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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Devil's Pool, by George Sand
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Devil's Pool
+
+Author: George Sand
+
+Release Date: July 4, 2004 [EBook #12816]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DEVIL'S POOL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Wilelmina Mallière and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ROMANCISTS
+
+GEORGE SAND
+
+THE DEVIL'S POOL
+
+[Illustration: Chapter V
+
+_He saw my little Marie watching her three sheep on the common land_. ]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOTHÈQUE DES CHEFS-D'OEUVRE
+
+DU ROMAN CONTEMPORAIN
+
+_THE DEVIL'S POOL_
+
+GEORGE SAND
+
+PRINTED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY BY GEORGE BARRIE & SONS, Philadelphia
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY GEORGE BARRIE & SON
+
+
+
+
+THIS EDITION OF
+
+THE DEVIL'S POOL
+
+HAS BEEN COMPLETELY TRANSLATED
+
+BY
+
+GEORGE B. IVES
+
+THE ETCHINGS AND DRAWINGS ARE BY
+
+EDMOND RUDAUX
+
+
+
+
+NOTICE
+
+
+When I began, with _The Devil's Pool_, a series of rustic pictures which
+I proposed to collect under the title of _The Hemp-Beater's Tales_, I
+had no theory, no purpose to effect a revolution in literature. No one
+can bring about a revolution by himself alone, and there are
+revolutions, especially in matters of art, which mankind accomplishes
+without any very clear idea how it is done, because everybody takes a
+hand in them. But this is not applicable to the romance of rustic
+manners: it has existed in all ages and under all forms, sometimes
+pompous, sometimes affected, sometimes artless. I have said, and I say
+again here: the dream of a country-life has always been the ideal of
+cities, aye, and of courts. I have done nothing new in following the
+incline that leads civilized man back to the charms of primitive life. I
+have not intended to invent a new language or to create a new style. I
+have been assured of the contrary in a large number of _feuilletons_,
+but I know better than any one what to think about my own plans, and I
+am always astonished that the critics dig so deep for them, when the
+simplest ideas, the most commonplace incidents, are the only
+inspirations to which the products of art owe their being. As for _The
+Devil's Pool_ in particular, the incident that I have related in the
+preface, an engraving of Holbein's that had made an impression upon me,
+and a scene from real life that came under my eyes at the same moment,
+in sowing time,--those were what impelled me to write this modest tale,
+the scene of which is laid amid humble localities that I used to visit
+every day. If any one asks me my purpose in writing it, I shall reply
+that I desired to do a very simple and very touching thing, and that I
+have not succeeded as I hoped. I have seen, I have felt the beautiful in
+the simple, but to see and to depict are two different things! The most
+that the artist can hope to do is to induce those who have eyes to look
+with him. Therefore, my friends, look at simple things, look at the sky
+and the fields and the trees and the peasants, especially at what is
+good and true in them: you will see them to a slight extent in my book,
+you will see them much better in nature.
+
+GEORGE SAND.
+
+NOHANT, _April 12, 1851_.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL'S POOL
+
+I
+
+THE AUTHOR TO THE READER
+
+    A la sueur de ton visaige
+     Tu gagnerois ta pauvre vie,
+    Après long travail et usaige,
+     Voicy la _mort_ qui te convie.[1]
+
+
+The quatrain in old French written below one of Holbein's pictures is
+profoundly sad in its simplicity. The engraving represents a ploughman
+driving his plough through a field. A vast expanse of country stretches
+away in the distance, with some poor cabins here and there; the sun is
+setting behind the hill. It is the close of a hard day's work. The
+peasant is a short, thick-set man, old, and clothed in rags. The four
+horses that he urges forward are thin and gaunt; the ploughshare is
+buried in rough, unyielding soil. A single figure is joyous and alert in
+that scene of _sweat and toil_. It is a fantastic personage, a skeleton
+armed with a whip, who runs in the furrow beside the terrified horses
+and belabors them, thus serving the old husbandman as ploughboy. This
+spectre, which Holbein has introduced allegorically in the succession of
+philosophical and religious subjects, at once lugubrious and burlesque,
+entitled the _Dance of Death_, is Death itself.
+
+In that collection, or rather in that great book, in which Death,
+playing his part on every page, is the connecting link and the dominant
+thought, Holbein has marshalled sovereigns, pontiffs, lovers, gamblers,
+drunkards, nuns, courtesans, brigands, paupers, soldiers, monks, Jews,
+travellers, the whole world of his day and of ours; and everywhere the
+spectre of Death mocks and threatens and triumphs. From a single picture
+only, is it absent. It is that one in which Lazarus, the poor man, lying
+on a dunghill at the rich man's door, declares that he does not fear
+Death, doubtless because he has nothing to lose and his life is
+premature death.
+
+Is that stoicist idea of the half-pagan Christianity of the Renaissance
+very comforting, and do devout souls find consolation therein? The
+ambitious man, the rascal, the tyrant, the rake, all those haughty
+sinners who abuse life, and whom Death holds by the hair, are destined
+to be punished, without doubt; but are the blind man, the beggar, the
+madman, the poor peasant, recompensed for their long life of misery by
+the single reflection that death is not an evil for them? No! An
+implacable melancholy, a ghastly fatality, overshadows the artist's
+work. It resembles a bitter imprecation upon the fate of mankind.
+
+There truly do we find the grievous satire, the truthful picture of the
+society Holbein had under his eyes. Crime and misfortune, those are what
+impressed him; but what shall we depict, we artists of another age?
+Shall we seek in the thought of death the reward of mankind in the
+present day? Shall we invoke it as the punishment of injustice and the
+guerdon of suffering?
+
+No, we have no longer to deal with Death, but with Life. We no longer
+believe either in the nothingness of the tomb or in salvation purchased
+by obligatory renunciation; we want life to be good because we want it
+to be fruitful. Lazarus must leave his dunghill, so that the poor may no
+longer rejoice at the death of the rich. All must be happy, so that the
+happiness of some may not be a crime and accursed of God. The husbandman
+as he sows his grain must know that he is working at the work of life,
+and not rejoice because Death is walking beside him. In a word, death
+must no longer be the punishment of prosperity or the consolation of
+adversity. God did not destine death as a punishment or a compensation
+for life; for he blessed life, and the grave should not be a refuge to
+which it is permitted to send those who cannot be made happy.
+
+Certain artists of our time, casting a serious glance upon their
+surroundings, strive to depict grief, the abjectness of poverty,
+Lazarus's dunghill. That may be within the domain of art and philosophy;
+but, by representing poverty as so ugly, so base, and at times so
+vicious and criminal a thing, do they attain their end, and is the
+effect as salutary as they could wish? We do not dare to say. We may be
+told that by pointing out the abyss that yawns beneath the fragile crust
+of opulence, they terrify the wicked rich man, as, in the time of the
+_Danse Macabre_, they showed him its yawning ditch, and Death ready to
+wind its unclean arms about him. To-day, they show him the thief picking
+his lock, the assassin watching until he sleeps. We confess that we do
+not clearly understand how they will reconcile him with the humanity he
+despises, how they will move his pity for the sufferings of the poor man
+whom he fears, by showing him that same poor man in the guise of the
+escaped felon and the burglar. Ghastly Death, gnashing his teeth and
+playing the violin in the productions of Holbein and his predecessors,
+found it impossible in that guise to convert the perverse and to comfort
+their victims. Is it not a fact that the literature of our day is in
+this respect following to some extent in the footsteps of the artists of
+the Middle Ages and the Renaissance?
+
+Holbein's drunkards fill their glasses in a sort of frenzied desire to
+put aside the thought of Death, who, unseen by them, acts as their
+cup-bearer. The wicked rich men of to-day demand fortifications and
+cannon to put aside the thought of a rising of the Jacquerie, whom art
+shows them at work in the shadow, separately awaiting the moment to
+swoop down upon society. The Church of the Middle Ages answered the
+terrors of the powerful ones of the earth by selling indulgences. The
+government of to-day allays the anxiety of the rich by making them pay
+for many gendarmes and jailers, bayonets and prisons.
+
+Albert Dürer, Michael Angelo, Holbein, Callot, Goya, produced powerful
+satires upon the evils of their age and their country. They are immortal
+works, historical pages of unquestionable value; we do not undertake,
+therefore, to deny artists the right to probe the wounds of society and
+lay them bare before our eyes; but is there nothing better to be done
+to-day than to depict the terrifying and the threatening? In this
+literature of mysteries of iniquity, which talent and imagination have
+made fashionable, we prefer the mild, attractive figures to the villains
+for dramatic effect. The former may undertake and effect conversions,
+the others cause fear, and fear does not cure egoism, but increases it.
+
+We believe that the mission of art is a mission of sentiment and love,
+that the novel of to-day ought to replace the parable and the fable of
+simpler times, and that the artist has a broader and more poetic task
+than that of suggesting a few prudential and conciliatory measures to
+lessen the alarm his pictures arouse. His object should be to make the
+objects of his solicitude lovable, and I would not reproach him for
+flattering them a little, in case of need. Art is not a study of
+positive reality, it is a quest for ideal truth, and the _Vicar of
+Wakefield_ was a more useful and healthy book for the mind than the
+_Paysan Perverti_ or the _Liaisons Dangereuses._
+
+Reader, pardon these reflections, and deign to accept them by way of
+preface. There will be no other to the little tale I propose to tell
+you, and it will be so short and so simple that I felt that I must
+apologize beforehand by telling you what I think of terrifying tales.
+
+I allowed myself to be drawn into this digression apropos of a
+ploughman. It is the story of a ploughman that I set out to tell you,
+and will tell you forthwith.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE PLOUGHING
+
+
+I had been gazing for a long time and with profound sadness at Holbein's
+ploughman, and I was walking in the fields, musing upon country-life and
+the destiny of the husbandman. Doubtless it is a depressing thing to
+consume one's strength and one's life driving the plough through the
+bosom of the jealous earth, which yields the treasures of its fecundity
+only under duress, when a bit of the blackest and coarsest bread at the
+end of the day is the only reward and the only profit of such laborious
+toil. The wealth that covers the ground, the crops, the fruit, the proud
+cattle fattening on the long grass, are the property of a few, and the
+instruments of fatigue and slavery of the majority. As a general rule,
+the man of leisure does not love, for themselves, the fields, or the
+meadows, or the spectacle of nature, or the superb beasts that are to be
+converted into gold pieces for his use. The man of leisure comes to the
+country in search of a little air and health, then returns to the city
+to spend the fruit of his vassal's toil.
+
+The man of toil, for his part, is too crushed, too wretched, and too
+frightened concerning the future, to enjoy the beauties of the landscape
+and the charms of rustic life. To him also the golden fields, the lovely
+meadows, the noble animals, represent bags of crowns, of which he will
+have only a paltry share, insufficient for his needs, and yet those
+cursed bags must be filled every year to satisfy the master and pay for
+the privilege of living sparingly and wretchedly on his domain.
+
+And still nature is always young and beautiful and generous. She sheds
+poetry and beauty upon all living things, upon all the plants that are
+left to develop in their own way. Nature possesses the secret of
+happiness, and no one has ever succeeded in wresting it from her. He
+would be the most fortunate of men who, possessing the science of his
+craft and working with his hands, deriving happiness and liberty from
+the exercise of his intelligent strength, should have time to live in
+the heart and the brain, to understand his work, and to love the work of
+God. The artist has enjoyment of that sort in contemplating and
+reproducing the beauties of Nature; but, when he sees the suffering of
+the men who people this paradise called the earth, the just,
+kind-hearted artist is grieved in the midst of his enjoyment. Where the
+mind, heart, and arms work in concert under the eye of Providence, true
+happiness would be found, and a holy harmony would exist between the
+munificence of God and the delights of the human soul. Then, instead of
+piteous, ghastly Death walking in his furrow, whip in hand, the painter
+of allegories could place beside the ploughman a radiant angel, sowing
+the blessed grain in the smoking furrows with generous hand.
+
+And the dream of a peaceful, free, poetical, laborious, simple existence
+for the husbandman is not so difficult of conception that it need be
+relegated to a place among chimeras. The gentle, melancholy words of
+Virgil: "O how happy the life of the husbandman, if he but knew his
+happiness!" is an expression of regret; but, like all regrets, it is
+also a prediction. A day will come when the ploughman may be an artist,
+if not to express,--which will then matter but little, perhaps,--at all
+events, to feel, the beautiful. Do you believe that this mysterious
+intuition of poesy does not already exist within him in the state of
+instinct and vague revery? In those who have a little hoard for their
+protection to-day, and in whom excess of misery does not stifle all
+moral and intellectual development, pure happiness, felt and
+appreciated, is at the elementary stage; and, furthermore, if poets'
+voices have already arisen from the bosom of sorrow and fatigue, why
+should it be said that the work of the hands excludes the exercise of
+the functions of the mind? That exclusion is probably the general result
+of excessive toil and profound misery; but let it not be said that when
+man shall work only moderately and profitably, then there will be none
+but bad workmen and bad poets. He who derives noble enjoyment from the
+inward sentiment of poesy is a true poet, though he has never written a
+line in his life.
+
+My thoughts had taken this course, and I did not notice that this
+confidence in man's capacity for education was strengthened in my mind
+by external influences. I was walking along the edge of a field which
+the peasants were preparing for the approaching sowing. The field was an
+extensive one, like that in Holbein's picture. The landscape, too, was
+of great extent and framed in broad lines of verdure, slightly reddened
+by the approach of autumn, the lusty brown earth, where recent rains had
+left in some of the furrows lines of water which sparkled in the sun
+like slender silver threads. It was a blight, warm day, and the ground,
+freshly opened by the sharp ploughshares, exhaled a slight vapor. At
+the upper end of the field, an old man, whose broad back and stern face
+recalled the man in Holbein's picture, but whose clothing did not
+indicate poverty, gravely drove his old-fashioned _areau_, drawn by two
+placid oxen, with pale yellow hides, veritable patriarchs of the fields,
+tall, rather thin, with long, blunt horns, hard-working old beasts whom
+long companionship has made _brothers_, as they are called in our
+country districts, and who, when they are separated, refuse to work with
+new mates and die of grief. People who know nothing of the country call
+this alleged friendship of the ox for his yoke-fellow fabulous. Let them
+go to the stable and look at a poor, thin, emaciated animal, lashing his
+sunken sides with his restless tail, sniffing with terror and contempt
+at the fodder that is put before him, his eyes always turned toward the
+door, pawing the empty place beside him, smelling the yoke and chains
+his companion wore, and calling him incessantly with a pitiful bellow.
+The driver will say: "There's a yoke of oxen lost; his brother's dead,
+and he won't work. We ought to fatten him for killing; but he won't eat,
+and he'll soon starve to death."
+
+The old ploughman was working slowly, in silence, without useless
+expenditure of strength. His docile team seemed in no greater hurry
+than he; but as he kept constantly at work, never turning aside, and
+exerting always just the requisite amount of sustained power, his furrow
+was as quickly cut as his son's, who was driving four less powerful oxen
+on some harder and more stony land a short distance away.
+
+But the spectacle that next attracted my attention was a fine one
+indeed, a noble subject for a painter. At the other end of the arable
+tract, a young man of attractive appearance was driving a superb team:
+four yoke of young beasts, black-coated with tawny spots that gleamed
+like fire, with the short, curly heads that suggest the wild bull, the
+great, wild eyes, the abrupt movements, the nervous, jerky way of doing
+their work, which shows that the yoke and goad still irritate them and
+that they shiver with wrath as they yield to the domination newly
+imposed upon them. They were what are called oxen _freshly yoked_. The
+man who was guiding them had to clear a field until recently used for
+pasturage, and filled with venerable stumps--an athlete's task which his
+energy, his youth, and his eight almost untamed beasts were hardly
+sufficient to accomplish.
+
+A child of six or seven years, as beautiful as an angel, with a lamb's
+fleece covering his shoulders, over his blouse, so that he resembled
+the little Saint John the Baptist of the painters of the Renaissance,
+was trudging along in the furrow beside the plough and pricking the
+sides of the oxen with a long, light stick, the end of which was armed
+with a dull goad. The proud beasts quivered under the child's small
+hand, and made the yokes and the straps about their foreheads groan,
+jerking the plough violently forward. When the ploughshare struck a
+root, the driver shouted in a resonant voice, calling each beast by his
+name, but rather to soothe than to excite them; for the oxen, annoyed by
+the sudden resistance, started forward, digging their broad forked feet
+into the ground, and would have turned aside and dragged the plough
+across the field, had not the young man held the four leaders in check
+with voice and goad, while the child handled the other four. He, too,
+shouted, poor little fellow, in a voice which he tried to render
+terrible, but which remained as sweet as his angelic face. The whole
+picture was beautiful in strength and in grace: the landscape, the man,
+the child, the oxen under the yoke; and, despite the mighty struggle in
+which the earth was conquered, there was a feeling of peace and profound
+tranquillity hovering over everything. When the obstacle was surmounted
+and the team resumed its even, solemn progress, the ploughman, whose
+pretended violence was only to give his muscles a little practice and
+his vitality an outlet, suddenly resumed the serenity of simple souls
+and cast a contented glance upon his child, who turned to smile at him.
+Then the manly voice of the young _paterfamilias_ would strike up the
+solemn, melancholy tune which the ancient tradition of the province
+transmits, not to all ploughmen without distinction, but to those most
+expert in the art of arousing and sustaining the spirit of
+working-cattle. That song, whose origin was perhaps held sacred, and to
+which mysterious influences seem to have been attributed formerly, is
+reputed even to the present day to possess the virtue of keeping up the
+courage of those animals, of soothing their discontent, and of whiling
+away the tedium of their long task. It is not enough to have the art of
+driving them so as to cut the furrow in an absolutely straight line, to
+lighten their labor by raising the share or burying it deeper in the
+ground: a man is not a perfect ploughman if he cannot sing to his
+cattle, and that is a special science which requires special taste and
+powers.
+
+To speak accurately, this song is only a sort of recitative, broken off
+and taken up again at pleasure. Its irregular form and its intonations,
+false according to the rules of musical art, make it impossible to
+reproduce. But it is a fine song none the less, and so entirely
+appropriate to the nature of the work it accompanies, to the gait of the
+ox, to the tranquillity of rural scenes, to the simple manners of the
+men who sing it, that no genius unfamiliar with work in the fields could
+have invented it, and no singer other than a _cunning ploughman_ of that
+region would know how to render it. At the time of year when there is no
+other work and no other sign of activity in the country than the
+ploughing, that sweet and powerful chant rises like the voice of the
+breeze, which it resembles somewhat in its peculiar pitch. The final
+word of each phrase, sustained at incredible length, and with marvellous
+power of breath, ascends a fourth of a tone, purposely making a discord.
+That is barbarous, perhaps, but the charm of it is indescribable, and
+when one is accustomed to hear it, one cannot conceive of any other song
+at that time and in those localities that would not disturb the harmony.
+
+It happened, therefore, that I had before my eyes a picture in striking
+contrast with Holbein's, although it might be a similar scene. Instead
+of a sad old man, a cheerful young man; instead of a team of thin, sorry
+horses, two yoke of four sturdy, spirited cattle; instead of Death, a
+lovely child; instead of an image of despair and a suggestion of
+destruction, a spectacle of energetic action and a thought of happiness.
+
+Then it was that the French quatrain:
+
+    "A la sueur de ton visaige," etc.,
+
+and the _O fortunatos_----_agricolas_ of Virgil, came to my mind
+simultaneously, and when I saw that handsome pair, the man and the
+child, performing a grand and solemn task under such poetic conditions,
+and with so much grace combined with so much strength, I had a feeling
+of profound compassion mingled with involuntary respect. Happy the
+husbandman. Yes, so I should be in his place, if my arm should suddenly
+become strong and my chest powerful, so that they could thus fertilize
+nature and sing to her, without my eyes losing the power to see and my
+brain to understand the harmony of colors and sounds, the delicacy of
+tones, and the gracefulness of contours,--in a word, the mysterious
+beauty of things, and, above all, without my heart ceasing to be in
+relation with the divine sentiment that presided at the immortal and
+sublime creation.
+
+But, alas! that man has never understood the mystery of the beautiful,
+that child will never understand it! God preserve me from the thought
+that they are not superior to the animals they guide, and that they have
+not at times a sort of ecstatic revelation that charms away their
+weariness and puts their cares to sleep! I see upon their noble brows
+the seal of the Lord God, for they are born kings of the earth much more
+truly than they who possess it, because they have paid for it. And the
+proof that they feel that it is so is found in the fact that you cannot
+expatriate them with impunity, and that they love the ground watered by
+the sweat of their brow, that the true peasant dies of homesickness in
+the uniform of the soldier, far from the fields where he was born. But
+that man lacks a part of the enjoyments I possess, immaterial enjoyments
+to which he is abundantly entitled, he the workman in the vast temple
+which the heavens are vast enough to embrace. He lacks knowledge of his
+own sentiments. They who condemned him to servitude from his mother's
+womb, being unable to take from him the power of reverie, have taken the
+power of reflection.
+
+Ah! well, such as he is, incomplete and doomed to never-ending
+childhood, he is nobler even so than he in whom knowledge has stifled
+sentiment. Do not place yourselves above him, you who consider
+yourselves endowed with the lawful and inalienable right to command him,
+for that terrible error proves that in you the mind has killed the heart
+and that you are the most incomplete and the blindest of men!--I prefer
+the simplicity of his mind to the false enlightenment of yours; and if I
+had to tell his life, it would be more pleasant for me to bring out its
+attractive and affecting aspects than it is creditable to you to depict
+the abject condition to which the scornful rigor of your social precepts
+may debase him.
+
+I knew that young man and that beautiful child; I knew their story, for
+they had a story, everybody has his story, and everybody might arouse
+interest in the romance of his own life if he but understood it.
+Although a peasant and a simple ploughman, Germain had taken account of
+his duties and his affections. He had detailed them to me ingenuously
+one day, and I had listened to him with interest. When I had watched him
+at work for a considerable time, I asked myself why his story should not
+be written, although it was as simple, as straightforward, and as devoid
+of ornament as the furrow he made with his plough.
+
+Next year that furrow will be filled up and covered by a new furrow.
+Thus the majority of men make their mark and disappear in the field of
+humanity. A little earth effaces it, and the furrows we have made
+succeed one another like graves in the cemetery. Is not the furrow of
+the ploughman as valuable as that of the idler, who has a name, however,
+a name that will live, if, by reason of some peculiarity or some absurd
+exploit, he makes a little noise in the world?
