw the time when salt was ninepence a

pound. Truly, times were hard."

Hyacinthe sniggered in his sleeve, and endeavoured to lay stress upon

those indelicate rights to which the little book merely made a modest

allusion.

"And how about the bridal rights, eh? My word! The baron popped his

legs into the bride's bed on the wedding night; and----"

They silenced him. The girls, even Lise, notwithstanding her rotundity

of form, had reddened deeply; while La Trouille and the two brats,

with their eyes turned downwards, were stuffing their fists into

their mouths to restrain their laughter. Hilarion drank in every word

open-mouthed, as if he understood it all.

Jean went on. He had now got to the administration of justice, the

three-fold justice of king, bishop, and lord, which racked the poor

folk toiling on the glebe. There was common law, there was statute law,

and, above all, there was the arbitrary right of might. No safeguard,

no appeal against the all-powerful sword. Even in the ages which

followed, when equity put in a protest, judgeships were bought, and

justice was sold. Worse still was the recruiting system: a blood-tax

which, for a long time, was only levied upon the inferior rural

classes. They fled into the woods, but were driven thence in chains,

with musket-stocks, and enrolled like galley-slaves. Promotion was

denied them. A younger son, nobly born, dealt in regiments as in goods

he had paid for; sold the smaller posts to the highest bidder, and

drove the rest of his human cattle to the shambles. Lastly came the

hunting rights, rights of dove-cot and warren, which even now, although

abolished, have left a fierce resentment in the peasant's heart. The

chase was an hereditary madness: an old feudal prerogative authorising

the lord to hunt here and everywhere, and punishing with death the

vassal audacious enough to hunt over his own ground. It was the caging

under the open sky of the free beast and bird for the pleasure of one

man. It was the grouping of fields into hunting-captaincies ravaged by

game, without it being lawful for the peasant to bring down so much as

a sparrow.

"That's intelligible," muttered Bécu, who would have fired at a poacher

as soon as at a rabbit.

Hyacinthe had pricked up his ears, now that the hunting question was

dealt with, and he slily whistled, as if to say that game belonged to

those who knew how to kill it.

"Ah! dear me!" said Rose, simply, fetching a deep sigh.

They all felt the need of similar relief. The reading was gradually

bearing heavy upon them, with the oppressive weight of a ghost story.

Nor did they always understand, which doubled their uneasiness. Things

having gone on like that in olden times, might easily become the same

again.

"Go on, poor Jacques Bonhomme," read Jean in his drawling, schoolboy

way: "shedding your sweat and blood; you are not yet through your

troubles."

And the peasant's Calvary was set forth. Everything was a source of

suffering to him: mankind, the elements, his own self. Under the feudal

system, when the nobles sallied forth to seek their prey, it was he who

was hunted, tracked down, and made booty of. Every private war between

lord and lord ruined if it did not slay him; his hut was burnt, his

field laid waste. Later on came the "great companies,"--the worst of

all the scourges that ever made our country districts desolate,--bands

of adventurers at the beck and call of any one who would pay them;

now for France, now against her, marking their passage with fire and

sword, and leaving only bare earth behind them. The towns, thanks to

their walls, might hold out, but the villages were swept away in that

murderous madness which pervaded the centuries from end to end. There

were centuries steeped in blood--centuries during which our unfortified

districts never ceased to moan with pain: women were violated,

children crushed to death, men hanged. Then, when war gave over, the

king's tax collectors made provision for the continued torture of the

poor; for the number and the magnitude of the taxes were nothing in

comparison to the wonderful and fearful method of their collection.

Villain-tax and salt-tax were farmed out; injustice presided over the

distribution of all the impositions; armed troops extorted payment of

treasury-dues in the same way as one might raise a contribution of

war. Insomuch that scarcely any of the money ever reached the State

coffers, being appropriated on its way, and dwindling more and more

at every fresh pair of pilfering hands it passed through. Then famine

interposed. The tyrannical folly of the law, causing the stagnation

of commerce and preventing the free sale of grain, produced terrible

dearths every ten years or so, whenever the season was too hot or

the rains were too prolonged,--dearths which seemed chastisements

of Heaven. A storm flushing the rivers, a dry spring, the smallest

cloud, the slightest sunbeam that marred the crops laid thousands

of human beings low, involving agonies of starvation, a sudden and

general rise of prices, and periods of awful anguish, during which men

browsed like brute beasts on the grass of the ditches. After war and

famine, fatal epidemics set in, and killed those whom the sword and

hunger had spared. Corruption ever sprang forth anew from ignorance

and uncleanliness: there was the great Black Death, whose gigantic

spectre looms above the old time, mowing down with its sickle the wan,

melancholy dwellers in the country districts.

Then his burden being greater than he could bear, Jacques Bonhomme

revolted. Behind him lay centuries of terrified submission, his

shoulders inured to the last, his spirit so crushed that he felt

not his own degradation. It was possible to beat and beat him; to

famish him, and rob him of all he had, without rousing him from the

timid stupor into which he had sunk, pondering confused thoughts that

signified nothing even to himself. But some last injustice, some

last anguish, made him suddenly spring at his master's throat like

a maddened, over-beaten domestic animal. So for ever, from century

to century, the same exasperation bursts forth, and the Jacquerie

arms the tillers of the soil with pitchfork and bill-hook, as soon

as they have nothing left them but to die. There were the Christian

"Bagandes" of Gaul, the "Pastoureaux" of the Crusades, and in later

times the "Croquants" and "Nu-pieds" who fell upon the nobles and royal

soldiers. After four hundred years the cry of the Jacques, in their

pain and wrath, was again to sweep over the desolate fields, and make

the masters quake in their castle strongholds. What if they once more

became angry, they who had numbers on their side? What if they claimed

their share of worldly joy? And the vision of old sweeps by: sturdy,

half-clad, tattered hordes, mad with brutality and lust, spreading

ruin and destruction, as they too had been ruined and destroyed, and

violating in their turn the wives of others.

"Calm thyself, dweller in the fields," pursued Jean, in his placid,

sedulous style, "for thy hour of triumph will soon strike from the

clock of history."

