Céleste cared for him with an anxious activity, made him drink remedies, applied blisters, came and went in the house; while old Amable remained on the edge of his attic, peering from that distance at the dark hollow where his son lay and suffered. He would not come any nearer, for his hatred of the woman, and he squatted there sulking like a jealous dog.
Six more days went by; then one morning when Céleste, who slept now on two wretched heaps of straw, went to see if her man was better, she could not hear his hurried breathing coming from his hidden bed. Terrified, she asked:
“Now, Césaire, how’ve you been tonight?”
He did not answer.
She put out her hand to touch him, and felt the cold flesh of his face. A long wail broke from her, the long wail of a woman in mortal fear. He was dead.
At her cry, the old deaf man appeared at the top of his ladder; and seeing Céleste rushing out to bring help, he hurried down and touched his son’s face himself: the truth broke on him and he bent to fasten the door from the inside, to keep the woman from coming back to take possession of his home again, now that his son was no longer alive.
Then he sat down on a chair beside the dead man.
Neighbours arrived and shouted and knocked. He did not hear them. One of them broke a pane of the window and jumped into the room. Others followed; the door was opened again, and Céleste reappeared, weeping violently, with swollen cheeks and red eyes. Then old Amable, beaten, climbed back to his attic without saying a word.
The burial took place next day; then, after the ceremony, father-in-law and daughter-in-law found themselves alone in the farmhouse, with the child.
It was the usual hour for dinner. She lit the fire, prepared the soup, and set the plates on the table, while the old man sat in his chair and waited without appearing to notice her.
When the meal was ready, she shouted in his ear:
“Come, dad, we must eat.”
He rose, took his place at the end of the table, emptied his bowl, chewed his bread spread thin with butter, drank two glasses of cider and then went out.
It was one of those moist warm days, one of those beneficent days when life ferments, palpitating and blossoming, over the whole surface of the earth.
Old Amable followed a little path across the fields. He looked at the green shoots of corn and barley, and thought that his young lad was under the ground now, his poor young lad. He walked wearily along, dragging his legs and limping a little. And as he was alone in the fields, all alone under the blue sky, in the middle of growing crops, all alone with the larks he saw hovering over his head but whose airy song he could not hear, he began to weep as he walked.
Then he sat down near a pool and stayed there until evening, watching the little birds that came to drink; then, at nightfall, he went home, supped without saying a word and climbed to his attic.
And his life went on as in the past. Nothing was changed, except that his son Césaire slept in the cemetery.
What could the old man have done? He could not work now, he was only fit to eat the soup prepared by his daughter-in-law. And he swallowed it in silence, morning and night, glaring furiously at the child who sat facing him at the other side of the table and ate too. Then he went out, wandered over the country like a vagabond, went and hid himself behind barns to get an hour or two hours’ sleep as if he was afraid of being seen, then as dusk fell he came home.
But weighty anxieties began to fill Céleste’s thoughts. The fields needed a man to watch over them and work them. Someone ought to be there in the fields all the time, not just a hired man, but a real husbandman, a master, who knew his job and would have a real interest in the farm. A woman alone could not cultivate them, follow the prices of corn, direct the selling and buying of stock. Certain ideas came into her head, simple practical ideas, over which she pondered all night. She could not marry again before the year was up, and the immediate pressing needs must be attended to at once.
Only one man could help her in this quandary, Victor Lecoq, the father of her child. He was steady, and land-wise; with a little money in his pocket he would have made an excellent farmer. She knew that, having seen him working on her parents’ farm.
So one morning, seeing him going along the road with a load of manure, she went out after him. When he saw her, he stopped his horses, and she spoke to him as if she had met him only the day before:
“Good day, Victor, how are you today?”
“I’m all right,” he answered; “and how’s yourself?”
“Oh, me, I’d be all right if I wasn’t alone on the place, which worries me because of the land.”
Then they talked on a long time, leaning against the wheel of the heavy wagon. Now and then the man scratched his forehead under his cap and reflected, while she, with crimson cheeks, talked earnestly, setting forth her reasons, all her affairs, her future plans; at last he murmured:
“Yes, it could be done.”
She held out her hand like a peasant concluding a bargain, and asked:
“Is it settled?”
He gripped the outstretched
