Old Amable
I
The grey rainy sky seemed to press down on the vast brown plain. The scents of autumn, the melancholy scents of bare wet earth, fallen leaves and dead flowers, made the stagnant evening air duller and heavier. The peasants were still working, scattered through the fields, and waiting for the hour of Angelus: it would recall them to the farms whose thatched roofs showed here and there through the branches of the bare trees that sheltered the orchards from the wind.
At the edge of a road, a very small child sat on a heap of clothes, legs apart, playing with a potato that every now and then he let fall into his frock, while five women, bent double, with rumps in the air, were setting out colza seedlings in the nearby field. Moving slowly and methodically all down the big trench that the plough had just turned up, they thrust in a pointed wooden stick; the plant, already a little withered and lying limply over on its side, was thrust into the hole; then they covered up the root and went on with their work.
A man walking past, a whip in his hand, his feet thrust into sabots, stopped beside the child and lifted him up to be kissed. At that, one of the women straightened herself and came to him. She was a big red-faced girl, large of hip and waist and shoulder, a tall Norman female, with yellow hair and florid skin.
She spoke in a decided voice.
“Hullo, Césaire; well?”
The man, a slight sad-faced boy, murmured:
“There’s nothing doing, as usual.”
“He won’t?”
“He won’t.”
“What you going to do?”
“How do I know?”
“Go and see the priest.”
“All right.”
“Go and see him right now.”
“All right.”
They stood looking at each other. He was still holding the child in his arms. He kissed it again and set it down once more on the women’s clothes.
Across the skyline, between two farms, moved a horse plough driven by a man. Beast, machine and labourer passed with slow easy movements across the sombre evening sky.
“What’d he say, your dad?”
“He said he wouldn’t have it.”
“Why wouldn’t he have it?”
With a gesture the boy drew her attention to the child he had just set down on the ground, then with a glance he indicated the man behind the distant plough.
“Because your brat’s his,” he said slowly.
The girl shrugged her shoulders. “Lord, doesn’t everyone know it’s Victor’s? And what o’ that? I got myself into trouble. Am I the only one? My ma was in trouble before me, and yours too, before she married your dad. Who hasn’t got themselves into trouble about here? I went wrong with Victor, but didn’t he catch me in the barn when I was asleep? And then I went wrong again when I wasn’t asleep. I’d ha’ married him, I would, if he hadn’t been a servant. Am I any the worse for that?”
The man said simply:
“I want you as you are, I do, with or without the brat. It’s only my dad that’s against it. But I’ll get over that.”
“Go and see the priest at once,” she answered.
“I’m going.”
And he lumbered off with his heavy countryman’s gait; while the girl, her hands on her hips, went back to planting colza.
The fact was that the man now walking away, Césaire Houldrèque, son of old deaf Amable Houlbrèque, wanted, against his father’s will, to marry Céleste Lévesque, who had had a child by Victor Lecoq, a mere servant lad employed at the time on her parents’ farm, and dismissed for that very reason.
In the fields, moreover, caste divisions do not exist, and if the servant is thrifty, he can take a farm himself and become the equal of his old master.
So Césaire Houlbrèque went off, his whip under his arm, chewing the cud of his thoughts, and lifting one after another his heavy wooden shoes slimed with mud. He was sure he wanted to marry Céleste Lévesque, he wanted her with her child, because she was the woman he needed. He couldn’t have said why, but he knew it, he was sure of it. He had only to look at her to be convinced of it and feel all strange and stirred up, and half dazed with happiness. It even gave him pleasure to kiss the little boy, Victor’s little boy, because he was born of her body.
And he stared without any resentment at the distant outline of the man driving the plough at the edge of the sky.
But old Amable would not have the marriage. He opposed it with the pigheaded obstinacy of a deaf man, a fury of obstinate rage.
In vain Césaire had shouted in his ear, the ear that could still hear a little.
“I’ll look well after you, dad. I tell you she’s a good girl, a decent girl, and a good manager too.”
“As long as I live,” the old man repeated, “I’ll not see it happen.”
And nothing could persuade him, nothing could break down his savage determination. One hope only was left to Césaire. Old Amable feared the priest because he dreaded the death he felt approaching. He feared little enough the good God, or the devil, or hell, or purgatory, of which he had the haziest notions, but he feared the priest, who stood in his mind for the day of his burying, very much as a man might dread doctors through a horror of disease. For the past week Céleste, who knew this weakness of the old man, had been urging Césaire to see the priest; but Césaire had hesitated, because he was not himself very fond of black gowns; in his mind they stood for hands always outstretched for alms or for the holy bread.
