Bab Bab 1 · PART I. CHAPTER I.

. PART I. CHAPTER I.

That morning Jean, with a seed-bag of blue linen tied round his waist,

held its mouth open with his left hand, while with his right, at every

three steps, he drew forth a handful of corn, and flung it broadcast.

The rich soil clung to his heavy shoes, which left holes in the ground,

as his body lurched regularly from side to side; and each time he

threw you saw, amid the ever-flying yellow seed, the gleam of two red

stripes on the sleeve of the old regimental jacket he was wearing out.

He strode forward in solitary state; and behind him, to bury the grain,

there slowly came a harrow, to which were harnessed two horses, driven

by a waggoner, who cracked his whip over their ears in long, regular

sweeps.

The patch of ground, scarcely an acre and a quarter in extent, was

of such little importance that Monsieur Hourdequin, the master of La

Borderie, had not cared to send the drill-plough, which was in use

elsewhere. Jean, then journeying due north over the field, had the

farm-buildings exactly in front of him, a mile and a quarter off. On

reaching the end of the furrow, he raised his eyes with a vacant look

as he paused for a moment to take breath.

Before him were the low farm walls, and a patch of old slate, isolated

on the outskirts of the plain of La Beauce, which stretched towards

Chartres. Under a dull, late October sky lay ten leagues of arable

land, where, at that time of year, great ploughed squares of bare,

rich, yellow soil alternated with green expanses of lucern and clover;

there was here not a slope, not a tree; the plain extended into the dim

distance, curving down beyond the horizon, which was level as at sea.

Westward, a small wood just edged the sky with a band of russet. In

the centre a road--the road from Châteaudun to Orleans--of chalk-like

whiteness, stretched four leagues straight ahead, displaying as it

went a geometrical row of telegraph-posts. Nothing else but three or

four wooden mills on log foundations, with their sails at rest; some

villages forming islets of stone; and a distant steeple emerging from a

depression in the landscape, the church itself being hidden among the

gentle undulations of the wheat-fields.

Jean turned and lurched back again due south, his left hand holding

the seed-bag, and his right slashing the air with an unbroken sheet of

grain. He now had in front of him, quite near, and cutting trench-like

through the plain, the narrow valley of the Aigre, beyond which the

district of La Beauce resumed its unconfined course on to Orleans.

Meadows and shady places could only be inferred from a range of tall

poplars, the yellowish tops of which rose out of the dell, looking, as

they just cleared the edge, like short bushes. Of the little village

of Rognes, built upon the declivity, a few roofs only were in view,

near the church, which raised on high its grey stone steeple, the

dwelling-place of ancient families of ravens. And eastward, beyond the

valley of the Loir,--where Cloyes, the chief town of the _canton_[1]

nestled at two leagues' distance,--the far-off hills of Le Perche were

visible, tinged with violet in the slate-grey light. There the old

Dunois, now become the _arrondissement_ of Châteaudun, lay between Le

Perche and La Beauce, on the very frontier of the latter, at a spot

which has obtained the name of Beauce the "Lousy," the soil there being

less fertile. When Jean got to the end of the field, he stopped again,

and glanced down along the stream of the Aigre, rippling bright and

clear through the meadows, side by side with the road to Cloyes, which

on that Saturday was furrowed by the carts of peasants going to market;

then he turned up again.

And still, with the same step, with the same gesture, he set out

north and returned south, wrapped in a living dust-cloud of seed;

while, behind him the whip cracked and the harrow buried the germs,

at the same quiet, contemplative rate. Heavy rains had retarded the

autumn sowing; the season's manuring had been done in August, and the

deep-lying fallows, duly cleared of weeds, had long been ready for

a fresh yield of corn, after the clover and oats of the triennial

rotation. Now the farmers were urged on by fear of coming frost,

which threatened after the storms. The weather had suddenly turned

cold and gloomy: there was no breath of wind, and but a dull light

was distributed over all this ocean of land. Seed was being sown on

all sides; there was a sower to the left, three hundred yards away;

another farther off to the right; others, and yet others, lost to sight

in the receding vista of the level fields. They formed little black

silhouettes, mere strokes which became slimmer and slimmer, till they

vanished in the distance. All made the same gesture, as they strewed

the seed, which the mind's eye still saw encircling them, as with a

wave of life. It was like a quiver passing over the plain, even into

the dim distance, where the scattered sowers could no longer be seen.

