Robidet rendered me his best service by always pointing out again each one of the men under my supervision. He knew only too well the weakness that, all my life, has played me absurd tricks and made me commit the most unfortunate breaks: not to be able to recognize people. That accounts for the uncertainty in my approach, which has often been taken for haughtiness, disdain or indifference; for anyone you do not recognize is not easily persuaded, even after being warned, that the lack of recognition is sincere. The people under my direction were, thank goodness, not numerous. As though to try my strength, France had reserved for her youngest mayor one of her tiniest communes. And the small number of its inhabitants continued to diminish, the mortality rate gaining each year over the births. While I now inhabit one of the most prolific regions in France, and, in order to present a family for the Cognacq legacy, I would be embarrassed only by the choice, the homes at La Roque were, for the greater part, childless. You must not picture a village; not even a little group of houses around a church. Scattered over the land, nothing but farms, often more than a kilometer apart. But not one was more isolated than that of Pierre B., my youngest farmer, son of the deceased mayor whom I succeeded. Pierre had recently taken as his wife one of the nicest girls in the region. A servant of fourteen or fifteen years of age, sister of the wife, lived with the newly wed couple; the latter, for a wonder, was pregnant; so I was particularly interested in this couple.
Madame Pierre B. was close to confinement when bad luck would have it that her husband was called away to a rather distant market where he was to buy some cattle. Two days of absence only; business first.
Pierre B. had no sooner left, than his wife’s labor began.
“I have an idea it is not going to be easy,” the young woman said to her sister. “It hurts a great deal, but I don’t think it is going as it should. How beastly that Pierre is gone.”
Then a little later:
“Perhaps it would be better just the same if you went to get the doctor at Lisieux. Pierre could not find any fault with that. Don’t be afraid to leave me alone. I still have a little time.”
Lisieux is twelve kilometers away. The child runs there. The doctor who is only a young supply, brings her back in his two wheeled carriage (there were not any autos yet). Not very well informed by the child who is a little stupid, he does not bring with him any of the instruments needed in case of a difficult delivery. Besides he is not a surgeon. He has hurried, it is true, and the child has run fast; but three hours have passed since she left her sister. When the doctor arrives, night is falling.…
When Pierre B. returned the next morning from market, he could see from the doorway, for the bedroom door had been left open, an abominable sight. On the unmade bed covered with blood, his lifeless young wife, her abdomen wide open. At the foot of the bed, a bundle of gory flesh: all that remained of the child. In the room frightful disorder; on the floor and on the table, bloody instruments: a knife, a cleaver, a skewer. As the forceps were not sufficient, kitchen utensils coming to his aid, told of the panic of the too young doctor, alone in that badly lighted room, losing his head and asking help of everything he could lay his hands on. The terrified servant had taken flight at the beginning of the operation.
My indignation was unlimited. I made up my mind to go find the doctor: to start a case against him. I had myself driven to Lisieux, but stopped the carriage before the door. I got out; I can still see the spot. I recall the street and the house. I see myself again taking a hundred steps, preparing my charge, and trying to imagine the disconcerted being before whom I was going to find myself; that young doctor, whose career I was going to break, was doubtless no eagle, but a boy almost as young as I was, inexperienced, who would tell me that, in the frightful combination of circumstances, all the experience in the world would not have made up for the total lack of means of help. Tramping up and down, I imagined his anguish, his groping in the dark, his panic, his despair, and I relived that nightmare so well that finally I went back to the carriage, no longer having the heart to crush the unhappy man more.
I applied more perseverance in the Mulot affair. I wrote the preceding only so as to come finally to Mulot. Ah! that one, I would have recognized him anywhere. He would have been enough to make me love the country. I become attached to a region really through its people. I was finding in my commune only petty interests, rapacity, slyness, all the elementary forms of selfishness; only wooden countenances, cunning or glum; only uncouth or deformed bodies. Mulot was not from that part of the country. A Norman however, but not like any other, and of such distinction in his manners that I could easily have imagined him the illegitimate son of some lord. And on certain days, I preferred to imagine him of Russian blood, so as to explain to myself the affectionate gentleness of his look of a moujik. He wore mutton-chop whiskers like the people of Calvados. He was not handsome, to be sure; but his facial features were not common or set, nothing cheap about them. Above all, he expressed himself with much more purity than anyone in my commune. He was a little more than forty years of age when I became mayor and began to notice him. I immediately conceived an unusual affection for him. I never met him without speaking to him and often I went out of my way to go see him work. A simple laborer, an “odd-job man,” Robidet employed him for the heaviest jobs. The laying and upkeep of drains was one of his specialties. Robidet had persuaded my mother to drain several sloping fields where the water ran off badly because of the nature of the soil, and where the grass gave way to rush sedge, horse-tail and reeds. When badly laid, too close to the level of the earth, or too narrow, the pipes of the drains were quickly invaded by the roots of some subterranean vegetation or other, hairy, matted roots that stopped them up. To counteract this, long rods of metal were inserted into the pipes; but they soon struck against an obstacle; and if you kept on, the pipe broke. Then the ground had to be opened, the drains detached, taken up, unstopped or replaced. This work took days. Every six months it had all to be done over again. It was dear and did not improve the field any, but interested me particularly, for I was trying to find out what plants could produce such over-developed roots, which Mulot was bringing out in enormous wads. I recall him bending over the spongy earth, his face half hidden by the rushes, wet, covered with mud, pushing the metal rod.…
“Do you see this drainage, sir? It’s of no use to you or the field. And it has to be repaired all the time. The cattle, on passing over it, pull apart the joints and break the pipes. Out of ten, six have to be replaced. You can’t help thinking that those who ordered the work (he did not mention Robidet by name) found it to their advantage.…”
Besides he never complained at all, but kept saying:
“If I work like this, it is so that my children can follow another trade.”
Mulot had two sons and three daughters. The eldest son, a husky fellow of sixteen years, worked at the blacksmith shop on the square; he had progressive ideas, did not associate with the country people, and ran over to Lisieux for his companions as soon as he had a free day. If I got a bow from him when I passed, that was all.