He had made up his mind now, however, and he went towards the rectory, turning over in his mind how he would set forth his business.
Father Raffin, a small active priest, thin and always clean-shaven, was waiting for his dinner hour and warming his feet in front of his kitchen fire.
He merely turned his head as he saw the peasant come in, and demanded:
“Well, Césaire, what is it you want?”
“I want to talk to you, Father.”
The man stood there, daunted, his cap in one hand and his whip in the other.
“Talk, then.”
Césaire looked at the servant, an old woman dragging one foot after the other as she laid a place for her master on a corner of the table before the window.
“It’s—it’s, as you might say, a confession,” he stammered.
At that, Father Raffin looked closely at his peasant; he noticed his confused face, uneasy bearing and wandering eye, and ordered:
“Marie, go to your room for five minutes while I talk to Césaire.”
The servant flung an angry look at the man, and went off muttering.
“Now,” the priest added, “let’s hear all about it.”
The lad still hesitated, staring at his sabots, twisting his cap; he made up his mind abruptly:
“It’s like this. I want to marry Céleste Lévesque.”
“Well, my lad, what’s to prevent you?”
“It’s dad won’t have it.”
“Your father?”
“Yes, my dad.”
“What did your father say to you?”
“He said she’s had a babby.”
“She’s not the first since our mother Eve to have that happen to her.”
“A babby by Victor, Victor Lecoq, the servant at Anthime Loisel.”
“Ah, ah … so he won’t have it?”
“He won’t have it.”
“Not at any price?”
“No more’n an ass that won’t budge, saving your honour.”
“What did you say to him, to persuade him?”
“I said to him she was a good girl, and decent, and a good manager.”
“And that didn’t persuade him. So you want me to speak to him?”
“That’s just it. You talk to him.”
“And how shall I talk to your father?”
“Well … as if you were preaching to make us give our pennies.”
To the peasant mind the sole end of religion was to unloosen purses and empty men’s pockets to fill the coffers of heaven. It was a sort of vast trading house where the priests were the salesmen, as cunning, shifty and sharp as anyone, carrying on business for the good God at the expense of the country folk.
He knew quite well that the priests were of service, of great service to the poorest, the sick and the dying, helping, consoling, advising, sustaining, but all as a matter of money, in exchange for white coins, lovely shining silver paid out for sacraments and masses, advice and protection, pardon for sins and indulgences, purgatory and paradise depending on the income and the generosity of the sinner.
Father Raffin, who knew his man and was by no means disturbed, began to laugh:
“Very well, I’ll go and tell my little tale to your father, but as for you, my lad, you’ll have to come to church.”
Houlbrèque stretched out his hand and swore he would:
“If you fix this for me, I promise I will, on a poor man’s word.”
“That’s a good lad. When do you want me to come and see your father?”
“The sooner the better, tonight if you can.”
“In half an hour, then, after supper.”
“In half an hour.”
“That’s settled, then. Goodbye, my lad.”
“Goodbye, Father; thank you.”
“None at all, my lad.”
And Césaire Houlbrèque returned home, his heart eased of a great load.
He leased a small, a very small farm, for his father and he were not well off. They kept one servant, a fifteen-year-old girl who made their soup, looked after the poultry, milked the cows and churned the butter, and they lived sparsely, although Césaire was a good husbandman. But they did not own enough land or enough stock to do more than make both ends meet.
The old man had given up working. Melancholy, as the deaf are, riddled with aches and pains, bent, twisted, he wandered through the fields, leaning on his stick, regarding man and beast with a harsh scornful stare. Sometimes he sat down on the edge of a ditch and remained there for hours, motionless, his thoughts drifting among the things that had been his whole life, the price of eggs and corn, the sun and the rain that spoiled or brought on the crops. And, racked with rheumatism, his old limbs still sucked up the dampness of the soil, as for seventy years they had sucked up the moisture exhaled from the walls of his low thatched cottage, roofed, too, with damp straw.
