Thibault thought this would be a good moment to declare himself; whenever he saw a woman crying, he immediately thought, most erroneously, that she only cried because she wished to be consoled.
He decided, however, that he would not be able to attain his object without a certain circumlocution.
“Indeed,” he answered, “I quite understand your sorrow, nay, more than that, I share it with you, for you cannot doubt the affection I bear my cousin. But we must resign ourselves, and without wishing to deny Landry’s good qualities, I would still ask you, Madame, to find someone else who is his equal.”
“His equal!” exclaimed the widow, “there is no such person. Where shall I find so nice and so good a youth? It was a pleasure to me to look at his smooth young face, and with it all, he was so self-composed, so steady in his habits! He was working night and day, and yet I could with a glance make him shrink away and hide. No, no, Monsieur Thibault, I tell you frankly, the remembrance of him will prevent me ever wishing to look at another man, and I know that I must resign myself to remaining a widow for the rest of my life.”
“Phew!” said Thibault; “but Landry was very young!”
“There is no disadvantage in that,” replied the widow.
“But who knows if he would always have retained his good qualities. Take my advice, Madame, do not grieve any more, but, as I say, look out for someone who will make you forget him. What you really need is not a baby-face like that, but a grown man, possessing all the qualities that you admire and regret in Landry, but, at the same time sufficiently mature to prevent the chance of finding one fine day that all your illusions are dispersed, and that you are left face to face with a libertine and a bully.”
The mistress of the Mill shook her head; but Thibault went on:
“In short, what you need, is a man who while earning your respect, will, at the same time make the Mill work profitably. You have but to say the word, and you would not have to wait long before you found yourself well provided for, my fair Madame, a good bit better than you were just now.”
“And where am I to find this miracle of a man?” asked the widow, as she rose to her feet, looking defiantly at the shoemaker, as if throwing down a challenge. The latter, mistaking the tone in which these last words were said, thought it an excellent occasion to make known his own proposals, and accordingly hastened to profit by it.
“Well, I confess,” he answered, “that when I said that a handsome widow like you would not have to go far before finding the man who would be just the very husband for her, I was thinking of myself, for I should reckon myself fortunate, and should feel proud, to call myself your husband. Ah! I assure you,” he went on, while the mistress of the Mill stood looking at him with ever-increasing displeasure in her eyes, “I assure you that with me you would have no occasion to fear any opposition to your wishes: I am a perfect lamb in the way of gentleness, and I should have but one law and one desire, my law would be to obey you, my desire to please you! and as to your fortune, I have means of adding to it which I will make known to you later on. …”
But the end of Thibault’s sentence remained unspoken.
“What!” cried the widow, whose fury was the greater for having been kept in check until then, “What! you, whom I thought my friend, you dare to speak of replacing him in my heart! you try to dissuade me from keeping my faith to your cousin. Get out of the place, you worthless scoundrel! out of the place, I say! or I will not answer for the consequences; I have a good mind to get four of my men to collar you and throw you under the Mill-wheel.”
Thibault was anxious to make some sort of response, but, although ready with an answer on ordinary occasions, he could not for the moment think of a single word whereby to justify himself. True, Madame Polet, gave him no time to think, but seizing hold of a beautiful new jug that stood near her, she flung it at Thibault’s head. Luckily for him, Thibault dodged to the left and escaped the missile, which flew past him, crashing to pieces against the chimneypiece. Then the mistress of the house took up a stool, and aimed it at him with equal violence; this time Thibault dodged to the right, and the stool went against the window, smashing two or three panes of glass. At the sound of the falling glass, all the youths and maids of the Mill came running up. They found their mistress flinging bottles, water-jugs, saltcellars, plates, everything in short that came to hand, with all her might at Thibault’s head. Fortunately for him widow Polet was too much incensed to be able to speak; if she had been able to do so, she would have called out; “Kill him! Strangle him! Kill the rascal! the scoundrel! the villain!”
On seeing the reinforcements arriving to help the widow, Thibault endeavoured to escape by the door that had been left open by the recruiting party, but just as he was running out, the good pig, that we saw taking its siesta in the sun, being roused out of its first sleep by all this hullabaloo, and thinking the farm people were after it, made a dash for its stye, and in so doing charged right against Thibault’s legs. The latter lost his balance, and went rolling over and over for a good ten paces in the dirt
