The elder Hautot, proud of his possessions, was boasting of the game that his guests would find in his shoot. He was a big Norman, one of those powerful, ruddy, big-boned men who can lift a cartload of apples on to their shoulders. Half peasant, half gentleman, rich, respected, influential, autocratic, he had first insisted that his son César should work up to the third form so that he might be well informed, and then he had stopped his education for fear of his becoming a fine gentleman without any interest in the farm.
Nearly as tall as his father, but thinner, César Hautot was a good son, docile, contented, full of admiration and respect and regard for the wishes and opinions of the elder Hautot.
M. Bermont, the tax-collector, a short stout man whose red cheeks showed a thin network of violet veins like the tributaries and winding streams of a river on a map, asked:
“And hares—are there any hares?”
The elder Hautot replied:
“As many as you please, especially in the hollows of Puysatier.”
“Where shall we begin?” asked the good-natured notary; he was pale and fat, his flesh bulging out in his tight-fitting, brand-new shooting-kit recently bought at Rouen.
“In that direction, through the bottoms. We will drive the partridges into the open and fall upon them.”
Hautot got up. The others followed his example, took their guns from the corner, examined the locks, stamped their feet to ease them in their boots, not yet softened by the warmth within. Then they went out, and the dogs straining at the leash barked and beat the air with their paws.
They set out towards the hollows, which were in a little glen, or rather in a long undulating stretch of poor land unfit for cultivation, furrowed with ditches and covered with ferns—an excellent preserve for game.
The sportsmen took their places, Hautot senior to the right, Hautot junior to the left, with the two guests in the centre. The keepers and game-bag carriers followed. The solemn moment had come when sportsmen are waiting for the first shot, their hearts beating more rapidly, and their nervous fingers unable to leave the trigger alone.
Suddenly there was a shot. Hautot had fired. They all stopped and saw a partridge, one of a covy flying as swiftly as possible, drop into a ditch covered with thick shrubs. The excited sportsman started to run, taking big strides, dragging aside the briers in his path, and disappeared into the thicket to look for the bird.
Almost immediately a second shot was heard.
“Ha! Ha! the rascal,” exclaimed M. Bermont, “he must have started a hare from the undergrowth.”
They all waited with eyes fixed on the mass of dense underwood. The notary, making a trumpet of his hands, shouted: “Have you got them?”
As there was no reply from the elder Hautot, César, turning towards the gamekeeper, said: “Go and help him, Joseph. We must keep in line. We’ll wait.”
And Joseph, a man with an old, lean body and swollen joints, set off at an easy pace down to the ditch, searching for a suitable opening with the caution of a fox. Then, suddenly, he shouted: “Oh, hurry up! Hurry up! There has been an accident!”
They all hurried along and plunged through the briers. Hautot had fallen on his side in a faint with both hands pressed on his abdomen, from which long trickles of blood flowed on to the grass through his linen jacket torn by a bullet. In letting go of his gun to pick up the dead partridge that lay within reach, he had dropped it and the second discharge going off in the fall had torn open his bowels. They drew him out of the ditch, undressed him and saw a frightful wound through which the intestines protruded. Then after binding him up as well as they could they carried him home and waited for the doctor who had been sent for, as well as the priest.
When the doctor arrived, he shook his head gravely, and turning towards young Hautot, who was sobbing on a chair, he said:
“My poor boy, this looks bad.”
But when the wound was dressed, the patient moved his fingers, first opened his mouth, then his eyes, cast around him a troubled, haggard glance, then appeared to be trying to recall, to understand, and he murmured:
“Good God, I am done for.”
The doctor held his hand.
“No, no; a question of a few days’ rest, it will be all right.”
Hautot resumed:
“I am done for! I am torn to bits! I know!”
Then, suddenly:
“I want to talk to my son, if there is time.”
In spite of himself, César was weeping, and repeated like a little boy:
“Papa, papa, poor papa!”
But the father said in a more determined tone:
“Come, stop crying, this is no time for tears. I have something to say to you. Sit down there, close to me, it will soon be over, and I shall be easier in my mind. You others, please leave us alone for a minute.”
As soon as they were alone:
“Listen, my boy. You are twenty-four, one can talk to you. After all there is not such a mystery about these matters as we attach to them. You know that your mother has been dead seven years and that I am only forty-five, seeing that I married when I was nineteen. Is that not true?”
The son stammered:
“Yes, quite true.”
“So then your mother has been dead for seven years, and I am still a widower. Well! a man like me cannot remain a widower at thirty-seven, you agree?”
The son replied:
“That’s quite true.”
Gasping for breath, very pale and his face drawn with pain, the father continued:
“God! how I suffer! Well, you understand.
