He rose from his bed at once, went to his table, and began to write; he forgot nothing, no detail of the crime, no detail of his life of agony, no detail of the tortures his heart had endured, and he ended by declaring that he had sentenced himself to death, that he was going to execute the criminal, and he begged his friend, his old friend, to take care that no one ever insulted his memory.
As he finished the letter, he saw that day had come. He closed it, sealed it, wrote the address, then walked lightly downstairs and almost ran to the little white box nailed to the wall at the corner of the farm. The paper was heavy in his hand; he dropped it inside the box, came quickly back, drew the bolts of the great door, and climbed to the top of his tower to wait for the coming and going of the postman who would carry away his death sentence.
Now he felt calm, set free, saved!
A cold dry wind, an icy wind blew in his face. He drew a deep greedy breath, his mouth open, drinking in its bitter caress. The sky was red, with the fiery red of a winter sky, and all the white frost-bound plain glittered in the early rays as though it were powdered with crushed glass. Upright, bareheaded, Renardet looked out over the wide countryside; there were meadows on his left hand, and on his right lay the village; from its chimneys spirals of smoke rose from the fires lit for breakfast.
He saw the Brindille running below him, between the rocks where he would very soon lie crushed. He felt newborn in this lovely frozen dawn, full of vigour and full of life. He was bathed in light, wrapped round in it, filled with it as with hope. A thousand memories assailed him, memories of other such mornings, of swift walks over the hard earth that rang under his feet, of good sport on the edge of the marshes where the wild duck nested. All the pleasant things he loved, the pleasant things of life, rushed through his memory, stabbed him with fresh desires, woke all the sharp appetites of his powerful active body.
And he was going to die? Why? Was he going to kill himself violently because he was afraid of a shadow? Afraid of nothing? He was rich and still young. What madness! All he needed to help him to forget was some distraction, to go away for a while, to travel. This very night he had not seen the child, because his mind had been preoccupied and lost itself in other thoughts. Perhaps he would never see her again? And if she continued to haunt him in this house, she would certainly not follow him anywhere else. The earth was wide and the future long. Why should he die?
His glance wandered over the meadows, and he caught sight of a blue patch in the path that ran by the Brindille. It was Médéric coming to deliver the letters from town and take away the village letters.
Renardet started violently as a pang of grief ran through him, and he rushed down the winding staircase to take back his letter, to make the postman give it to him. Little he cared now whether he was seen or not; he ran across the grass covered with the frozen crystals of the night’s frosts and he reached the box at the corner of the farm at the same moment as the postman.
The man had opened the little wooden box and was taking out several letters put there by the people of the parish.
“Good day, Médéric,” Renardet said to him.
“Good day, Mr. Mayor.”
“I say, Médéric, I’ve dropped a letter in the box that I want. I’ve come to ask you to give it me back.”
“Certainly, Mr. Mayor, I’ll give it to you.”
And the postman raised his eyes. He was thunderstruck at the sight of Renardet’s face; his cheeks were purple, his eyes were restless, black-rimmed, and sunk in his head, his hair wild, his beard tangled, his tie awry. It was evident that he had not been to bed.
“Are you ill, Mr. Mayor?” the man demanded.
The other man realised in a flash that he must present an odd appearance; he became confused and stammered: “No … no. It’s only that I jumped out of bed to ask you for that letter. … I was asleep. … Don’t you see?”
A vague suspicion crossed the old soldiers’ mind.
“What letter?” he answered.
“The one you’re going to give me back.”
Médéric was hesitating now; he did not think the mayor’s manner was natural. Perhaps there was a secret, a political secret in the letter. He knew that Renardet was not a republican, and he knew all about the queer shifts and all about the underhand dealings in use at elections.
“Who’s this letter addressed to?” he demanded.
“To Monsieur Pictoin, the examining magistrate. You know him quite well, my friend Monsieur Pictoin.”
The postman sought among the letters and found the one he was being asked to return. Then he began to scrutinise it, turning it over and over in his fingers, very perplexed, very disturbed between his fear of committing a serious fault and his fear of making an enemy of the mayor.
Seeing his hesitation, Renardet made a movement to seize the letter and snatch it from him. This abrupt gesture convinced Médéric that he had stumbled on