Jean was coming down for the last time when he perceived, approaching

from Rognes, a large red and white cow, the halter of which was held by

a young girl, almost a child. The little peasant-girl and the animal

were coming along the path which skirted the valley at the top of the

plateau; and, with his back turned to them, he had gone up and finished

the field, when a sound of running, mingled with stifled cries, made

him look round, just as he was untying his seed-bag to depart. It was

the cow running away, galloping over a field of lucern, and followed by

the girl, who was exhausting her strength in trying to keep it back.

Fearing an accident, he shouted:

"Leave go; why don't thee?"

But she did nothing of the kind, only panting and abusing her cow in

angry, frightened tones.

"Coliche! Would you, then, Coliche? Ah, you foul brute! Ah, you cursed

beast!"

So far, running and leaping to the full extent of her little legs, she

had managed to follow. But she stumbled, fell once, then rose only to

fall again farther on; and from that point, the animal growing frantic,

she was dragged along. Then she began to shriek, while her body left a

furrow in the lucern.

"Leave go, in God's name!" Jean continued shouting. "Leave go, why

don't thee?"

He shouted thus mechanically, out of fright; for he also had started

running, grasping, at length, the situation. The rope had evidently got

entangled round her waist, and was being more closely twined at each

fresh effort. Fortunately he took a short cut across a ploughed field,

and made for the cow with such speed that the frightened and perplexed

animal stopped dead. Jean was already undoing the rope, and seating the

girl upon the grass.

"Thou hast broken nothing?" he asked.

No; she had not so much as swooned. She stood up, felt herself all

over, and coolly lifted her petticoats up to her thighs, to look at her

knees, which smarted. Meanwhile, she was still so breathless that she

could not speak.

"See, it's there it hurts me," she said at last. "All the same, I'm

alive and kicking; there's nothing the matter. Oh! I was frightened.

Over on the road there I was a regular jelly!"

And, examining the circle of red on her strained wrist, she moistened

it with spittle and applied her lips to it; then, comforted and

restored, she added with a deep sigh:

"She's not vicious, Coliche. Only since yesterday she has plagued us

to death, because she's in heat. I'm taking her to the bull at La

Borderie."

"At La Borderie?" repeated Jean. "That's capital; I'm going back there;

I'll go with thee."

He still used the second person singular, treating her as a little

urchin, so slight was she for her fourteen years of age. She, raising

her chin, looked seriously at the big, ruddy, crop-haired, full-faced,

regular-featured young fellow, whose twenty-nine years made him in her

eyes an old man.

"Hullo! I know you. You are Corporal, the carpenter who stopped as

farm-hand with Monsieur Hourdequin."

Hearing the nickname, which the peasants had given him, the young

fellow smiled; and he contemplated her in turn, surprised to find her

almost a woman so soon, with her little bust firm and taking shape,

her oval face, her deep, black eyes; and full lips, fresh and rosy as

ripening fruit. She was clad in a grey skirt and black woollen bodice;

on her head there was a round cap; and she had a very dark skin,

scorched and burnished by the sun.

"Why, thou'rt old Mouche's youngest!" cried he. "I didn't call thee to

mind. Isn't that so? Thy sister was keeping company with Buteau last

spring, when he worked with me at La Borderie?"

She replied simply:

"Yes, I'm Françoise. My sister Lise went with cousin Buteau, and is now

six months with child. He's bolted; he's down Orgères way, at the farm

of La Chamade."

"That's it," concluded Jean; "I have seen them together."

And they remained an instant mute, face to face; he smiling at having

one evening surprised the two lovers behind a mill, she still sucking

her bruised wrist, as if the moisture of her lips allayed its smarting;

whilst, in an adjoining field, the cow quietly plucked tufts of lucern.