He returned home at dusk, took his place at the end of the table, in the kitchen, and when he had in front of him the earthenware bowl that held his soup, he grasped it in bent fingers that seemed to have taken on the curved shape of the bowl, and winter and summer he warmed his hands on it before beginning to eat, so as to lose nothing, not one particle of warmth that came from the fire which cost so much money, nor a drop of the soup that took fat and salt to make, nor a morsel of the bread that was made from the corn.
Then he climbed up a ladder to the attic where he had his mattress, while his son slept downstairs, in the depths of a sort of niche near the chimney-place, and the servant shut herself in a kind of cell, a black hole which had once been used for storing potatoes.
Césaire and his father rarely spoke to each other. Only from time to time, when it was a question of selling a crop or buying a calf, the young man consulted the old one, making a speaking-trumpet of his hands and shouting his reasons into his father’s ear; and father Amable approved or disapproved in a slow hollow voice issuing from the pit of his stomach.
Césaire approached him after this fashion one evening as if it were a question of acquiring a horse or a young cow and conveyed to him, shouting in his ear at the top of his voice, his intention of marrying Céleste Lévesque.
At that, the old man was angry. Why? On moral grounds? Probably not. A girl’s virtue is lightly enough esteemed in the country. But his avarice, his deep-rooted savage instinct to thrift, revolted at the idea of his son bringing up a child who was not his own. His mind had leaped instantly to the thought of all the soup the child would swallow before he was old enough to make himself useful on the farm; he had reckoned up all the pounds of bread and all the pints of cider that the youngster would eat and drink until his fourteenth year; and he felt growing in him a crazy resentment against Césaire who had thought of none of these things.
He answered, in a voice of unwonted vigour:
“Have you taken leave of your senses?”
Then Césaire had set himself to enumerate his reasons, to relate Céleste’s good points, and prove that she would save a hundred times the cost of the child. But the old man doubted the existence of these merits, while he could not doubt the existence of the child, and he reiterated stolidly, without offering any further reasons:
“I’ll not have it! I’ll not have it! You’ll not do it as long as I’m alive.”
And for three months they stuck at that deadlock, neither giving way an inch, and once a week, at least, they went over it all again, with the same arguments, the same words, the same gestures, and the same futile result.
It was after this that Céleste had advised Césaire to go and ask their priest’s help.
When the young peasant got home he found his father already at the table, for his visit to the rectory had delayed him.
They dined in silence, sitting opposite each other, ate a little butter on their bread after the soup and drank a glass of cider; then they sat motionless on their chairs, in the dim glimmer of the candle brought by the little servant to give her light to wash the bowls, dry the glasses and cut chunks of bread in preparation for the breakfast eaten at dawn.
There was a knock at the door: it opened immediately and the priest appeared. The old man lifted uneasy distrustful eyes, and, with a foreboding of danger, started to climb his ladder, but Father Raffin put a hand on his shoulder and yelled in his ear:
“I have a word to say to you, old Amable.”
Césaire had disappeared, profiting by the door left open by the priest. He did not want to listen, so much he dreaded the discussion; he did not want to feel his spirits gradually sinking with each obstinate refusal of his father; he preferred to learn the truth, good or bad, in one word afterwards; and he went out into the darkness. It was a moonless starless evening, one of those misty evenings when the air feels heavy with moisture. A faint smell of apples hung round the yard, for it was the time when the earliest apples were gathered, the euribles, as they say in the cider country. As Césaire walked past the walls of the cowsheds, the warm smell of living animals asleep in the straw floated through the narrow windows; and by the stable he heard the stamping of the horses, and the sound of their jaws snatching and chewing the oats from the mangers.
He walked straight ahead, thinking about Céleste. In his simple mind, where ideas were hardly more than images born of direct contact with objects, thoughts of love took form only when he evoked the image of a big red-haired girl, standing in a sunken road, laughing, hands on hips.
It was thus he had seen her on the day when he first desired her. He had, however, known her since they were children, but never before this morning had he taken any particular notice of her. They had talked for some minutes; then he left her, and as he walked away, he kept on saying to himself: “Christ, that’s a fine girl all the same. A pity she went wrong with Victor.” He thought about it until evening, and all the next day as well.
When he saw her again, he felt a tickling sensation at the bottom of his throat, as if a feather had been pushed down his mouth into his chest; and after that, every time he found himself near her, he was surprised at the nervous tickling feeling that invariably attacked him.
