It is a fine holiday for him, in the woodcock season.
The farm is immense, an old building in an orchard, encircled by four rows of beech-trees which struggle the year round against the sea wind.
We enter the kitchen, where a monstrous fire is blazing in our honour.
Our table is set close to the lofty fireplace, where in front of the limpid flames a plump bird is turning and roasting, while the juice drips into an earthen plate.
The farmer’s wife greets us now, a tall silent woman, always busied with household cares, her head full of deals and calculations, of sheep and cattle. She is a methodical woman, levelheaded and austere, highly respected in the district.
Along the end of the kitchen runs the big table where will shortly seat themselves the hired men and women of every class, certain ploughmen, labourers, farm wenches, shepherds; and all those folk eat in silence under the quick eye of the mistress and watch us dine with Farmer Picot, who lets off jests that make us all laugh. Then, when all her household has been fed, Madame Picot will take, alone, her hasty and frugal meal on a corner of the table, keeping an eye on the servant-girl meanwhile.
On ordinary days, she dines with her household.
The three of us, the d’Orgemols and I, sleep in a white room, bare, whitewashed, and containing only our three beds, three chairs, and three basins.
Gaspard always wakes first and sounds a ringing reveille. And in half an hour everyone is ready and we set off with old Picot, who shoots with us.
Monsieur Picot prefers me to his masters. Why? Doubtless because I am not his master. Then you may see us both making for the wood from the right, while the two brothers advance on it from the left. Simon has the dogs in his charge, leading them, all three held at the end of a cord.
For we are not out after woodcock but rabbits. We are convinced that we must not look for woodcock, but just come across them. We stumble on them and kill them, don’t you know! When you want especially to find them, you never set eyes on one. It is a strange and lovely thing to hear in the clear morning air the sharp report of the gun, then Gaspard’s thunderous voice filling the whole countryside and roaring: “Woodcock—here they come!”
I am wily. When I have brought down a woodcock, I call out: “Rabbit!” And I rejoice exceedingly when we lay out the bag at lunch.
There we are, old Picot and I, in the little wood where the leaves fall with a soft ceaseless murmur, a harsh murmur, a little sad, they are dead. It is cold, a thin sharp cold that pricks eyes, nose, ears, and has powdered the edges of the grass and the brown ploughed fields with a fine white moss. But we are warm in all our limbs, under the thick sheepskin. The sun sparkles in the blue air; it has little or no warmth, but it sparkles. It is good to shoot over the woods on a keen winter morning.
Yonder a dog breaks into a shrill barking. It is Pif. I know his thin voice. Then, silence. Now another outburst, then another; and Paf gives tongue in his turn. But what is Moustouche doing? Ah, there he goes whimpering like a chicken whose neck is being wrung. They have started a rabbit. Now, Farmer Picot!
They draw apart, then close in, separate again, then run back; we follow their haphazard goings, running along narrow paths, every sense on the alert, fingers on the triggers of our guns.
They make back towards the common, we make back too. Suddenly a grey streak, a shadow crosses the path. I bring my gun to my shoulder and fire. The faint smoke clears away in the blue air, and I see on the grass a morsel of white fur that moves. Then I shout at the top of my voice: “Rabbit, rabbit! Here it is!” And I show it to the three dogs, to the three shaggy crocodiles, who congratulate me with wagging tails; they then go off in search of another.
Old Picot has rejoined me. Moustouche begins to yelp. The farmer says:
“That’s surely a hare, let’s go to the edge of the common.”
But just as I emerged from the wood, I saw, standing ten paces from me, Gargan, the deaf-mute, Monsieur Picot’s herdsman, wrapped round in a voluminous yellowish cloak, with a woollen bonnet on his head, and knitting away at a stocking, as do all the shepherds of these parts.
“Good morning, shepherd,” I said, as we always do.
And he lifted his head in greeting, although he had not heard my voice, but he had seen my lips moving.
I have known this shepherd for fifteen years. For fifteen years I have seen him every autumn, standing on the edge or in the middle of a field, his body motionless and his hands ceaselessly knitting. His flock follow him like a pack of hounds, seeming to obey his eye.
Old Picot grasped my arm:
“You know that the shepherd has killed his wife?”
I was dumbfounded.
“Gargan? The deaf-mute?”
“Yes, this last winter, and he was brought to trial at Rouen. I will tell you about it.”
And he drew me into the copse, for the herdsman was able to pick up the words from his master’s lips as if he had heard them. He understood no one else; but, face to face with him, he was no longer deaf; and his master, on the other hand, read like a wizard every meaning of the mute’s dumbshow, all the gestures of his fingers, the wrinklings of his cheeks, and the flashes of his eyes.
Listen to this simple story, a melancholy piece of news, just such a one as happens in the country, time and again.
Gargan was the son of a marl-digger, one of those men who go down into the clay pits to dig
