He answered, in a voice of unwonted vigour:
“Have you taken leave of your senses?”
Then Césaire had set himself to enumerate his reasons, to relate Céleste’s good points, and prove that she would save a hundred times the cost of the child. But the old man doubted the existence of these merits, while he could not doubt the existence of the child, and he reiterated stolidly, without offering any further reasons:
“I’ll not have it! I’ll not have it! You’ll not do it as long as I’m alive.”
And for three months they stuck at that deadlock, neither giving way an inch, and once a week, at least, they went over it all again, with the same arguments, the same words, the same gestures, and the same futile result.
It was after this that Céleste had advised Césaire to go and ask their priest’s help.
When the young peasant got home he found his father already at the table, for his visit to the rectory had delayed him.
They dined in silence, sitting opposite each other, ate a little butter on their bread after the soup and drank a glass of cider; then they sat motionless on their chairs, in the dim glimmer of the candle brought by the little servant to give her light to wash the bowls, dry the glasses and cut chunks of bread in preparation for the breakfast eaten at dawn.
There was a knock at the door: it opened immediately and the priest appeared. The old man lifted uneasy distrustful eyes, and, with a foreboding of danger, started to climb his ladder, but Father Raffin put a hand on his shoulder and yelled in his ear:
“I have a word to say to you, old Amable.”
Césaire had disappeared, profiting by the door left open by the priest. He did not want to listen, so much he dreaded the discussion; he did not want to feel his spirits gradually sinking with each obstinate refusal of his father; he preferred to learn the truth, good or bad, in one word afterwards; and he went out into the darkness. It was a moonless starless evening, one of those misty evenings when the air feels heavy with moisture. A faint smell of apples hung round the yard, for it was the time when the earliest apples were gathered, the euribles, as they say in the cider country. As Césaire walked past the walls of the cowsheds, the warm smell of living animals asleep in the straw floated through the narrow windows; and by the stable he heard the stamping of the horses, and the sound of their jaws snatching and chewing the oats from the mangers.
He walked straight ahead, thinking about Céleste. In his simple mind, where ideas were hardly more than images born of direct contact with objects, thoughts of love took form only when he evoked the image of a big red-haired girl, standing in a sunken road, laughing, hands on hips.
It was thus he had seen her on the day when he first desired her. He had, however, known her since they were children, but never before this morning had he taken any particular notice of her. They had talked for some minutes; then he left her, and as he walked away, he kept on saying to himself: “Christ, that’s a fine girl all the same. A pity she went wrong with Victor.” He thought about it until evening, and all the next day as well.
When he saw her again, he felt a tickling sensation at the bottom of his throat, as if a feather had been pushed down his mouth into his chest; and after that, every time he found himself near her, he was surprised at the nervous tickling feeling that invariably attacked him.
Three weeks later he decided to marry her, so taken was he with her. He could not have said what had roused in him this overweening desire, but he expressed it by saying: “I’m possessed by her,” as if the passion he bore within him for this girl was mastering him like an evil spirit. He did not mind at all that she had lost her virtue; it was only so much the worse; it did not spoil her; and he bore no ill will to Victor Lecoq for it.
But if the priest failed, what was he to do? He dared not think about that, so tortured was he by anxiety.
He had reached the rectory, and he sat down near the little wooden fence to wait for the priest’s return.
He had been there perhaps an hour when he heard footsteps on the road, and despite the blackness of the night, he soon made out the still blacker shadow of a cassock.
He stood up, his legs trembling under him, afraid to speak, afraid to be told.
The priest saw him and said gaily:
“Well, my boy, it’s all right.”
Césaire stammered:
“All right … it can’t be.”
“Yes, my lad, but not without some trouble. What an obstinate old donkey your father is!”
“It can’t be,” the peasant repeated.
“But it is. Come and see me tomorrow noon, to arrange for the banns.”
The man had seized the priest’s hand. He gripped it, shook it, crushed it, babbling: “Indeed, indeed, indeed, Father … on the word of an honest man … you’ll see me next Sunday in church.”
II
The wedding took place towards the middle of December. It was a simple one, since the pair had not much money. Césaire, all in new clothes, was ready at eight in the morning to go and call for his
