Meanwhile, they drew near the place where little Roque had been found. They came to it at last, one evening, at dusk.
As the shadows were drawing down under a darkened sky, the woodcutters wanted to stop work, and put off until tomorrow the felling of an enormous beech, but the owner refused to allow it and insisted that they should forthwith lop off its branches and haul down the monstrous tree that had lent its shadow to the crime.
When the man had stripped it bare of all its branches and made it ready for its doom, when the woodcutters had undermined its base, five men began to haul on the rope fastened to the summit.
The tree resisted; hacked half through as it was, the powerful trunk was rigid as an iron girder. The workmen, lying right back on the rope, pulled all together, heaving steadily, and accompanied every pull with a breathless shout.
Two woodcutters stood near the giant, grasping their axes, like two executioners ready to strike another blow, and Renardet, motionless, his hand on the bark, waited for the fall in the grip of a nervous agitation.
One of the men said to him: “You are standing too close, Mr. Mayor; when it falls, you might get hurt.”
He neither replied nor drew back; he looked prepared to fling himself upon the beech with both arms and throw it like a wrestler throwing his man.
At the foot of the great wooden column, there was a sudden rending that seemed to run through it to the very top like a mournful shudder; and it swayed a little, on the verge of falling, but resisting still.
With tense bodies and straining arms, the men gave another and mightier heave; and as the shattered tree swayed over, Renardet made a sudden step forward, then stopped, his shoulders braced to take the inevitable shock, the fatal shock that would crush him to the ground.
But the tree, falling a little to one side, only grazed his body, flinging him face downwards five yards away.
The workmen rushed forward to lift him up; he had already raised himself on his knees; he was dazed, with eyes staring wildly, and he drew his hand across his forehead as if he had come to his senses after an access of madness.
When they had helped him to his feet, the astonished men questioned him, unable to understand what he had done. Stammering, he told them that for a moment he had lost his head, or, rather, slipped for a second back into his childhood, and he had imagined that he had time to cross beneath the tree as youngsters rush across in front of hurrying carriages, that he had played at taking risks, that for a week he had felt the desire to do it growing in him, and every time a tree cracked as it fell had wondered if one could run under it without being touched. It was a fool’s trick, he admitted; but everyone has these moments of insanity and these puerile and idiotic temptations.
He explained all this very slowly in a muffled voice, hesitating for words; then he went off, saying: “We’ll be here again tomorrow, my men, tomorrow.”
As soon as he reached his room, he sat down at his table, flooded with light reflected from the shade of the lamp, and wept, his face between his hands.
He wept for a long time, then he dried his eyes, lifted his head, and looked at his clock. It was not yet six. He thought: “I have time before dinner,” and he went and locked his door. Then he came back and sat down again at his table. He pulled out the middle drawer, took a revolver from inside, and placed it on his papers, in the full glare of the lamp. The steel of the weapon gleamed, and threw out flashes of light like flames.
Renardet stared at it for a time with the uncertain eye of a drunken man; then he stood up and began to walk about.
He walked from one end of the room to the other, and from time to time he stopped, to begin again at once. Suddenly he opened the door of his dining room, soaked a napkin in the water jug, and wiped his forehead, as he had done on the morning of the crime. Then he began to walk about again. Every time he walked past his table, the shining weapon attracted his glance, almost fitted itself into his hand; but he kept his eye on the clock and thought: “I have still time.”
Half past six struck. Then he grasped the revolver, and, his face twisted into a horrible grimace, he opened his mouth and thrust the barrel inside as if he wanted to swallow it. He stood so for some moments, motionless, finger on the trigger; then, seized with a sudden shuddering horror, he spat the pistol out on to the carpet.
He dropped into his chair, shaken with sobs: “I can’t. I daren’t. My God, my God! What shall I do to get the courage to kill myself?”
There was a knock at the door; he leaped to his feet in a frenzy. A servant said: “Dinner is ready, sir.” “Very well,” he answered, “I’m coming down.”
So he picked up the weapon, shut it away in the drawer again, then looked at himself in the glass over the chimneypiece to assure himself that his face was not too convulsed. He was flushed, as always, a little more flushed perhaps. That was all. He went downstairs and sat down to dinner.
He ate slowly, like a man anxious to prolong a meal, anxious not to be left alone with himself. Then he smoked several pipes in the dining room while the table was cleared. Then he went back to his room.
As soon as he had shut