+
+So let us, if we can, rescue from oblivion the furrow of Germain, the
+_cunning ploughman_. He will know nothing about it, and will not be
+disturbed; but I shall have had a little pleasure in making the attempt.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+PÈRE MAURICE
+
+
+"Germain," his father-in-law said to him one day, "you must make up your
+mind to marry again. It's almost two years since you lost my daughter,
+and your oldest boy is seven years old. You're getting on toward thirty,
+my boy, and when a man passes that age, you know, in our province, he's
+considered too old to begin housekeeping again. You have three fine
+children, and thus far they haven't been a trouble to us. My wife and
+daughter-in-law have looked after them as well as they could, and loved
+them as they ought. There's Petit-Pierre, he's what you might call
+educated; he can drive oxen very handily already; he knows enough to
+keep the cattle in the meadow, and he's strong enough to drive the
+horses to water. So he isn't the one to be a burden to us; but the other
+two--we love them, God knows! poor innocent creatures!--cause us much
+anxiety this year. My daughter-in-law is about lying-in, and she still
+has a little one in her arms. When the one we expect has come, she won't
+be able to look after your little Solange, and especially your little
+Sylvain, who isn't four years old and hardly keeps still a minute day or
+night. His blood is hot, like yours: he'll make a good workman, but he's
+a terrible child, and my old woman can't run fast enough now to catch
+him when he runs off toward the ditch or in among the feet of the
+cattle. And then, when my daughter-in-law brings this other one into the
+world, her last but one will be thrown on my wife's hands for a month,
+at least. So your children worry us and overburden us. We don't like to
+see children neglected; and when you think of the accidents that may
+happen to them for lack of watching, your mind's never at rest. So you
+must have another wife, and I another daughter-in-law. Think it over, my
+boy. I've already warned you more than once; time flies, and the years
+won't wait for you. You owe it to your children and to us, who want to
+have everything go right in the house, to marry as soon as possible."
+
+"Well, father," the son-in-law replied, "if you really want me to do it,
+I must gratify you. But I don't propose to conceal from you that it will
+cause me a great deal of annoyance, and that I'd about as lief drown
+myself. You know what you've lost, and you don't know what you may
+find. I had an excellent wife, a good-looking wife, sweet and brave,
+good to her father and mother, good to her husband, good to her
+children, a good worker, in the fields or in the house, clever about her
+work, good at everything, in fact; and when you gave her to me, when I
+took her, it wasn't one of the conditions that I should forget her if I
+had the bad luck to lose her."
+
+"What you say shows a good heart, Germain," rejoined Père Maurice; "I
+know you loved my daughter, that you made her happy, and that if you
+could have satisfied Death by going in her place, Catherine would be
+alive at this moment and you in the cemetery. She well deserved to have
+you love her like that, and if you don't get over her loss, no more do
+we. But I'm not talking about forgetting her. The good God willed that
+she should leave us, and we don't let a day pass without showing Him, by
+our prayers, our thoughts, our words, our acts, that we respect her
+memory and are grieved at her departure. But if she could speak to you
+from the other world and tell you her will, she would bid you seek a
+mother for her little orphans. The question, then, is to find a woman
+worthy to take her place. It won't be very easy; but it isn't
+impossible; and when we have found her for you, you will love her as you
+loved my daughter, because you are an honest man and because you will be
+grateful to her for doing us a service and loving your children."
+
+"Very good, Père Maurice," said Germain, "I will do what you wish, as I
+always have done."
+
+"I must do you the justice to say, my son, that you have always listened
+to the friendship and sound arguments of the head of your family. So let
+us talk over the matter of your choice of a new wife. In the first
+place, I don't advise you to take a young woman. That isn't what you
+need. Youth is fickle; and as it's a burden to bring up three children,
+especially when they're the children of another marriage, what you must
+have is a kind-hearted soul, wise and gentle, and used to hard work. If
+your wife isn't about as old as yourself, she won't have sense enough to
+accept such a duty. She will think you too old and your children too
+young. She will complain, and your children will suffer."
+
+"That is just what disturbs me," said Germain. "Suppose she should hate
+the poor little ones, and they should be maltreated and beaten?"
+
+"God forbid!" said the old man. "But evil-minded women are rarer in
+these parts than good ones, and a man must be a fool not to be able to
+put his hand on the one that suits him."
+
+"True, father: there are some good girls in our village. There's Louise
+and Sylvaine and Claudie and Marguerite--any one you please, in fact."
+
+"Softly, softly, my boy, all those girls are too young or too poor--or
+too pretty; for we must think of that, too, my son. A pretty woman isn't
+always as steady as a plainer one."
+
+"Do you want me to take an ugly one, pray?" said Germain, a little
+disturbed.
+
+"No, not ugly, for you will have other children by her, and there's
+nothing so sad as to have ugly, puny, unhealthy children. But a woman
+still in her prime, in good health and neither ugly nor pretty, would do
+your business nicely."
+
+"It is easy to see," said Germain, smiling rather sadly, "that to get
+such a one as you want we must have her made to order; especially as you
+don't want her to be poor, and rich wives aren't easy to get, especially
+for a widower."
+
+"Suppose she was a widow herself, Germain? what do you say to a widow
+without children, and a snug little property?"
+
+"I don't know of any just now in our parish."
+
+"Nor do I, but there are other places."
+
+"You have some one in view, father; so tell me at once who it is."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+GERMAIN, THE CUNNING PLOUGHMAN
+
+
+"Yes, I have some one in view," replied Père Maurice. "It's one Léonard,
+widow of one Guérin, who lives at Fourche."
+
+"I don't know the woman or the place," replied Germain, resigned, but
+becoming more and more depressed.
+
+"Her name is Catherine, like your deceased wife's."
+
+"Catherine? Yes, I shall enjoy having to say that name: Catherine! And
+yet, if I can't love her as well as I loved the other, it will cause me
+more pain than pleasure, for it will remind me of her too often."
+
+"I tell you that you will love her: she's a good creature, a woman with
+a big heart; I haven't seen her for a long time, she wasn't a
+bad-looking girl then; but she is no longer young, she is thirty-two.
+She belongs to a good family, all fine people, and she has eight or ten
+thousand francs in land which she would be glad to sell, and buy other
+land where she goes to live; for she, too, is thinking of marrying
+again, and I know that, if her disposition should suit you, she wouldn't
+think you a bad match."
+
+"So you have arranged it all?"
+
+"Yes, subject to the judgment of you two; and that is what you must ask
+each other after you are acquainted. The woman's father is a distant
+relation of mine and has been a very close friend. You know him, don't
+you--Père Léonard?"
+
+"Yes, I have seen him talking with you at the fairs, and at the last one
+you breakfasted together: is this what you were talking about at such
+length?"
+
+"To be sure; he watched you selling your cattle and thought you did the
+business very well, that you were a fine-appearing fellow, that you
+seemed active and shrewd; and when I told him all that you are and how
+well you have behaved to us during the eight years we've lived and
+worked together, without ever an angry or discontented word, he took it
+into his head that you must marry his daughter; and the plan suits me,
+too, I confess, considering the good reputation she has, the integrity
+of her family, and what I know about their circumstances."
+
+"I see, Père Maurice, that you think a little about worldly goods."
+
+"Of course I think about them. Don't you?"
+
+"I will think about them, if you choose, to please you; but you know
+that, for my part, I never trouble myself about what is or is not coming
+to me in our profits. I don't understand about making a division, and my
+head isn't good for such things. I know about the land and cattle and
+horses and seed and fodder and threshing. As for sheep and vines and
+gardening, the niceties of farming, and small profits, all that, you
+know, is your son's business, and I don't interfere much in it. As for
+money, my memory is short, and I prefer to yield everything rather than
+dispute about thine and mine. I should be afraid of making a mistake and
+claiming what is not due me, and if matters were not simple and clear, I
+should never find my way through them."
+
+"So much the worse, my son, and that's why I would like you to have a
+wife with brains to take my place when I am no longer here. You have
+never been willing to look into our accounts, and that might make
+trouble between you and my son, when you don't have me to keep the peace
+between you and tell you what is coming to each of you."
+
+"May you live many years, Père Maurice! But don't you worry about what
+will happen when you are gone; I shall never dispute with your son. I
+trust Jacques as I trust myself, and as I have no property of my own, as
+everything that can possibly come to me, comes to me as your daughter's
+husband and belongs to our children, I can be easy in my mind and so can
+you; Jacques would never try to defraud his sister's children for his
+own, as he loves them almost equally."
+
+"You are right in that, Germain. Jacques is a good son, a good brother,
+and a man who loves the truth. But Jacques may die before you, before
+your children are grown up, and one must always have a care not to leave
+minors without a head to give them good advice and arrange their
+differences. Otherwise the lawyers interfere, set them at odds with each
+other, and make them eat everything up in lawsuits. So we ought not to
+think of bringing another person into our house, man or woman, without
+saying to ourselves that that person may some day have to direct the
+conduct and manage the business of thirty or more children,
+grandchildren, sons-in-law, and daughters-in-law. No one knows how much
+a family may grow, and when the hive is too full and the time has come
+to swarm, every one thinks about carrying off his honey. When I took
+you for my son-in-law, although my daughter was rich and you poor, I
+never reproached her for choosing you. I saw you were a good worker, and
+I knew well that the best sort of riches for country people like us is a
+good pair of arms and a heart like yours. When a man brings those things
+into a family, he brings enough. But it's different with a woman: her
+work in the house is to keep, not to get. Besides, now that you are a
+father and are looking for a wife, you must remember that your new
+children, having no sort of claim on the inheritance of your first
+wife's children, would be left in want if you should die, unless your
+wife had some property of her own. And then, it would cost something to
+feed the children you are going to add to our little colony. If that
+should fall on us alone, we would take care of them, never fear, and
+without complaining; but everybody's comfort would be diminished, and
+the first children would have to take their share of the privations.
+When families increase beyond measure, and their means do not increase
+in proportion, then want comes, however bravely we may struggle against
+it. This is all I have to say, Germain; think it over, and try to make
+yourself agreeable to Widow Guérin; for her good management and her
+crowns will bring us aid for the present and peace of mind for the
+future."
+
+"Very good, father. I will try to like her and make her like me."
+
+"To do that you must go to see her."
+
+"At her home? At Fourche? That's a long way, isn't it? and we don't have
+much time to run about at this season."
+
+"When a marriage for love is on the carpet, you must expect to waste
+time; but when it's a marriage of convenience between two people who
+have no whims and who know what they want, it's soon arranged. Tomorrow
+will be Saturday; you can shorten your day's ploughing a bit and start
+about two o'clock, after dinner; you will be at Fourche by night;
+there's a good moon just now, the roads are excellent, and it isn't more
+than three leagues. Fourche is near Magnier. Besides, you can take the
+mare."
+
+"I should rather go afoot in this cool weather."
+
+"True, but the mare's a fine beast, and a suitor makes a better
+appearance if he comes well mounted. You must wear your new clothes and
+carry a nice present of game to Père Léonard. You will say that you come
+with a message from me, you will talk with him, you will pass the
+Sunday with his daughter, and you will return with a _yes_ or a _no_ on
+Monday morning."
+
+"Very good," replied Germain calmly, and yet he was not altogether calm.
+
+Germain had always lived a virtuous life, as hard-working peasants do.
+Married at twenty, he had loved but one woman in his life, and since he
+had become a widower, although he was naturally impulsive and vivacious,
+he had never laughed and dallied with any other. He had faithfully
+cherished a genuine regret in his heart, and he did not yield to his
+father-in-law without a feeling of dread and melancholy; but the
+father-in-law had always managed his family judiciously, and Germain,
+who had devoted himself unreservedly to the common work, and
+consequently to him who personified it, the father of the
+family,--Germain did not understand the possibility of rebelling against
+sound arguments, against the common interest of all.
+
+Nevertheless, he was sad. Few days passed that he did not weep for his
+wife in secret, and, although solitude was beginning to weigh upon him,
+he was more terrified at the thought of forming a new union, than
+desirous to escape from his grief. He said to himself vaguely that love
+might have consoled him if it had taken him by surprise, for love does
+not console otherwise. One cannot find it by seeking it; it comes to us
+when we do not expect it. This project of marriage, conceived in cold
+blood, which Père Maurice laid before him, the unknown fiancée, and,
+perhaps, even all the good things that were said of her common-sense and
+her virtue, gave him food for thought. And he went his way, musing as a
+man muses who has not enough ideas to fight among themselves; that is to
+say, not formulating in his mind convincing reasons for selfish
+resistance, but conscious of a dull pain, and not struggling against an
+evil which it was necessary to accept.
+
+Meanwhile, Père Maurice had returned to the farm-house, while Germain
+employed the last hour of daylight, between sunset and darkness, in
+mending the breaches made by the sheep in the hedge surrounding a
+vineyard near the farm buildings. He raised the stalks of the bushes,
+and supported them with clods of earth, while the thrushes chattered in
+the neighboring thicket, and seemed to call to him to make haste, they
+were so curious to come to examine his work as soon as he had gone.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+LA GUILLETTE
+
+
+Père Maurice found in the house an elderly neighbor, who had come to
+have a chat with his wife, and borrow some embers to light her fire.
+Mère Guillette lived in a wretched hovel within two gunshots of the
+farm. But she was a decent woman and a woman of strong will. Her poor
+house was neat and clean, and her carefully patched clothes denoted
+proper self-respect with all her poverty.
+
+"You came to get some fire for the night, eh, Mère Guillette?" said the
+old man. "Is there anything else you would like?"
+
+"No, Père Maurice," she replied; "nothing just now. I'm no beggar, you
+know, and I don't abuse my friends' kindness."
+
+"That's the truth; and so your friends are always ready to do you a
+service."
+
+"I was just talking with your wife, and I was asking her if Germain had
+at last made up his mind to marry again."
+
+"You're no gossip," replied Père Maurice, "and one can speak before you
+without fear of people talking; so I will tell my wife and you that
+Germain has really made up his mind; he starts to-morrow for Fourche."
+
+"Bless me!" exclaimed Mère Maurice; "the poor fellow! God grant that he
+may find a wife as good and honest as himself!"
+
+"Ah! he is going to Fourche?" observed La Guillette. "Just see how
+things turn out! that helps me very much, and as you asked me just now,
+Père Maurice, if there was anything I wanted, I'll tell you what you can
+do to oblige me."
+
+"Tell us, tell us, we shall be glad to oblige."
+
+"I would like to have Germain take the trouble to take my daughter with
+him."
+
+"Where? to Fourche?"
+
+"Not to Fourche, but to Ormeaux, where she is going to stay the rest of
+the year."
+
+"What!" said Mère Maurice, "are you going to part from your daughter?"
+
+"She has got to go out to service and earn something. It comes hard
+enough to me and to her, too, poor soul! We couldn't make up our minds
+to part at midsummer; but now Martinmas is coming, and she has found a
+good place as shepherdess on the farms at Ormeaux. The farmer passed
+through here the other day on his way back from the fair. He saw my
+little Marie watching her three sheep on the common land.--'You don't
+seem very busy, my little maid,' he said; 'and three sheep are hardly
+enough for a shepherd. Would you like to keep a hundred? I'll take you
+with me. The shepherdess at our place has been taken sick and she's
+going back to her people, and if you'll come to us within a week, you
+shall have fifty francs for the rest of the year, up to midsummer.'--The
+child refused, but she couldn't help thinking about it and telling me
+when she came home at night and found me sad and perplexed about getting
+through the winter, which is sure to be hard and long, for we saw the
+cranes and wild geese fly south this year a full month earlier than
+usual. We both cried; but at last we took courage. We said to each other
+that we couldn't stay together, because there's hardly enough to keep
+one person alive on our little handful of land; and then Marie's getting
+old--here she is nearly sixteen--and she must do as others do, earn her
+bread and help her poor mother."
+
+"Mère Guillette," said the old ploughman, "if fifty francs was all that
+was needed to put an end to your troubles and make it unnecessary for
+you to send your daughter away, why, I would help you to find them,
+although fifty francs begins to mean something to people like us. But we
+must consult good sense as well as friendship in everything. If you were
+saved from want for this winter, you wouldn't be safe from future want,
+and the longer your daughter postpones taking the step, the harder it
+will be for you and for her to part. Little Marie is getting to be tall
+and strong, and she has nothing to do at home. She might fall into lazy
+habits--"
+
+"Oh! as far as that goes, I'm not afraid," said Mère Guillette. "Marie's
+as brave as a rich girl at the head of a big establishment could be. She
+doesn't sit still a minute with her arms folded, and when we haven't any
+work, she cleans and rubs our poor furniture and makes every piece shine
+like a looking-glass. She's a child that's worth her weight in gold, and
+I'd have liked it much better to have her come to you as a shepherdess
+instead of going so far away among people I don't know. You'd have
+taken her at midsummer if we could have made up our minds; but now
+you've hired all your help, and we can't think of it again until
+midsummer next year."
+
+"Oh! I agree with all my heart, Guillette! I shall be very glad to do
+it. But, meanwhile, she will do well to learn a trade and get used to
+working for others."
+
+"Yes, of course; the die is cast. The farmer at Ormeaux sent for her
+this morning; we said yes, and she must go. But the poor child doesn't
+know the way, and I shouldn't like to send her so far all alone. As your
+son-in-law is going to Fourche to-morrow, he can just as well take her.
+It seems that it's very near the farm she's going to, according to what
+they tell me; for I have never been there myself."
+
+"They're right side by side, and my son-in-law will take her. That's as
+it should be; indeed, he can take her behind him on the mare, and that
+will save her shoes. Here he is, coming in to supper. I say, Germain,
+Mère Guillette's little Marie is going to Ormeaux as shepherdess. You'll
+take her on your horse, won't you?"
+
+"Very well," said Germain, who was preoccupied, but always ready to do
+his neighbor a service.
+
+In our world, it would never occur to a mother to entrust a daughter of
+sixteen to a man of twenty-eight! for Germain was really only
+twenty-eight, and although, according to the ideas of his province, he
+was considered an old man so far as marriage was concerned, he was still
+the handsomest man in the neighborhood. Work had not furrowed and
+wrinkled his face, as is the case with most peasants who have ten years
+of ploughing behind them. He was strong enough to plough ten more years
+without looking old, and the prejudice of age must have been very strong
+in a young girl's mind to prevent her remarking that Germain had a fresh
+complexion, a bright eye, blue as the heavens in May, ruddy lips, superb
+teeth, and a body as graceful and supple as that of a colt that has
+never left the pasture.
+
+But chastity is a sacred tradition in certain country districts, far
+removed from the corrupt animation of large cities, and Maurice's family
+was noted among all the families of Belair for uprightness, and fidelity
+to the truth. Germain was going in search of a wife; Marie was too young
+and too pure for him to think of her in that light, and, unless he was a
+heartless, bad man, it was impossible that he should have a guilty
+thought in connection with her. Père Maurice was in no way disturbed,
+therefore, to see him take the pretty girl _en croupe_; La Guillette
+would have considered that she was insulting him if she had requested
+him to respect her as his sister. Marie mounted the mare, weeping
+bitterly, after she had kissed her mother and her young friends twenty
+times over. Germain, who was also in a melancholy mood, had the more
+sympathy with her grief, and rode away with a grave face, while the
+neighbors waved their hands in farewell to poor Marie, with no thought
+of evil to come.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+PETIT-PIERRE
+
+
+_Grise_ was young and strong and handsome. She carried her double load
+easily, putting back her ears and champing her bit like the proud,
+high-spirited mare she was. As they rode by the long pasture, she spied
+her mother--who was called Old Grise, as she was called Young Grise--and
+neighed an adieu. Old Grise approached the fence, making her hopples
+ring, tried to leap over into the road to follow her daughter; then,
+seeing that she started off at a fast trot, she neighed in her turn, and
+stood looking after her, pensive and disturbed in mind, with her nose in
+the air, and her mouth filled with grass which she forgot to eat.
+
+"The poor creature still knows her progeny," said Germain to divert
+little Marie's thoughts from her grief. "That makes me think that I
+didn't kiss my Petit-Pierre before I started. The bad boy wasn't there.
+Last night, he strove to make me promise to take him along, and he
+cried a good hour in his bed. This morning again he tried everything to
+persuade me. Oh! what a shrewd, wheedling little rascal he is! but when
+he saw that it couldn't be, monsieur lost his temper: he went off into
+the fields, and I haven't seen him all day."
+
+"I saw him," said Marie, trying to force back her tears. "He was running
+toward the woods with the Soulas children, and I thought it likely he
+had been away for some time, for he was hungry, and was eating wild
+plums and blackberries off the bushes. I gave him some bread from my
+luncheon, and he said: 'Thanks, my dear little Marie; when you come to
+our house, I'll give you some cake.' The little fellow is just too
+winning, Germain!"
+
+"Yes, he is a winning child, and I don't know what I wouldn't do for
+him," the ploughman replied. "If his grandmother hadn't had more sense
+than I, I couldn't have kept from taking him with me when I saw him
+crying so hard that his poor little heart was all swollen."
+
+"Well! why didn't you bring him, Germain? he wouldn't have been in the
+way; he's so good when you do what he wants you to."
+
+"It seems that he would have been in the way where I am going. At
+least, that was Père Maurice's opinion.--For my part, I should have
+said, on the contrary, that we ought to see how he would be received,
+and that nobody could help taking kindly to such a dear child.--But they
+say at the house that I mustn't begin by exhibiting the burdens of the
+household.--I don't know why I talk to you about this, little Marie: you
+don't understand it."
+
+"Yes, I do, Germain; I know you are going to get a wife; my mother told
+me, and bade me not mention it to any one, either at home or where I am
+going, and you needn't be afraid: I won't say a word."
+
+"You will do well, for it isn't settled; perhaps I shan't suit the lady
+in question."
+
+"We must hope you will, Germain. Pray, why shouldn't you suit her?"
+
+"Who knows? I have three children, and that's a heavy load for a woman
+who isn't their mother!"
+
+"That's true; but your children aren't like other children."
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"They are as beautiful as little angels, and so well brought up that you
+can't find more lovable children anywhere."
+
+"There's Sylvain, he's not over good."
+
+"He's very small! he can't be anything but terrible; but he's so
+bright!"
+
+"True, he is bright: and such courage! he isn't a bit afraid of cows or
+bulls, and if I would permit him, he'd be climbing up on the horses with
+his older brother."
+
+"If I had been in your place, I'd have brought the older one. Your
+having such a beautiful child would surely make her love you on the
+spot!"
+
+"Yes, if the woman is fond of children; but suppose she doesn't like
+them?"
+
+"Are there women who don't like children?"
+
+"Not many, I think; but there are some, and that is what worries me."
+
+"Then you don't know this woman at all?"
+
+"No more than you do, and I am afraid I shall not know her any better
+after I have seen her. I am not suspicious. When any one says pleasant
+words to me, I believe them; but I have had reason to repent more than
+once, for words are not deeds."
+
+"They say she's a fine woman."
+
+"Who says so? Père Maurice?"
+
+"Yes, your father-in-law."
+
+"That's all right; but he doesn't know her, either."
+
+"Well, you will soon see her; you will be very careful, and it's to be
+hoped you won't make any mistake, Germain."
+
+"Look you, little Marie, I should be very glad if you would go into the
+house for a little while before going on to Ormeaux: you're a shrewd
+girl, you have always shown that you have a keen mind, and you notice
+everything. If you see anything that makes you think, you can quietly
+tell me about it."
+
+"Oh! no, Germain, I wouldn't do that! I should be too much afraid of
+being mistaken; and, besides, if a word spoken thoughtlessly should
+disgust you with this marriage, your people would blame me for it, and I
+have enough troubles without bringing fresh ones on my poor dear
+mother's head."
+
+As they were talking thus, Grise pricked up her ears and shied, then
+retraced her steps and approached the hedge, where there was something
+which had frightened her at first, but which she now began to recognize.
+Germain looked at the hedge and saw something that he took for a lamb in
+the ditch, under the branches of an oak still thick and green.
+
+"It's a stray lamb," he said, "or a dead one, for it doesn't move.
+Perhaps some one is looking for it; we must see."
+
+"It isn't a lamb," cried little Marie; "it's a child asleep; it's your
+Petit-Pierre."
