But at this Honore merely smiled with indulgence. At their age it was a matter of no importance, and after all everything had to be learnt. These scuffles between little girls and boys, legs in the air and hands furtively exploring beneath skirts, seemed to him no more than charming and innocent diversions. As Alexis pursued the subject of Tintin’s depravity, with more than a hint of hypocrisy in his voice, he said at a venture:
‘'You've forgotten to mention that you were helping him."
"What me-1’
"Yes. you!”
Alexis was thoroughly disconcerted.
"Well, only because Isabel would struggle so much. And all I did was to hold her legs.”
"What!" cried Honore. rising in his wrath again. “You mean to say you held her legs while young Maloret had all the fun?’’
“Well, as a matter of fact we took it in turns.”
Moved to laughter by this avowal. Honore calmed down again. He was well enough pleased that his lads should enjoy tumbling the girls. In this at least they did not resemble the gnat-blooded Ferdinand, who had passed his dreary youth amid stiff collars and books of catechism finding what solitary pleasure he could, the poor Little would-be priest, because a would-be priest he had been and a would-be priest he remained, no matter what he said. (To Honore's ideas, no full-blooded male could possibly be a priest, or a Royalist or a Bonapartist either, if it came to that: a man must be singularly lacking in gusto if he could remain indifferent to the bosomy and beamv figure of the Republic.)
Alexis resumed his place beneath his father's benevolent and contemplative gaze; but Adelaide was still bent upon his undoing.
"Trust vou to take his side." she said to Honore; “but while the little wretch is playing about with the girls the cows go off and get themselves blown in the clover. There won't be much laughing when one of them dies of it!”
Honore’s expression changed abruptly.
“Is that true, what your mother says? "
"Of course it's true." said Adelaide. "Rougerre came in to-night with a belly on her that you’d think she was on the verge of calving!”
“God Almighty,” cried Honore. flying into a rage again, “vou let a cow get into that state!. . Will you kind's- tell me exactly what you've been doing this afternoon?"
Alexis defended himself with ability', maintaining that
Rougette was not at all blown, but that she always looked a bit that way when she had been grazing well.
“All that happened was that while I was fighting Tintin she strayed over to Rugnon’s pasture, but that isn’t the sort of rich grass that would do her any harm, anything but, in fact.”
“Well, that’s true,” said Honore, calming down once more. And when his wife talked of going round to see Anals Maloret about the shirt her son had damaged, he said: “I don’t want to hear any more about it, and you’ll leave Ana'is alone. If there’s anything to be said to the Malorets, I’ll say it.”
At this point Juliette came in, breathless from running, and sat down beside her father.
“Just as well you ran,” said Adelaide, “or you wouldn’t have been back before midnight.”
“Yes,” said Honore. “You really ought to come home a little earlier.”
But there was no real rebuke in his voice. Juliette glanced at him and they laughed together. He was incapable of being stern with her. To him it was still a matter for pride and wonder that from his skinny and short-tempered wife he should have brought forth this tall girl with soft, dark eyes, a tranquil laugh and proper curves in all the proper places.
“At least you needn’t go so far as to praise her,” said Adelaide bitterly. “If she’s come home at all, you can be quite sure it’s only because there are no more young men hanging about outside.”
“That’s quite true, Mamma. But then, I told them to go home.”
“No need to tell us that there were several of them!”
“There were three.”
“So long as there are three sweethearts,” said Honore, “there’s nothing to worry about. And who were they, the young scoundrels?”
Juliette named them: Leon Dur, Baptiste Rugnon and Noel Maloret. At the third name Honore knitted his eyebrows and exclaimed under his breath. The infernal Malorets seemed to crop up everywhere. However, he made no comment, but asked casually:
“And do you know yet which is to be the real one?”
Juliette flushed slightly and answered in a non-committal voice:
“I can’t say.”
She lowered her eyes to her plate. Honore regarded her in silence for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and went out to call on the Messelons.
Since seeing his brother, Honore had been thinking over the problems to which Zephe Maloret’s candidacy for the office of mayor would give rise. Open opposition, the only kind which he considered decent, would entail serious consequences. He would have to leave the Hau-douin house even if Ferdinand did not compel him to do so, and being homeless, without money and almost without land, he would have to rent a cottage in Claquebue or elsewhere and hire himself out as a day-labourer to maintain his family in poverty. It would perhaps be more sensible to get a job in a factory, because only in a town could his wife and children hope to find work. “Well, and why not?” he reflected. “Alphonse works in a factory.”
But the idea was hateful to him. To go and work in a town at the age of forty-five! Never again to feel soft earth beneath the toe of one’s sabot, as sensitive as the flesh itself; never to look for rain or sun, never to be alone in the circle of the horizon. . instead of this, to have one’s gaze cut short by walls and ironwork, to use tools shared by everyone, to piss at fixed hours in a fixed place. . But if it must be done, it must. Honore had no intention of compromising either with his long-nourished anger or with his Republican conscience. Nevertheless he would be thankful to avoid a battle which must cost him so much, and he tried to hope that Messelon, despite his illness and his seventy-two years, still had a grip on life. He was impatient to learn how he was.
The Messelons were just finishing their evening meal. There were ten of them seated round the long table, besides the mother, who ate standing, as the custom was. The lamp was turned low, and they talked in undertones because the door to the sick-room was half-open.
“I’m late in coming,” said Honore in a low voice. “So much work to be got through during the day.”
Old Mme. Messelon signed to one of her children to fetch him a chair.
“It’s kind all the same, Honore. Philibert will be glad to know you’ve come, he spoke to me of you this morning. Things aren’t going well with him. I’m afraid he’s near the end. A man you’d never have thought he’d go so soon, so full of life, and strong and straight as a tree.”
She turned her head, calling all the Messelons to witness. There was a movement of heads round the table, a grave, acquiescent murmur.
“Yes, he was strong. . And full of energy, you’d never believe. . No one like him anywhere for getting the work done. .”
The old woman smiled in her pride and her grief.
“It’s a week since he ate anything — anything to speak of… A week to-morrow, Honore! And such a strong man!.
Honore uttered words of hopefulness by which he himself was somewhat fortified. A thin voice, trembling at the end of each sentence, came to them through the half-open door.
“Is that you talking in the kitchen, Honore? Come in here.”
Honore went into the bedroom preceded by the old woman carrying the lamp. Philibert Messelon lay in the bed, his cheeks hollowed, his eyes dimmed. Seeing him so wasted and so pale that one might have thought him dead already except for the little gasping breaths that passed painfully between his grey lips, Honore felt pity clutch him by the throat. He forced himself to say cheerfully: