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.