Buteau had brusquely shrugged his shoulders. A pretty piece of work,

revolting. To be laid hold of by gendarmes. Oh, yes! All the others,

moreover, since the little book had begun to relate their forefathers'

risings, had listened with downcast eyes, not venturing on the least

gesture, but full of mistrust although at home. These were things no

one ought to talk about openly; no one need know what they thought on

the subject. Hyacinthe, having tried to interrupt, announcing that

he would shortly be at the throats of more than one, Bécu violently

declared that all Republicans were pigs, and Fouan had to silence them,

solemnly, with the subdued gravity of an old man who knows a thing or

two but won't speak. La Grande, while the other women seemed to become

more interested than ever in their knitting, observed: "What one has

one keeps"--a remark which did not appear to have any connection with

what was being read. Françoise alone, her work dropping on her lap,

gazed at Corporal, amazed at his reading so long without making a

mistake.

"Ah, dear me! Dear me!" repeated Rose, sighing more deeply.

The style of the book changed. It became lyrical, and magniloquently

celebrated the Revolution. 'Twas then, in the apotheosis of '89, that

Jacques Bonhomme triumphed. After the taking of the Bastille, while

the peasants burned the châteaux, the night of the 4th of August

legalised the conquests of centuries by recognising the freedom of

man and the equality of civil rights. "In one night, the ploughman

had become the equal of the lord who, by virtue of his parchments,

had drunk the peasant's sweat and devoured the fruits of his toilsome

nights." Abolition of serfdom, of all the privileges of the nobles, of

the ecclesiastical and manorial courts of justice; the re-purchase of

vested rights, the equalisation of taxation, the admission of every

citizen to all civil or military offices--so the list went on. The

evils of the old life seemed to vanish one by one. It was the hosanna

of a new golden age dawning for the ploughman, who was made the subject

of a whole pageful of eulogy, and hailed as king and foster-father of

the world. He only was of importance: down on your knees before his

holy plough! The horrors of '93 were stigmatised in burning words, and

the book wound up with a high-flown panegyric on Napoleon, the child of

the Revolution, who had succeeded in "extricating it from the grooves

of License, to ensure the happiness of the rural districts."

"That's true!" from Bécu, as Jean turned to the last page.

"Yes, that's true," said old Fouan. "We had fine times of it, I can

tell you, when I was young. I saw Napoleon once, at Chartres. I was

twenty. We were free; we had land; it was first-rate! I mind how my

father once said that he sowed coppers and reaped crowns. Then we had

Louis XVIII., Charles X., and Louis Philippe. Things still went on; we

had enough to eat, and couldn't complain. And now we've got Napoleon

III., and things weren't so bad, either, up to last year. Only----"

He meant to break off, but the words forced their way.

"Only, what the odds does it make to Rose and me, their liberty and

their equality? Are we any the fatter for it, after toiling and moiling

for fifty years?"

Then, in a few slow and hesitating words, he unwittingly summed up the

whole of this tale. The soil so long tilled for the lord's benefit by

the cudgelled and naked slave, whose skin was not even his own--the

soil, fertilised by his efforts, passionately loved and desired during

close constant intimacy, like another man's wife, whom one tends,

embraces, but must not possess--the soil, after centuries of such

longing torment, at length taken full possession of, becoming one's

own, a love-dalliance and life-spring. This desire of ages, this hope

constantly delayed, explained the peasant's love for his field, his

passion for land, for the utmost quantity possible, for the loamy

soil, palpable to the touch, and poiseable in the palm of the hand.

And yet the indifference and ingratitude of this earth! Worship it as

you would, it never warmed nor produced one grain the more. Too much

rain rotted the seeds, hail ravaged the green wheat, a thunderstorm

laid the stalks low, two months' drought shrivelled the ears: and what

with devouring insects, nipping frosts, cattle plagues, and leprosies

of noxious weeds, everything conspired to bring ruin; the struggle was

a daily one, every mistake a danger, one's faculties were ever at full

stretch. Surely he had never hung back; had worked body and soul, and

had maddened to find his toil insufficient. He had withered his sinews,

had withheld nothing of himself from this soil that, after having

barely fed him, left him wretched, unsated, ashamed of his senile

impotence, to seek the arms of another, without so much as a pitying

thought for those poor bones of his that would soon be earth.

"And that's where it is!" went on the old fellow. "In youth we're

always hard at it; and, having contrived with great difficulty to make

both ends meet, we find ourselves old, and have to quit. Isn't it so,

Rose?"

The mother bent her trembling head. Great heaven, yes! She, too, had

worked harder than a man, for certain. Rising before the rest of the

household, getting the meals, sweeping, scouring, wearing herself out

over a thousand duties--the cows, the pigs, the baking--and always the

last in bed. She must have had a strong constitution not to have broken

down altogether, and her only reward was to have lived her life. One

got nothing but wrinkles, and one was lucky if, after pinching and

screwing, after going to bed in the dark and putting up with bread and

water, one saved just enough to keep the wolf from the door in one's

old age.

"All the same," resumed Fouan, "we mustn't complain. I've heard tell

there are districts where the land gives a deal more trouble. Thus, in

Le Perche, there's nought but flintstones. In La Beauce, the ground

is still soft, and only wants good, steady work. But it's spoiling.

It's certainly less fertile than formerly, and fields that once gave

crops of seven quarters now yield little more than five. And for a year

past the prices have been going down. They say that corn is coming in

from savage parts. There's some mischief brewing--a crisis, as they

say. Is misfortune ever at an end? This universal suffrage, now, it

don't bring meat to the pot, does it? The land tax weighs us down,

they keep on taking our children away to fight. It's not a bit of use

having revolutions, it's six of one and half a dozen of the other, and

a peasant always remains a peasant."