+
+"Upon my word!" exclaimed Germain, dismounting; "just see the little imp
+lying there asleep, so far from home, and in a ditch, where a snake
+might find him!"
+
+He raised the child, who opened his eyes and smiled at him, saying, as
+he threw his arms around his neck:
+
+"Little father, you're going to take me with you!"
+
+"Oh, yes! still the same song! what were you doing there, naughty
+Pierre?"
+
+"I was waiting for my little father to pass; I was looking out on the
+road, and I looked so hard I went to sleep."
+
+"And if I had passed without seeing you, you would have stayed out all
+night and the wolf would have eaten you!"
+
+"Oh! I knew you'd see me!" rejoined Petit-Pierre confidently.
+
+"Well, kiss me now, Pierre, bid me good-by, and run back to the house if
+you don't want them to have supper without you."
+
+"Why, ain't you going to take me with you?" cried the child, beginning
+to rub his eyes to show that he proposed to weep.
+
+"You know grandpa and grandma don't approve of it," said Germain, taking
+refuge behind the authority of the old people, like one who places but
+slight reliance on his own.
+
+But the child heard nothing. He began to cry in good earnest, saying
+that as long as his father took little Marie, he could take him too. He
+was told that they would have to go through great forests, that there
+were many wicked animals there that ate little children, that Grise
+would not carry three, that she said so when they started, and that in
+the country they were going to there was no bed or supper for little
+monkeys. All these excellent reasons did not convince Petit-Pierre; he
+threw himself on the grass and rolled about, crying that his father did
+not love him, and that, if he refused to take him with him, he would not
+go back to the house day or night.
+
+Germain's fatherly heart was as soft and weak as a woman's. His wife's
+death, the care he had been compelled to bestow upon his little ones,
+together with the thought that the poor motherless children needed to be
+dearly loved, had combined to make it so, and such a hard struggle took
+place within him, especially as he was ashamed of his weakness, and
+tried to conceal his distress from little Marie, that the perspiration
+stood out on his forehead and his eyes were bordered with red as if
+they, too, were all ready to shed tears. Finally, he tried to be angry;
+but as he turned to little Marie, as if to call her to witness his
+firmness of will, he saw that the dear girl's face was bathed in tears,
+and, all his courage deserting him, it was impossible for him to keep
+back his own, although he continued to scold and threaten.
+
+"Really, your heart is too hard," said little Marie at last, "and for my
+part, I could never hold out like that against a child who is so
+unhappy. Come, Germain, take him along. Your mare is used to carrying
+two grown people and a child, for your brother-in-law and his wife, who
+is much heavier than I am, go to market every Saturday, with their boy,
+on the honest creature's back. You can put him up in front of you;
+indeed, I'd rather go all alone on foot than make the little fellow
+suffer so."
+
+"Don't be disturbed about that," said Germain, who was dying with
+anxiety to be persuaded. "Grise is strong, and would carry two more if
+there was room on her backbone. But what shall we do with the child on
+the way? he will be cold and hungry--and who will look after him
+to-night and to-morrow, put him to bed, wash him and dress him? I don't
+dare put that trouble on a woman whom I don't know, and who will think,
+I have no doubt, that I stand very little on ceremony with her for a
+beginning."
+
+"According to the good-will or annoyance she shows, you will be able to
+judge her at once, Germain, believe me; and at all events, if she
+doesn't take to your Pierre, I will take charge of him. I will go to her
+house to dress him, and I'll take him into the fields to-morrow. I'll
+amuse him all day, and see that he has all he needs."
+
+"And he'll tire you out, my poor girl! He'll be a burden to you! a whole
+day--that's a long while!"
+
+"On the contrary, I shall enjoy it; he will be company for me, and make
+me less unhappy the first day I shall have to pass in a new country. I
+shall fancy I am still at home."
+
+The child, seeing that little Marie was taking his part, had clung to
+her skirt and held it so tight that she would have had to hurt him to
+take it away. When he saw that his father was yielding, he took Marie's
+hand in both his little sunburned ones and kissed it, leaping for joy,
+and pulling her toward the mare with the burning impatience that
+children show in all their desires.
+
+"Well, well," said the girl, taking him in her arms, "we must try to
+soothe this poor heart that is jumping like a little bird's, and if you
+feel cold when night comes, my Pierre, just tell me, and I'll wrap you
+in my cloak. Kiss your little father, and ask him to forgive you for
+being such a bad boy. Tell him that it shall never happen again! never,
+do you hear?"
+
+"Yes, yes, on condition that I always do what he wants me to, eh?" said
+Germain, wiping the little fellow's eyes with his handkerchief. "Ah!
+Marie, you will spoil the rascal for me!--And really, little Marie,
+you're too good. I don't know why you didn't come to us as shepherdess
+last midsummer. You could have taken care of my children, and I would
+rather have paid you a good price for waiting on them than go in search
+of a wife who will be very likely to think that she's doing me a great
+favor by not detesting them."
+
+[Illustration: Chapter VI
+
+_He raised the child, who opened his eyes and smiled at him, saying, as
+he threw his arms around his neck.
+
+"Little father, you are going to take me with you_!"]
+
+"You mustn't look on the dark side of things like that," replied little
+Marie, holding the rein while Germain placed his son on the front of
+the heavy goat-skin-covered saddle; "if your wife doesn't like children,
+you can hire me next year, and I'll amuse them so well that they won't
+notice anything, never you fear."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+ON THE MOOR
+
+
+"By the way," said Germain, when they had ridden on a short distance,
+"what will they think at home when this little man doesn't appear? The
+old people will be anxious, and they will scour the country for him."
+
+"You can tell the man working on the road yonder that you have taken him
+with you, and send him back to tell your people."
+
+"True, Marie, you think of everything! It didn't even occur to me that
+Jeannie would be in this neighborhood."
+
+"He lives close to the farm, too: he won't fail to do your errand."
+
+
+When they had taken that precaution, Germain started the mare off at a
+trot, and Petit Pierre was so overjoyed that he did not notice at first
+that he had not dined; but as the rapid movement of the horse dug a pit
+in his stomach, he began, after a league or more, to yawn and turn
+pale, and at last confessed that he was dying of hunger.
+
+"Now he's beginning," said Germain. "I knew that we shouldn't go far
+before monsieur would cry from hunger or thirst."
+
+"I'm thirsty, too!" said Petit-Pierre.
+
+"Well, we will go to Mère Rebec's wine-shop at Corlay, at the sign of
+the _Break of Day_. A fine sign, but a poor inn! Come, Marie, you will
+drink a finger of wine too."
+
+"No, no, I don't need anything," she said, "I'll hold the mare while you
+go in with the little one."
+
+"But now I think of it, my dear girl, you gave the bread you had for
+your luncheon to my Pierre, and you haven't had anything to eat; you
+refused to dine with us at the house, and did nothing but weep."
+
+"Oh! I wasn't hungry, I was too sad! and I promise you that I haven't
+the slightest desire to eat now."
+
+"We must force you to, little one; otherwise you'll be sick. We have a
+long way to go, and we mustn't arrive there half-starved, and ask for
+bread before we say good-day. I propose to set you the example, although
+I'm not very hungry; but I shall make out to eat, considering that I
+didn't dine very well, either. I saw you and your mother weeping, and it
+made my heart sick. Come, come, I will tie Grise at the door; get down,
+I insist upon it."
+
+All three entered Mere Rebec's establishment, and in less than a quarter
+of an hour the stout, limping hostess succeeded in serving them an
+omelet of respectable appearance with brown-bread and light wine.
+
+Peasants do not eat quickly, and Petit-Pierre had such an enormous
+appetite that nearly an hour passed before Germain could think of
+renewing their journey. Little Marie ate to oblige at first; then her
+appetite came, little by little; for at sixteen one cannot fast long,
+and the country air is an imperious master. The kind words Germain said
+to her to comfort her and give her courage also produced their effect;
+she made an effort to persuade herself that seven months would soon be
+passed, and to think how happy she would be to be at home once more, in
+her own village, since Père Maurice and Germain were agreed in promising
+to take her into their service. But as she was beginning to brighten up
+and play with Petit-Pierre, Germain conceived the unfortunate idea of
+telling her to look out through the wine-shop window at the lovely view
+of the valley, which they could see throughout its whole length from
+that elevation, laughing and verdant and fertile. Marie looked, and
+asked if they could see the houses at Belair from there.
+
+"To be sure," replied Germain, "and the farm, and your house too. Look,
+that little gray speck, not far from the great poplar at Godard, just
+below the church-spire."
+
+"Ah! I see it," said the girl; and thereupon she began to weep again.
+
+"I did wrong to remind you of that," said Germain, "I keep doing foolish
+things to-day! Come, Marie, my girl, let's be off; the days are short,
+and when the moon comes up, an hour from now, it won't be warm."
+
+They resumed their journey, and rode across the great heath, and as
+Germain did not urge the mare, in order not to fatigue the girl and the
+child by a too rapid gait, the sun had set when they left the road to
+enter the woods.
+
+Germain knew the road as far as Magnier; but he thought that he could
+shorten it by not taking the avenue of Chanteloube, but going by Presles
+and La Sépulture, a route which he was not in the habit of taking when
+he went to the fair. He went astray and lost a little more time before
+entering the woods; even then he did not enter at the right place, and
+failed to discover his mistake, so that he turned his back to Fourche
+and headed much farther up, in the direction of Ardentes.
+
+He was prevented then from taking his bearings by a mist which came with
+the darkness, one of those autumn evening mists which the white
+moonlight makes more vague and more deceptive. The great pools of water
+which abound in the clearings exhaled such dense vapor that when Grise
+passed through them, they only knew it by the splashing of her feet and
+the difficulty she had in pulling them out of the mud.
+
+When they finally found a straight, level path, and had ridden to the
+end of it, Germain, upon endeavoring to ascertain where he was, realized
+that he was lost; for Père Maurice, in describing the road, had told him
+that, on leaving the woods, he would have to descend a very steep hill,
+cross a very large meadow, and ford the river twice. He had advised him
+to be cautious about riding into the river, because there had been heavy
+rains at the beginning of the season, and the water might be a little
+high. Seeing no steep hill, no meadow, no river, but the level moor,
+white as a sheet of snow, Germain drew rein, looked about for a house,
+waited for some one to pass, but saw nothing to give him any
+information. Thereupon he retraced his steps, and rode back into the
+woods. But the mist grew denser, the moon was altogether hidden, the
+roads were very bad, the ruts deep. Twice Grise nearly fell; laden as
+she was, she lost courage, and although she retained sufficient
+discernment to avoid running against trees, she could not prevent her
+riders from having to deal with huge branches which barred the road at
+the level of their heads and put them in great danger. Germain lost his
+hat in one of these encounters, and had great difficulty in finding it.
+Petit-Pierre had fallen asleep, and, lying back like a log, so
+embarrassed his father's arms that he could not hold the mare up or
+guide her.
+
+"I believe we're bewitched," said Germain, drawing rein once more: "for
+these woods aren't big enough for a man to lose himself in unless he's
+drunk, and here we have been riding round and round for two hours,
+unable to get out of them. Grise has only one idea in her head, and that
+is to go back to the house, and she was the one that made me go astray.
+If we want to go home, we have only to give her her head. But when we
+may be within two steps of the place where we are to spend the night,
+we should be mad to give up finding it, and begin such a long ride over
+again. But I don't know what to do. I can't see either the sky or the
+ground, and I am afraid this child will take the fever if we stay in
+this infernal fog, or be crushed by our weight if the horse should fall
+forward."
+
+"We mustn't persist in riding any farther," said little Marie. "Let's
+get down, Germain; give me the child; I can carry him very well, and
+keep him covered up with the cloak better than you can. You can lead the
+mare, and perhaps we shall see better when we're nearer the ground."
+
+That expedient succeeded only so far as to save them from a fall, for
+the fog crawled along the damp earth and seemed to cling to it. It was
+very hard walking, and they were so exhausted by it that they stopped
+when they at last found a dry place under some great oaks. Little Marie
+was drenched, but she did not complain or seem disturbed. Thinking only
+of the child, she sat down in the sand and took him on her knees, while
+Germain explored the neighborhood after throwing Grise's rein over the
+branch of a tree.
+
+But Grise, who was thoroughly disgusted with the journey, jumped back,
+released the reins, broke the girths, and, kicking up her heels higher
+than her head some half-dozen times, by way of salutation, started off
+through the brush, showing very plainly that she needed no one's
+assistance in finding her way.
+
+"Well, well," said Germain, after he had tried in vain to catch her,
+"here we are on foot, and it would do us no good if we should find the
+right road, for we should have to cross the river on foot; and when we
+see how full of water these roads are, we can be sure that the meadow is
+under water. We don't know the other fords. So we must wait till the
+mist rises; it can't last more than an hour or two. When we can see, we
+will look for a house, the first one we can find on the edge of the
+wood; but at present we can't stir from here; there's a ditch and a pond
+and I don't know what not in front of us; and I couldn't undertake to
+say what there is behind us, for I don't know which way we came."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+UNDER THE GREAT OAKS
+
+
+"Oh! well, Germain, we must be patient," said little Marie. "We are not
+badly off on this little knoll. The rain doesn't come through the leaves
+of these great oaks, for I can feel some old broken branches that are
+dry enough to burn. You have flint and steel, Germain? You were smoking
+your pipe just now."
+
+"I had them. My steel was in the bag on the saddle with the game I was
+carrying to my intended; but the cursed mare carried off everything,
+even my cloak, which she will lose or tear on all the branches." "Oh!
+no, Germain; the saddle and cloak and bag are all there on the ground,
+by your feet. Grise broke the girths and threw everything off when she
+left."
+
+"Great God, that's so!" said the ploughman; "and if we can feel round
+and find a little dead wood, we can succeed in drying and warming
+ourselves."
+
+"That's not hard to do," said little Marie; "the dead wood cracks under
+your feet wherever you step; but give me the saddle first."
+
+"What are you going to do with it?"
+
+"Make a bed for the little one: no, not like that; upside-down, so he
+won't roll out; and it's still warm from the mare's back. Prop it up on
+each side with those stones you see there."
+
+"I don't see them! Your eyes are like a cat's, aren't they?"
+
+"There! now that's done, Germain! Give me your cloak to wrap up his
+little feet, and I'll put mine over his body. Look! isn't he as
+comfortable there as he would be in his bed? and feel how warm he is!"
+
+"Yes, indeed! you know how to take care of children, Marie!"
+
+"That doesn't take much magic. Now look for your steel in your bag, and
+I'll fix the wood."
+
+"That wood will never light, it's too damp."
+
+"You doubt everything, Germain! Why, can't you remember taking care of
+sheep and making big fires in the fields when it was raining hard?"
+
+"Yes, that's a knack that children who tend sheep have; but I've been an
+ox-driver ever since I knew how to walk."
+
+"That's how you came to be stronger in your arms than clever with your
+hands. There's your fire all built; now you'll see if it won't burn!
+Give me the fire and a few dry ferns. Good! now blow; you're not
+weak-lunged, are you?"
+
+"Not that I know of," said Germain, blowing like a forge-bellows. In a
+moment, the flame shot up, cast a red light at first, and finally rose
+in bluish flashes under the branches of the oaks, struggling with the
+mist, and gradually drying the atmosphere for ten feet around.
+
+"Now, I'll sit down beside the little one and see that no sparks fall on
+him," said the girl. "You must throw on wood and keep the fire bright,
+Germain! we shall not catch cold or the fever here, I promise you."
+
+"Faith, you're a smart girl," said Germain, "and you can make a fire
+like a little witch. I feel like a new man, and my courage is coming
+back to me; for, with my legs wet to the knees, and the prospect of
+staying here till daybreak in that condition, I was in a very bad humor
+just now."
+
+"And when one is in a bad humor, one never thinks of anything," rejoined
+little Marie.
+
+"And are you never in a bad humor, pray?"
+
+"Oh! no, never! What's the use?"
+
+"Why, it's of no use, that's certain; but how can you help it, when you
+have things to annoy you? God knows that you have plenty of them, poor
+child; for you haven't always been happy!"
+
+"True, my poor mother and I have suffered. We have been unhappy, but we
+never lost courage."
+
+"I wouldn't lose courage for any work that ever was," said Germain; "but
+poverty would grieve me, for I have never lacked anything. My wife made
+me rich, and I am rich still; I shall be as long as I work at the farm:
+that will be always, I hope; but every one has his own troubles! I have
+suffered in another way."
+
+"Yes, you lost your wife, and it was a great pity!"
+
+"Wasn't it?"
+
+"Oh! I cried bitterly for her, Germain, I tell you! for she was so kind!
+But let's not talk about her any more or I shall cry again; all my
+sorrows seem to be coming back to me to-day."
+
+"Indeed, she loved you dearly, little Marie; she thought a deal of you
+and your mother. What! you are crying! Come, come, my girl, I don't want
+to cry, you know--"
+
+"But you are crying, Germain! You are crying, too! Why should a man be
+ashamed to cry for his wife? Cry on, don't mind me! I share that grief
+with you!"
+
+"You have a kind heart, Marie, and it does me good to weep with you. But
+put your feet near the fire; your skirts are all damp, too, poor little
+girl! Let me take your place by the child, and do you warm yourself
+better than that."
+
+"I'm warm enough," said Marie; "if you want to sit down, take a corner
+of the cloak; I am very comfortable."
+
+"To tell the truth, we're not badly off here," said Germain, seating
+himself close beside her. "The only thing that troubles me now is
+hunger. It must be nine o'clock, and I had such hard work walking in
+those wretched roads, that I feel all fagged out. Aren't you hungry,
+too, Marie?"
+
+"I? Not at all. I'm not used to four meals a day as you are, and I have
+been to bed without supper so many times, that once more doesn't worry
+me much."
+
+"Well, a wife like you is a great convenience; she doesn't cost much,"
+said Germain, with a smile.
+
+"I am not a wife," said Marie artlessly, not perceiving the turn the
+ploughman's ideas were taking. "Are you dreaming?"
+
+"Yes, I believe I am dreaming," was Germain's reply; "perhaps it's
+hunger that makes my mind wander."
+
+"What a gourmand you must be!" she rejoined, brightening up a little in
+her turn; "well, if you can't live five or six hours without eating,
+haven't you some game in your bag, and fire to cook it with?"
+
+"The devil! that's a good idea! but what about the gift to my future
+father-in-law?"
+
+"You have six partridges and a hare! I don't believe you need all that
+to satisfy your hunger, do you?"
+
+"But if we undertake to cook it here, without a spit or fire-dogs, we
+shall burn it to a cinder!"
+
+"Oh! no," said little Marie; "I'll agree to cook it for you in the ashes
+so it won't smell of smoke. Didn't you ever catch larks in the fields,
+and haven't you cooked them between two stones? Ah! true! I forget that
+you never tended sheep! Come, pluck that partridge! Not so hard! you'll
+pull off the skin!"
+
+"You might pluck another one to show me how!"
+
+"What! do you propose to eat two? What an ogre! Well, there they are all
+plucked, and now I'll cook them."
+
+"You would make a perfect _cantinière_, little Marie; but unluckily you
+haven't any canteen, and I shall be reduced to drink water from this
+pool."
+
+"You'd like some wine, wouldn't you? Perhaps you need coffee, too? you
+imagine you're at the fair under the arbor! Call the landlord: liquor
+for the cunning ploughman of Belair!"
+
+"Ah! bad girl, you're laughing at me, are you? You wouldn't drink some
+wine, I suppose, if you had some?"
+
+"I? I drank with you to-night at La Rebec's for the second time in my
+life; but if you'll be very good, I will give you a bottle almost full,
+and of good wine too!"
+
+"What, Marie, are you really a magician?"
+
+"Weren't you foolish enough to order two bottles of wine at La Rebec's?
+You drank one with the boy, and I took barely three drops out of the one
+you put before me. But you paid for both of them without looking to
+see."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, I put the one you didn't drink in my basket, thinking that you or
+the little one might be thirsty on the way; and here it is."
+
+"You are the most thoughtful girl I ever saw. Well, well! the poor
+child was crying when we left the inn, but that didn't prevent her from
+thinking more of others than herself! Little Marie, the man who marries
+you will be no fool."
+
+"I hope not, for I shouldn't like a fool. Come, eat your partridges,
+they are cooked to a turn; and, having no bread, you must be satisfied
+with chestnuts."
+
+"And where the devil did you get chestnuts?"
+
+"That's wonderful, certainly! why, all along the road, I picked them
+from the branches as we passed, and filled my pockets with them."
+
+"Are they cooked, too?"
+
+"What good would my wits do me if I hadn't put some chestnuts in the
+fire as soon as it was lighted? We always do that in the fields."
+
+"Now, little Marie, we will have supper together! I want to drink your
+health and wish you a good husband--as good as you would wish yourself.
+Tell me what you think about it!"
+
+"I should have hard work, Germain, for I never yet gave it a thought."
+
+"What! not at all? never?" said Germain, falling to with a ploughman's
+appetite, but cutting off the best pieces to offer his companion, who
+obstinately refused them, and contented herself with a few chestnuts.
+"Tell me, little Marie," he continued, seeing that she did not propose
+to reply, "haven't you ever thought about marrying? you're old enough,
+though!"
+
+"Perhaps I am," she said; "but I am too poor. You need at least a
+hundred crowns to begin housekeeping, and I shall have to work five or
+six years to save that much."
+
+"Poor girl! I wish Pere Maurice would let me have a hundred crowns to
+give you."
+
+"Thank you very much, Germain. What do you suppose people would say
+about me?"
+
+"What could they say? everybody knows that I'm an old man and can't
+marry you. So they wouldn't imagine that I--that you--"
+
+"Look, ploughman! here's your son waking up," said little Marie.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE EVENING PRAYER
+
+
+Petit-Pierre had sat up, and was looking all about with a thoughtful
+expression.
+
+"Ah! the rascal never does anything else when he hears anybody eating!"
+said Germain; "a cannon-shot wouldn't wake him, but move your jaws in
+his neighborhood, and he opens his eyes at once."
+
+"You must have been like that at his age," said little Marie, with a
+mischievous smile. "Well, my little Pierre, are you looking for the top
+of your cradle? It's made of green leaves to-night, my child; but your
+father's having his supper, all the same. Do you want to sup with him? I
+haven't eaten your share; I thought you would probably claim it!"
+
+"Marie, I insist on your eating," cried the ploughman; "I shan't eat any
+more. I am a glutton, a boor; you go without on our account, and it's
+not right; I'm ashamed of myself. It takes away my appetite, I tell
+you; I won't let my son have any supper unless you take some."
+
+"Let us alone," replied little Marie, "you haven't the key to our
+appetites. Mine is closed to-day, but your Pierre's is wide open, like a
+little wolf's. Just see how he goes at it! Oh! he'll be a sturdy
+ploughman, too!"
+
+In truth, Petit-Pierre soon showed whose son he was, and, although he
+was hardly awake and did not understand where he was or how he came
+there, he began to devour. Then, when his hunger was appeased, being
+intensely excited as children generally are when their regular habits
+are interrupted, he exhibited more quick wit, more curiosity, and more
+shrewdness than usual. He made them tell him where he was, and when he
+learned that he was in the middle of a forest, he was a little afraid.
+
+"Are there naughty beasts in this forest?" he asked his father.
+
+"No, there are none at all," was the reply. "Don't be afraid."
+
+"Then you lied when you told me that the wolves would carry me off if I
+went through the big forest with you?"