Three weeks later he decided to marry her, so taken was he with her. He could not have said what had roused in him this overweening desire, but he expressed it by saying: “I’m possessed by her,” as if the passion he bore within him for this girl was mastering him like an evil spirit. He did not mind at all that she had lost her virtue; it was only so much the worse; it did not spoil her; and he bore no ill will to Victor Lecoq for it.
But if the priest failed, what was he to do? He dared not think about that, so tortured was he by anxiety.
He had reached the rectory, and he sat down near the little wooden fence to wait for the priest’s return.
He had been there perhaps an hour when he heard footsteps on the road, and despite the blackness of the night, he soon made out the still blacker shadow of a cassock.
He stood up, his legs trembling under him, afraid to speak, afraid to be told.
The priest saw him and said gaily:
“Well, my boy, it’s all right.”
Césaire stammered:
“All right … it can’t be.”
“Yes, my lad, but not without some trouble. What an obstinate old donkey your father is!”
“It can’t be,” the peasant repeated.
“But it is. Come and see me tomorrow noon, to arrange for the banns.”
The man had seized the priest’s hand. He gripped it, shook it, crushed it, babbling: “Indeed, indeed, indeed, Father … on the word of an honest man … you’ll see me next Sunday in church.”
II
The wedding took place towards the middle of December. It was a simple one, since the pair had not much money. Césaire, all in new clothes, was ready at eight in the morning to go and call for his betrothed and take her to the registrar; but as he was too early, he sat down by the kitchen table and waited for those of his relations and friends who were to accompany him.
It had been snowing for a week, and the brown earth, already made fruitful by the autumn sowing, had turned livid and slept under a vast sheet of ice.
It was cold in the cottages, whose thatched roofs wore a white bonnet; and the round apple trees in the orchards looked as if they were in flower, powdered over as in the lovely month of their blossoming.
Today, the heavy clouds from the north, grey clouds swollen with fleecy showers, had vanished, and the blue sky opened on a white earth on which the rising sun flung silver rays.
Césaire sat staring in front of him through the window, thinking of nothing, quite happy.
The door opened, two woman came in, peasants in their Sunday clothes, the aunt and cousin of the bridegroom; then three men cousins, then a woman neighbour. They found themselves chairs, and sat silent and motionless, the women on one side of the kitchen and the men on the other, overwhelmed by a sudden timidity, the embarrassed melancholy that seizes people gathered together for a ceremony. Shortly one of the cousins asked:
“Isn’t it time?”
“I’m sure ’tis,” Césaire answered.
“Let’s be off, then,” cried another.
They rose to their feet. Césaire had been growing more and more uneasy: he stood up now and climbed the attic ladder to see if his father was ready. The old man, always up so early in the morning, had not yet put in an appearance. His son found him on his mattress, his eyes open and a malicious expression on his face.
He shouted right inside his ear:
“Come, dad, get up. It’s time to go to t’wedding.”
The deaf man murmured in a dying voice:
“I can’t. I’ve gotten such a chill it’s stiffened my back. I can’t move hand nor foot.”
The young man stared at him in horror, seeing through the manoeuvre.
“Come, dad, you must make yourself get up.”
“I can’t.”
“Here, I’ll help you.”
And he bent over the old man, pushed back the quilt, took him by the arm and lifted him up. But father Amable began to groan:
“Hou, hou, hou! The pain! Hou, hou, I can’t. My back’s all knotted up.”
Césaire realised that he could not do anything, and, furious with his father for the first time in his life, he cried:
“Very well, you won’t get any dinner, for I’m having a meal at Polyte’s inn. That’ll teach you to behave like a mule.”
And he scrambled down the ladder and set off, followed by his relatives and guests.
The men had turned up their trousers to keep the edges from getting sodden in the snow; the women held their petticoats well up, showing their thin ankles, their grey woollen stockings, and their bony shins, as stiff as broomsticks. The whole company rolled along in silence, one behind the other, picking their way with great caution, for fear of losing the road, which had quite vanished under the flat monotonous unbroken covering of snow.
As they approached each farm, they saw one or two people waiting to join them; and the procession grew longer and longer; it wound along, following the unseen line of the road, looking like a living rosary of black beads slithering over the white fields.
In front of the bride’s door, a number of people were stamping their feet while they waited for the bridegroom. They hailed him when he appeared; and Céleste came out of her room at once, dressed in a blue gown, her shoulders covered with a little red shawl, and wearing a wreath of orange-flowers on her head.
