“Six feet of earth like the rest of us. .”
“Pig!. .”
“Alfred killed me. . ”
“Slut that you were!”
. he hit me with a hoe. .”
“Put me somewhere else!”
“You let him have you all the same!”
“I want one on each side of me.”
“Oh, how good it was to feel pain!. .”
“Three girls going to the woods. .”
“Liar!”
“My oxen!. .”
“Oh, the warmth of feeling pain!. .”
“A woman without a halfpenny. .”
“You took my bill-hook.”
“The mule. .”
“It’s time you came down here!”
“Guste Berthier first!”
“No, Philibert Messelon!”
“Oh, how warm it was, the ice on the Chat-Bleu pond!” “Three girls…”
“No, this week!”
“Liar!”
“You hid everything from me!”
“Neither warmth nor cold. .”
“I went away with my sons. . ”
“Murderer!”
“You’re the one who wanted to get married!”
“. . with my sons, in the evening. .”
“And God — what’s God doing? One never hears anything of Him!”
“God is in Heaven.”
“On earth, too, just a little.”
“But here below there is no more God!”
“Three girls. .”
“Three bitches!”
“He never counted the change.”
“Murderer!”
“Thief!”
“They don’t want to die.”
“Three girls going to the woods. .”
“Eight years I’ve been waiting for her.”
“I was boiling the linen in the washtub.
“You were always after him.”
. I scalded myself — oh, the delight!”
“And the ice on the Chat-Bleu pond!”
“Swine!”
“He took me on the grass.”
“But at the age of seventy-five, really!”
“We were three girls. .”
“Three bitches!. .”
Marie Dur ran to the sacristy to fetch the cure. Shrugging his shoulders he came with her to the graveyard, but, as was only to be expected, heard nothing. He was concerned only with the voices of the living and the souls of the dead. The clamour of the bodies rotting in the ground was nothing to him, and he was resolved not to hear. And while he urged the faithful to depart, the dead continued their commotion, untroubled by his presence.
Old Jules Haudouin was among the most vehement, but not with rage against the living. His fury was directed at old Maloret, Tine Maloret and the four-year-old boy who lay together three graves away, whose nearness had always troubled his repose. Adelaide stood listening to him with deference, now and then approving with a nod or a dry sound in her throat. Erect and thin in her black dress, her head enclosed in her bonnet with its ribbons tied beneath her chin, she gazed at the three graves of the Ma-lorets, pursing her lips and contracting her nostrils as though she suspected the three deceased not merely of giving off a stench beneath her nose but of doing it on purpose.
Zephe Maloret, Ana'is and their two sons stood with heads bowed, affecting to meditate in all quietness of heart. It was as though they did not hear the voice of old Haudouin rising from below, and this was what Adelaide thought: and so she began to repeat aloud the old man’s words. Jules Haudouin spoke, and Adelaide said after him:
“What was Tine Maloret after all? A wench the men passed round among themselves, a trollop who could be had in a ditch for thirty sous, that’s what Tine was! And the sons she bore still trying to find out who their fathers were! And that’s the sort they put in the cemetery these days, along with respectable people!. .”
The Malorets spoke no word in protest, and Zephe, proposing to withdraw, signed to Ana'is and his two sons. But the Durs, the Berthiers, the Corenpots, the Messelons, the Rousseliers, the Rugearts, the Coutants, the Domines, the Boeufs, the Trousquets, the Pignons, the Caroches, the Bonbols the Clergerons, the Dubuclars ran to listen to Jules Haudouin. They formed a circle three rows deep round Zephe and Adelaide, and they could not be ignored.
“I have no intention of replying,” said Zephe.
“You’d find it difficult!” retorted Jules Haudouin from below.
“You’d find it difficult. .” his daughter-in-law repeated, “—because I have not exaggerated by a hair’s breadth, and Tine was what we all know and what I have said and I could go on telling about her all to-day and all to-morrow if good taste and my sense of propriety did not restrain me! And the same is true of old Alaloret. What could I not say of him if I chose?”
“We have no intention of replying,” said Zephe and Noel together.
“Let’s go,” said Ana'is.
But the Durs, the Coutants, the Bonbols and the Cler-gerons murmured in Zephe’s ear:
“Why don’t you answer him? You must answer!”
Zephe gazed towards his father’s grave, but old Maloret was voiceless and Tine was not comfortable either. There was nothing to be heard but the voice of Jules Haudouin.
“And everything I could say of Tine and old Maloret might be said of the rest of them!”
“And everything I could say of Tine and old Maloret might be said of the rest of them,” repeated his daughter-in-law. “Tine has her living image among you, and you all know who it is, and how some people get their living with flowered aprons and frills and furbelows that they flaunt on the roads. And what’s more the parents aren’t ashamed to buy winnowing-machines with the money! And all this is true!”
The Messelons, the Corenpots and the Berthiers nudged each other with their elbows and the laughter broke out from behind their moustaches. Zephe’s cheeks were burning.
“I shan’t answer. I shall say nothing, although I might say a great deal. I know things w%ich plenty of people don’t know.”
Juliette, standing at her mother’s side, was frightened at the threat and murmured:
“Don’t goad him too far. Don’t forget they’ve got the letter!”
Adelaide knew well enough what was in her mind, but urged on by the voice and the fury of old Jules Haudouin she could no longer contain herself.
“No letter is going to stop me saying what everyone knows, the things that went on between Tine and her own father, and the vile habits they have in that family! Marguerite had her share, too!”
Anai's burst into tears, and Zephe protested in a thin voice:
“It’s not true! It’s an invention — all lies that people tell about us!”
His body was bowed, and he leaned on the shoulders of his sons. Zephe was well aware that the shameful habits of his family were known to all the village, but since they were only mentioned in a whisper, and never in his presence, the fact had caused him no discomfort. A tale that travels under cover is no more than a legend, and what people think of it has no substance. But those who listened to Adelaide were now compelled with horror to contemplate the sin of the Malorets in the light of dav. Many among them were ill at ease and secretly resented her outspokenness. What were things coming to, if it was no longer possible to sin without being publicly denounced? The cure, who had been engaged in conversation in a corner of the cemetery, now drew near the gathering to receive the last salutations. He, too, did not care to see truth brought too zealously out into the open: there were privacies upon which God himself, in his own interest, did not intrude, and the Malorets were so constituted that they might, almost without sinning, bestow upon their daughters that which rightly belonged to their wives. He entered the circle and cried with his customary vigour: “What do you mean by making this disgraceful noise in the place of the dead? And after hearing Mass! You should be ashamed! Adelaide Haudouin, how dare you,