+
+"Do you hear this reasoner?" said Germain in some embarrassment.
+
+"He is right," replied little Marie, "you told him that; he has a good
+memory, and he remembers it. But you must understand, my little Pierre,
+that your father never lies. We passed the big forest while you were
+asleep, and now we're in the little forest, where there aren't any
+naughty beasts."
+
+"Is the little forest very far from the big one?"
+
+"Pretty far; and then the wolves never leave the big forest. Even if one
+should come here, your father would kill him."
+
+"And would you kill him, too, little Marie?"
+
+"We would all kill him, for you would help us, my Pierre, wouldn't you?
+You're not afraid, I know. You would hit him hard!"
+
+"Yes, yes," said the child, proudly, assuming a heroic attitude, "we
+would kill 'em."
+
+"There's no one like you for talking to children," said Germain to
+little Marie, "and for making them hear reason. To be sure, it isn't
+long since you were a child yourself, and you remember what your mother
+used to say to you. I believe that the younger one is, the better one
+understands the young. I am very much afraid that a woman of thirty,
+who doesn't know what it is to be a mother, will find it hard to learn
+to prattle and reason with young brats."
+
+"Why so, Germain? I don't know why you have such a bad idea of this
+woman; you'll get over it!"
+
+"To the devil with the woman!" said Germain. "I would like to go home
+and never come back here. What do I need of a woman I don't know!"
+
+"Little father," said the child, "why do you keep talking about your
+wife to-day, when she is dead?"
+
+"Alas! you haven't forgotten your poor dear mother, have you?"
+
+"No, for I saw them put her in a pretty box of white wood, and my
+grandma took me to her to kiss her and bid her good-by!--She was all
+white and cold, and every night my aunt tells me to pray to the good
+Lord to let her get warm with Him in heaven. Do you think she's there
+now?"
+
+"I hope so, my child; but you must keep on praying: that shows your
+mother that you love her."
+
+"I am going to say my prayer," replied the child; "I did not think of
+saying it this evening. But I can't say it all by myself; I always
+forget something. Little Marie must help me."
+
+"Yes, Pierre, I will help you," said the girl. "Come, kneel here by my
+side."
+
+The child knelt on the girl's skirt, clasped his little hands, and began
+to repeat his prayer with interest and fervently at first, for he knew
+the beginning very well; then more slowly and hesitatingly, and at last
+repeating word for word what Marie dictated to him, when he reached that
+point in his petition beyond which he had never been able to learn, as
+he always fell asleep just there every night. On this occasion, the
+labor of paying attention and the monotony of his own tones produced
+their customary effect, so that he pronounced the last syllables only
+with great effort, and after they had been repeated three times; his
+head grew heavy, and fell against Marie's breast: his hands relaxed,
+separated, and fell open upon his knees. By the light of the camp-fire,
+Germain looked at his little angel nodding against the girl's heart,
+while she, holding him in her arms and warming his fair hair with her
+sweet breath, abandoned herself to devout reverie and prayed mentally
+for Catherine's soul.
+
+Germain was deeply moved, and tried to think of something to say to
+little Marie to express the esteem and gratitude she inspired in him,
+but he could find nothing that would give voice to his thoughts. He
+approached her to kiss his son, whom she was still holding against her
+breast, and it was hard for him to remove his lips from Petit-Pierre's
+brow.
+
+"You kiss him too hard," said Marie, gently pushing the ploughman's head
+away, "you will wake him. Let me put him to bed again, for he has gone
+back to his dreams of paradise."
+
+The child let her put him down, but as he stretched himself out on the
+goat-skin of the saddle, he asked if he were on Grise. Then, opening his
+great blue eyes, and gazing at the branches for a moment, he seemed to
+be in a waking dream, or to be impressed by an idea that had come into
+his mind during the day and took shape at the approach of sleep. "Little
+father," he said, "if you're going to give me another mother, I want it
+to be little Marie."
+
+And, without awaiting a reply, he closed his eyes and went to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+DESPITE THE COLD
+
+
+Little Marie seemed to pay no further heed to the child's strange words
+than to look upon them as a proof of friendship; she wrapped him up
+carefully, stirred the fire, and, as the mist lying upon the neighboring
+pool gave no sign of lifting, she advised Germain to lie down near the
+fire and have a nap.
+
+"I see that you're almost asleep now," she said, "for you don't say a
+word, and you are staring at the fire just as your little one did just
+now. Come, go to sleep, and I will watch over you and the child."
+
+"You're the one to go to sleep," replied the ploughman, "and I will
+watch both of you, for I never was less inclined to sleep; I have fifty
+ideas in my head."
+
+"Fifty, that's a good many," said the maiden, with some suggestion of
+mockery in her tone; "there are so many people who would like to have
+one!"
+
+"Well, if I am not capable of having fifty, at all events I have one
+that hasn't left me for an hour."
+
+"And I'll tell you what it is, as well as the ones you had before it."
+
+"Very good! tell me, if you can guess, Marie; tell me yourself, I shall
+like that."
+
+"An hour ago," she retorted, "you had the idea of eating, and now you
+have the idea of sleeping."
+
+"Marie, I am only an ox-driver at best, but really, you seem to take me
+for an ox. You're a bad girl, and I see that you don't want to talk with
+me. Go to sleep, that will be better than criticising a man who isn't in
+good spirits."
+
+"If you want to talk, let us talk," said the girl, half-reclining beside
+the child and resting her head against the saddle. "You're determined to
+worry, Germain, and in that you don't show much courage for a man. What
+should I not say, if I didn't fight as hard as I can against my own
+grief?"
+
+"What, indeed; and that is just what I have in my head, my poor child!
+You're going to live far away from your people in a wretched place, all
+moors and bogs, where you will catch the fever in autumn, where there's
+no profit in raising sheep for wool, which always vexes a shepherdess
+who is interested in her business; and then you will be among strangers
+who may not be kind to you, who won't understand what you are worth.
+Upon my word, it pains me more than I can tell you, and I have a mind to
+take you back to your mother, instead of going to Fourche."
+
+"You speak very kindly, but without sense, my poor Germain; one
+shouldn't be cowardly for his friends, and instead of pointing out the
+dark side of my lot, you ought to show me the bright side, as you did
+when we dined at La Rebec's."
+
+"What would you have? that's the way things looked to me then, and they
+look different now. You would do better to find a husband."
+
+"That can't be, Germain, as I told you; and as it can't be, I don't
+think about it."
+
+"But suppose you could find one, after all? Perhaps, if you would tell
+me what sort of a man you'd like him to be, I could succeed in thinking
+up some one."
+
+"To think up some one is not to find him. I don't think about it at all,
+for it's of no use."
+
+"You have never thought of finding a rich husband?"
+
+"No, of course not, as I am poor as Job."
+
+"But if he should be well off, you wouldn't be sorry to be well lodged,
+well fed, well dressed, and to belong to a family of good people who
+would allow you to help your mother along?"
+
+"Oh! as to that, yes! to help my mother is my only wish."
+
+"And if you should meet such a man, even if he wasn't in his first
+youth, you wouldn't object very much?"
+
+"Oh! excuse me, Germain. That's just the thing I am particular about. I
+shouldn't like an old man."
+
+"An old man, of course not; but a man of my age, for instance?"
+
+"Your age is old for me, Germain; I should prefer Bastien so far as age
+goes, though Bastien isn't such a good-looking man as you."
+
+"You would prefer Bastien the swineherd?" said Germain bitterly. "A
+fellow with eyes like the beasts he tends!"
+
+"I would overlook his eyes for the sake of his eighteen years."
+
+Germain had a horrible feeling of jealousy.--"Well, well," he said, "I
+see that your mind is set on Bastien. It's a queer idea, all the same!"
+
+"Yes, it would be a queer idea," replied little Marie, laughing
+heartily, "and he would be a queer husband. You could make him believe
+whatever you chose. For instance, I picked up a tomato in monsieur le
+curé's garden the other day; I told him it was a fine red apple, and he
+bit into it like a glutton. If you had seen the wry face he made! _Mon
+Dieu_, how ugly he was!"
+
+"You don't love him then, as you laugh at him?"
+
+"That wouldn't be any reason. But I don't love him: he's cruel to his
+little sister, and he isn't clean."
+
+"Very good! and you don't feel inclined toward anybody else?"
+
+"What difference does it make to you, Germain?"
+
+"No difference, it's just for something to talk about. I see, my girl,
+that you have a sweetheart in your head already."
+
+"No, Germain, you're mistaken, I haven't one yet; it may come later: but
+as I shall not marry till I have saved up a little money, it will be my
+lot to marry late and to marry an old man."
+
+"Well, then, take an old man now."
+
+"No indeed! when I am no longer young myself, it will be all the same to
+me; now it would be different."
+
+"I see, Marie, that you don't like me; that's very clear," said Germain
+angrily, and without weighing his words.
+
+Little Marie did not reply. Germain leaned over her: she was asleep; she
+had fallen back, conquered, struck down, as it were, by drowsiness, like
+children who fall asleep while they are prattling.
+
+Germain was well pleased that she had not heard his last words; he
+realized that they were unwise, and he turned his back upon her, trying
+to change the current of his thoughts.
+
+But it was of no avail, he could not sleep, nor could he think of
+anything else than what he had just said. He walked around the fire
+twenty times, walked away and returned; at last, feeling as excited as
+if he had swallowed a mouthful of gunpowder, he leaned against the tree
+that sheltered the two children and watched them sleeping.
+
+[Illustration: Chapter IX
+
+_The child knelt on the girl's skirt, clasped his little hands, and
+began to repeat his prayer with interest and fervently at first, for he
+knew the beginning very well_.]
+
+"I don't know why I never noticed that little Marie is the prettiest
+girl in the province!" he thought. "She hasn't a great deal of color,
+but her little face is as fresh as a wild rose! What a pretty mouth and
+what a cunning little nose!--She isn't tall for her age, but she's built
+like a little quail and light as a lark!--I don't know why they think
+so much at home of a tall, stout, red-faced woman. My wife was rather
+thin and pale, and she suited me above all others.--This girl is
+delicate, but she's perfectly well and as pretty to look at as a white
+kid! And what a sweet, honest way she has! how well you can read her
+kind heart in her eyes, even when they are closed in sleep!--As for wit,
+she has more than my dear Catherine had, I must admit, and one would
+never be bored with her.--She's light-hearted, she's virtuous, she's a
+hard worker, she's affectionate, and she's amusing.--I don't see what
+more one could ask.
+
+"But what business have I to think of all that?" resumed Germain, trying
+to look in another direction. "My father-in-law wouldn't listen to it,
+and the whole family would treat me as a madman! Besides, she herself
+wouldn't have me, poor child!--She thinks I am too old: she told me so.
+She isn't interested; it doesn't worry her much to think of being in
+want and misery, of wearing poor clothes and suffering with hunger two
+or three months in the year, provided that she satisfies her heart some
+day and can give herself to a husband who suits her--and she's right,
+too! I would do the same in her place--and at this moment, if I could
+follow my own will, instead of embarking on a marriage that I don't
+like the idea of, I would choose a girl to my taste."
+
+The more Germain strove to argue with himself and calm himself, the less
+he succeeded. He walked twenty steps away, to lose himself in the mist;
+and then he suddenly found himself on his knees beside the two sleeping
+children. Once he even tried to kiss Petit-Pierre, who had one arm
+around Marie's neck, and he went so far astray that Marie, feeling a
+breath as hot as fire upon her lips, awoke and looked at him in terror,
+understanding nothing of what was taking place within him.
+
+"I didn't see you, my poor children!" said Germain, quickly drawing
+back. "I came very near falling on you and hurting you."
+
+Little Marie was innocent enough to believe him and went to sleep again.
+Germain went to the other side of the fire, and vowed that he would not
+stir until she was awake. He kept his word, but it was a hard task. He
+thought that he should go mad.
+
+At last, about midnight, the fog disappeared, and Germain could see the
+stars shining through the trees. The moon also shook itself clear of the
+vapors that shrouded it and began to sow diamonds on the damp moss. The
+trunks of the oak-trees remained in majestic obscurity; but, a little
+farther away, the white stems of the birches seemed like a row of
+phantoms in their shrouds. The fire was reflected in the pool; and the
+frogs, beginning to become accustomed to it, hazarded a few shrill,
+timid notes; the knotty branches of the old trees, bristling with pale
+lichens, crossed and recrossed, like great fleshless arms, over our
+travellers' heads; it was a lovely spot, but so lonely and melancholy
+that Germain, weary of suffering there, began to sing and to throw
+stones into the water to charm away the ghastly _ennui_ of solitude. He
+wanted also to wake little Marie; and when he saw her rise and look
+about to see what the weather was like, he suggested that they should
+resume their journey.
+
+"In two hours," he said, "the approach of dawn will make the air so cold
+that we couldn't stay here, notwithstanding our fire.--Now we can see
+where we are going, and we shall be sure to find a house where they will
+let us in, or at least a barn where we can pass the rest of the night
+under cover."
+
+Marie had no wish in the matter; and although she was still very sleepy,
+she prepared to go with Germain.
+
+He took his son in his arms without waking him, and insisted that Marie
+should come and take a part of his cloak as she would not take her own
+from around Petit-Pierre.
+
+When he felt the girl so near him, Germain, who had succeeded in
+diverting his thoughts and had brightened up a little for a moment,
+began to lose his head again. Two or three times he walked abruptly away
+from her and left her to walk by herself. Then, seeing that she had
+difficulty in keeping up with him, he waited for her, drew her hastily
+to his side, and held her so tight that she was amazed and angry too,
+although she dared not say so.
+
+As they had no idea in what direction they had started out, they did not
+know in what direction they were going; so that they passed through the
+whole forest once more, found themselves again on the edge of the
+deserted moor, retraced their steps, and, after turning about and
+walking a long while, they spied a light through the trees.
+
+"Good! there's a house," said Germain, "and people already awake, as the
+fire's lighted. Can it be very late?"
+
+But it was not a house: it was their camp-fire which they had covered
+when they left it, and which had rekindled in the breeze.
+
+They had walked about for two hours, only to find themselves back at
+their starting-point.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+IN THE OPEN AIR
+
+
+"This time I give it up!" said Germain, stamping on the ground. "A spell
+has been cast on us, that's sure, and we shall not get away from here
+till daylight. This place must be bewitched."
+
+"Well, well, let's not lose our tempers," said Marie, "but let us make
+the best of it. We'll make a bigger fire, the child is so well wrapped
+up that he runs no risk, and it won't kill us to pass a night
+out-of-doors. Where did you hide the saddle, Germain? In the middle of
+the holly-bushes, you great stupid! It's such a convenient place to go
+and get it!"
+
+"Here, take the child, while I pull his bed out of the brambles; I don't
+want you to prick your fingers."
+
+"It's all done, there's the bed, and a few pricks aren't sword-cuts,"
+retorted the brave girl.
+
+She proceeded to put little Pierre to bed once more; the boy was so
+sound asleep by that time, that he knew nothing about their last
+journey. Germain piled so much wood on the fire that it lighted up the
+forest all around; but little Marie was at the end of her strength, and,
+although she did not complain, her legs refused to hold her. She was
+deathly pale, and her teeth chattered with cold and weakness. Germain
+took her in his arms to warm her; and anxiety, compassion, an
+irresistible outburst of tenderness taking possession of his heart,
+imposed silence on his passions. His tongue was loosened, as if by a
+miracle, and as all feeling of shame disappeared, he said to her:
+
+"Marie, I like you, and I am very unfortunate in not making you like me.
+If you would take me for your husband, neither father-in-law nor
+relations nor neighbors nor advice could prevent me from giving myself
+to you. I know you would make my children happy and teach them to
+respect their mother's memory, and, as my conscience would be at rest, I
+could satisfy my heart. I have always been fond of you, and now I am so
+in love with you that if you should ask me to spend my life fulfilling
+your thousand wishes, I would swear on the spot to do it. Pray, pray,
+see how I love you and forget my age! Just think what a false idea it is
+that people have that a man of thirty is old. Besides, I am only
+twenty-eight! a girl is afraid of being criticised for taking a man ten
+or twelve years older than she is, because it isn't the custom of the
+province; but I have heard that in other places they don't think about
+that; on the other hand, they prefer to give a young girl, for her
+support, a sober-minded man and one whose courage has been put to the
+test, rather than a young fellow who may go wrong, and turn out to be a
+bad lot instead of the nice boy he is supposed to be. And then, too,
+years don't always make age. That depends on a man's health and
+strength. When a man is worn out by overwork and poverty, or by evil
+living, he is old before he's twenty-five. While I--But you're not
+listening to me, Marie."
+
+"Yes, I am, Germain, I hear what you say," replied little Marie; "but I
+am thinking of what my mother has always told me: that a woman of sixty
+is much to be pitied when her husband is seventy or seventy-five and
+can't work any longer to support her. He grows infirm, and she must take
+care of him at an age when she herself is beginning to have great need
+of care and rest. That is how people come to end their lives in the
+gutter."
+
+"Parents are right to say that, I agree, Marie," said Germain; "but,
+after all, they would sacrifice the whole of youth, which is the best
+part of life, to provide against what may happen at an age when one has
+ceased to be good for anything, and when one is indifferent about ending
+his life in one way or another. But I am in no danger of dying of hunger
+in my old age. I am in a fair way to save up something, because, living
+as I do with my wife's people, I work hard and spend nothing. Besides, I
+will love you so well, you know, that that will prevent me from growing
+old. They say that when a man's happy he retains his youth, and I feel
+that I am younger than Bastien just from loving you; for he doesn't love
+you, he's too stupid, too much of a child to understand how pretty and
+good you are, and made to be courted. Come, Marie, don't hate me, I am
+not a bad man; I made my Catherine happy; she said before God, on her
+death-bed, that she had never been anything but contented with me, and
+she advised me to marry again. It seems that her heart spoke to her
+child to-night, just as he went to sleep. Didn't you hear what he said?
+and how his little mouth trembled while his eyes were looking at
+something in the air that we couldn't see! He saw his mother, you may be
+sure, and she made him say that he wanted you to take her place."
+
+"Germain," Marie replied, greatly surprised and very grave, "you talk
+straightforwardly, and all you say is true. I am sure that I should do
+well to love you, if it wouldn't displease your relations too much; but
+what would you have me do? my heart says nothing to me for you. I like
+you very much; but although your age doesn't make you ugly, it frightens
+me. It seems to me as if you were something like an uncle or godfather
+to me; that I owe you respect, and that there would be times when you
+would treat me as a little girl rather than as your wife and your equal.
+And then my girl friends would laugh at me, perhaps, and although it
+would be foolish to pay any attention to that, I think I should be
+ashamed and a little bit sad on my wedding-day."
+
+"Those are childish reasons; you talk exactly like a child, Marie!"
+
+"Well, yes, I am a child," she said, "and that is just why I am afraid
+of a man who knows too much. You see, I'm too young for you, for you are
+finding fault with me already for talking foolishly! I can't have more
+sense than belongs to my years."
+
+"Alas! _mon Dieu_! how I deserve to be pitied for being so awkward and
+for my ill-success in saying what I think! Marie, you don't love me,
+that's the fact; you think I am too simple and too dull. If you loved me
+a little, you wouldn't see my defects so plainly. But you don't love me,
+you see!"
+
+"Well, it isn't my fault," she replied, a little wounded by his dropping
+the familiar form of address he had hitherto used; "I do the best I can
+while I listen to you, but the harder I try, the less able I am to make
+myself believe that we ought to be husband and wife."
+
+Germain did not reply. He hid his face in his hands and it was
+impossible for little Marie to tell whether he was crying or sulking or
+asleep. She was a little disturbed to see him so depressed, and to be
+unable to divine what was going on in his mind; but she dared say no
+more to him, and as she was too much astonished by what had taken place
+to have any desire to go to sleep again, she waited impatiently for
+daybreak, continuing to keep up the fire and watching the child, whom
+Germain seemed to have forgotten. Germain, meanwhile, was not asleep; he
+was not reflecting on his lot, nor was he devising any bold stroke, or
+any plan of seduction. He was suffering keenly, he had a mountain of
+_ennui_ upon his heart. He wished he were dead. Everything seemed to be
+turning out badly for him, and if he could have wept, he would not have
+done it by halves. But there was a little anger with himself mingled
+with his suffering, and he was suffocating, unable and unwilling to
+complain.
+
+When day broke and the noise in the fields announced the fact to
+Germain, he took his hands from his face and rose. He saw that little
+Marie had not slept, either, but he could think of nothing to say to her
+to show his solicitude. He was utterly discouraged. He concealed Grise's
+saddle in the bushes once more, took his bag over his shoulder, and
+said, taking his son's hand:
+
+"Now, Marie, we'll try and finish our journey. Do you want me to take
+you to Ormeaux?"
+
+"We will go out of the woods together," she replied, "and when we know
+where we are, we will go our separate ways."
+
+Germain said nothing. He was wounded because the girl did not ask him to
+escort her to Ormeaux, and he did not realize that he had made the offer
+in a tone that seemed to challenge a refusal.
+
+A wood-cutter, whom they met within two hundred paces, pointed out the
+path they must take, and told them that after crossing the great meadow
+they had only to go, in the one case straight ahead, in the other to
+the left, to reach their respective destinations, which, by the way,
+were so near together that the houses at Fourche could be distinctly
+seen from the farm of Ormeaux, and _vice versa_.
+
+When they had thanked the wood-cutter and passed on, he called them back
+to ask if they had not lost a horse.
+
+"I found a fine gray mare in my yard," he said, "where she may have gone
+to escape the wolf. My dogs barked all night long, and at daybreak I saw
+the beast under my shed; she's there still. Go and look at her, and if
+you know her, take her."
+
+Germain, having described Grise and being convinced that it was really
+she, started back to get his saddle. Little Marie thereupon offered to
+take the child to Ormeaux, where he could come and get him after he had
+paid his respects at Fourche.
+
+"He isn't very clean after the night we have passed," she said. "I will
+brush his clothes, wash his pretty little face, and comb his hair, and
+when he's all spick and span, you can present him to your new family."
+
+"How do you know that I am going to Fourche?" rejoined Germain testily.
+"Perhaps I shan't go there."
+
+"Oh! yes, Germain, you ought to go, and you will," said the girl.
+
+"You are in a great hurry to have me married to somebody else, so that
+you can be sure I won't make myself a nuisance to you."
+
+"Come, come, Germain, don't think any more about that; that's an idea
+that came to you in the night, because our unpleasant adventure
+disturbed your wits a little. But now you must be reasonable again; I
+promise to forget what you said to me and never to mention it to any
+one."
+
+"Oh! mention it, if you choose. I am not in the habit of taking back
+what I say. What I said to you was true and honest, and I shan't blush
+for it before any one."
+
+"Very good; but if your wife knew that you had thought of another woman
+just at the moment you called on her, it might turn her against you. So
+be careful what you say now; don't look at me like that, with such a
+strange expression, before other people. Think of Père Maurice, who
+relies on your obedience, and who would be very angry with me if I
+turned you from doing as he wants you to. Good-by, Germain; I'll take
+Petit-Pierre with me so as to force you to go to Fourche. I keep him as
+a pledge."
+
+"Do you want to go with her?" said the ploughman to his son, seeing
+that he was clinging to little Marie's hands and following her
+resolutely.
+
+"Yes, father," replied the child, who had been listening and understood
+in his own way what they had been saying unsuspectingly before him. "I
+am going with my darling Marie: you can come and get me when you're done
+getting married; but I want Marie to be my little mother, just the
+same."
+
+"You see that he wants it to be so," Germain said to the young girl.
+"Listen, Petit-Pierre," he added, "I want her to be your mother and stay
+with you always: she's the one that isn't willing. Try to make her do
+what I want her to."
+
+"Don't you be afraid, papa, I'll make her say yes: little Marie always
+does what I want her to."
+
+He walked away with the girl. Germain was left alone, more depressed and
+irresolute than ever.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+THE VILLAGE LIONESS
+
+
+However, when he had repaired the disorder of travel in his clothes and
+his horse's accoutrements, when he was mounted upon Grise and had
+ascertained the road to Fourche, he reflected that there was no drawing
+back and that he must forget that night of excitement as a dangerous
+dream.
+
+He found Père Léonard in the doorway of his white house, sitting on a
+pretty wooden bench painted spinach green. There were six stone steps
+leading to the frontdoor, showing that the house had a cellar. The wall
+between the garden and hemp-field was roughcast with lime and pebbles.
+It was an attractive place; one might almost have taken it for the abode
+of a substantial bourgeois.
+
+Germain's prospective father-in-law came to meet him, and, after five
+minutes spent in questioning him concerning his whole family, he added
+this phrase, invariably used to question courteously those whom one
+meets as to the object of their journey: "So you have come out this way
+for a little ride, eh?"
+
+"I came to see you," replied the ploughman, "and to offer you this
+little gift of game from my father-in-law, and to say, also from him,
+that you would know my purpose in coming."
+
+"Ha! ha!" laughed Père Léonard, patting his round paunch, "I see, I
+hear, I understood!" And he added, with a wink: "You'll not be alone in
+paying your respects, my young friend. There are three in the house
+already, dancing attendance like you. I don't turn anybody away, and I
+should be hard put to it to decide against any one of them, for they're
+all good matches. However, on account of Pere Maurice and the quality of
+your lands, I should prefer you. But my daughter's of age and mistress
+of her own property; so she will do as she pleases. Go in and introduce
+yourself; I hope you may draw the lucky number!"
+
+"Pardon, excuse me," replied Germain, greatly surprised to find himself
+one of several, where he had expected to be alone. "I didn't know that
+your daughter was already provided with suitors, and I didn't come to
+dispute for her with others."
+
+"If you thought that because you were slow in coming," retorted Père
+Léonard, with undiminished good-humor, "you would catch my daughter
+napping, you made a very great mistake, my boy. Catherine has something
+to attract husbands with, and she'll have only too many to choose from.
+But go into the house, I tell you, and don't lose courage. She's a woman
+worth disputing for."
+
+And, pushing Germain by the shoulders with rough good-humor, "Here,
+Catherine," he cried, entering the house, "here's one more!"
+
+This jovial but vulgar manner of being introduced to the widow, in the
+presence of her other suitors, put the finishing touch to the
+ploughman's confusion and annoyance. He felt ill at ease, and stood for
+some moments without venturing to turn his eyes on the fair one and her
+court.
+
+The Widow Guérin was well made, and did not lack freshness. But the
+expression of her face and her costume repelled Germain at the first
+glance. She had a forward, self-satisfied air, and her mob-cap trimmed
+with a triple row of lace, her silk apron, and her black lace fichu were
+decidedly not in harmony with the idea he had conceived of a sedate,
+serious-minded widow.
+
+This elegance in dress and her free and easy manners made her appear
+old and ugly to him, although she was neither. He thought that such
+coquettish attire and such playful manners would be well suited to the
+age and keen wit of little Marie, but that such pleasantry on the
+widow's part was heavy and stale, and that there was no distinction in
+the way she wore her fine clothes.
+
+The three suitors were sitting at a table laden with food and wine,
+which were kept there for them through the whole of Sunday morning; for
+Père Léonard loved to exhibit his opulence, nor was the widow sorry to
+display her fine plate and to keep open house like a woman of means.
+Germain, simple and trustful as he was, did not lack penetration in his
+observation of things, and for the first time in his life he stood on
+the defensive while drinking. Père Léonard had compelled him to take a
+seat with his rivals, and, seating himself opposite him, he treated him
+as handsomely as possible, and devoted himself to him with evident
+partiality. The gift of game, despite the breach Germain had made in it
+on his own account, was still considerable enough to produce an effect.
+The widow seemed to appreciate it, and the suitors eyed it disdainfully.
+
+Germain felt ill at ease in that company, and did not eat with any
+heartiness. Père Léonard rallied him about it.--"You seem very down in
+the mouth," he said, "and you're sulking with your glass. You mustn't
+let love spoil your appetite, for a fasting lover can't find so many
+pretty things to say as the man who has sharpened up his wits with a
+mouthful of wine."
+
+Germain was mortified that it should be assumed that he was in love; and
+the affected demeanor of the widow, who lowered her eyes with a smile,
+like one who is sure of her game, made him long to protest against his
+alleged surrender; but he feared to seem discourteous, so he smiled and
+took patience.
+
+The widow's lovers seemed to him like three rustic clowns. They must
+have been rich, or she would not have listened to their suits. One of
+them was more than forty, and was about as stout as Père Léonard;
+another had but one eye, and drank so much that it made him stupid; the
+third was young and not a bad-looking fellow; but he attempted to be
+witty, and said such insane things that one could but pity him. But the
+widow laughed as if she admired all his idiotic remarks, and therein she
+gave no proof of good taste. Germain thought at first that she was in
+love with the young man; but he soon perceived that he was himself the
+recipient of marked encouragement, and that she wished him to yield more
+readily to her charms. That was to him a reason for feeling and
+appearing even colder and more solemn.
+
+The hour of Mass arrived, and they left the table to attend in a body.
+They had to go to Mers, a good half-league away, and Germain was so
+tired that he would have been glad of an opportunity to take a nap
+first: but he was not in the habit of being absent from Mass, and he
+started with the others.
+
+The roads were filled with people, and the widow walked proudly along,
+escorted by her three suitors, taking the arm of one, then of another,
+bridling up and carrying her head high. She would have been very glad to
+exhibit the fourth to the passers-by; but it seemed so ridiculous to be
+paraded thus in company by a petticoat, in everybody's sight, that he
+kept at a respectful distance, talking with Père Léonard and finding a
+way to divert his thoughts and occupy his mind so that they did not seem
+to belong to the party.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+THE MASTER
+
+
+When they reached the village, the widow stopped to wait for them. She
+was determined to make her entry with her whole suite; but Germain,
+refusing to afford her that satisfaction, left Père Léonard, spoke with
+several people of his acquaintance, and entered the church by another
+door. The widow was vexed with him.
+
+After the Mass, she made her appearance in triumph on the greensward
+where dancing was in progress, and opened three successive dances with
+her three lovers. Germain watched her, and concluded that she danced
+well, but with affectation.
+
+"Well!" said Léonard, clapping him on the shoulder, "so you don't ask my
+daughter to dance? You are altogether too bashful!"
+
+"I don't dance since I lost my wife," the ploughman replied.
+
+"Oh! but when you're looking for another, mourning's at an end in your
+heart as well as in your clothes."
+
+"That's no argument, Père Léonard; besides, I feel too old, I don't care
+for dancing any more."
+
+"Hark ye," rejoined Léonard, leading him apart, "you took offence when
+you entered my house, because you found the citadel already surrounded
+by besiegers, and I see that you're very proud; but that isn't
+reasonable, my boy. My daughter's used to being courted, especially
+these last two years since her mourning came to an end, and it isn't her
+place to make advances to you."
+
+"Your daughter has been free to marry again for two years, you say, and
+hasn't made up her mind yet?" said Germain.
+
+"She doesn't choose to hurry, and she's right. Although she has rather a
+lively way with her, and you may think she doesn't reflect much, she's a
+woman of great good sense and one who knows very well what she's about."
+
+"I don't see how that can be," said Germain ingenuously, "for she has
+three gallants in her train, and if she knew what she wanted, at least
+two of them would seem to her to be in the way and she would request
+them to stay at home."
+
+"Why so? you don't know anything about it, Germain. She doesn't want
+either the old man or the one-eyed one or the young one, I'm almost
+certain of it; but if she should turn them away, people would say she
+meant to remain a widow and no others would come."
+
+"Ah, yes! they act as a sign-post for her!"
+
+"As you say. Where's the harm if they like it?"
+
+"Every one to his taste!" said Germain.
+
+"That wouldn't be to your taste, I see. But come, now, we can come to an
+understanding: supposing that she prefers you, the field could be left
+clear for you."
+
+"Yes, supposing! And how long must I stand with my nose in the air
+before I can find out?"
+
+"That depends on yourself, I fancy, if you know how to talk and argue.
+So far my daughter has understood very clearly that the best part of her
+life would be the part that she passed in letting men court her, and she
+doesn't feel in any hurry to become one man's servant when she can give
+orders to several. And so, as long as the game pleases her, she can
+divert herself with it; but if you please her more than the game, the
+game may be stopped. All you have to do is not to be discouraged. Come
+every Sunday, ask her to dance, give her to understand that you're on
+the list, and if she finds you more likeable and better informed than
+the others, I don't doubt that she'll tell you so some fine day."
+
+"Excuse me, Père Léonard, your daughter is entitled to act as she
+pleases, and I have no right to blame her. I would act differently if I
+were in her place; I'd be more honest, and I wouldn't let men throw away
+their time who probably have something better to do than hang around a
+woman who laughs at them. But, after all, if that entertains her and
+makes her happy, it's none of my business. But I must tell you one thing
+that is a little embarrassing for me to confess since this morning,
+seeing that you began by making a mistake as to my intentions and didn't
+give me any time to reply; so that you believe something that isn't so.
+Pray understand that I didn't come here to ask for your daughter's hand,
+but to buy a pair of oxen that you intend to take to the fair next week
+and that my father-in-law thinks will suit him."
+
+"I understand, Germain," said Léonard calmly; "you changed your mind
+when you saw my daughter with her lovers. That's as you please. It seems
+that what attracts one repels another, and you have the right to
+withdraw as long as you haven't spoken yet. If you really want to buy
+my oxen, come and look at them in the pasture; we'll talk it over, and
+whether we strike a bargain or not, you'll come and take dinner with us
+before you go back."
+
+"I don't want you to put yourself out," replied Germain, "perhaps you
+have business here; I'm a little tired of watching them dance and of
+doing nothing. I'll go to look at your cattle, and join you later at
+your house."
+
+Thereupon, Germain slipped away and walked toward the meadows, where
+Léonard had pointed out some of his beasts in the distance. It was true
+that Père Maurice wanted to buy, and Germain thought that if he should
+take back a good yoke at a moderate price, he would be pardoned more
+readily for having voluntarily failed to accomplish the real object of
+his journey.
+
+He walked fast, and was soon within a short distance of Ormeaux.
+Thereupon he felt that he must go and kiss his son and see little Marie
+once more, although he had lost the hope and banished from his mind the
+thought of owing his happiness to her. All that he had seen and
+heard--the vain, giddy woman; the father, at once cunning and shallow,
+who encouraged his daughter in her pride and disingenuous habits; the
+imitation of city luxury, which seemed to him an offence against the
+dignity of country manners; the time wasted in indolent, foolish
+conversation, that household so different from his own, and, above all,
+the profound discomfort that the husbandman feels when he lays aside his
+laborious habits; all the _ennui_ and annoyance he had undergone within
+the last few hours--made Germain long to be once more with his child and
+his little neighbor. Even if he had not been in love with the latter, he
+would have sought her none the less for distraction, and to restore his
+mind to its accustomed channels.
+
+But he looked in vain in the neighboring fields, he saw neither little
+Marie nor little Pierre; and yet it was the time when the shepherds are
+in the fields. There was a large flock in a pasture; he asked a young
+boy who was tending them if the sheep belonged to the farm of Ormeaux.
+
+"Yes," said the child.
+
+"Are you the shepherd? do boys tend woolly beasts for the farmers in
+your neighborhood?"
+
+"No. I'm tending 'em to-day because the shepherdess has gone away: she
+was sick."
+
+"But haven't you a new shepherdess who came this morning?"
+
+"Oh! yes! she's gone, too, already."
+
+"What! gone? didn't she have a child with her?"
+
+"Yes, a little boy; he cried. They both went away after they'd been here
+two hours."
+
+"Where did they go?"
+
+"Where they came from, I suppose. I didn't ask 'em."
+
+"But what did they go away for?" said Germain, with increasing anxiety.
+
+"Why, how do I know?"
+
+"Didn't they agree about wages? but that must have been agreed on
+beforehand."
+
+"I can't tell you anything about it. I saw them go in and come out,
+that's all."
+
+Germain went on to the farm and questioned the farm-hands. No one could
+explain what had happened; but all agreed that, after talking with the
+farmer, the girl had gone away without saying a word, taking with her
+the child, who was weeping.
+
+"Did they ill-treat my son?" cried Germain, his eyes flashing fire.
+
+"He was your son, was he? How did he come to be with that girl? Where
+are you from, and what's your name?"
+
+Germain, seeing that his questions were answered by other questions,
+according to the custom of the country, stamped his foot impatiently,
+and asked to speak with the master.
+
+The master was not there: he was not in the habit of staying the whole
+day when he came to the farm. He had mounted his horse, and ridden off
+to some other of his farms.
+
+"But surely you can find out the reason of that young girl's going
+away?" said Germain, assailed by keen anxiety.
+
+The farm-hand exchanged a strange smile with his wife, then replied that
+he knew nothing about it, that it did not concern him. All that Germain
+could learn was that the girl and the child had gone in the direction of
+Fourche. He hurried to Fourche: the widow and her lovers had not
+returned, nor had Père Léonard. The servant told him that a young girl
+and a child had come there and inquired for him, but that she, not
+knowing them, thought it best not to admit them and advised them to go
+to Mers.
+
+"Why did you refuse to let them in?" said Germain angrily. "Are you so
+suspicious in these parts that you don't open your door to your
+neighbor?"
+
+"Oh! bless me!" the servant replied, "in a rich house like this, one
+has to keep a sharp lookout. I am responsible for everything when the
+masters are away, and I can't open the door to everybody that comes."
+
+"That's a vile custom," said Germain, "and I'd rather be poor than live
+in fear like that. Adieu, girl! adieu to your wretched country!"
+
+He inquired at the neighboring houses. Everybody had seen the
+shepherdess and the child. As the little one had left Belair
+unexpectedly, without being dressed for the occasion, with a torn blouse
+and his little lamb's fleece over his shoulders; and as little Marie was
+necessarily very shabbily dressed at all times, they had been taken for
+beggars. Some one had offered them bread; the girl had accepted a piece
+for the child, who was hungry, then she had walked away very fast with
+him and had gone into the woods.
+
+Germain reflected a moment, then asked if the farmer from Ormeaux had
+not come to Fourche.
+
+"Yes," was the reply; "he rode by on horseback a few minutes after the
+girl."
+
+"Did he ride after her?"
+
+"Ah! you know him, do you?" laughed the village innkeeper, to whom he
+had applied for information.
+
+"Yes, to be sure; he's a devil of a fellow for running after the girls.
+But I don't believe he caught that one; although, after all, if he had
+seen her--"
+
+"That's enough, thanks!" And he flew rather than ran to Leonard's
+stable. He threw the saddle on Grise's back, leaped upon her, and
+galloped away in the direction of the woods of Chanteloube.
+
+His heart was beating fast with anxiety and wrath, the perspiration
+rolled down his forehead. He covered Grise's sides with blood, although
+the mare, when she found that she was on the way to her stable, did not
+need to be urged to go at full speed.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE OLD WOMAN
+
+
+Germain soon found himself at the spot on the edge of the pool where he
+had passed the night. The fire was still smoking; an old woman was
+picking up what was left of the dead wood Marie had collected. Germain
+stopped to question her. She was deaf, and misunderstood his questions.
+
+"Yes, my boy," she said, "this is the Devil's Pool. It's a bad place,
+and you mustn't come near it without throwing three stones in with your
+left hand and crossing yourself with your right: that drives away the
+spirits. Unless they do that, misfortune comes to those who walk around
+it."
+
+"I didn't ask you about that," said Germain, drawing nearer to her and
+shouting at the top of his voice: "Haven't you seen a girl and a young
+child going through the woods?"
+
+"Yes," said the old woman, "there was a small child drowned there!"
+
+Germain shivered from head to foot; but luckily the old woman added:
+
+"That was a long, long while ago; they put up a beautiful cross; but on
+a fine stormy night the evil spirits threw it into the water. You can
+still see one end of it. If any one had the bad luck to stop here at
+night, he would be very sure not to be able to go away before dawn. It
+would do him no good to walk, walk: he might travel two hundred leagues
+through the woods and find himself still in the same place."--The
+ploughman's imagination was impressed, do what he would, by what he
+heard, and the idea of the misfortune which might follow, to justify the
+remainder of the old woman's assertions, took such complete possession
+of his brain that he felt cold all over his body. Despairing of
+obtaining any additional information, he mounted his horse and began to
+ride through the woods, calling Pierre at the top of his voice,
+whistling, cracking his whip, breaking off branches to fill the forest
+with the noise of his progress, then listening to see if any voice
+answered; but he heard naught but the bells on the cows scattered among
+the bushes, and the fierce grunting of pigs fighting over the acorns.
+
+At last, Germain heard behind him the footsteps of a horse following in
+his track, and a man of middle age, swarthy, robust, dressed like a
+semi-bourgeois, shouted to him to stop. Germain had never seen the
+farmer of Ormeaux; but an angry instinct led him to determine at once
+that it was he. He turned, and, eyeing him from head to foot, waited to
+hear what he had to say to him.
+
+"Haven't you seen a young girl of fifteen or sixteen, with a little boy,
+pass this way?" said the farmer, affecting an indifferent manner,
+although he was visibly moved.
+
+"What do you want of her?" demanded Germain, not seeking to disguise his
+indignation.
+
+"I might tell you that that was none of your business, my friend, but as
+I have no reason to hide it, I will tell you that she's a shepherdess I
+hired for the year without knowing her.--When she came to the farm, she
+seemed to me too young and not strong enough for the work. I thanked
+her, but I insisted on paying her what her little journey had cost; and
+she went off in a rage while my back was turned.--She was in such a
+hurry that she even forgot part of her things and her purse, which
+hasn't very much in it, to be sure; a few sous, I suppose!--but as I had
+business in this direction, I thought I might meet her and give her what
+she forgot and what I owe her."
+
+Germain was too honest a soul not to hesitate when he heard that story,
+which was possible at least, if not very probable. He fixed a piercing
+gaze on the farmer, who bore his scrutiny with much impudence or else
+with perfect innocence.
+
+"I want to have a clear conscience," said Germain to himself, and,
+restraining his indignation, he continued aloud:
+
+"She's a girl from our neighborhood; I know her: she must be somewhere
+about here. Let us go on together--we shall find her, I've no doubt."
+
+"You are right," said the farmer. "Let's go on--but, if we don't find
+her at the end of the path, I give it up--for I must take the Ardentes
+road."
+
+"Oho!" thought the ploughman, "I won't leave you! even if I should have
+to twist around the Devil's Pool with you for twenty-four hours!"
+
+"Stay!" said Germain suddenly, fixing his eyes on a clump of furze which
+was moving back and forth in a peculiar way: "holà! holà! Petit-Pierre,
+my child, is that you?"
+
+The child, recognizing his father's voice, leaped out of the bushes like
+a kid, but when he saw that he was with the farmer, he stopped as if in
+terror, and stood still, uncertain what to do.
+
+"Come, my Pierre, come, it's me!" cried the ploughman, riding toward him
+and leaping down from his horse to take him in his arms: "and where's
+little Marie?"
+
+"She's hiding there, because she's afraid of that bad black man, and so
+am I."
+
+"Oh! don't you be afraid; I am here--Marie! Marie! it's me!"
+
+Marie came crawling out from the bushes, and as soon as she saw Germain,
+whom the farmer was following close, she ran and threw herself into his
+arms; and, clinging to him like a daughter to her father, she exclaimed:
+
+"Ah! my good Germain, you will defend me; I'm not afraid with you."
+
+Germain shuddered. He looked at Marie: she was pale, her clothes were
+torn by the brambles through which she had run, seeking the thickest
+underbrush, like a doe with the hunters on her track. But there was
+neither despair nor shame on her face.
+
+"Your master wants to speak to you," he said, still watching her
+features.
+
+"My master?" she said proudly; "that man is not my master and never will
+be!--You are my master, you, Germain. I want you to take me back with
+you--will work for you for nothing!"
+
+The farmer had ridden forward, feigning some impatience.
+
+"Ah! little one," he said, "you forgot something which I have brought
+you."
+
+"No, no, monsieur," replied little Marie, "I didn't forget anything, and
+there's nothing I want to ask you for--"
+
+"Hark ye a minute," said the farmer, "I have something to say to
+you!--Come!--don't be afraid--just two words."
+
+"You can say them out loud. I have no secrets with you."
+
+"Come and get your money, at least."
+
+"My money? You don't owe me anything, thank God!"
+
+"I suspected as much," said Germain in an undertone; "but never mind,
+Marie, listen to what he has to say to you--for, for my part, I am
+curious to find out. You can tell me afterward: I have my reasons for
+that. Go beside his horse--I won't lose sight of you."
+
+Marie took three steps toward the farmer, who said to her, leaning
+forward on the pommel of his saddle, and lowering his voice:
+
+"Here's a bright louis-d'or for you, little one! you won't say anything,
+understand? I'll say that I concluded you weren't strong enough for the
+work on my farm.--And don't let anything more be said about it. I'll
+come and see you again one of these days, and if you haven't said
+anything, I'll give you something else. And then, if you're more
+reasonable, you'll only have to say the word: I will take you home with
+me, or else come and talk with you in the pasture at dusk. What present
+shall I bring you?"
+
+"There is my gift to you, monsieur!" replied little Marie aloud,
+throwing his louis-d'or in his face with no gentle hand. "I thank you
+very much, and I beg you to let me know beforehand when you are coming
+our way: all the young men in my neighborhood will turn out to receive
+you, because our people are very fond of bourgeois who try to make love
+to poor girls! You'll see, they'll be on the lookout for you!"
+
+"You're a liar and a silly babbler!" said the farmer in a rage, raising
+his stick threateningly. "You'd like to make people believe what isn't
+true, but you won't get any money out of me: I know your kind!"
+
+Marie had recoiled in terror; but Germain darted to the farmer's horse's
+head, seized the rein, and shook it vigorously:
+
+"I understand now!" he said, "and I see plainly enough what the trouble
+was. Dismount! my man! come down and let us have a talk!"
+
+The farmer was by no means anxious to take a hand in the game: he
+spurred his horse in order to free himself, and tried to strike the
+ploughman's hands with his stick and make him relax his hold; but
+Germain eluded the blow, and, taking him by the leg, unhorsed him and
+brought him to the heather, where he knocked him down, although the
+farmer was soon upon his feet again and defended himself sturdily.
+
+[Illustration: Chapter XIV
+
+_Marie had recoiled in terror; but Germain darted to the farmer's
+horse's head, seized the rein, and shook it vigorously._]
+
+"Coward!" said Germain, when he had him beneath him, "I could break
+every bone in your body if I chose! But I don't like to harm anybody,
+and besides, no punishment would mend your conscience. However, you
+shan't stir from this spot until you have asked this girl's pardon on
+your knees."
