Old Milon
For the past month the great sun had been casting its broiling heat over the fields. Nature is unfolding radiantly beneath this shower of fire; as far as the eye can reach, the earth is green. To the ends of the horizon, the sky is blue. The Norman farms scattered over the plain look, from the distance, like little woods, enclosed in their girdle of slender beeches. From near at hand, when the worm-eaten gate is opened, it is as though one were looking at a giant garden, for all the aged apple trees, bony of limb like country folk, are in flower. The rows of black, crooked, twisted old trunks in the farmyard display their dazzling white and pink domes under the sky. The sweet perfume of their blossoming mingles with the rich stenches of the open cowshed and the steam of the fermenting dungheap overrun with hens.
It is noon. The family is at dinner in the shade of the pear-tree by the door: the father, the mother, the four children, the two servants, and the three hired men. There is little speech. The soup is eaten, then the cover is taken off the dish full of potatoes cooked in fat.
From time to time a maid rises and goes down to the cellar to refill the pitcher of cider.
The man, a big fellow of forty, gazes at a vine, still bare of leaves, which grows up the front of his house, and runs, writhing like a snake, under the shutters, the whole length of the wall.
“The old man’s vine is budding early this year,” he remarks at last. “Maybe it will bear.”
The woman also turns round and looks at it, without speaking.
The vine is planted on the exact spot where the old man was shot.
It was during the war of 1870. The Prussians were occupying the entire district. General Faidherbe, with the Northern army, was putting up a stout resistance.
The Prussian staff was quartered at this farm. The old peasant who owned it, old Milon, Pierre Milon, had taken them in and installed them as comfortably as he could.
For a month the German advance-guard had remained in the village, reconnoitring. The French remained immovable ten leagues away; yet every night Uhlans kept disappearing.
All the detachments of scouts, those who were sent out on picket duty, when only two or three men set out together, never returned.
They were found dead in the morning, in a field, beside a farmyard, or in a ditch. Their horses lay at the roadside, with their throats cut with a sabre.
These murders all appeared to be committed by the same men, who could not be discovered.
The whole district was under a reign of terror. Peasants were shot on mere denunciation, and women imprisoned; an attempt was made to frighten the children into revealing the truth. Nothing was discovered.
But one morning old Milon was seen lying in his stable, with a slash cut across his face.
Two disembowelled Uhlans were found three kilometres from the farm. One still held his bloodstained weapon in his hand. He had fought, had defended himself.
A council of war was immediately established in the open, in front of the farm, and the old man was brought in.
He was sixty-eight. He was small, thin, and slightly crooked, with big hands like the claws of a crab. His faded, thin hair, light as a duckling’s down, concealed none of the flesh on his skull. The brown, creased skin on his neck showed veins which were lost under the jaws and reappeared at the temples. He was known throughout the neighbourhood as a miser and a hard man in business.
He was made to stand, between four soldiers, in front of the kitchen table, which had been carried out of doors. Five officers and the colonel sat facing him.
The colonel began speaking, in French:
“Father Milon, since we have been here, we have had nothing but praise for you. You have always been obliging, and even zealous, in our service. But today a terrible charge rests upon you, and the matter must be cleared up. How did you get the wound in your face?”
The peasant did not reply.
“Your silence condemns you, Milon,” continued the colonel. “But I will have an answer from you, do you hear? Do you know who killed the Uhlans who were found this morning near the Calvary?”
“It was me,” said the old man in a clear voice.
Amazed, the colonel remained silent for a second, staring fixedly at the prisoner. Old Milon remained impassive, with his besotted peasant expression, his eyes lowered as though he were talking to his priest. One thing only revealed his inner distress; again and again he kept swallowing his saliva, with a visible effort, as though his throat were tightly constricted.
The man’s family, his son Jean, his daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, stood ten paces back, in frightened consternation.
“Do you