The waggoner and the harrow had gone off by a roundabout way, to reach

the road. Two ravens, which kept wheeling round and round the steeple,

were heard to caw. The three notes of the angelus rang through the

still air.

"Hullo! Twelve o'clock already!" cried Jean. "Let's make haste!"

Then, noticing La Coliche in the field: "Eh, but thy cow is doing

damage! Suppose any one saw her! Wait a bit, I'll make it lively for

her!"

"Nay, let be," said Françoise, stopping him. "The plot is ours. Our

folk own the whole bank as far as Rognes. We reach from here up to

yonder; the next to that is uncle Fouan's; then comes aunt Grande's."

While indicating the patches she had led the cow back into the path.

And not till then, when she again held her, fearlessly, by the rope,

did she think of thanking the young fellow.

"Anyhow, I owe you a pretty debt of gratitude! Thanks, you know,

thanks, very much!"

They had started walking along the narrow road which skirted the valley

before cutting through the fields. The final peal of the angelus had

just died away, the ravens alone kept on cawing. They trudged on behind

the cow tugging at her rope, neither of the two conversing, for they

had relapsed into the silence of rustics who travel for leagues, side

by side, without exchanging a word. On their right their glance fell on

a drill-plough, the horses of which turned close by them; the ploughman

bade them good-day, and they answered him in the same sober tone. Down

on their left, along the road to Cloyes, carts continued to file by,

the market not opening till one o'clock. These vehicles jolted heavily

along on their two wheels, like jumping insects, so diminished in

the distance as to leave merely the white specks of the women's caps

distinguishable.

"There's uncle Fouan and aunt Rose over there, on their way to the

notary's," said Françoise, gazing at a conveyance the size of a

nutshell, which sped along nearly a mile off.

She had a sailor's eye, the long sight of those bred in the country,

trained in details, and capable of identifying man or beast even when

they were but little moving specks afar off.

"Oh, yes; I've been told so," resumed Jean. "So it's settled that the

old man divides his property among his daughter and two sons?"

"It's settled. They've all agreed to meet to-day at Monsieur

Baillehache's."

She again watched the cart in its course, and then resumed:

"We don't care one way or the other; it won't make us any fatter or

thinner. Only, on account of Buteau, sister thinks he'll marry her,

perhaps, when he gets his share. He says one can't start housekeeping

on nothing."

Jean laughed.

"Me and Buteau were pals, hang him! Oh, he don't think twice about

telling girls lies! And he must have 'em, by hook or by crook; he gets

at 'em by foul means, if they won't by fair."

"He's a pig, that's flat!" declared Françoise, peremptorily. "People

have no business to play dirty tricks like that, putting their cousins

in the family-way and then leaving 'em in the lurch."

But suddenly, in a fit of rage, she exclaimed:

"You wait, Coliche! I'll make you dance! There she is at it again;

she's mad, the brute, when she gets that way."

She had violently jerked the cow back. At that spot the road left the

edge of the plateau, and the cart disappeared from view, while they

both continued their walk on the level, now having in front of them,

and on either side, only the endless expanse of arable land. Between

the fallows and the artificial meadows the path ran flat and bushless,

terminating at the farm, which you might have thought within reach of

the hand, but which kept receding under the ashen-grey sky. They had

relapsed into silence again, no longer opening their mouths, as if

impressed by the contemplative gloominess of La Beauce, so sad and yet

so fruitful.

When they arrived, the large square yard of La Borderie, shut in on

three sides by cow-sheds, sheep-cots, and barns, was deserted. But

there immediately appeared upon the kitchen door-step a short, bold,

pretty-looking young woman.

"How's this, Jean, you're not eating this morning?"

"I'm just going to, Madame Jacqueline."

Since the daughter of Cognet, the Rognes road-labourer,--_La Cognette_,

as they called her when she washed up the farm dishes at twelve years

of age--had been raised to the honours of servant-mistress, she

despotically required that every one should treat her as a lady.

"Oh, it is you, Françoise," she resumed. "You've come for the

bull. Well, you must wait. The neatherd is at Cloyes with Monsieur

Hourdequin. But he'll be back; he ought to be here now."

And as Jean was making for the kitchen, she took him round the waist

and fondled him smilingly, regardless of spectators, hungering, as it

were, for love, and not satisfied with having the master.

Françoise, left alone, waited patiently, sitting on a stone bench

in front of the manure-pit, which took up a third of the yard. She

was listlessly watching a group of fowls, pecking and warming their

feet in the broad low layer of manure, which in the cold air began to

steam with a slight bluish vapour. At the end of half-an-hour, when

Jean re-appeared, finishing a slice of bread and butter, she had not

stirred. He sat down near her, and as the cow fidgeted, lashed its tail

and lowed, he finally said:

"It's tiresome he doesn't come back."

The girl shrugged her shoulders, as though to say that she was in no

hurry. Then, after a fresh silence:

"So, Corporal, they call you Jean, and nothing else?"

"Why, no; Jean Macquart."

"And you don't belong to our part of the country?"

"No, I'm a Provençal, from Plassans, a town over yonder."

She had raised her eyes to examine him, surprised that any one could

come from so far off.

"After Solferino," continued he, "eighteen months since, I came back

from Italy with my discharge, and a fellow-soldier brought me here.

Then, d'ye see, my old trade of carpenter no longer suited me, and,

what with one thing and another, I stopped at the farm."

"Ah!" said she, simply, without taking her big, black eyes off him,

"it's curious, all the same."

At that moment, as La Coliche gave a prolonged, despairing low of

desire, a hoarse murmur came from the cow-house, the door of which was

shut.

"Hullo!" cried Jean, "that brute of a Cæsar has heard her. Hark! he's

talking inside there. Oh, he knows his business. You can't bring one

of 'em into the yard but he smells her out, and knows what he's wanted

for."

Then, breaking off:

"I say, the neatherd must have stopped with Monsieur Hourdequin. If

thee liked, I would bring thee the bull, and thee needn't come back

again. We could manage it all right by ourselves."

"Not half a bad idea," said Françoise, getting up.

As he opened the door of the cow-house, he paused to ask:

"Must thy animal be tied up?"

"Tied up? No, no! not worth while. She is quite ready; she won't so

much as stir."

When the door was opened you saw, in two rows on either side of the

central path, the thirty farm cows, some lying in the litter, others

crunching the beets in their manger; and, from the corner where he

stood, one of the bulls, a black Dutch, spotted with white, stretched

out his head in anticipation of his task.

As soon as he was untied, he slowly emerged. Then stopping short, as

though surprised by the fresh air and sunlight, he remained motionless

for a minute, bracing himself up, his sinewy tail swinging, his neck

inflated, his muzzle outstretched to sniff. La Coliche, without

stirring, turned towards him her large, fixed eyes, and lowed more

softly. Then he advanced, pressed against her, and laid his head on her

hind-quarters, abruptly and roughly; with his tongue, which was hanging

out, he put her tail aside, and licked her as far as the thighs; she

letting him do as he pleased, and keeping quite still, save for a

slight quivering of her skin. Jean and Françoise waited gravely, their

arms hanging beside them.

When Cæsar was ready, he got upon La Coliche with a jerk, and with such

weighty force as to shake the ground. She had not given way, and he

compressed her flanks with his two feet. But she, a strapping animal

from the Cotentin, was so tall, so broad for him, who was of a smaller

breed, that he could not reach. He was conscious of it, and made a vain

effort to raise himself and to bring her nearer.

"He is too small," said Françoise.

"Yes, a little," said Jean. "But that don't matter; he'll do it all the

same."

She shook her head in doubt; and, as Cæsar still fumbled about, and

seemed to be getting exhausted, she came to a resolution.

"No, he must be helped," she said. "If he goes wrong, it'll be waste of

time."