But everyone asked Césaire:
“Where’s your dad?”
He made the embarrassed answer:
“He couldn’t move with rheumatics.”
The farmers shook their heads, and looked at him with malicious incredulity.
They set off for the registrar’s. A peasant woman carried Victor’s child behind the future husband and wife, as if they were going to a christening; and the peasants, arm in arm now, in double file, made their way through the snow with the motion of a sloop on the sea.
After the mayor had married the betrothed in the little town hall, the priest proceeded to unite them in the modest house of God. He blessed their marriage and promised them a fruitful union; then he preached to them of wedded virtue, the simple healthy virtue of the country, work, peace and faithfulness, while the child, feeling the cold, whimpered behind the bride’s back.
The moment the couple reappeared on the threshold of the church, shots rang out in the cemetery moat. Nothing was visible but the barrels of the guns from which issued quick spurts of smoke; then a head emerged and looked at the procession; it was Victor Lecoq celebrating the marriage of his dear friend, congratulating her on her happiness and throwing her his vows with each flash of powder. He had recruited some of his friends, five or six hired men, to deliver these musketry salvoes. Everyone agreed that he was behaving very well.
The meal took place at the inn kept by Polyte Cacheprune. Twenty places had been laid in the big dining room where the people dined on market day; and the great joint turning on the spit, the birds roasting in their juice, the black puddings crisping on the clear hot fire, filled the house with a pungent fragrance, the smoke of red-hot charcoal spattered with drops of grease, and the strong heavy smell of country food.
They sat down at the table at noon, and the soup was soon poured into the plates. Faces were already animated; mouths opened to utter broad jests, eyes wrinkled up in malicious mirth. They were going to enjoy themselves, by God.
The door opened, and old Amable appeared. He looked spiteful and furiously angry, and he dragged himself along on his sticks, groaning at every step to let them see how he was suffering.
Everyone fell silent at sight of him, but all at once old Malivoire, his neighbour and a fat jolly man who knew everyone’s little ways, began to shout, as Césaire always did, making a speaking-trumpet of his hands: “Hey, old fox, you’ve a good nose, you have, to smell Polyte’s cooking from your house.”
A great laugh burst from the throats of the guests. Malivoire, excited by his success, went on: “There’s nothing like a plaster of black pudding for the rheumatics. It’ll warm your inside, with a glass of brandy. …”
All the men shouted, hammering the table with their fists, rolling with laughter, bending and straightening their bodies as if they were working at a pump. The women clucked like hens, the servants writhed with amusement as they stood by the walls. Only old Amable did not laugh, and waited, without replying, while they laid a place for him.
They put him in the centre of the table, facing his daughter-in-law, and he began to eat as soon as he was seated. It was his son who was paying, after all, and he must have his share of it. With each ladleful of soup that dropped into his stomach, with each mouthful of bread or meat chewed by his gums, with each glass of cider and wine that rolled down his gullet, he felt that he was getting back some of his property, taking back a little of his money that all these gluttons were devouring, saving a fragment of his possessions, in fact. And he ate in silence, with the obstinacy of a miser who hides halfpennies, with the gloomy tenacity that he used to bring to his persevering toil.
But all at once he saw Céleste’s child at the foot of the table, sitting on a woman’s knee, and his eyes never left it again. He continued to eat, his glance fixed on the little creature. The woman nursing him kept putting between his lips little bits of stew which he nibbled, and the old man suffered more from the few mouthfuls sucked by this grub than from all that the rest of the guests swallowed.
The meal lasted till evening. Then everyone went home.
Césaire helped old Amable to his feet.
“Come, dad, time to get home,” he said. And he put his two sticks into his hands. Céleste took the child in her arms, and they went slowly through the sombre night lit by the gleaming snow. The deaf old man, three parts drunk, and made all the more spiteful thereby, refused obstinately to get on. Several times he even sat down, with the idea that his daughter-in-law might take cold; and he groaned, without saying a word, delivering himself of a sort of long-drawn dolorous wail.
When they reached home, he climbed up to his attic at once, while Césaire made up a bed for the child near the wide nook where he and his wife were going to lie. But as the newly married pair did not go to sleep at once, they heard the old man tossing on his mattress for a long time, and several times he even spoke aloud, as if he were dreaming and giving away his thoughts despite himself, unable to keep them back, so obsessed he was by the one idea.