+
+The farmer, who was familiar with affairs of that sort, tried to turn it
+off as a joke. He claimed that his offence was not so very serious, as
+it consisted only in words, and said that he was willing to beg the
+girl's pardon, on condition that he might kiss her and that they should
+all go and drink a pint of wine at the nearest inn and part good
+friends.
+
+"You disgust me!" replied Germain, pressing his face against the ground,
+"and I long to see the last of your ugly face. There, blush if you can,
+and you had better take the road of the _affronteux_[2] when you come to
+our town."
+
+He picked up the farmer's holly staff, broke it across his knee to show
+the strength of his wrists, and threw the pieces away with a
+contemptuous gesture.
+
+Then, taking his son's hand in one of his, and little Marie's in the
+other, he walked away, trembling with indignation.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+THE RETURN TO THE FARM
+
+
+Within a quarter of an hour they had crossed the moors. They trotted
+along the high-road, and Grise neighed at every familiar object.
+Petit-Pierre told his father what had taken place so far as he had been
+able to understand it.
+
+"When we got there," he said, "_that man_ came and talked to _my Marie_
+in the sheepfold, where we went first to see the fine sheep. I'd got up
+into the crib to play, and _that man_ didn't see me. Then he said
+good-day to my Marie and then he kissed her."
+
+"You let him kiss you, Marie?" said Germain, trembling with anger.
+
+"I thought it was a compliment, a custom of the place for new arrivals,
+just as grandma, at your house, kisses the girls who take service with
+her, to show that she adopts them and will be like a mother to them."
+
+"And then," continued Petit-Pierre, who was very proud to have a story
+to tell, "_that man_ said something naughty, something you told me not
+to say and not to remember: so I forgot it right away. But if my papa
+wants me to tell him what it was--"
+
+"No, my Pierre, I don't want to hear it, and I don't want you to
+remember it ever."
+
+"Then I'll forget it again," said the child. "And then _that man_ acted
+as if he was mad because Marie said she was going away. He told her he'd
+give her all she wanted,--a hundred francs! And my Marie got mad, too.
+Then he went at her, just like he was going to hurt her. I was afraid,
+and I ran up to Marie and cried. Then _that man_ said like this: 'What's
+that? where did that child come from? Put him out of here.' And he put
+up his stick to beat me. But my Marie stopped him, and she said like
+this: 'We will talk by and by, monsieur; now I must take this child to
+Fourche, and then I'll come back again.' And as soon as he'd gone out of
+the sheepfold, my Marie says to me like this: 'Let's run away, my
+Pierre, we must go away right off, for that man's a bad man, and he
+would only hurt us.'--Then we went behind the barns and crossed a little
+field and went to Fourche to look for you. But you weren't there, and
+they wouldn't let us wait for you. And then _that man_ came up behind
+us on his black horse, and we ran still farther away, and then we went
+and hid in the woods. Then he came, too, and we hid when we heard him
+coming. And then, when he'd gone by, we began to run for ourselves so as
+to go home; and then at last you came and found us; and that's all there
+was. I didn't forget anything, did I, my Marie?"
+
+"No, Pierre, and it's the truth. Now, Germain, you will bear witness for
+me and tell everybody at home that it wasn't for lack of courage and
+being willing to work that I couldn't stay over yonder."
+
+"And I will ask you, Marie," said Germain, "to ask yourself the
+question, whether, when it comes to defending a woman and punishing a
+knave, a man of twenty-eight isn't too old? I'd like to know if Bastien,
+or any other pretty boy who has the advantage of being ten years younger
+than I am, wouldn't have been crushed by _that man_, as Petit-Pierre
+calls him: what do you think about it?"
+
+"I think, Germain, that you have done me a very great service, and that
+I shall thank you for it all my life."
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"My little father," said the child, "I didn't think to tell little Marie
+what I promised you. I didn't have time, but I'll tell her at home, and
+I'll tell grandma, too."
+
+This promise on his child's part gave Germain abundant food for
+reflection. The problem now was how to explain his position to his
+family, and while setting forth his grievances against the widow Guérin,
+to avoid telling them what other thoughts had predisposed him to be so
+keen-sighted and so harsh in his judgment.
+
+When one is happy and proud, the courage to make others accept one's
+happiness seems easily within reach; but to be rebuffed in one direction
+and blamed in another is not a very pleasant plight.
+
+Luckily, Pierre was asleep when they reached the farm, and Germain put
+him down on his bed without waking him. Then he entered upon such
+explanations as he was able to give. Père Maurice, sitting upon his
+three-legged stool in the doorway, listened gravely to him, and,
+although he was ill pleased with the result of the expedition, when
+Germain, after describing the widow's system of coquetry, asked his
+father in-law if he had time to go and pay court to her fifty-two
+Sundays in the year with the chance of being dismissed at the end of the
+year, the old man replied, nodding his head in token of assent: "You are
+not wrong, Germain; that couldn't be." And again, when Germain told how
+he had been compelled to bring little Marie home again without loss of
+time to save her from the insults, perhaps from the violence, of an
+unworthy master, Père Maurice again nodded assent, saying: "You are not
+wrong, Germain; that's as it should be."
+
+When Germain had finished his story and given all his reasons, his
+father-in-law and mother-in-law simultaneously uttered a heavy sigh of
+resignation as they exchanged glances.
+
+Then the head of the family rose, saying: "Well! God's will be done!
+affection isn't made to order!"
+
+"Come to supper, Germain," said the mother-in-law. "It's a pity that
+couldn't be arranged better; however, it wasn't God's will, it seems. We
+must look somewhere else."
+
+"Yes," the old man added, "as my wife says, we must look somewhere
+else."
+
+There was no further sound in the house, and when Petit-Pierre rose the
+next morning with the larks, at dawn, being no longer excited by the
+extraordinary events of the last two days, he relapsed into the normal
+apathy of little peasants of his age, forgot all that had filled his
+little head, and thought of nothing but playing with his brothers, and
+_being a man_ with the horses and oxen.
+
+Germain tried to forget, too, by plunging into his work again; but he
+became so melancholy and so absent-minded that everybody noticed it. He
+did not speak to little Marie, he did not even look at her; and yet, if
+any one had asked him in which pasture she was, or in what direction she
+had gone, there was not an hour in the day when he could not have told
+if he had chosen to reply. He had not dared ask his people to take her
+on at the farm during the winter, and yet he was well aware that she
+must be suffering from poverty. But she was not suffering, and Mère
+Guillette could never understand why her little store of wood never grew
+less, and how her shed was always filled in the morning when she had
+left it almost empty the night before. It was the same with the wheat
+and potatoes. Some one came through the window in the loft, and emptied
+a bag on the floor without waking anybody or leaving any tracks. The old
+woman was anxious and rejoiced at the same time; she bade her daughter
+not mention the matter, saying that if people knew what was happening in
+her house they would take her for a witch. She really believed that the
+devil had a hand in it, but she was by no means eager to fall out with
+him by calling upon the curé to exorcise him from her house; she said to
+herself that it would be time to do that when Satan came and demanded
+her soul in exchange for his benefactions.
+
+Little Marie had a clearer idea of the truth, but she dared not speak to
+Germain for fear that he would recur to his idea of marriage, and she
+pretended when with him to notice nothing.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+MÈRE MAURICE
+
+
+One day, Mère Maurice, being alone in the orchard with Germain, said to
+him affectionately: "My poor son, I don't think you're well. You don't
+eat as much as usual, you never laugh, and you talk less and less. Has
+any one in the house, have we ourselves wounded you, without meaning to
+do it or knowing that we had done it?"
+
+"No, mother," replied Germain, "you have always been as kind to me as
+the mother who brought me into the world, and I should be an ungrateful
+fellow if I complained of you, or your husband, or any one in the
+house."
+
+"In that case, my child, it must be that your grief for your wife's
+death has come back. Instead of lessening with time, your loneliness
+grows worse, and you absolutely must do what your father-in-law very
+wisely advised, you must marry again."
+
+"Yes, mother, that would be my idea, too; but the women you advised me
+to seek don't suit me. When I see them, instead of forgetting Catherine,
+I think of her all the more."
+
+"The trouble apparently is, Germain, that we haven't succeeded in
+divining your taste. So you must help us by telling us the truth.
+Doubtless there's a woman somewhere who was made for you, for the good
+Lord doesn't make anybody without putting by his happiness for him in
+somebody else. So if you know where to go for the wife you need, go and
+get her; and whether she's pretty or ugly, young or old, rich or poor,
+we have made up our minds, my old man and I, to give our consent; for
+we're tired of seeing you so sad, and we can't live at peace if you are
+not."
+
+"You are as good as the good Lord, mother, and so is father," replied
+Germain; "but your compassion can't cure my trouble: the girl I would
+like won't have me."
+
+"Is it because she's too young? It's unwise for you to put your thoughts
+on a young girl."
+
+
+"Well, yes, mother, I am foolish enough to have become attached to a
+young girl, and I blame myself for it. I do all I can not to think of
+her; but whether I am at work or resting, whether I am at Mass or in my
+bed, with my children or with you, I think of her all the time, and
+can't think of anything else."
+
+"Why, it's as if there'd been a spell cast on you, Germain, isn't it?
+There's only one cure for it, and that is to make the girl change her
+mind and listen to you. So I must take a hand in it, and see if it can
+be done. You tell me where she lives and what her name is."
+
+"Alas! my dear mother, I don't dare," said Germain, "for you'll laugh at
+me."
+
+"No, I won't laugh at you, Germain, because you're in trouble, and I
+don't want to make it any worse for you. Can it be Fanchette?"
+
+"No, mother, not her."
+
+"Or Rosette?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Tell me, then, for I won't stop, if I have to name all the girls in the
+province."
+
+Germain hung his head, and could not make up his mind to reply.
+
+"Well," said Mère Maurice, "I leave you in peace for to-day, Germain;
+perhaps to-morrow you will feel more like trusting me, or your
+sister-in-law will show more skill in questioning you."
+
+And she picked up her basket to go and stretch her linen on the bushes.
+
+Germain acted like children who make up their minds when they see that
+you have ceased to pay any attention to them. He followed his
+mother-in-law, and at last gave her the name in fear and trembling--_La
+Guillette's little Marie_.
+
+Great was Mère Maurice's surprise: she was the last one of whom she
+would have thought. But she had the delicacy not to cry out at it, and
+to make her comments mentally. Then, seeing that her silence was
+oppressive to Germain, she held out her basket to him, saying: "Well, is
+that any reason why you shouldn't help me in my work? Carry this load,
+and come and talk with me. Have you reflected, Germain? have you made up
+your mind?"
+
+"Alas! my dear mother, that's not the way you must talk: my mind would
+be made up if I could succeed; but as I shouldn't be listened to, I have
+made up my mind simply to cure myself if I can."
+
+"And if you can't?"
+
+"Everything in its time, Mère Maurice: when the horse is overloaded, he
+falls; and when the ox has nothing to eat, he dies."
+
+"That is to say that you will die if you don't succeed, eh? God forbid,
+Germain! I don't like to hear a man like you say such things as that,
+because when he says them he thinks them. You're a very brave man, and
+weakness is a dangerous thing in strong men. Come, take hope. I can't
+imagine how a poor girl, who is much honored by having you want her, can
+refuse you."
+
+"It's the truth, though, she does refuse me."
+
+"What reasons does she give you?"
+
+"That you have always been kind to her, that her family owes a great
+deal to yours, and that she doesn't want to displease you by turning me
+away from a wealthy marriage."
+
+"If she says that, she shows good feeling, and it's very honest on her
+part. But when she tells you that, Germain, she doesn't cure you, for
+she tells you she loves you, I don't doubt, and that she'd marry you if
+we were willing."
+
+"That's the worst of it! she says that her heart isn't drawn toward me."
+
+"If she says what she doesn't mean, the better to keep you away from
+her, she's a child who deserves to have us love her and to have us
+overlook her youth because of her great common-sense."
+
+"Yes," said Germain, struck with a hope he had not before conceived;
+"it would be very good and very _comme il faut_ on her part! but if
+she's so sensible, I am very much afraid it's because she doesn't like
+me."
+
+"Germain," said Mère Maurice, "you must promise to keep quiet the whole
+week and not worry, but eat and sleep, and be gay as you used to be.
+I'll speak to my old man, and if I bring him round, then you can find
+out the girl's real feeling with regard to you."
+
+Germain promised, and the week passed without Père Maurice saying a word
+to him in private or giving any sign that he suspected anything. The
+ploughman tried hard to seem tranquil, but he was paler and more
+perturbed than ever.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+LITTLE MARIE
+
+
+At last, on Sunday morning as they came out from Mass, his mother-in-law
+asked him what he had obtained from his sweetheart since their interview
+in the orchard.
+
+"Why, nothing at all," he replied. "I haven't spoken to her."
+
+"How do you expect to persuade her, pray, if you don't speak to her?"
+
+"I have never spoken to her but once," said Germain. "That was when we
+went to Fourche together; and since then I haven't said a single word to
+her. Her refusal hurt me so, that I prefer not to hear her tell me again
+that she doesn't love me."
+
+"Well, my son, you must speak to her now; your father-in-law authorizes
+you to do it. Come, make up your mind! I tell you to do it, and, if
+necessary, I insist on it; for you can't remain in this state of doubt."
+
+Germain obeyed. He went to Mère Guillette's, with downcast eyes and an
+air of profound depression. Little Marie was alone in the
+chimney-corner, musing so deeply that she did not hear Germain come in.
+When she saw him before her, she leaped from her chair in surprise and
+her face flushed.
+
+"Little Marie," he said, sitting beside her, "I have pained you and
+wearied you, I know; but _the man and the woman at our house_"--so
+designating the heads of the family in accordance with custom--"want me
+to speak to you and ask you to marry me. You won't be willing to do it,
+I expect that."
+
+"Germain," replied little Marie, "have you made up your mind that you
+love me?"
+
+"That offends you, I know, but it isn't my fault; if you could change
+your mind, I should be too happy, and I suppose I don't deserve to have
+it so. Come, look at me, Marie, am I so very frightful?"
+
+"No, Germain," she replied, with a smile, "you're better looking than I
+am."
+
+"Don't laugh at me; look at me indulgently; I haven't lost a hair or a
+tooth yet. My eyes tell you that I love you. Look into my eyes, it's
+written there, and every girl knows how to read that writing."
+
+Marie looked into Germain's eyes with an air of playful assurance; then
+she suddenly turned her head away and began to tremble.
+
+"Ah! _mon Dieu!_ I frighten you," said Germain; "you look at me as if I
+were the farmer of Ormeaux. Don't be afraid of me, I beg of you, that
+hurts me too much. I won't say bad words to you, I won't kiss you
+against your will, and when you want me to go away, you have only to
+show me the door. Tell me, must I go out so that you can stop
+trembling?"
+
+Marie held out her hand to the ploughman, but without turning her head,
+which was bent toward the fire-place, and without speaking.
+
+"I understand," said Germain; "you pity me, for you are kind-hearted;
+you are sorry to make me unhappy; but still you can't love me, can you?"
+
+"Why do you say such things to me, Germain?" little Marie replied at
+last, "do you want to make me cry?"
+
+"Poor little girl, you have a kind heart, I know; but you don't love me,
+and you hide your face from me because you're afraid to let me see your
+displeasure and your repugnance. And for my part, I don't dare do so
+much as press your hand! In the woods, when my son was asleep, and you
+were asleep too, I came near kissing you softly. But I should have died
+of shame rather than ask you for a kiss, and I suffered as much that
+night as a man roasting over a slow fire. Since then, I've dreamed of
+you every night. Ah! how I have kissed you, Marie! But you slept without
+dreaming all the time. And now do you know what I think? that if you
+should turn and look at me with such eyes as I have for you, and if you
+should put your face to mine, I believe I should fall dead with joy. And
+as for you, you are thinking that if such a thing should happen to you,
+you would die of anger and shame!"
+
+Germain talked as if he were dreaming, and did not know what he said.
+Little Marie was still trembling; but as he was trembling even more than
+she, he did not notice it. Suddenly she turned; she was all in tears,
+and looked at him with a reproachful expression.
+
+The poor ploughman thought that that was the last stroke, and rose to
+go, without awaiting his sentence, but the girl detained him by throwing
+her arms about him, and hid her face against his breast.
+
+"Ah! Germain," she said, sobbing, "haven't you guessed that I love you?"
+
+Germain would have gone mad, had not his son, who was looking for him
+and who entered the cottage galloping on a stick, with his little sister
+_en croupe_, lashing the imaginary steed with a willow switch, recalled
+him to himself. He lifted him up, and said, as he put him in his
+fiancée's arms:
+
+"You have made more than one person happy by loving me!"
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+I
+
+THE COUNTRY WEDDING
+
+
+Here ends the story of Germain's courtship, as he told it to me himself,
+cunning ploughman that he is! I ask your pardon, dear reader, for having
+been unable to translate it better; for the old-fashioned, artless
+language of the peasants of the district that _I sing_--as they used to
+say--really has to be translated. Those people speak too much French for
+us, and the development of the language since Rabelais and Montaigne has
+deprived us of much of the old wealth. It is so with all progress, and
+we must make up our minds to it. But it is pleasant still to hear those
+picturesque idioms in general use on the old soil of the centre of
+France; especially as they are the genuine expressions of the mockingly
+tranquil and pleasantly loquacious character of the people who use them.
+Touraine has preserved a considerable number of precious patriarchal
+locutions. But Touraine has progressed rapidly in civilization during
+and since the Renaissance. It is covered with châteaux, roads,
+activity, and foreigners. Berry has remained stationary, and I think
+that, next to Bretagne and some provinces in the extreme south of
+France, it is the most _conservative_ province to be found at the
+present moment. Certain customs are so strange, so curious, that I hope
+to be able to entertain you a moment longer, dear reader, if you will
+permit me to describe in detail a country wedding, Germain's for
+instance, which I had the pleasure of attending a few years ago.
+
+For everything passes away, alas! In the short time that I have lived,
+there has been more change in the ideas and customs of my village than
+there was for centuries before the Revolution. Half of the Celtic,
+pagan, or Middle-Age ceremonials that I saw in full vigor in my
+childhood, have already been done away with. Another year or two,
+perhaps, and the railroads will run their levels through our deep
+valleys, carrying away, with the swiftness of lightning, our ancient
+traditions and our wonderful legends.
+
+It was in winter, not far from the Carnival, the time of year when it is
+considered becoming and proper, among us, to be married. In the summer,
+we hardly have time, and the work on a farm cannot be postponed three
+days, to say nothing of the extra days required for the more or less
+laborious digestion attending the moral and physical intoxication that
+follows such a festivity.--I was sitting under the huge mantel-piece of
+an old-fashioned kitchen fire-place, when pistol-shots, the howling of
+dogs, and the shrill notes of the bagpipe announced the approach of the
+fiancés. Soon Père and Mère Maurice, Germain, and little Marie, followed
+by Jacques and his wife, the nearest relations of the bride and groom,
+and their godfathers and godmothers, entered the court-yard.
+
+Little Marie, not having as yet received the wedding-gifts, called
+_livrées_, was dressed in the best that her modest wardrobe afforded: a
+dress of dark-gray cloth, a white fichu with large bright-colored
+flowers, an apron of the color called _incarnat_, an Indian red then
+much in vogue but despised to-day, a cap of snow-white muslin and of the
+shape, fortunately preserved, which recalls the head-dress of Anne
+Boleyn and Agnès Sorel. She was fresh and smiling, and not at all proud,
+although she had good reason to be. Germain was beside her, grave and
+deeply moved, like the youthful Jacob saluting Rachel at Laban's well.
+Any other girl would have assumed an air of importance and a triumphant
+bearing; for in all ranks of life it counts for something to be married
+for one's _beaux yeux_. But the girl's eyes were moist and beaming with
+love; you could see that she was deeply smitten, and that she had no
+time to think about the opinions of other people. She had not lost her
+little determined manner; but she was all sincerity and good nature;
+there was nothing impertinent in her success, nothing personal in her
+consciousness of her strength. I never saw such a sweet fiancée as she
+when she quickly answered some of her young friends who asked her if she
+was content: "Bless me! indeed I am! I don't complain of the good Lord."
+
+Père Maurice was the spokesman; he had come to offer the customary
+compliments and invitations. He began by fastening a laurel branch
+adorned with ribbons to the mantel-piece; that is called the _exploit_,
+that is to say, the invitation; then he gave to each of the guests a
+little cross made of a bit of blue ribbon crossed by another bit of pink
+ribbon; the pink for the bride, the blue for the groom; and the guests
+were expected to keep that token to wear on the wedding-day, the women
+in their caps, the men in their button-holes. It was the ticket of
+admission.
+
+Then Père Maurice delivered his speech. He invited the master of the
+house and all _his company_, that is to say, all his children, all his
+relations, all his friends, all his servants, to the marriage-ceremony,
+_to the feast, to the sports, to the dancing, and to everything that
+comes after_. He did not fail to say:--I come _to do you the honor_ to
+_invite_ you. A very proper locution, although it seems a misuse of
+words to us, as it expresses the idea of rendering honor to those who
+are deemed worthy thereof.
+
+Despite the general invitation carried thus from house to house
+throughout the parish, good-breeding, which is extremely conservative
+among the peasantry, requires that only two persons in each family
+should take advantage of it,--one of the heads of the family to
+represent the household, one of their children to represent the other
+members.
+
+The invitations being delivered, the fiancés and their relations went to
+the farm and dined together.
+
+Little Marie tended her three sheep on the common land, and Germain
+turned up the ground as if there were nothing in the air.
+
+On the day before that fixed for the marriage, about two o'clock in the
+afternoon, the musicians arrived, that is to say, the bagpipers and
+viol-players, with their instruments decorated with long floating
+ribbons, and playing a march written for the occasion, in a measure
+somewhat slow for the feet of any but natives, but perfectly adapted to
+the nature of the heavy ground and the hilly roads of that region.
+Pistol-shots, fired by youths and children, announced the beginning of
+the ceremony. The guests assembled one by one and danced on the
+greensward in front of the house, for practice. When night had come,
+they began to make strange preparations: they separated into two
+parties, and when it was quite dark, they proceeded to the ceremony of
+the _livrées_.
+
+That ceremony was performed at the home of the fiancée, La Guillette's
+cabin. La Guillette took with her her daughter, a dozen or more young
+and pretty shepherdesses, her daughter's friends or relations, two or
+three respectable matrons, neighbors with well-oiled tongues, quick at
+retort, and unyielding observers of the ancient customs. Then she
+selected a dozen sturdy champions, her relations and friends; and,
+lastly, the old _hemp-beater_ of the parish, a fine and fluent talker,
+if ever there was one.
+
+The rôle played in Bretagne by the _bazvalan_, or village tailor, is
+assumed in our country districts by the hemp-beater or the wool-carder,
+the two professions being often united in a single person. He attends
+all solemnities, sad or gay, because he is essentially erudite and a
+fine speaker, and on such occasions it is always his part to act as
+spokesman in order that certain formalities that have been observed from
+time immemorial may be worthily performed. The wandering trades which
+take men into the bosoms of other families and do not permit them to
+concentrate their attention upon their own, are well calculated to make
+them loquacious, entertaining, good talkers, and good singers.
