“The baggage! So now it’s a sunshade!”
From his place on top of the loaded cart Honore gazed in fascination after that shimmer of wispy pink moving towards the shadow of the wood. Then he looked to see what Ernest thought of it. But Ernest had not even looked up. He was bent over the sheaves, trussing assiduously. And Honore shrugged his shoulders in sudden fury. A worker, by God!. . The infernal boy worked as though he were on a picnic: and when a pretty girl in a flimsy frock passed between him and the sun he never so much as gave her a glance! What it came down to was that he was no better than his Uncle Ferdinand!
“Perhaps she’s got the letter in her bodice,” said Juliette jestingly.
Ernest picked up another sheaf, paying no attention. “Will you look at her, God Almighty!” roared Honore. “You don’t see girls like that at Epinal, however high and mighty you may think you are!”
Ernest did so and said indifferently:
“She’s all right, I’m not saying she isn’t. But what’s the use of that sort except to show their legs in a cabaret?” “Listen to him! Did you hear that? He wants to know what’s the use of her! By God, it’s Ferdinand all over again!”
“Well, if that’s the way he is,” said Adelaide, “you might as well leave him alone.”
Ferdinand was deeply apprehensive concerning the effect upon his children of their cousins’ companionship, and even that of their Uncle Honore. The lively and unrestrained diversions of the village children of Claquebue, from which he himself in his day had culled only a meagre and shameful booty, filled him with misgivings. On the Sundays when he took his family to his brother’s house he would have liked to block their ears and put a gag on Honore’s mouth. He imagined Alexis pouring infamous suggestions into the ears of Antoine, Juliette robbing Frederic of his virginity (with that swaying of the behind that went on when she carried a bucket of water: he pictured it only too vividly, and then was furious with Juliette, with his son and with Honore — how dared parents allow their daughters to have such behinds!) and the two youngest staging exhibitions of priapic frenzy for Lucienne’s benefit. The dangers threatening well brought-up children on that plain, warm and tender as a waiting woman, were as it seemed to him beyond computation; and at the edge of the plain stood the great woods bordering half the horizon: dense and without end, filled with moist shades wherein were harboured those wanton dreams of which some emanation, a scent, a murmur, was borne by the breeze over the fields. . Disgusting!. . And this was where he brought his children on Sundays, respectable, properly-supervised children whose evil impulses wasted away all through the week in the lugubrious silence of the privy! It was he himself who opened up to them that lush, ensnaring prospect, surrendering them for a whole day to the mercies of a shameless joy among people living w ith their animals in a state of rut and abomination!. . No; he was not exaggerating. With his own eyes and something more than his eyes (he wasn’t made of wood after all, however he might wish he were!) — with his own eyes he had seen his brother's entire family, the little ones in front, gathered in the farmyard round Etendard the bull while he was covering a cow. He had come upon them unexpectedly, but no one had paid him the slightest attention. They had been absorbed in the snorting, bellowing, heaving spectacle, and when Honore had stepped forward to render such assistance as was needed he had been accompanied by a murmur of sympathy and admiration. Ferdinand had been a witness of many such encounters, but in a strictly professional capacity. Surprise and the emotion of the onlookers had on this occasion given him a curious shock, infecting him with something like enthusiasm. In his mortification at the disgraceful weakness he had blamed Claquebue and the gross unrestraint of Honore's family. Even if Lucienne had been there, he reflected, it would not have made the slightest difference! The thought made him shudder. What an appalling experience for a voung girl frequenting the chaste halls of the Demoiselles Hermeline! (Poor ladies! Little did they dream in their refinement that such hideous physical manifestations could exist, still less that the uncle of their best Conscience Scrutiny pupil took a hand in them with positiye delight!) Fortunately Etendard rested from his labours on Sundays, securely tied up in his stall. But Honore's children were not tied up, and Ferdinand never ceased to surmise in anguish at the snares they might be devising for the perdition of his own young.
In all this, however, he worried himself unduly. His children derived no soul-destroying instruction from their visits to Claquebue; at the worst they only risked hearing a greater freedom of speech than their father considered nice. Sunday was a day of pause in Honore's household no less than for the countryside as a whole, a yawn, as it were, in the consciousness of everyday. The flatland of ploughed fields and meadows lost for a day a certain wholeness of life bestowed upon it during the week by the coming and going of men at work, the voices crying to the beasts, the grunts of toil, the creaking of the carts. When Honore steered the plough over his land he had only to raise his head to see other men of the village doing the same, multiplying his image, so to speak, into the far distance; and there was for him a sense of security in being thus a part of the great community of labour on the soil. But on Sundays life was disrupted: people looked at the plain from inside their houses and saw no more than their own property, their enclosed fields. The Lord’s day was the property-owner’s day, and those possessing none made a poor showing: a day of balancing the accounts, when one was always a little terrified at the money that had been spent: a day of hoarding and withdrawal on which one had no impulse to render anything to love or friendship. In any case there were the Sunday clothes, not propitious to love-making or even to talk about it. Each one died a little of that oppressive Sunday despair that hung like a threat over the empty countryside.
The faithful wandered among the graves talking of the dead who were never quite dead, and when the hour for Mass sounded went to see to the burial of their sins. The cure entered his pulpit and denounced the perverse inconstancy of fashion, the danger of supping with the devil with too short a spoon. Curiosity and self-indulgence were harmful to work, to riches. He cited examples from the neighbourhood, naming names. The Journiers at their wedding-feast had thought to take over-lavish advantage of God’s sanction: and now look at them, grown so poor that they dared not even show themselves at Mass! It was what one might expect. God has nowhere given a specific ruling as to the fitting number of conjugal embraces, but that is precisely how he catches you out! Extras must be dearly paid for, on earth as in Heaven, but especially on earth. The best course to pursue, the most prudent and far-sighted, is one of abstinence so far as one is able. Davs well filled with toil, said the cure, and at night a praver to send you off to sleep: thus does one enhance one’s worldv estate and at the same time one’s hope of Paradise. The faithful as they listened to him counted their possessions,
pictured them dissipated by loose living, associated in terrifying cause-and-effect the nights of abandonment, the prospects of the harvest and the wrath of God. Fear and regret lent to their devotions a flavour of sour melancholv. Throughout Sunday God withdrew his presence from the fields to mstal himself in the heart of his flock. More than one of the men straggling along the roads when Church was over felt the fatigue of the davs of toil bear down upon his limbs beneath their drab Sundav garments, while the lifelessness of the plain clutched at his heart.