The methodical Jean had been waiting to finish his reading. Silence

being re-established, he went on softly:

"Happy husbandman, forsake not the village for the town; where

everything--milk, meat, vegetables--must be bought, and where you

would always spend more than necessary, because of the opportunities

offered. Have you not fresh air and sunshine, healthy toil, and honest

joys in the village? Rural life is peerless; far from gilded pomp, you

enjoy true happiness; in proof thereof, do not the town artisans go for

jaunts into the country, just as the tradesman's one dream is to seek

retirement near you, culling flowers, eating fruit off the tree, and

gambolling on the sward. Be sure, Jacques Bonhomme, that money is but a

chimera. If your bosom be at peace, your fortune is made."

Jean's voice faltered. He was fain to repress his emotion, this big,

tender-hearted, town-bred fellow, whose soul was touched by these

pictures of rustic bliss. The others remained gloomy; the women bending

over their needles, the men stolid and moody. Was the book making game

of them? Money was the only desirable thing, and they were starving in

penury. As the young fellow found this silence--heavy with suffering

and spleen--rather oppressive, he ventured on a sage reflection:

"Anyhow, things would, perhaps, be better with education. People were

wretched in former times because they knew nothing. Now-a-days we know

a little, and times are certainly easier. So the thing is to be taught

thoroughly, and have schools of agriculture."

Fouan, an old fogey averse to new-fangled ways, interrupted him

violently:

"Come, hang you and your science! The more a man knows the worse he

gets on. I tell you the land gave a better yield fifty years ago! It

gets angry at being worried so, and never gives more than it chooses,

the beggar! Hasn't Monsieur Hourdequin run through his own weight in

silver, pottering about with new inventions? No, no; a peasant is bound

to remain a peasant, that's flat!"

Ten o'clock was striking, and after this conclusive remark, as weighty

as the chop of an axe, Rose got up to fetch a pot of chestnuts, which

she had left in the hot ashes in the kitchen. This was the usual treat

on All Hallow E'en. She even brought two quarts of white wine to make

the festival complete. Thenceforward stories were forgotten, the fun

grew fast and furious, and nails and teeth alike were busy extracting

the steaming boiled chestnuts from their husks.

La Grande at once pocketed her share, as she was slower at eating

than the others. Bécu and Hyacinthe gulped theirs down, skin and all,

pitching them into their mouths from a distance; while Palmyre, grown

bold, cleaned hers with extreme care, and stuffed Hilarion with them,

as if he were a fowl. As for the children, they "made pudding." La

Trouille dug one tooth into the chestnut, and then squeezed it so as

to cause a thin stream to spurt out, which Delphin and Nénesse licked

up. This being very nice, Lise and Françoise decided to do the same.

Then the candle was snuffed for the last time, and glasses were clinked

to the good fellowship of all present. The heat had increased; a ruddy

vapour rose from the liquid manure; the cricket chirped more loudly in

the great shifting shadows of the rafters; and, so that the cows might

join in the festivities, they were given some husks, which they munched

with a subdued and measured noise.

Finally, at half-past ten, the party broke up. First of all Fanny led

Nénesse away. Then Hyacinthe and Bécu went out quarrelling, the outer

cold bringing on a relapse of intoxication; and La Trouille and Delphin

were soon heard sustaining their respective parents, prodding them

and restoring them to the right path, as if they were restive animals

forgetful of the way to the stables. Every time the door swung to, an

icy gust blew in from the snow-white road. La Grande did not hurry at

all, as she twisted her handkerchief round her neck and pulled on her

mittens. Not a glance did she vouchsafe towards Palmyre and Hilarion,

who slunk timidly away, shivering in their rags; but, eventually

betaking herself back to her home, which was adjacent, she slammed the

door violently after her. There only remained Françoise and Lise.

"I say, Corporal," asked Fouan, "you'll see them on their way as you

go back to the farm, won't you? It's on your way."

Jean nodded assent, while the two girls were wrapping their shawls

round their heads.

Buteau had got up and was pacing to and fro in the cow-house, grim,

restless, and pre-occupied. Since the reading he had been silent, as

if engrossed by the book's tales about the laboriously acquired land.

Why not have the whole? A division had become intolerable to him. And

there were other things besides confusedly jostling each other within

his thick skull: wrath, pride, a dogged resolve to keep to his word,

the exasperated craving of the man who would like, and yet will not,

for fear of being taken advantage of. However, he abruptly came to a

decision.

"I am going up to bed. Good-bye!" he said.

"How good-bye?"

"I shall start for La Chamade before daybreak. Good-bye, in case I

don't see you again."

His father and mother, shoulder to shoulder, had planted themselves in

front of him.

"Well, and your share?" said Fouan. "Do you accept it?"

Buteau walked as far as the door, then, turning round:

"No!" he replied.

The old peasant trembled in every limb. He drew himself up to his full

height, and his ancient authority flashed forth for the last time.

"Very good. You are a wicked son. I shall give your brother and sister

their shares, and shall let them farm yours; and when I die, I shall

arrange for them to keep it. You shall have nothing. Be off with you!"

Buteau did not flinch from his rigid attitude. Then Rose, in her turn,

tried to soothe him.

"Why, you are just as much cared for as the others, silly! You're only

quarrelling with your bread and butter. Accept!"

"No!" And then off he went, going up to bed.

Outside, Lise and Françoise, aghast at the scene, walked a few steps in

silence. They had again taken one another's waist, and their figures

mingled, looking quite black against the snow which glimmered through

the night. Jean, who followed them, also in silence, presently heard

them crying. He then tried to cheer them up.

"Come, come, he'll think better of it; he'll say yes to-morrow."

"Ah, you don't know him!" cried Lise. "He'd be cut to pieces sooner

than give way. No, no, it's all over!"

Then, despairingly, she added:

"What _shall_ I do with his child?"

"Well, it'll have to come any way," murmured Françoise.

This made them laugh. But their spirits were too low, and they began to

cry again.

When Jean had seen them to their door he made the best of his way

across the plain. It had left off snowing; the sky was once more clear

and bright; a wide, star-spangled, frosty sky it was, shedding a

crystalline blue light; and La Beauce extended afar, quite white, and

level and still like a sea of ice. Not a breath came from the distant

horizon; he heard nothing but the tramp of his own thick shoes on

the hard soil. 'Twas a deep calm, the peacefulness of the cold. All

that Jean had read was whirling in his brain. He took off his cap to

cool himself, feeling an oppression behind his ears, and wishing to

escape from thought. The idea of that girl with child and her sister

annoyed him too. The tramp of his thick shoes still rang out. Then

a shooting-star started down the sky, furrowing it with fire in its

silent flight.

Over there, the farm of La Borderie was vanishing from sight, hardly

forming as much as a bump on the white expanse of snow; and as soon as

Jean had entered the cross-path, he remembered the field he had sown

in the vicinity some days before. Looking to the left, he recognised

it under the winding-sheet that covered it. The layer of snow, of the

lightness and purity of ermine, was a thin one, leaving the crests of

the furrows apparent, and but imperfectly veiling the earth's benumbed

limbs. How soundly must the seeds be sleeping! How deep a rest in those

icy flanks until the warm morn, when the Spring sun would again awaken

them to life!

PART II.

CHAPTER I.

It was four o'clock; the dawn was barely breaking: the pink dawn of

early May. Under the glimmering sky the buildings of La Borderie still

slept, half in gloom: three long buildings on three sides of the

vast square yard, the sheep-cot at the end, the barns on the right,

the cow-house, stable, and dwelling-house on the left. Closing the

fourth side, the cart-entrance was shut, and secured by an iron bar.

On the manure-pit a big solitary yellow cock sounded the reveille in

brilliant, clarion tones. A second cock made answer, then a third, and

thus the call was caught up and passed on from farm to farm throughout

the length and breadth of La Beauce.

On that night, as on most other nights, Hourdequin had joined

Jacqueline in her bedroom, a little servant's room that he had allowed

her to embellish with flowered wall-paper, chintz curtains, and

mahogany furniture. Despite her growing power, she had encountered

violent opposition whenever she had made an attempt to share with him

the room formerly occupied by his deceased wife, the conjugal chamber

which he protected out of some remnant of respect. She was much hurt at

this, understanding that she would never be the real mistress until she

slept in the old oak bedstead with red cotton hangings.

Jacqueline awoke at early dawn and lay on her back, with her eyelids

wide open, while the farmer was still snoring beside her. Amid the

exciting warmth of the bed, her black eyes were still dreamy, and her

nude, slim, girlish form was throbbing. Nevertheless, she hesitated;

then, making up her mind, she lightly stepped across her master--moving

so lightly and so deftly that he did not feel her--and noiselessly

slipped on a petticoat with hands feverish with her sudden desire.

However, as she happened to knock against a chair, he, in his turn,

opened his eyes.

"Why, you're dressing! Where are you going?"

"I'm anxious about the bread, and am going to look at it."

Hourdequin dozed off again, mumbling, astonished at the excuse and

with his brain at work amid his drowsiness. What an odd notion. The

bread didn't need her at that time in the morning. And, goaded by a

sharp suspicion, he all at once became wide awake. Amazed at seeing her

no longer there, he gazed wanderingly round this servant's room, at his

slippers, his pipe, and his razor. What! another freak of passion of

that baggage for some farm hand? During the couple of minutes he needed

to recover himself, he took a retrospect of the past.

His father, Isidore Hourdequin, was the descendant of an old peasant

family of Cloyes, refined and raised to the middle classes in the

sixteenth century. All of them had held posts in the salt-revenue: one

had been granary-keeper at Chartres; another, controller at Châteaudun;

and Isidore possessed some sixty thousand francs when, at twenty-six

years of age, on being deprived of his office by the Revolution, he

conceived the idea of making a fortune out of the thefts of those

scoundrelly republicans who offered the national property for sale.

He had an admirable knowledge of the district, he sniffed round, made

calculations, and at last paid thirty thousand francs--a bare fifth

of the true value--for the three hundred and seventy acres of La

Borderie, which was all that remained of the ancient demesne of the

Rognes-Bouquevals. Not a single peasant had dared to risk his crowns;

only townsfolk, pettifoggers, and financiers derived profit from the

Revolutionary proceedings. Besides, it was purely a speculation,

for Isidore had no intention of encumbering himself with a farm.

He reckoned confidently on selling it at its full value when the

disturbances were over, and thus getting his money back five-fold. But

the Directory came on, and the depreciation of property continued; so

that he could not sell to the expected advantage. His land held him

in its grasp, and he became its prisoner; insomuch that, obstinately

unwilling to let any of it go, he resolved to farm it himself, in

the hope of thus at last realising his dreams of fortune. About this

time he married the daughter of a neighbouring farmer who brought him

a hundred and twenty acres, so that he now owned some five hundred;

and it was thus that this townsman, sprung three centuries previously

from a peasant stock, returned to tillage. To tillage on a large

scale, however; to the landed aristocracy that had replaced the old

all-powerful feudalism.

Alexander Hourdequin, his only son, was born in 1804. He had commenced

his studies, discreditably enough, at the college of Châteaudun. He had

a passion for land, and decided to return home and help his father,

disappointing another dream of the latter, who, finding his fortune

advance but slowly, would have liked to sell everything off and start

his son in some liberal profession. The young man was twenty-seven,

when, on the death of his father, he became master of La Borderie. He

was a champion of new methods; his first care, in marrying, was to look

out, not for property but for money, for, according to him, if the farm

stagnated, the fault lay in lack of capital. The dower he desired,

amounting to fifty thousand francs, was brought him by a sister of

the notary, Baillehache, a ripe damsel, his senior by five years,

extremely ugly, but good-tempered. Then began a long struggle between

the farmer and his property; at first a prudent one, but gradually

made feverish by mistakes: a struggle renewed every season, every day,

which, without making him rich, enabled him to lead the broad life of

a big full-blooded man, resolved to deny himself no gratification. For

several years things went from bad to worse. His wife had presented him

with two children: a boy who had enlisted out of distaste for farming,

and who had been made a captain after Solferino; and a delicate,

charming girl, the apple of his eye, and the heiress of La Borderie,

now that his ungrateful son had become a soldier of fortune. But he

lost his wife, and, two months later, his daughter. This was a terrible

shock. The captain had left off coming to La Borderie save once a year,

and the father all at once found himself alone in the world, without a

future, without the stimulus of working for his progeny. But bleed as

the wound might internally, he remained outwardly erect, violent, and

overbearing. Before the peasantry, who sneered at his machines, and

longed for the fall of this middle-class man that presumed to dabble

in their occupation, he stood firm. Besides, what could he do? He was

ever the closer prisoner of his land. The accumulated labour, and the

capital sunk, shut him in more tightly every day, and left him no

possible outlet but through disaster.