+
+The hemp-beater is peculiarly sceptical. He and another rustic
+functionary, of whom we shall speak anon, the grave-digger, are always
+the strong-minded men of the neighborhood. They have talked so much
+about ghosts, and are so familiar with all the tricks of which those
+mischievous spirits are capable, that they fear them hardly at all.
+Night is the time when all three, hemp-beaters, grave-diggers, and
+ghosts, principally exercise their callings. At night, too, the
+hemp-beater tells his harrowing tales. May I be pardoned for a slight
+digression.
+
+When the hemp has reached the proper point, that is to say, when it has
+been sufficiently soaked in running water and half dried on the bank,
+it is carried to the yards of the different houses; there they stand it
+up in little sheaves, which, with their stalks spread apart at the
+bottom and their heads tied together in balls, greatly resemble, in the
+dark, a long procession of little white phantoms, planted on their slim
+legs and walking noiselessly along the walls.
+
+At the end of September, when the nights are still warm, they begin the
+process of beating, by the pale moonlight. During the day, the hemp has
+been heated in the oven; it is taken out at night to be beaten hot. For
+that purpose, they use a sort of wooden horse, surmounted by a wooden
+lever, which, falling upon the grooves, breaks the plant without cutting
+it. Then it is that you hear at night, in the country, the sharp,
+clean-cut sound of three blows struck in rapid succession. Then there is
+silence for a moment; that means that the arm is moving the handful of
+hemp, in order to break it in another place. And the three blows are
+repeated; it is the other arm acting on the lever, and so it goes on
+until the moon is dimmed by the first rays of dawn. As this work is done
+only a few days in the year, the dogs do not become accustomed to it,
+and howl plaintively at every point of the compass.
+
+It is the time for unusual and mysterious noises in the country. The
+migrating cranes fly southward at such a height that the eye can hardly
+distinguish them in broad daylight. At night, you can only hear them;
+and their hoarse, complaining voices, lost among the clouds, seem like
+the salutation and the farewell of souls in torment, striving to find
+the road to heaven and compelled by an irresistible fatality to hover
+about the abodes of men, not far from earth; for these migratory birds
+exhibit strange uncertainty and mysterious anxiety in their aerial
+wanderings. It sometimes happens that they lose the wind, when fitful
+breezes struggle for the mastery or succeed one another in the upper
+regions. Thereupon, when one of those reverses happens during the day,
+we see the leader of the line soar at random through the air, then turn
+sharply about, fly back, and take his place at the rear of the
+triangular phalanx, while a skilful manoeuvre on the part of his
+companions soon brings them into line behind him. Often, after vain
+efforts, the exhausted leader abandons the command of the caravan;
+another comes forward, takes his turn at the task, and gives place to a
+third, who finds the current and leads the host forward in triumph. But
+what shrieks, what reproaches, what remonstrances, what fierce
+maledictions or anxious questions are exchanged by those winged pilgrims
+in an unfamiliar tongue!
+
+In the resonant darkness you hear the dismal uproar circling above the
+houses sometimes for a long while; and as you can see nothing, you feel,
+in spite of yourself, a sort of dread and a sympathetic uneasiness until
+the sobbing flock has passed out of hearing in space.
+
+There are other sounds that are peculiar to that time of year, and are
+heard principally in the orchards. The fruit is not yet gathered, and a
+thousand unaccustomed snappings and crackings make the trees resemble
+animate beings. A branch creaks as it bends under a weight that has
+suddenly reached the last stage of development; or an apple detaches
+itself and falls at your feet with a dull thud on the damp ground. Then
+you hear a creature whom you cannot see, brushing against the branches
+and bushes as he runs away; it is the peasant's dog, the restless,
+inquisitive prowler, impudent and cowardly as well, who insinuates
+himself everywhere, never sleeps, is always hunting for nobody knows
+what, watches you from his hiding-place in the bushes and runs away at
+the noise made by a falling apple, thinking that you are throwing a
+stone at him.
+
+On such nights as those--gray, cloudy nights--the hemp-beater narrates
+his strange adventures with will-o'-the-wisps and white hares, souls in
+torment and witches transformed into wolves, the witches' dance at the
+cross-roads and prophetic night-owls in the grave-yard. I remember
+passing the early hours of the night thus around the moving flails,
+whose pitiless blow, interrupting the beater's tale at the most exciting
+point, caused a cold shiver to run through our veins. Often, too, the
+goodman went on talking as he worked; and four or five words would be
+lost: awful words, of course, which we dared not ask him to repeat, and
+the omission of which imparted a more awe-inspiring mystery to the
+mysteries, sufficiently harrowing before, of his narrative. In vain did
+the servants warn us that it was very late to remain out-of-doors, and
+that the hour for slumber had long since struck for us; they themselves
+were dying with longing to hear more. And with what terror did we
+afterward walk through the hamlet on our homeward way! how deep the
+church porch seemed, and how dense and black the shadow of the old
+trees! As for the grave-yard, that we did not see; we closed our eyes as
+we passed it.
+
+But the hemp-beater does not devote himself exclusively to frightening
+his hearers any more than the sacristan does; he likes to make them
+laugh, he is jocose and sentimental at need, when love and marriage are
+to be sung; he it is who collects and retains in his memory the most
+ancient ballads and transmits them to posterity. He it is, therefore,
+who, at wedding-festivals, is entrusted with the character which we are
+to see him enact at the presentation of the _livrées_ to little Marie.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE LIVRÉES
+
+
+When everybody was assembled in the house, the doors and windows were
+closed and fastened with the greatest care; they even barricaded the
+loop-hole in the attic; they placed boards, trestles, stumps, and tables
+across all the issues as if they were preparing to sustain a siege; and
+there was the solemn silence of suspense in that fortified interior
+until they heard in the distance singing and laughing, and the notes of
+the rustic instruments. It was the bridegroom's contingent, Germain at
+the head, accompanied by his stoutest comrades, by his relations,
+friends, and servants and the grave-digger,--a substantial, joyous
+procession.
+
+But, as they approached the house, they slackened their pace, took
+counsel together, and became silent. The maidens, shut up in the house,
+had arranged little cracks at the windows, through which they watched
+them march up and form in battle-array. A fine, cold rain was falling,
+and added to the interest of the occasion, while a huge fire was
+crackling on the hearth inside. Marie would have liked to abridge the
+inevitable tedious length of this formal siege; she did not like to see
+her lover catching cold, but she had no voice in the council under the
+circumstances, and, indeed, she was expected to join, ostensibly, in the
+mischievous cruelty of her companions.
+
+When the two camps were thus confronted, a discharge of fire-arms
+without created great excitement among all the dogs in the neighborhood.
+Those of the household rushed to the door barking vociferously, thinking
+that a real attack was in progress, and the small children, whom their
+mothers tried in vain to reassure, began to tremble and cry. The whole
+scene was so well played that a stranger might well have been deceived
+by it and have considered the advisability of preparing to defend
+himself against a band of brigands.
+
+Thereupon, the grave-digger, the bridegroom's bard and orator, took his
+place in front of the door, and, in a lugubrious voice, began the
+following dialogue with the hemp-beater, who was stationed at the small
+round window above the same door:
+
+
+THE GRAVE-DIGGER.
+
+Alas! my good people, my dear parishioners, for the love of God open the
+door.
+
+
+THE HEMP-BEATER.
+
+Who are you, pray, and why do you presume to call us your dear
+parishioners? We do not know you.
+
+
+THE GRAVE-DIGGER.
+
+We are honest folk in sore distress. Be not afraid of us, my friends!
+receive us hospitably. The rain freezes as it falls, our poor feet are
+frozen, and we have come such a long distance that our shoes are split.
+
+
+THE HEMP-BEATER.
+
+If your shoes are split, you can look on the ground; you will surely
+find osier withes to make _arcelets_ [little strips of iron in the shape
+of bows, with which shoes (wooden) were mended].
+
+
+THE GRAVE-DIGGER.
+
+Osier _arcelets_ are not very strong. You are making sport of us, good
+people, and you would do better to open the door to us. We can see the
+gleam of a noble blaze within your house; doubtless the spit is in
+place, and your hearts and your stomachs are rejoicing together. Open,
+then, to poor pilgrims, who will die at your door if you do not have
+mercy on them.
+
+
+THE HEMP-BEATER.
+
+Aha! you are pilgrims? you did not tell us that. From what pilgrimage
+are you returning, by your leave?
+
+
+THE GRAVE-DIGGER.
+
+We will tell you that when you have opened the door, for we come from so
+far away that you would not believe it.
+
+
+THE HEMP-BEATER.
+
+Open the door to you? indeed! we should not dare trust you. Let us see:
+are you from Saint-Sylvain de Pouligny?
+
+
+THE GRAVE-DIGGER.
+
+We have been to Saint-Sylvain de Pouligny, but we have been farther than
+that.
+
+
+THE HEMP-BEATER.
+
+Then you have been as far as Sainte-Solange?
+
+
+THE GRAVE-DIGGER.
+
+We have been to Sainte-Solange, for sure; but we have been farther
+still.
+
+
+THE HEMP-BEATER.
+
+You lie; you have never been as far as Sainte-Solange.
+
+
+THE GRAVE-DIGGER.
+
+We have been farther, for we have just returned from Saint-Jacques de
+Compostelle.
+
+
+THE HEMP-BEATER.
+
+What foolish tale are you telling us? We don't know that parish. We see
+plainly enough that you are bad men, brigands, _nobodies_, liars. Go
+somewhere else and sing your silly songs; we are on our guard, and you
+won't get in here.
+
+
+THE GRAVE-DIGGER.
+
+Alas! my dear man, have pity on us! We are not pilgrims, as you have
+rightly guessed; but we are unfortunate poachers pursued by the keepers.
+The gendarmes are after us, too, and, if you don't let us hide in your
+hay-loft, we shall be caught and taken to prison.
+
+
+THE HEMP-BEATER.
+
+But what proof have we this time that you are what you say? for here is
+one falsehood already that you could not follow up.
+
+
+THE GRAVE-DIGGER.
+
+If you will open the door, we will show you a fine piece of game we have
+killed.
+
+
+THE HEMP-BEATER.
+
+Show it now, for we are suspicious.
+
+
+THE GRAVE-DIGGER.
+
+Well, open a door or a window, so that we can pass in the creature.
+
+
+THE HEMP-BEATER.
+
+Oh! nay, nay! not such fools! I'm looking at you through a little hole,
+and I see neither hunters nor game.
+
+At that point, a drover's boy, a thick-set youth of herculean strength,
+came forth from the group in which he had been standing unnoticed, and
+held up toward the window a goose all plucked and impaled on a stout
+iron spit, decorated with bunches of straw and ribbons.
+
+"Hoity-toity!" cried the hemp-beater, after he had cautiously put out an
+arm to feel the bird; "that's not a quail or a partridge, a hare or a
+rabbit; it looks like a goose or a turkey. Upon my word, you are noble
+hunters! and that game did not make you ride very fast. Go elsewhere,
+my knaves! all your falsehoods are detected, and you may as well go home
+and cook your supper. You won't eat ours."
+
+
+THE GRAVE-DIGGER.
+
+Alas! _mon Dieu_! where shall we go to have our game cooked? it's very
+little among so many of us; and, besides, we have no fire nor place to
+go to. At this time of night, every door is closed, everybody has gone
+to bed; you are the only ones who are having a wedding-feast in your
+house, and you must be very hardhearted to leave us to freeze outside.
+Once more, good people, let us in; we won't cause you any expense. You
+see we bring our own food; only a little space at your fireside, a
+little fire to cook it, and we will go hence satisfied.
+
+
+THE HEMP-BEATER.
+
+Do you think that we have any too much room, and that wood costs
+nothing?
+
+
+THE GRAVE-DIGGER.
+
+We have a little bundle of straw to make a fire with, we will be
+satisfied with it; only give us leave to place the spit across your
+fire-place.
+
+
+THE HEMP-BEATER.
+
+We will not do it; you arouse disgust, not pity, in us. It's my opinion
+that you are drank, that you need nothing, and that you simply want to
+get into our house to steal our fire and our daughters.
+
+
+THE GRAVE-DIGGER.
+
+As you refuse to listen to any good reason, we propose to force our way
+into your house.
+
+
+THE HEMP-BEATER.
+
+Try it, if you choose. We are so well protected that we need not fear
+you. You are insolent knaves, too, and we won't answer you any more.
+
+
+Thereupon, the hemp-beater closed the window-shutter with a great noise,
+and went down to the lower room by a ladder. Then he took the bride by
+the hand, the young people of both sexes joined them, and they all began
+to dance and utter joyous exclamations, while the matrons sang in
+piercing tones and indulged in loud peals of laughter in token of their
+scorn and defiance of those who were attempting an assault without.
+
+The besiegers, on their side, raged furiously together: they discharged
+their pistols against the doors, made the dogs growl, pounded on the
+walls, rattled the shutters, and uttered terror-inspiring yells; in
+short, there was such an uproar that you could not hear yourself talk,
+such a dust and smoke that you could not see yourself.
+
+The attack was a mere pretence, however: the moment had not come to
+violate the laws of etiquette. If they could succeed, by prowling about
+the house, in finding an unguarded passage, any opening whatsoever, they
+could try to gain an entrance by surprise, and then, if the bearer of
+the spit succeeded in placing his bird in front of the fire, that
+constituted a taking possession of the hearth-stone, the comedy was at
+an end, and the bridegroom was victor.
+
+But the entrances to the house were not so numerous that they were
+likely to have neglected the usual precautions, and no one would have
+assumed the right to employ violence before the moment fixed for the
+conflict.
+
+When they were weary of jumping about and shouting, the hemp-beater
+meditated a capitulation. He went back to his window, opened it
+cautiously, and hailed the discomfited besiegers with a roar of
+laughter:
+
+"Well, my boys," he said, "you're pretty sheepish, aren't you? You
+thought that nothing could be easier than to break in here, and you
+have discovered that our defences are strong. But we are beginning to
+have pity on you, if you choose to submit and accept our conditions."
+
+
+THE GRAVE-DIGGER.
+
+Speak, my good friends; tell us what we must do to be admitted to your
+fireside.
+
+
+THE HEMP-BEATER.
+
+You must sing, my friends, but sing some song that we don't know, and
+that we can't answer with a better one.
+
+"Never you fear!" replied the grave-digger, and he sang in a powerful
+voice:
+
+"'_Tis six months since the spring-time_,"
+
+"_When I walked upon the springing grass_," replied the hemp-beater, in
+a somewhat hoarse but awe-inspiring voice. "Are you laughing at us, my
+poor fellows, that you sing us such old trash? you see that we stop you
+at the first word."
+
+"_It was a prince's daughter_--"
+
+"_And she would married be_" replied the hemp-beater. "Go on, go on to
+another! we know that a little too well."
+
+
+THE GRAVE-DIGGER.
+
+What do you say to this:
+
+"_When from Nantes I was returning_--"
+
+
+THE HEMP-BEATER.
+
+"_I was weary, do you know! oh! so weary_." That's a song of my
+grandmother's day. Give us another one.
+
+
+THE GRAVE-DIGGER.
+
+"_The other day as I was walking_--"
+
+
+THE HEMP-BEATER.
+
+"_Along by yonder charming wood_!" That's a silly one! Our grandchildren
+wouldn't take the trouble to answer you! What! are those all you know?
+
+
+THE GRAVE-DIGGER.
+
+Oh! we'll sing you so many of them, that you will end by stopping short.
+
+
+Fully an hour was passed in this contest. As the two combatants were the
+most learned men in the province in the matter of ballads, and as their
+repertory seemed inexhaustible, it might well have lasted all night,
+especially as the hemp-beater seemed to take malicious pleasure in
+allowing his opponent to sing certain laments in ten, twenty, or thirty
+stanzas, pretending by his silence to admit that he was defeated.
+Thereupon, there was triumph in the bridegroom's camp, they sang in
+chorus at the tops of their voices, and every one believed that the
+adverse party would make default; but when the final stanza was half
+finished, the old hemp-beater's harsh, hoarse voice would bellow out the
+last words; whereupon he would shout: "You don't need to tire yourselves
+out by singing such long ones, my children! We have them at our fingers'
+ends!"
+
+Once or twice, however, the hemp-beater made a wry face, drew his
+eyebrows together, and turned with a disappointed air toward the
+observant matrons. The grave-digger was singing something so old that
+his adversary had forgotten it, or perhaps had never known it; but the
+good dames instantly sang the victorious refrain through their noses, in
+tones as shrill as those of the sea-gull; and the grave-digger, summoned
+to surrender, passed to something else.
+
+It would have been too long to wait until one side or the other won the
+victory. The bride's party announced that they would show mercy on
+condition that the others should offer her a gift worthy of her.
+
+Thereupon, the song of the _livrées_ began, to an air as solemn as a
+church chant.
+
+The men outside sang in unison:
+
+     "Ouvrez la porte, ouvrez,
+     Marie, ma mignonne,
+    _J'ons_ de beaux cadeaux à vous présenter.
+    Hélas! ma mie, laissez-nous entrer."[3]
+
+To which the women replied from the interior, in falsetto, in doleful
+tones:
+
+    "Mon père est en chagrin, ma mère en grand' tristesse,
+    Et moi je suis fille de trop grand' merci
+    Pour ouvrir ma porte à _cette heure ici_."[4]
+
+The men repeated the first stanza down to the fourth line, which they
+modified thus:
+
+    "J'ons un beau mouchoir à vous présenter."[5]
+
+But the women replied, in the name of the bride, in the same words as
+before.
+
+Through twenty stanzas, at least, the men enumerated all the gifts in
+the _livrée_, always mentioning a new article in the last verse: a
+beautiful _devanteau_,--apron,--lovely ribbons, a cloth dress, lace, a
+gold cross, even to _a hundred pins_ to complete the bride's modest
+outfit. The matrons invariably refused; but at last the young men
+decided to mention _a handsome husband to offer_, and they replied by
+addressing the bride, and singing to her with the men:
+
+     "Ouvrez la porte, ouvrez,
+     Marie, ma mignonne,
+    C'est un beau man qui vient vous chercher.
+    Allons, ma mie, laissons-les entrer."[6]
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE WEDDING
+
+
+The hemp-beater at once drew the wooden latch by which the door was
+fastened on the inside; at that time, it was still the only lock known
+in most of the houses in our village. The bridegroom's party invaded the
+bride's dwelling, but not without a combat; for the boys stationed
+inside the house, and even the old hemp-beater and the old women, made
+it their duty to defend the hearthstone. The bearer of the spit,
+supported by his adherents, was bound to succeed in bestowing his bird
+in the fire-place. It was a genuine battle, although they abstained from
+striking one another, and there was no anger in it. But they pushed and
+squeezed one another with such violence, and there was so much
+self-esteem at stake in that conflict of muscular strength, that the
+results might be more serious than they seemed to be amid the laughter
+and the singing. The poor old hemp-beater, who fought like a lion, was
+pressed against the wall and squeezed until he lost his breath. More
+than one champion was floored and unintentionally trodden under foot,
+more than one hand that grasped at the spit was covered with blood.
+Those sports are dangerous, and the accidents were so serious in later
+years that the peasants determined to allow the ceremony of the
+_livrées_ to fall into desuetude. I believe that we saw the last of it
+at Françoise Meillant's wedding, and still it was only a mock-battle.
+
+The contest was animated enough at Germain's wedding. It was a point of
+honor on one side and the other to attack and to defend La Guillette's
+fireside. The huge spit was twisted like a screw in the powerful hands
+that struggled for possession of it. A pistol-shot set fire to a small
+store of hemp in skeins that lay on a shelf suspended from the ceiling.
+That incident created a diversion, and while some hastened to smother
+the germ of a conflagration, the grave-digger, who had climbed to the
+attic unperceived, came down the chimney and seized the spit, just as
+the drover, who was defending it near the hearth, raised it above his
+head to prevent its being snatched from him. Some time before the
+assault, the matrons had taken care to put out the fire, fearing that
+some one might fall in and be burned while they were struggling close
+beside it. The facetious grave-digger, in concert with the drover,
+possessed himself of the trophy without difficulty, therefore, and threw
+it across the fire-dogs. It was done! No one was allowed to touch it
+after that. He leaped into the room, and lighted a bit of straw which
+surrounded the spit, to make a pretence of cooking the goose, which was
+torn to pieces and its limbs strewn over the floor.
+
+Thereupon, there was much laughter and burlesque discussion. Every one
+showed the bruises he had received, and as it was often the hand of a
+friend that had dealt the blow, there was no complaining or quarrelling.
+The hemp-beater, who was half flattened out, rubbed his sides, saying
+that he cared very little for that, but that he did protest against the
+stratagem of his good friend the grave-digger, and that, if he had not
+been half-dead, the hearth would not have been conquered so easily. The
+matrons swept the floor, and order was restored. The table was covered
+with jugs of new wine. When they had drank together and recovered their
+breath, the bridegroom was led into the centre of the room, and, being
+armed with a staff, was obliged to submit to a new test.
+
+During the contest, the bride had been concealed with three of her
+friends by her mother, her godmother, and aunts, who had seated the four
+girls on a bench in the farthest corner of the room, and covered them
+over with a great white sheet. They had selected three of Marie's
+friends who were of the same height as she, and wore caps of exactly the
+same height, so that, as the sheet covered their heads and descended to
+their feet, it was impossible to distinguish them from each other.
+
+The bridegroom was not allowed to touch them, except with the end of his
+wand, and only to point out the one whom he judged to be his wife. They
+gave him time to examine them, but only with his eyes, and the matrons,
+who stood by his side, watched closely to see that there was no
+cheating. If he made a mistake, he could not dance with his betrothed
+during the evening, but only with her whom he had chosen by mistake.
+
+Germain, finding himself in the presence of those phantoms enveloped in
+the same winding-sheet, was terribly afraid of making a mistake; and, as
+a matter of fact, that had happened to many others, for the precautions
+were always taken with scrupulous care. His heart beat fast. Little
+Marie tried to breathe hard and make the sheet move, but her mischievous
+rivals did the same, pushed out the cloth with their fingers, and there
+were as many mysterious signs as there were girls under the veil. The
+square caps kept the veil so perfectly level that it was impossible to
+distinguish the shape of a head beneath its folds.
+
+Germain, after ten minutes of hesitation, closed his eyes, commended his
+soul to God, and stuck his staff out at random. He touched little
+Marie's forehead, and she threw the sheet aside with a cry of triumph.
+He obtained leave then to kiss her, and, taking her in his strong arms,
+he carried her to the middle of the room, and with her opened the ball,
+which lasted until two o'clock in the morning.
+
+Then they separated to meet again at eight o'clock. As there was a
+considerable number of young people from the neighboring towns, and as
+there were not beds enough for everybody, each invited guest among the
+women of the village shared her bed with two or three friends, while the
+young men lay pell-mell on the hay in the loft at the farm. You can
+imagine that there was not much sleep there, for they thought of nothing
+but teasing, and playing tricks on one another and telling amusing
+stories. At all weddings, there are three sleepless nights, which no one
+regrets.
+
+At the hour appointed for setting out, after they had eaten their soup
+_au lait_ seasoned with a strong dose of pepper to give them an
+appetite, for the wedding-banquet bade fair to be abundant, they
+assembled in the farm-yard. Our parish church being suppressed, they
+were obliged to go half a league away to receive the nuptial
+benediction. It was a lovely, cool day; but, as the roads were very bad,
+every man had provided himself with a horse, and took _en croupe_ a
+female companion, young or old. Germain was mounted upon Grise, who,
+being well groomed, newly shod, and decked out in ribbons, pranced and
+capered and breathed fire through her nostrils. He went to the cabin for
+his fiancée, accompanied by his brother-in-law Jacques, who was mounted
+on old Grise and took Mère Guillette _en croupe_, while Germain returned
+triumphantly to the farm-yard with his dear little wife.
