The manure heaps were well kept; the watchdogs lived in kennels, a crowd of chickens ran to and fro in the high grass.
Every day at noon fifteen persons, master, men, and maids, took their places at the long kitchen table on which the soup steamed in a great delf bowl with a pattern of blue flowers.
The animals, horses, cows, pigs, and sheep, were fat, clean, and well kept; and Lucas, a tall man beginning to acquire a paunch, made his rounds three times a day, watching over all and taking thought for all.
At the far end of the stable they kept, out of charity, a very old white horse that the mistress was anxious to have cared for until it died a natural death, because she had raised and always kept it, and because it stirred memories in her heart.
This old pensioner was looked after by a batman in the person of a fifteen-year-old lad named Isidore Duval, called Zidore for short, who, during the winter, gave him his ration of oats and his straw and, in the summer, was obliged to go four times a day and change the position where he was tied up, so that he might have plenty of fresh grass.
The animal, almost crippled, could hardly lift its heavy legs, thick at the knee and swollen above the hoofs. Its coat, which was no longer groomed, looked like white hair, and its long eyelashes gave its eyes a melancholy air.
When Zidore took it out to grass, he had to tug at the halter, so slowly did the animal walk; and the boy, stooping, panting, swore at it, exasperated at having the ancient nag to look after.
The farmhands, noticing the boy’s anger towards Coco, laughed at it; they were always talking to Zidore about the horse, just to exasperate the lad. His friends chaffed him. In the village he was called Coco-Zidore.
The boy was furious, and felt growing in himself a desire to be revenged on the horse. He was a thin child, long in the leg, very dirty, and with a mop of red, thick, coarse, bristling hair. He seemed stupid, spoke with a stammer, and with infinite labour, as though ideas were born with difficulty into his dull, brutish soul.
For a long time he felt surprised at the keeping of Coco, angry at seeing good stuff wasted on a useless beast. From the moment that it ceased working, it seemed to him wrong to feed it, revolting to waste good oats, so expensive as oats were, on this paralysed jade. Often, in spite of the orders of Farmer Lucas, he economised on the horse’s food, supplying it with no more than half its ration, keeping back litter and hay. The hatred in his confused primitive mind grew sharper, the hatred of a grasping peasant, cunning, ferocious, brutal, and cowardly.
When summer came round again, he had to go and move the beast from place to place on its sloping meadow. It was a long way from the farm. More furious each morning, the lad plodded off across the cornfields. The men working in the fields shouted to him in jest:
“Hey! Zidore! Give my kind regards to Coco.”
He never answered, but on the way he would break off a stick from a hedge, and as soon as he had tethered the old horse in a new place, he would allow it to resume its grazing and then, coming up treacherously, begin to thwack its hocks. The animal would try to escape, to rush away, to avoid the blows, and ran round at the end of its halter as though it were in a circus ring. The boy beat it savagely, running relentlessly after it, his teeth shut hard in anger.
Then he would go slowly away, without looking back, while the horse watched him go with its old eyes, its ribs projecting, and quite out of breath after so much trotting, and it would not lower its bony white head again until it had seen the young peasant’s blue blouse vanish in the distance.
As the nights were warm, Coco was now left to sleep out of doors, away at the edge of the valley, beyond the wood. Zidore alone went to see the animal.
The boy had a further habit of amusing himself by throwing stones at it. He would sit down ten paces away on a bank and stay there for half an hour, from time to time flinging a jagged pebble at the old nag, which remained standing, chained up in front of its enemy and looking steadily at him, not daring to crop the grass until he was gone.
But one thought remained firmly planted in the lad’s mind: Why feed this horse which did no work? It seemed to him as if this wretched jade were stealing another’s victuals, the possessions of mankind, the property of the good God, were stealing even from himself, Zidore, who had to work for his food.
Little by little, every day, the boy lessened the circle of pasture which he gave it by moving the stake to which its halter was fixed.
The animal went without food, grew thin, pined away. Too weak to break the cord, it stretched out its head towards the broad expanse of green, shining grass so near at hand; the smell of it reached its nostrils but it could not touch it.
Then one morning Zidore had an idea: he decided not to go on moving Coco. He had had enough of walking so far for the sake of this miserable carcass.
But he came all the same, to enjoy his revenge. The anxious beast stared at him. He did not beat it that day. He walked round it, his hands in his pockets. He even pretended to change its position, but thrust the stake back into the same hole, and went away, delighted with his invention.
The horse, seeing him go, neighed to remind him; but the lad began to run, leaving it all