Hourdequin, square shouldered, broad and florid in face, retaining

no other token of middle-class refinement than his small hands, had

always been despotically virile towards his female servants. Even in

his wife's time he had ravished them all, as a mere matter-of-course,

a thing of no further importance. If those daughters of poor peasants

that take to dressmaking occasionally avoid a fall, not one of those

that take service in farms escape man: servant or master. Madame

Hourdequin was still alive when Jacqueline was engaged, out of charity,

at La Borderie. Cognet, an old drunkard, used to beat her black and

blue; and she was so wizened and scraggy that the bones of her body

showed through her rags. Moreover, she was of such reputed ugliness

that children used to hoot at her. She would have been taken for under

twelve, though in reality she was then nearly eighteen. She helped

the servant, and was employed in menial work--in washing up, sweeping

the yard, and keeping the live-stock clean--and she became more and

more grimy, as if dirt were a delight to her. After the death of the

mistress, however, she seemed to get a bit cleaner. All the servants

used to turn her up in the straw: not a man came to the farm without

doing what he chose with her; and one day, as she went down with her

master into the cellar, he also, though previously disdainful, tried

to see what the ill-favoured slattern was like. But she resisted

furiously, and scratched and bit him so effectually that he was obliged

to let her go.

From that moment her fortune was made. She resisted for six months,

and then yielded herself up, a little bit at a time. From the yard

she rose to the kitchen as servant proper; next she engaged a girl as

help; then, grown quite the lady, she had a maid of her own. Now the

little scullion had become a stylish, pretty-looking girl, extremely

dark, with a firm breast and strong supple limbs, such as develop in

those previously made unduly thin by hardship. She became coquettish

and extravagant, smothering herself with all sorts of scents, but

retaining withal a leaven of uncleanliness. The people of Rognes, the

neighbouring farmers, were none the less amazed at the intrigue. Was

it actually possible that a man of substance should take a fancy to a

wench like that, neither beautiful nor plump--in short, "La Cognette,"

the daughter of that drunkard Cognet, who might have been seen for

the last twenty years breaking stones on the public highway! A fine

papa-in-law! And a pretty piece of goods she was! The peasants did not

even comprehend that this "piece of goods" was their vengeance, the

revenge of the village upon the farm, of the wretched tiller of the

soil upon the enriched townsman who had become a large landholder.

Hourdequin, at his critical age of fifty-five, gradually became the

slave of his fleshly desires, feeling physical need of Jacqueline, as

one has the physical needs of hunger and thirst. When she chose to be

especially agreeable, she would twine round him cat-like, and satiate

him with unscrupulous, brazen shamelessness, such as courtezans do not

venture upon; and for one of those hours he humbled himself and begged

of her still to stay after quarrels and terrible spasms of resolution,

in which he threatened to kick her out of doors.

Only the evening before he had all but struck her, at the close of a

stormy attempt she had made to sleep in the bed where his wife had

died; and she had refused his embraces all night, beating him away each

time he approached; for, though she constantly indulged herself with

the farm servants, she kept him on short commons, whetting his passion

by abstinence so as to augment her power over him. And thus that

morning, in that moist room, in that tumbled bed where her presence

still breathed, anger and desire again seized hold of him. He had long

had scent of her many infidelities, and now he leapt out of bed, crying

aloud: "The strumpet! If I only catch her!"

He dressed rapidly and went down stairs.

Jacqueline had flitted through the silent house in the first faint

glimmer of dawn. As she crossed the yard she gave a start on seeing

the old shepherd, Soulas, already up. But her desire was so strong

that she paid no heed. So much the worse! She slipped past the stable,

accommodating fifteen horses, where four of the farm waggoners slept,

and made for the garret at the end where Jean had his bed--some straw

and a coverlet, but no sheets. Embracing him in his sleep, closing his

mouth with a kiss to stifle his cry of surprise, palpitating and out of

breath, she whispered:

"It's me, you big stupid! Don't be alarmed. Quick, quick; let's make

haste!"

But he took fright. He wouldn't, there, in his own bed, for fear of

a surprise. The ladder of the loft was near there, however, so they

climbed up, leaving the trap-door open, and fell amid the hay.

"Oh, you big stupid! you big stupid!" repeated Jacqueline in ecstacy,

with her coo in the throat, which seemed to rise from her loins.

It was near upon two years since Jean Macquart had come to the farm.

On leaving the army he had fallen in, at Bazoches-le-Doyen, with a

fellow-soldier--a cabinetmaker like himself--at the house of whose

father, a small village contractor and builder employing two or three

hands, he had resumed his calling. But his heart was no longer in his

work. Seven years of service had put his hand out of practice, and

had so set him against the saw and plane that he seemed a different

being. Formerly, at Plassans, he stayed hard at work on his wood,

without aptitude for book-learning, just knowing the three R's,

but yet very reflective and very painstaking, resolved on making

himself independent of his horrible family. Old Macquart kept him in

leading-strings, appropriated his mistresses under his very eyes,

and went every Saturday to the door of his workshop to rob him of

his wages. Accordingly, when ill-usage and over-work had killed his

mother, he followed the example of his sister Gervaise--who had just

run off to Paris with a lover--and decamped, so as not to have to

keep his vagabond father. Now he hardly knew himself again; not that

he had grown lazy in his turn, but life in the army had enlarged his

mind. Politics, for instance, which had once bored him, now absorbed

him and led him to reason upon equality and fraternity; so that, what

with habits of mouching, troublesome and indolent sentinel work, a

sleepy life in barracks, and the wild rough-and-tumble of war, he

had so changed that the tools dropped from his hands; he dreamt of

his campaign in Italy; and a yearning for rest, a longing to stretch

himself on the grass and forget everything, benumbed his efforts.