When he came down his ladder in the morning he saw his daughter-in-law hurrying round at work.
“Come, dad!” she cried; “hurry up, here’s some good soup.”
And at the end of the table she set a round black earthern pot full of steaming liquid. He made no reply but sat down and took up the scalding bowl, and warmed his hands on it as he always did. It was such a cold day that he even pressed it against his chest and tried to get a little of the quick heat of the boiling water into his old body that so many winters had stiffened.
Then he sought his sticks and went out into the frozen fields until noon, until dinnertime, for he had seen Céleste’s baby installed in a big soap box, still asleep.
He kept altogether to himself. He went on living in the cottage as before, but he bore himself as if he were no longer part of it, no longer interested in anything, regarding these people, his son, the woman and the child, as strangers whom he did not know and to whom he never spoke.
The winter dragged on. It was long and hard. Then the first days of spring burst the seeds; and once more the peasants, like industrious ants, spent their days in the fields, working from dawn to dark, in the northeast wind, in rain, along the furrows of the brown earth that bore in its bosom the bread of man.
The year promised well for the newly married pair. The crops pushed up thick and hardy; there were no late frosts; and the blossoming apple trees scattered over the grass a pink and white snow that foretold a bumper harvest.
Césaire worked very hard, rising early and going to bed late, to save the cost of a hired man. Sometimes his wife said to him:
“You’ll make yourself ill in the long run.”
“No, I’ll not,” he answered; “I’m used to it.”
But one evening he came home so exhausted that he had to lie down without any supper. He rose at the usual hour in the morning; but he could not eat, in spite of his fast of the night before; and he had to come home in the middle of the afternoon to rest again. During the night, he began to cough; and he tossed on his mattress, feverish, with burning forehead, and dry tongue, consumed with a frightful thirst.
He did, however, go as far as his fields at daybreak; but the next day the doctor had to be called in, and pronounced him very ill, and down with inflammation of the lungs.
He never left now the nook which served him for bedroom. He could be heard coughing, panting and tossing in the depths of his hole. A candle had to be carried to the opening, in order to look at him, to give him his medicine or apply a cupping-glass. Then his sunken face, disfigured by its growth of beard, became visible under a thick canopy of spiderwebs, which hung and floated, stirred by the draught. And the sick man’s hands lay on the grey bedclothes as if they were dead.
Céleste cared for him with an anxious activity, made him drink remedies, applied blisters, came and went in the house; while old Amable remained on the edge of his attic, peering from that distance at the dark hollow where his son lay and suffered. He would not come any nearer, for his hatred of the woman, and he squatted there sulking like a jealous dog.
Six more days went by; then one morning when Céleste, who slept now on two wretched heaps of straw, went to see if her man was better, she could not hear his hurried breathing coming from his hidden bed. Terrified, she asked:
“Now, Césaire, how’ve you been tonight?”
He did not answer.
She put out her hand to touch him, and felt the cold flesh of his face. A long wail broke from her, the long wail of a woman in mortal fear. He was dead.
At her cry, the old deaf man appeared at the top of his ladder; and seeing Céleste rushing out to bring help, he hurried down and touched his son’s face himself: the truth broke on him and he bent to fasten the door from the inside, to keep the woman from coming back to take possession of his home again, now that his son was no longer alive.
Then he sat down on a chair beside the dead man.
Neighbours arrived and shouted and knocked. He did not hear them. One of them broke a pane of the window and jumped into the room. Others followed; the door was opened again, and Céleste reappeared, weeping violently, with swollen cheeks and red eyes. Then old Amable, beaten, climbed back to his attic without saying a word.
The burial took place next day; then, after the ceremony, father-in-law and daughter-in-law found themselves alone in the farmhouse, with the child.
It was the usual hour for dinner. She lit the fire, prepared the soup, and set the plates on the table, while the old man sat in his chair and waited without appearing to notice her.
When the meal was ready, she shouted in his ear:
“Come, dad, we must eat.”
He rose, took his place at the end of the table, emptied his bowl, chewed his bread spread thin with butter, drank two glasses of cider and then went out.
It was one of those moist warm days, one of those beneficent days when life ferments, palpitating and blossoming, over the whole surface of the earth.
Old Amable followed a little path across the fields. He looked at the green shoots of corn and barley, and thought that his young lad was under the ground now, his poor young lad. He walked wearily along, dragging his legs and limping a little. And as he was alone in the fields, all alone under the blue sky, in the middle of growing crops, all alone with the larks he saw hovering over his head but whose airy song he could not hear, he began to weep as he walked.
Then he sat down near a pool and stayed there until evening, watching the little birds that came to drink; then, at nightfall, he went home, supped without saying a word and climbed to his attic.
And his life went on as in the past. Nothing was changed, except that his son Césaire slept in the cemetery.
What could the old man have done? He could not work now, he was only fit to eat the soup prepared by his daughter-in-law. And he swallowed it in silence, morning and night, glaring furiously at the child who sat facing him at the other side of the table and ate too. Then he went out, wandered over the country like a vagabond, went and hid himself behind barns to get an hour or two hours’ sleep as if he was afraid of being seen, then as dusk fell he came home.
But weighty anxieties began to fill Céleste’s thoughts. The fields needed a man to watch over them and work them. Someone ought to be there in the fields all the time, not just a hired man, but a real husbandman, a master, who knew his job and would have a real interest in the farm. A woman alone could not cultivate them, follow the prices of corn, direct the selling and buying of stock. Certain ideas came into her head, simple practical ideas, over which she pondered all night. She could not marry again before the year was up, and the immediate pressing needs must be attended to at once.
Only one man could help her in this quandary, Victor Lecoq, the father of her child. He was steady, and land-wise; with a little money in his pocket he would have made an excellent farmer. She knew that, having seen him working on her parents’ farm.
So one morning, seeing him going along the road with a load of manure, she went out after him. When he saw her, he stopped his horses, and she spoke to him as if she had met him only the day before:
“Good day, Victor, how are you today?”
“I’m all right,” he answered; “and how’s yourself?”
“Oh, me, I’d be all right if I wasn’t alone on the place, which worries me because of the land.”
Then they talked on a long time, leaning against the wheel of the heavy wagon. Now and then the man scratched his forehead under his cap and reflected, while she, with crimson cheeks, talked earnestly, setting forth her reasons, all her affairs, her future plans; at last he murmured:
“Yes, it could be done.”
She held out her hand like a peasant concluding a bargain, and asked:
“Is it settled?”
He gripped the outstretched hand:
“It’s settled.”
“On Sunday, then.”
“On Sunday.”
“All right; goodbye, Victor.”
“Goodbye, Madame Houlbrèque.”
III
That Sunday was a feast day in the village, the yearly feast of their patron saint, called in Normandy the Assemblée.
For a week, strange vehicles were seen coming by every road, dragged along by grey or roan hacks, and housing the travelling families of regular showmen, with gambling-outfits, shooting-galleries, and amusements of all kinds, and men showing curiosities, for whom the peasants had a curious name of their own.
Dirty caravans, with flapping curtains, and accompanied by a melancholy dog slinking with hanging head between the wheels, drew up one after the other in the village square. Then a tent was put up before each travelling house, and shining objects, glimpsed through holes in the canvas, roused to fever pitch the cupidity and curiosity of the village youngsters.
Early on the morning of the feast, all the booths were opened, displaying their glories of glass and porcelain; and the peasants on their way to Mass were already casting open complacent glances on the unimposing stalls which were the same they saw year after year.
The square was crowded from early in the afternoon. Farmers with their wives and children came in from all the nearby villages, jolting along in two wheeled carts that rattled like old iron and rocked like seesaws. They unharnessed at friends’ houses; and the farmyards were filled with strange covered wagons, grey, lofty, narrow curving wagons, like long-legged deep-sea beasts.
And each family, infants in front, grownups behind, walked quickly to the assemblée, with smiling faces and hands hanging open, great red bony hands that were accustomed to toil and seemed embarrassed to have nothing to do.
A sleight-of-hand man blew his trumpet; the harmonium belonging to the wooden horses wafted its jerky wailing notes into the air, the wheel on the gaming-table ground round with a noise like tearing cotton; rifle shots rang out in rapid succession. The slow-moving crowd ambled past the booths like a mass of slowly oozing paste, pushed about like a herd of beasts, and moving clumsily round like lumbering animals accidentally let loose.
The girls, arms locked together in rows of five or six, twittered and sang; the lads followed them round, bandying jests, caps over one ear and blouses stiff with starch and puffed out like blue balloons.