+
+Then the merry cavalcade set forth, escorted by children on foot, who
+fired pistols as they ran and made the horses jump. Mère Maurice was
+riding in a small cart with Germain's three children and the fiddlers.
+They opened the march to the sound of the instruments. Petit-Pierre was
+so handsome that the old grandmother was immensely proud. But the
+impulsive child did not stay long beside her. He took advantage of a
+halt they were obliged to make, when they had gone half the distance, in
+order to pass a difficult ford, to slip down and ask his father to take
+him up on Grise in front of him.
+
+"No, no!" said Germain, "that will make people say unkind things about
+us! you mustn't do it."
+
+"I care very little what the people of Saint-Chartier say," said little
+Marie. "Take him, Germain, I beg you; I shall be prouder of him than of
+my wedding-dress."
+
+Germain yielded the point, and the handsome trio dashed forward at
+Grise's proudest gallop.
+
+And, in fact, the people of Saint-Chartier, although very satirical and
+a little inclined to be disagreeable in their intercourse with the
+neighboring parishes which had been combined with theirs, did not think
+of laughing when they saw such a handsome bridegroom and lovely bride,
+and a child that a king's wife would have envied. Petit-Pierre had a
+full coat of blue-bottle colored cloth, and a cunning little red
+waistcoat so short that it hardly came below his chin. The village
+tailor had made the sleeves so tight that he could not put his little
+arms together. And how proud he was! He had a round hat with a black and
+gold buckle and a peacock's feather protruding jauntily from a tuft of
+Guinea-hen's feathers. A bunch of flowers larger than his head covered
+his shoulder, and ribbons floated down to his feet. The hemp-beater, who
+was also the village barber and wig-maker, had cut his hair in a circle,
+covering his head with a bowl and cutting off all that protruded, an
+infallible method of guiding the scissors accurately. Thus accoutred, he
+was less picturesque, surely, than with his long hair flying in the wind
+and his lamb's fleece _à la_ Saint John the Baptist; but he had no such
+idea, and everybody admired him, saying that he looked like a little
+man. His beauty triumphed over everything, and, in sooth, over what
+would not the incomparable beauty of childhood triumph?
+
+His little sister Solange had, for the first time in her life, a real
+cap instead of the little child's cap of Indian muslin that little girls
+wear up to the age of two or three years. And such a cap! higher and
+broader than the poor little creature's whole body. And how lovely she
+considered herself! She dared not turn her head, and sat perfectly
+straight and stiff, thinking that people would take her for the bride.
+
+As for little Sylvain, he was still in long dresses and lay asleep on
+his grandmother's knees, with no very clear idea of what a wedding might
+be.
+
+Germain gazed affectionately at his children, and said to his fiancée,
+as they arrived at the mayor's office:
+
+"Do you know, Marie, I ride up to this door a little happier than I was
+the day I brought you home from the woods of Chanteloube, thinking that
+you would never love me; I took you in my arms to put you on the ground
+just as I do now, but I didn't think we should ever be together again on
+good Grise with this child on our knees. I love you so much, you see, I
+love those dear little ones so much, I am so happy because you love me
+and love them and because my people love you, and I love my mother and
+my friends and everybody so much to-day, that I wish I had three or four
+hearts to hold it all. Really, one is too small to hold so much love and
+so much happiness! I have something like a pain in my stomach."
+
+There was a crowd at the mayor's door and at the church to see the
+pretty bride. Why should we not describe her costume? it became her so
+well. Her cap of white embroidered muslin had flaps trimmed with lace.
+In those days, peasant-women did not allow themselves to show a single
+hair; and although their caps conceal magnificent masses of hair rolled
+in bands of white thread to keep the head-dress in place, even in these
+days it would be considered an immodest and shameful action to appear
+before men bareheaded. They do allow themselves now, however, to wear a
+narrow band across the forehead, which improves their appearance very
+much. But I regret the classic head-dress of my time: the white lace
+against the skin had a suggestion of old fashioned chastity which seemed
+to me more solemn, and when a face was beautiful under those
+circumstances, it was a beauty whose artless charm and majesty no words
+can describe.
+
+Little Marie still wore that head dress, and her forehead was so white
+and so pure that it defied the white of the linen to cast a shadow upon
+it. Although she had not closed her eyes during the night, the morning
+air, and above all things the inward joy of a soul as spotless as the
+sky, and a little hidden fire, held in check by the modesty of youth,
+sent to her cheeks a flush as delicate as the peach-blossom in the early
+days of April.
+
+Her white fichu, chastely crossed over her bosom, showed only the
+graceful contour of a neck as full and round as a turtle-dove's; her
+morning dress of fine myrtle-green cloth marked the shape of her slender
+waist, which seemed perfect, but was likely to grow and develop, for she
+was only seventeen. She wore an apron of violet silk, with the pinafore
+which our village women have made a great mistake in abolishing, and
+which imparted so much modesty and refinement to the chest. To-day, they
+spread out their fichus more proudly, but there is no longer that sweet
+flower of old-fashioned pudicity in their costume that made them
+resemble Holbein's virgins. They are more coquettish, more graceful. The
+correct style in the old days was a sort of unbending stiffness which
+made their infrequent smiles more profound and more ideal.
+
+At the offertory, Germain, according to the usual custom, placed the
+_treizain_--that is to say, thirteen pieces of silver--in his fiancée's
+hand. He placed on her finger a silver ring of a shape that remained
+invariable for centuries, but has since been replaced by the _band of
+gold._ As they left the church, Marie whispered: "Is it the ring I
+wanted? the one I asked you for, Germain?"
+
+"Yes," he replied, "the one my Catherine had on her finger when she
+died. The same ring for both my marriages."
+
+"Thank you, Germain," said the young wife in a serious tone and with
+deep feeling. "I shall die with it, and if I die before you, you must
+keep it for your little Solange."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE CABBAGE
+
+
+They remounted their horses, and rode rapidly back to Belair. The
+banquet was a sumptuous affair, and lasted, intermingled with dancing
+and singing, until midnight. The old people did not leave the table for
+fourteen hours. The grave-digger did the cooking, and did it very well.
+He was renowned for that, and he left his ovens to come and dance and
+sing between every two courses. And yet he was epileptic, was poor Père
+Bontemps. Who would have suspected it? He was as fresh and vigorous and
+gay as a young man. One day we found him lying like a dead man in a
+ditch, all distorted by his malady, just at nightfall. We carried him to
+our house in a wheelbarrow, and passed the night taking care of him.
+Three days later, he was at a wedding, singing like a thrush, leaping
+like a kid, and frisking about in the old-fashioned way. On leaving a
+marriage-feast, he would go and dig a grave and nail up a coffin. He
+performed those duties devoutly, and although they seemed to have no
+effect on his merry humor, he retained a melancholy impression which
+hastened the return of his attacks. His wife, a paralytic, had not left
+her chair for twenty years. His mother is a hundred and forty years old
+and is still alive. But he, poor man, so jovial and kind-hearted and
+amusing, was killed last year by falling from his loft to the pavement.
+Doubtless he was suddenly attacked by his malady, and had hidden himself
+in the hay, as he was accustomed to do, in order not to frighten and
+distress his family. Thus ended, in a tragic way, a life as strange as
+himself, a mixture of gloom and folly, of horror and hilarity, amid
+which his heart remained always kind and his character lovable.
+
+But we are coming to the third day of the wedding-feast, which is the
+most interesting of all, and has been retained in full vigor down to our
+own day. We will say nothing of the slice of toast that is carried to
+the nuptial bed; that is an absurd custom which offends the modesty of
+the bride, and tends to destroy that of the young girls who are present.
+Moreover, I think that it is a custom which obtains in all the provinces
+and has no peculiar features as practised among us.
+
+[Illustration: Chapter IV (Appendix)
+
+_He fell on his knees in the furrow through which he was about to run
+his plough once more, and repeated the morning prayer with such emotion
+that the tears rolled down his cheeks, still moist with perspiration_]
+
+Just as the ceremony of the _livrées_ is the symbol of the taking
+possession of the bride's heart and home, that of the _cabbage_ is the
+symbol of the fruitfulness of the union. After breakfast on the day
+following the marriage-ceremony, comes this strange performance, which
+is of Gallic origin, but, as it passed through the hands of the
+primitive Christians, gradually became a sort of _mystery_, or burlesque
+morality-play of the Middle Ages.
+
+Two youths--the merriest and most energetic of the party--disappear
+during the breakfast, don their costumes, and return, escorted by the
+musicians, dogs, children, and pistol-shots. They represent a couple of
+beggars, husband and wife, covered with the vilest rags. The husband is
+the dirtier of the two: it is vice that has degraded him; the woman is
+unhappy simply and debased by her husband's evil ways.
+
+They are called the _gardener_ and the _gardener's wife_, and claim to
+be fitted to watch and cultivate the sacred cabbage. But the husband is
+known by several appellations, all of which have a meaning. He is
+called, indifferently, the _pailloux_,[7] because he wears a wig made of
+straw or hemp, and, to hide his nakedness, which is ill protected by his
+rags, he surrounds his legs and a part of his body with straw. He also
+provides himself with a huge belly or a hump by stuffing straw or hay
+under his blouse. The _peilloux_ because he is covered with _peille_
+(rags). And, lastly, the _païen_ (heathen), which is the most
+significant of all, because he is supposed, by his cynicism and his
+debauched life, to represent in himself the antipodes of all the
+Christian virtues.
+
+He arrives with his face daubed with grease and wine lees, sometimes
+swallowed up in a grotesque mask. A wretched, cracked earthen cup, or an
+old wooden shoe, hanging by a string to his belt, he uses to ask alms in
+the shape of wine. No one refuses him, and he pretends to drink, then
+pours the wine on the ground by way of libation. At every step, he falls
+and rolls in the mud; he pretends to be most disgustingly drunk. His
+poor wife runs after him, picks him up, calls for help, tears out the
+hempen hair that protrudes in stringy locks from beneath her soiled cap,
+weeps over her husband's degradation, and reproaches him pathetically.
+
+"You wretch!" she says, "see what your bad conduct has reduced us to!
+It's no use for me to spin, to work for you, to mend your clothes! you
+never stop tearing and soiling them. You have run through my little
+property, our six children are in the gutter, we live in a stable with
+the beasts; here we are reduced to asking alms, and you're so ugly, so
+revolting, so despised, that soon they will toss bread to us as they do
+to the dogs. Alas! my poor _mondes_ [people], take pity on us! take pity
+on me! I don't deserve my fate, and no woman ever had a filthier, more
+detestable husband. Help me to pick him up, or else the wagons will
+crush him like an old broken bottle, and I shall be a widow, which would
+kill me with grief, although everybody says it would be great good
+fortune for me."
+
+Such is the rôle of the gardener's wife and her constant lamentation
+throughout the play. For it is a genuine, spontaneous, improvised
+comedy, played in the open air, on the highways, among the fields,
+seasoned by all the incidents that happen to occur; and in it everybody
+takes a part, wedding-guests and outsiders, occupants of the houses and
+passers-by, for three or four hours in the day, as we shall see. The
+theme is always the same, but it is treated in an infinite variety of
+ways, and therein we see the instinct of mimicry, the abundance of
+grotesque ideas, the fluency, the quickness at repartee, and even the
+natural eloquence of our peasants.
+
+The part of the gardener's wife is ordinarily entrusted to a slender,
+beardless man with a fresh complexion, who is able to give great
+verisimilitude to the character he assumes and to represent burlesque
+despair so naturally that the spectators may be amused and saddened at
+the same time as by the genuine article. Such thin, beardless men are
+not rare in our country districts, and, strangely enough, they are
+sometimes the most remarkable for muscular strength.
+
+After the wife's wretched plight is made evident, the younger
+wedding-guests urge her to leave her sot of a husband and divert herself
+with them. They offer her their arms and lead her away. Gradually she
+yields, becomes animated, and runs about, now with one, now with
+another, behaving in a scandalous way: a new moral lesson--the husband's
+misconduct incites and causes misconduct on the part of his wife.
+
+The _païen_ thereupon awakes from his drunken stupor; he looks about for
+his companion, provides himself with a rope and a stick, and runs after
+her. They lead him a long chase, they hide from him, they pass the woman
+from one to another, they try to keep her amused, and to deceive her
+jealous mate. His _friends_ try hard to intoxicate him. At last, he
+overtakes his faithless spouse and attempts to beat her. The most
+realistic, shrewdest touch in this parody of the miseries of conjugal
+life, is that the jealous husband never attacks those who take his wife
+away from him. He is very polite and prudent with them, he does not
+choose to vent his wrath on any one but the guilty wife, because she is
+supposed to be unable to resist him.
+
+But just as he raises his stick and prepares his rope to bind the
+culprit, all the men in the wedding-party interpose and throw themselves
+between the two. _Don't strike her! never strike your wife_! is the
+formula that is repeated to satiety in these scenes. They disarm the
+husband, they force him to pardon his wife and embrace her, and soon he
+pretends to love her more dearly than ever. He walks about arm-in-arm
+with her, singing and dancing, until a fresh attack of intoxication
+sends him headlong to the ground once more: and with that his wife's
+lamentations recommence, her discouragement, her pretended misconduct,
+the husband's jealousy, the intervention of the bystanders, and the
+reconciliation. There is in all this an ingenuous, even commonplace,
+lesson, which savors strongly of its origin in the Middle Ages, but
+which always makes an impression, if not upon the bride and groom,--who
+are too much in love and too sensible to-day to need it,--at all
+events, upon the children and young girls and boys. The _païen_ so
+terrifies and disgusts the girls, by running after them and pretending
+to want to kiss them, that they fly from him with an emotion in which
+there is nothing artificial. His besmeared face and his great
+stick--perfectly harmless, by the way--makes the youngsters shriek with
+fear. It is the comedy of manners in its most elementary but most
+impressive state.
+
+When this farce is well under way, they prepare to go in search of the
+cabbage. They bring a hand-barrow, on which the _païen_ is placed, armed
+with a spade, a rope, and a great basket. Four strong men carry him on
+their shoulders. His wife follows him on foot, the _ancients_ come in a
+group behind, with grave and pensive mien; then the wedding-party falls
+in two by two, keeping time to the music. The pistol-shots begin again,
+the dogs howl louder than ever at sight of the unclean _païen_, thus
+borne in triumph. The children salute him derisively with wooden clogs
+tied at the ends of strings.
+
+But why this ovation to such a revolting personage? They are marching to
+the conquest of the sacred cabbage, the emblem of matrimonial fecundity,
+and this besotted drunkard is the only man who can put his hand upon
+the symbolical plant. Therein, doubtless, is a mystery anterior to
+Christianity, a mystery that reminds one of the festival of the
+Saturnalia or some ancient Bacchanalian revel. Perhaps this _païen_, who
+is at the same time the gardener _par excellence_, is nothing less than
+Priapus in person, the god of gardens and debauchery,--a divinity
+probably chaste and serious in his origin, however, like the mystery of
+reproduction, but insensibly degraded by licentiousness of manners and
+disordered ideas.
+
+However that may be, the triumphal procession arrives at the bride's
+house and marches into her garden. There they select the finest cabbage,
+which is not quickly done, for the ancients hold a council and discuss
+the matter at interminable length, each pleading for the cabbage which
+seems to him the best adapted for the occasion. The question is put to a
+vote, and when the choice is made, the _gardener_ fastens his rope
+around the stalk and goes as far away as the size of the garden permits.
+The gardener's wife looks out to see that the sacred vegetable is not
+injured in its fall. The _Jesters_ of the wedding-party, the
+hemp-beater, the grave-digger, the carpenter, or the cobbler,--in a
+word, all those who do not work on the land, and who, as they pass
+their lives in other people's houses, are reputed to have and do really
+have more wit and a readier tongue than the simple agricultural
+laborers,--take their places around the cabbage. One digs a trench with
+the spade, so deep that you would say he was preparing to dig up an
+oak-tree. Another puts on his nose a _drogue_, made of wood or
+pasteboard, in imitation of a pair of spectacles: he performs the duties
+of _engineer_, comes forward, walks away, prepares a plan, overlooks the
+workmen, draws lines, plays the pedant, cries out that they are spoiling
+the whole thing, orders the work to be abandoned and resumed according
+to his fancy, and makes the performance as long and as absurd as he can.
+Is this an addition to the former programme of the ceremony, in mockery
+of theorists in general, for whom the ordinary peasant has the most
+sovereign contempt, or in detestation of land-surveyors, who control the
+register of lands and assess the taxes, or of the employees of the
+Department of Roads and Bridges, who convert common lands into highways
+and cause the suppression of time-worn abuses dear to the peasant heart?
+Certain it is that this character in the comedy is called the
+_geometrician_, and that he does his utmost to make himself unbearable
+to those who handle the pick and shovel.
+
+At last, after quarter of an hour of mummery and remonstrances, so that
+the roots of the cabbage may not be cut and it can be transplanted
+without injury, while spadefuls of earth are thrown into the faces of
+the bystanders,--woe to him who does not step aside quickly enough;
+though he were a bishop or a prince, he must receive the baptism of
+earth,--the _païen_ pulls the rope, the _païenne_ holds her apron, and
+the cabbage falls majestically amid the cheers of the spectators. Then
+the basket is brought, and the pagan couple proceed to plant the cabbage
+therein with all imaginable care and precautions. They pack it in fresh
+soil, they prop it up with sticks and strings as city florists do their
+superb potted camellias; they plant red apples stuck on twigs, branches
+of thyme, sage, and laurel all about it; they deck the whole with
+ribbons and streamers; they place the trophy on the hand-barrow with the
+_paten_, who is expected to maintain its equilibrium and keep it from
+accident, and at last they leave the garden in good order to the music
+of a march.
+
+But when they come to pass through the gate, and again when they try to
+enter the bridegroom's yard, an imaginary obstacle bars the passage.
+The bearers of the barrow stumble, utter loud exclamations, step back,
+go forward again, and, as if they were driven back by an invisible
+force, seem to succumb under the burden. Meanwhile, the rest of the
+party laugh heartily and urge on and soothe the human team. "Softly!
+softly, boy! Come, courage! Look out! Patience! Stoop! The gate is too
+low! Close up, it's too narrow! a little to the left; now to the right!
+Come, take heart, there you are!"
+
+So it sometimes happens that, in years of abundant crops, the ox-cart,
+laden beyond measure with fodder or grain, is too broad or too high to
+enter the barndoor. And such exclamations are shouted at the powerful
+cattle to restrain or excite them; and with skilful handling and
+vigorous efforts the mountain of wealth is made to pass, without mishap,
+beneath the rustic triumphal arch. Especially with the last load, called
+the _gerbaude_, are these precautions required; for that is made the
+occasion of a rustic festival, and the last sheaf gathered from the last
+furrow is placed on top of the load, decorated with ribbons and flowers,
+as are the heads of the oxen and the driver's goad. Thus the triumphal,
+laborious entry of the cabbage into the house is an emblem of the
+prosperity and fruitfulness it represents.
+
+Arrived in the bridegroom's yard, the cabbage is taken to the highest
+point of the house or the barn. If there is a chimney, a gable end, a
+dove-cote higher than the other elevated portions, the burden must, at
+any risk, be taken to that culminating point. The _païen_ accompanies it
+thither, fixes it in place, and waters it from a huge jug of wine, while
+a salvo of pistol-shots and the joyful contortions of the _païenne_
+announce its inauguration.
+
+The same ceremony is immediately repeated. Another cabbage is dug up in
+the bridegroom's garden and borne with the same formalities to the roof
+that his wife has abandoned to go with him. The trophies remain in place
+until the rain and wind destroy the baskets and carry off the cabbages.
+But they live long enough to offer some chance of fulfilment of the
+prophecy that the old men and matrons utter as they salute them.
+"Beautiful cabbage," they say, "live and flourish, so that our young
+bride may have a fine little baby before the end of the year; for if you
+die too quickly, it will be a sign of sterility, and you will be stuck
+up there on top of the house like an evil omen."
+
+The day is far advanced before all these performances are at an end. It
+only remains to escort the husband and wife to the godfathers and
+godmothers. When these putative parents live at a distance, they are
+escorted by the musicians and all the wedding-party to the limits of the
+parish. There, there is more dancing by the roadside, and they kiss the
+bride and groom when they take leave of them. The _païen_ and his wife
+are then washed and dressed in clean clothes, when they are not so
+fatigued by their rôles that they have had to take a nap.
+
+They were still dancing and singing and eating at the farm-house at
+Belair at midnight on the third day of the festivities attending
+Germain's wedding. The old men were seated at the table, unable to leave
+it, and for good reason. They did not recover their legs and their wits
+until the next day at dawn. At that time, while they sought their homes,
+in silence and with uncertain steps, Germain, proud and well-content,
+went out to yoke his cattle, leaving his young wife to sleep until
+sunrise. The lark, singing as he flew upward to the sky, seemed to him
+to be the voice of his heart, giving thanks to Providence. The
+hoar-frost, glistening on the bare bushes, seemed to him the white April
+blossoms that precede the appearance of the leaves. All nature was
+serene and smiling in his eyes. Little Pierre had laughed and jumped
+about so much the day before, that he did not come to help him to drive
+his oxen; but Germain was content to be alone. He fell on his knees in
+the furrow through which he was about to run his plough once more, and
+repeated the morning prayer with such emotion that the tears rolled down
+his cheeks, still moist with perspiration.
+
+In the distance could be heard the songs of the youths from the
+adjoining parishes, just starting for home, and repeating, in voices
+somewhat the worse for wear, the merry refrains of the preceding night.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES
+
+
+[Footnote 1:
+
+    By the sweat of thy brow
+    Thou wilt earn thy poor livelihood;
+    After long travail and service,
+    Lo! _Death_ comes and calls thee.
+]
+
+[Footnote 2: The name applied to the road which turns aside from the
+main street at the entrance to a village and runs along its outskirts.
+It is supposed that people who fear that they may receive some merited
+_affront_ will take that road to avoid being seen.--_Author's Note_.]
+
+[Footnote 3:
+
+     Open the door, yes, open,
+     Marie, my darling,
+    I have beautiful gifts to offer you.
+    Alas! my dear, pray let us in.
+]
+
+[Footnote 4:
+
+    My father grieves, my mother's deathly sad,
+    And I am too pitiful a daughter
+    To open my door at such an hour.
+]
+
+[Footnote 5:
+
+    I have a fine handkerchief to offer you.
+]
+
+[Footnote 6:
+
+     Open the door, yes, open,
+     Marie, my darling,
+    'Tis a handsome husband who comes to seek you.
+    Come, my dear, and let us let them in.
+]
+
+[Footnote 7: Man of straw--from _paille_ (straw).]
+
+
+
+
+List of Illustrations
+
+THE DEVIL'S POOL
+
+
+LITTLE MARIE TENDING HER SHEEP
+
+PIERRE'S STRATAGEM
+
+PIERRE'S EVENING PRAYER
+
+THE FARMER BROUGHT TO ACCOUNT
+
+GERMAIN REPEATS HIS MATIN PRAYER
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Devil's Pool, by George Sand
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