One morning his master installed him at La Borderie, to make some

repairs. There was a good month's work, rooms to floor, doors and

windows to be set right almost everywhere. Jean blissfully dragged

the work on for six weeks. Meanwhile his master died, and the son, a

married man, went off to set up shop in his wife's part of the country.

Left at La Borderie, where rotting wood was always coming to light

and needing attention, the cabinetmaker did several jobs on his own

account; then, as the harvest was beginning, he lent a hand and stayed

six weeks longer; so that, noting his zeal, and how kindly he took

to agriculture, the farmer ended by keeping him altogether. In less

than a year, the ex-artisan became a capital farm servant, carting,

ploughing, sowing, reaping, and seeming to satisfy his desire for

peace in the restfulness of agriculture. Away with saw and plane! His

interest was somewhere else! He seemed born for a field life, with

his sober, deliberate way, his love of systematic work, his ox-like

temperament inherited from his mother. He started on his new career

delightedly with a relish for the country that peasants never know, a

relish due to odds and ends of sentimental reading, and to notions of

simplicity, virtue, and perfect bliss, such as are found in moral tales

for children.

To tell the truth, another cause had kept him, and made him happy

at the farm. While he was mending the doors, La Cognette had made a

display of her charms amid his shavings. The temptation had, indeed,

come from her, for she was attracted by the big fellow's sturdy limbs,

and judged him, by his regular massive features, to be a man of

virility. He yielded; and then continued as he had begun, dreading that

he might be deemed a fool, and tormented, moreover, by a craving for

the licentious hussy, who knew so well how to raise men's passions.

At heart his native honesty made protest. It was dishonourable to

dally with the sweetheart of M. Hourdequin, to whom he owed a debt of

gratitude. Of course he adduced justifications: she wasn't the master's

wife, but only his Poll, and as she played him false here, there,

and everywhere, he might as well profit by it as let others do so.

However, such excuses did not prevent his uneasiness from increasing in

proportion as he saw the farmer grow more and more fascinated. No doubt

it would not end well.

Among the hay Jean and Jacqueline were restraining their breath, when

the former, whose ears were on the alert, heard the frame of the

ladder creak. He leapt up, and, at the risk of his life, dropped down

the opening that was used for throwing fodder down. Hourdequin's head

just then appeared on the other side, on a level with the trap-door.

He saw at the same glance the shadow of the retreating man, and the

woman, still supine, with her legs in the air. Such a fury seized hold

of him, that it never occurred to him to descend in pursuit of the

gallant; but, with a buffet that would have felled an ox, he overturned

Jacqueline, who was now getting up on to her knees again.

"Strumpet!" he shouted.

With a shriek of rage, she denied the evidence.

"It's false!"

He had to exercise all his powers of self-restraint to refrain from

kicking her into a jelly.

"I saw it! Confess it's true, or I'll kill you."

"No, no, no! It's not true."

Then, when at length she had got upon her feet again, she grew insolent

and irritating, resolved to bring her power into full play.

"Besides, what's it got to do with you?" she asked. "Am I your wife? As

you don't choose that I should sleep in your bed, I'm free to lie where

I like."

She spoke with her dove-like coo, as if in lascivious raillery.

"Come, move out of the way! Let me go down. I'll leave this evening."

"This instant!"

"No, this evening. Wait and think it over."

He was left quivering and beyond himself, not knowing on whom to

vent his wrath. Though he no longer had the courage to turn her into

the street forthwith, how gladly would he have kicked her gallant out

of doors. But how was he to catch him now? He had gone straight up

into the loft, guided by the open doors, without examining the beds;

and when he got down again the four waggoners from the stable were

dressing, as was Jean, in his garret. Which of the five had it been?

One as likely as the other, and, perhaps, the whole lot, one after the

other. Nevertheless, he hoped the man would betray himself. Then he

gave his morning orders, sent nobody into the fields, and did not go

out himself, but rambled about the farm with clenched fists, scowling

and hankering after somebody to knock down.

After the seven o'clock breakfast, this exasperated review of the

master's set the whole household in a tremble. At La Borderie there

were five hands for the five ploughs, three threshers, two cow-herds or

yard-men, a shepherd, and a little swine-herd; in all, twelve servants,

without counting the house-maid. Hourdequin began in the kitchen by

abusing the latter, because she hadn't put the baking-shovels back

in their places on the ceiling. Then he prowled into the two barns,

one for oats, the other for wheat, the latter being of immense size,

as large as a church, with doors five yards high; and he picked a

quarrel with the threshers, whose flails, he said, cut up the straw

too much. Then he went through the cow-house, and became furious at

finding the thirty cows in good order, the central passage scoured,

and the troughs clean. He did not know on what ground to fall foul of

the cow-herds, till, glancing outside at the cisterns, which were also

under their charge, he noticed that a discharge-pipe was stopped up by

some sparrows' nests. As in all the Beauce farms, the rain-water from

the slate roofs was here sedulously collected and conducted off by a

complicated system of gutters. So he asked, roughly, if they meant to

let him die of thirst for the benefit of the sparrows. But the storm

finally burst on the waggoners. Although the litters of the fifteen

horses in the stable were clean, he began by bawling out that it was

disgusting to leave them in such filth. Then, ashamed of his own

injustice, and the more exasperated, while paying a visit to the four

sheds at the four corners of the farm buildings, where the implements

were kept, he was delighted to find a plough with its handles broken.

Then he regularly stormed. Did the five beggars amuse themselves by

breaking his stock on purpose? He'd send the whole five of them about

their business; yes, the whole five of them! He'd have no invidious

distinctions! While he swore at them, his flashing eyes looked them

through, expecting some paleness or quiver that would reveal the

traitor. Nobody flinched, however, and he left them with a wild gesture

of despair.