The whole countryside was there, masters, labourers and servants.
Old Amable himself, clad in an ancient and greenish frock-coat, had come to see the assemblée, for he had never missed a single one.
He watched the gambling, halted in front of the shooting-galleries to criticise the marksmanship, and took particular interest in a very simple game that consisted in throwing a big wooden ball into the open mouth of a fat man painted on a plank.
Suddenly someone tapped him on the shoulder. It was old Malivoire shouting: “Eh, dad, come and have one with me.”
And they sat down at a table in a drinking-booth set up in the open air. They drank one brandy, then two brandies, then three brandies; and old Amable began to wander through the assemblée again. His thoughts were becoming a little confused, he smiled without knowing why he did, he stood smiling in front of the gaming-table, and the wooden horses, and most of all in front of the coconut shy. He spent a long time at that, overcome with joy when a player knocked over the policeman or the priest, two authorities that he instinctively mistrusted. Then he went back and sat down in the drinking-booth, and took a glass of cider to refresh himself. It was late and night was falling. A neighbour said warningly: “You’ll get home too late for your supper stew, dad.”
Then he set out for the farm. A pleasant dusk, the warm dusk of spring evenings, stole slowly over the earth.
When he reached his door he thought he saw through the lighted window two people in the house. He halted, very surprised, then he went in and saw Victor Lecoq sitting at the table before a plateful of potatoes, eating supper in the very place where his son had always sat.
He turned abruptly round as if he meant to go out again. The night was quite dark now. Céleste stood up and shouted at him:
“Come here quick, dad, we’ve got a good stew to celebrate the assemblée.”
At that he obeyed her mechanically and sat down, looking slowly round at the man, the woman and the child. Then he began to eat placidly, as he did every day.
Victor Lecoq seemed to be quite at home, he kept talking to Céleste, and took the child on his knees and fondled it. And Céleste gave him another helping of food, filled his glass, seemed quite happy to be talking to him. Old Amable regarded both of them with a fixed stare, unable to hear anything they said. When he had finished his supper (and he had hardly eaten anything, so upset did he feel), he got to his feet, and instead of climbing to his attic as he did every night, he opened the door and went out into the fields.
When he had gone, Céleste, a little uneasy, asked:
“Now what’s to be done?”
Victor answered indifferently:
“Don’t worry. He’ll come back when he’s tired.”
Then she tidied the room, washed the plates and dried the table while the man calmly undressed. Then he slipped into the dark cave-like bedroom where she had slept with Césaire.
The yard door opened. Old Amable reappeared. As soon as he got inside, he looked all round the room, like an old dog with his nose on the scent. He was looking for Victor Lecoq. As he did not see him, he took the candle from the table and brought it near the dark nook where his son had died. In its dark recesses he saw the man stretched out under the clothes and already asleep. At that the deaf man turned softly away, put the candle down, and once more went out into the yard.
Céleste had finished her work; she had put her son to bed, made everything tidy, and sat waiting until her father-in-law came in, to lie down in her turn beside Victor.
She remained sitting in the chair, her hands idle in her lap, staring at nothing.
He did not come in, and she murmured, worried and annoyed:
“He’ll make us burn a penn’orth of candle, the old good-for-nothing.”
Victor answered from the depths of his bed:
“He’s been out more than an hour. Better go and see if he’s fallen asleep on the seat in front of the door.”
“I’ll go,” she said, and, standing up, she took the light and went out, shading her eyes with her hand to help her to see in the darkness.
She saw nothing in front of the door, nothing on the seat, nothing on the dungheap where the old man sometimes used to sit on warm days.
But just as she was turning back into the house, she happened to lift her eyes to the big apple tree that made a shade over the farm gate, and saw suddenly two feet, a man’s two feet, dangling at the level of her face.
She screamed in terror: “Victor! Victor! Victor!”
He came running out in his shirt. She could not speak, and with her head turned aside so that she should not see it, she pointed to the tree with outstretched arm.
He did not understand, and he took the candle to see what was wrong. In the green thickness lit up by the light he was holding below it, he saw old Amable hung by the neck at a considerable height, in a halter from the stable.
A ladder was leaning against the trunk of the apple tree.
Victor ran for a hatchet, climbed the tree and cut the cord. But the old man was already cold; his tongue protruded horribly in a frightful grimace.