On ending his inspection at the sheep-fold, it occurred to Hourdequin

to cross-question the shepherd Soulas. This old fellow of sixty-five

had been half-a-century at the farm, and had saved nothing by it,

having been preyed upon by his wife, a drunkard and a drab, whom he had

just had the happiness of laying beneath the sod. He was in dread lest

his old age should presently entail his dismissal, and was hurriedly

saving up the few coppers requisite to rescue him from want. Possibly

the master might help him; but, then, there was no saying which might

die first. And did they give money for tobacco and a nip? Besides,

he had made an enemy of Jacqueline, whom he loathed with the jealous

hatred of an old servant disgusted by the rapid advancement of such an

upstart. Whenever she gave him orders, he was beside himself with rage,

remembering how he had seen her in rags and filth. She would assuredly

have dismissed him, if she had felt herself strong enough to do so; and

this made him prudent. He wanted to keep his place, and shunned all

conflict, no matter how sure he might be of his master's support.

The sheep-fold occupied the entire building at the end of the yard,

a gallery eighty yards long, in which the eight hundred sheep of the

farm were only separated by hurdles. On one side, the ewes, in various

groups; on the other, the lambs; and farther on, the rams. Every two

months the males, reared for sale, were castrated; while the females

were kept to renew the flock of mothers, the oldest of which were sold

off every year. The younger were served, at fixed times, by the rams,

dishleys crossed with merinos, of superb strain, and stupid gentle

aspect, with the heavy head and large rounded nose seen in men addicted

to vice. Those entering the sheep-fold were choked by a strong smell,

the ammoniacal exhalation from the litter: stale straw on which fresh

straw was laid for three months running, the racks being fitted with

hangers, so as to raise them as the manure-heap ascended. There was

ventilation: the windows being wide, and the floor of the loft above

being formed of movable oaken beams, which were taken away as the

fodder got less. It was said, however, that this living heat, this

soft, warm, fermenting heap, was necessary to the proper growth of the

sheep.

Hourdequin, pushing open one of the doors, caught sight of Jacqueline

escaping by another. She, also, had thought uneasily of Soulas, feeling

sure she had been watched with Jean; but the old man had remained

impassive, seeming not to understand why she made herself so agreeable,

contrary to her custom. The sight of the young woman leaving the

sheep-fold, where she never went, aggravated the farmer's feverish

uncertainty.

"Well, Soulas," asked he, "any news this morning?"

The shepherd, very tall and thin, with a long face intersected by

wrinkles, and looking as though carved with a bill-hook out of a knot

of oak, replied slowly:

"No, Monsieur Hourdequin, nothing whatever, except that the shearers

are coming and will soon be at work."

The master chatted for a moment, so as not to seem to be questioning

him. The sheep, who had been fed indoors since the first frosts of

November, were to be let loose again towards mid-May, when the clover

would be ready for them. As for the cows, they were seldom pastured

until after the harvest. Yet this land of La Beauce, dry and devoid of

natural herbage as it was, yielded good meat; and it was only through

routine and laziness that the breeding of oxen was unknown there.

Five or six pigs, even, were all that each farm fattened, for its own

consumption.

Hourdequin with his hot hand stroked the soft and bright-eyed ewes who

had run up with raised heads; while the lambs, pent up a little way

off, surged against the hurdles, bleating.

"And so, Soulas, you saw nothing this morning?" he asked again, looking

the shepherd full in the face.

The old fellow _had_ seen, but what availed it to speak? His deceased

wife, tippler and drab, had familiarised him with the vices of women

and the folly of men. Very possibly La Cognette, although betrayed,

would still hold her own, and then he would be made the scapegoat, so

that an awkward witness might be got out of the way.

"Saw nothing, nothing at all!" he repeated, with dull eyes and stolid

face.

When Hourdequin re-crossed the yard he noticed Jacqueline standing

there, nervously straining her ears, in fear of what was being said

in the sheep-fold. She was pretending to be busy with her poultry:

six hundred head of hens, ducks, and pigeons, who were fluttering,

chattering, and scratching on the manure-heap, amid a constant

hurly-burly. She even relieved her feelings a bit by boxing the ears

of the swine-herd, who had upset a bucket of water he was carrying to

the pigs. But a single glance at the farmer reassured her. He knew

nothing; the old man had held his tongue. Her insolence thus grew

greater.

For instance, at the mid-day repast, she displayed a provoking gaiety.

As the heavy work had not yet begun, they now only had four meals:

bread-and-milk at seven, sopped toast at twelve, bread and cheese at

four, soup and bacon at eight. They fed in the kitchen, a vast room, in

which stretched a table flanked by two forms. Modern progress was only

represented by a cast-iron stove, which took up a corner of the immense

hearth. At the end the black mouth of the oven yawned; and along the

smoky walls saucepans gleamed and old-fashioned utensils stood in neat

rows. As the maid, a stout, plain girl, had baked that morning, a

pleasant scent of hot bread rose from the open pan.

"So your stomach's not in working order to-day?" asked Jacqueline

audaciously of Hourdequin, who came in last.

Since the death of his wife and daughter he sat at the same table as

his servants, as in the good old times, so that he might not have to

eat alone. He took a chair at one end, while the servant-mistress did

the same at the other. There were fourteen of them, and the maid did

the helping.

The farmer having sat down without replying, La Cognette talked of

seeing to the food. This consisted of slices of toasted bread broken

into a soup-tureen, moistened with wine, and sweetened with _ripopée_,

an old Beauce word for treacle. She asked for a second spoonful of

this; pretended to spoil the men, and vented jests that set the table

in a roar. Each of her phrases had a double meaning, reminding them

that she was leaving that night. There were bickerings and partings,

and those who would never have another chance would regret not having

dipped their fingers in the gravy for the last time. The shepherd ate

on in his chuckle-headed way, while the master, impassive, also seemed

not to understand. Jean, to avoid betraying himself, was obliged to

laugh with the others, despite his uneasiness; for, to be sure, he

deemed himself scarcely straightforward in all this.

After the meal, Hourdequin issued his orders for the afternoon. Out

of doors, there were only a few little jobs to finish: the oats to

be rolled, and the ploughing of the fallows to be completed, pending

the time for cutting the lucern and clover. So he kept two men, Jean

and another, to clean the hay-loft. He himself, now plunged into

despondency, with his ears buzzing from the reaction of his blood,

and very wretched, set out on the prowl, not knowing what occupation

to try, to get rid of his vexation. The shearers having installed

themselves under one of the sheds, in a corner of the yard, he took up

his stand in front of them and watched them.

There were five sallow spindled-shanked fellows, squatting on the

ground, with large shears of shining steel. The shepherd passed the

ewes over, ranging them on the ground like so many skin bottles,

with their four feet tied together, and only just able to lift their

heads and bleat. As soon as a shearer caught hold of one of them she

became silent, and abandoned herself, blown out like a balloon by the

thickness of her wool, which sweat and dust had coated with a hard

black crust. Under the rapid shears, the animal came out from the

fleece like a bare hand out of a dark glove, all pink and fresh, clad

in the gleaming snowy inner wool. Held between the knees of a tall

wizened man, one mother, set on her back, with her thighs apart, and

her head erect and rigid, made exposure of her belly, which had the

hidden whiteness, the quivering skin of an undressed person. The

shearers earned three sous per head, and a good workman could shear

twenty sheep a day.

Hourdequin, absorbed, was thinking that wool had fallen to eight sous a

pound, and that he'd have to make haste and sell, or else it would get

too dry, and lose in weight. The year before, congestion of the spleen

had decimated the flocks of La Beauce. Everything was going from bad to

worse; it meant ruin, bankruptcy, for grain had been falling more and

more heavily every month. Once more a prey to agricultural worries, and

feeling stifled in the yard, he left the farm and went to take a glance

at his fields. His quarrels with La Cognette always ended thus. After

swearing and clenching his fists, he gave way, oppressed by suffering,

which was only relieved by the contemplation of the infinite green

expanses of his wheat and oats.

Ah, how he loved that land of his! With a passion untainted by the keen

avarice of the peasant; a sentimental, almost an intellectual, passion;

for he felt her to be the common mother, who had given him his life

and nourishment--to whom he would return. At first, when quite young,

after being brought up upon her, his distaste for college, his impulse

to burn his books and stop at the farm, had simply sprung from his free

habits, his gay gallops over ploughed fields, his intoxicating open-air

life amid the breezes of the plain. But later on, upon succeeding his

father, he had loved the land like a lover; his love had ripened, as if

he had thenceforward taken her in lawful wedlock to make her fruitful.

That tenderness had grown and grown, until he now devoted to her his

time, his money, his whole life, as to a good and fertile wife, whose

caprices, whose treason even, he would condone. Many a time he flew

into a rage when she proved shrewish, when, too damp or too dry, she

consumed the seed without yielding a harvest. Then, he began to doubt,

and at length accused himself as if he were an impotent or unskilful

bridegroom: the fault must have been his if a child had not been born

to her. Since then he had been haunted by new methods, had plunged

into every innovation, regretting that he had been so lazy at college,

and that he had not studied at one of those agricultural schools that

he and his father used to make fun of. How many futile attempts; how

many experiments ending in failure! And the machines that his servants

put out of order; the chemical manure adulterated by the dealers! La

Borderie had swallowed up his whole fortune, it now hardly brought

him in bread and cheese, and he was expecting the agricultural crisis

to finish him off. No matter; he would remain the prisoner of his own

soil, and would bury his bones within it, after having kept it for wife

up to the very last.

On that day, as soon as he got out of doors, he remembered his son,

the captain. The two of them together might have achieved something

fine! But he dismissed from his thoughts the memory of the fool

who preferred trailing a sword! He had no child now; he would end

his days in solitude. Then his neighbours came into his mind, more

especially the Coquarts, some landowners who cultivated their farm of

Saint-Juste--father, mother, three sons, and two daughters; and who

succeeded scarcely better than he did. At La Chamade, the farmer, being

near the end of his lease, had left off manuring, letting the property

go to rack and ruin. So it was. There was calamity everywhere. One had

to work one's self to death, and not complain. Little by little, a

soothing calm rose from the broad green fields he was skirting. Some

light showers, in April, had brought on the fodder-crops beautifully.

The purple clover transported him with delight; he forgot everything

else. Then as he was taking a short cut across some ploughed land, to

have a look at the work of his two waggoners, the soil clung to his

feet; he felt that it was rich and fertile, and it seemed to clasp

and hold him back; taking him once more wholly to itself, while the

virility, the vigour, the hey-day of his thirty years returned to him.

Was not this the only wife for a man? Of what consequence were the

whole set of Cognettes, plates out of which every one ate, and with

which one might be well content, provided they were clean enough? This

excuse, so consonant with his low craving for the baggage, crowned his

gaiety. He walked for three hours, and jested with a girl--the servant

of those very Coquarts--who was returning from Cloyes on a donkey, and

showing her legs.

When Hourdequin went back to La Borderie, he noticed Jacqueline saying

good-bye to the farm cats. There were always a troop of them; but

whether a dozen, fifteen, or twenty, nobody precisely knew, for the

she-cats used to litter in various odd nests of straw, and re-appear

with trains of five or six kittens. Next, she went up to the kennels of

Emperor and Massacre, the shepherd's two dogs; but they detested her,

and growled.

The dinner, in spite of the farewells taken of the animals, went off

just as on other days. The master ate and conversed as usual. And at

the close of the day nothing more was said about anybody's departure.

They all went to sleep, and darkness enwrapped the silent farm.

That very night, too, Jacqueline slept in the room of the late Madame

Hourdequin: the state chamber, with its large bed in the depths of

an alcove with red hangings. In this room there stood a wardrobe, a

small round table, and an arm-chair of the Voltaire style; while above

a little mahogany writing-table there hung some medals, framed under

glass, and won by the farmer at agricultural competitions. When La

Cognette in her chemise, had mounted on to the conjugal couch, she

stretched herself upon it, with her turtle-dove chuckle, spreading out

her arms and legs as if to take possession of the entire bed.

On the morrow, when she fell on Jean's neck, he repulsed her. Things

having now taken a serious turn, it wasn't proper, and he wouldn't

consent any more.