Calmly and carefully, as if bent on a serious piece of work, she had

drawn near. Her intentness made the pupils of her eyes retreat, left

her red lips half open, and kept her features motionless. Raising her

arm with a sweep she aided the animal in his efforts, and he, gathering

up his strength, speedily accomplished his purpose. It was done.

Firmly, with the impassive fertility of land which is sown with seed

the cow had unflinchingly received the fruitful stream of the male.

Indeed, she had not even trembled at the shock; and he had already

dropped again to the ground, shaking the earth once more.

Françoise having withdrawn her hand, remained with her arm in the air.

Finally she lowered it, saying:

"That's all right."

"Yes, and neatly done," replied Jean, with an air of conviction,

mingled with a good workman's satisfaction at seeing work well and

expeditiously performed.

It did not occur to him to indulge in any of the spicy remarks with

which the farm-servants used to chaff the girls who brought their cows

for this purpose. The child seemed to consider it all so simple and

necessary that there was, indeed, nothing to laugh at fairly. It was

Nature.

However, Jacqueline had been standing at the door again for an instant

or so, and with a chuckle which was habitual to her, she cried

jestingly:

"Eh! poke your nose everywhere! So you hold the candle now!"

Jean having burst into a horse-laugh, Françoise suddenly flushed all

over, quite confused; and to hide her embarrassment--while Cæsar

returned of his own accord into the cow-house, and La Coliche munched

a stalk of oats which had grown in the manure-pit--she dived into her

pockets, fumbled about, eventually produced her handkerchief, untied

the corner of it, in which she had wrapped up the two-franc fee, and

said:

"Here! There's the money! And good day to you!"

She set out with her cow, and Jean took his bag again and followed her,

telling Jacqueline that he was going to the Poteau field, according to

the instructions issued by Monsieur Hourdequin, for the day.

"Good!" she replied. "The harrow ought to be there."

Then as the young man came up with the girl, and they went off in

single file down the narrow path, she called out to them again, in her

coarse, bantering voice:

"No danger, eh? If you lose yourselves together the chit knows her way

about."

Behind them the farmyard was again deserted. Neither had laughed this

time. They walked on slowly, and the only sound was that of their shoes

striking against the stones. All that Jean noticed of Françoise was the

nape of her child-like neck, over which curled some short black hair

under her round cap. At last, after going some fifty paces:

"She does wrong to chaff others about the men," said Françoise,

sedately. "I might have answered her----"

And turning towards the young fellow with a mischievous upward glance:

"It's true, isn't it, that she is false to Monsieur Hourdequin, just as

if she were already his wife? You know as much about that, maybe, as

most people."

His eyes fell, and he looked sheepish. "Lord! she does as she likes;

it's her affair," he answered.

Françoise had turned her back and was pursuing her road.

"That's true enough. I was only in fun, because you're old enough to be

my father, and because it's of no consequence one way or the other. But

there's one thing, since Buteau played that dirty trick on my sister,

I've taken an oath that I'd rather be cut in two than have a lover."

Jean bent his head, and they spoke no more. The little Poteau field lay

at the bottom of the path, half way to Rognes. When the young fellow

got there he stopped. The harrow was waiting for him, and a sack of

seed had been emptied out into a furrow. He filled his bag, saying:

"Good-bye, then!"

"Good-bye," replied Françoise. "Thanks again!"

But, in sudden apprehension, he drew himself up and called out:

"I say! suppose La Coliche began again; shall I go with you all the

way?"

She was already some distance off, but she turned round, and through

the deep stillness of the country air came the sound of her calm,

steady voice:

"No, no! There's no need, it's all right! She's got quite as much as

she can carry!"

Jean, with his seed-bag at his waist, had started down the piece of

plough land, with his ceaseless gesture of throwing the grain; he

raised his eyes and looked at Françoise diminishing in height among the

fields, looking quite small behind her lazy cow, which was swinging

heavily from side to side. When he turned up again, he ceased to see

her; but, as he came back, there she was again, but smaller still, so

slim as to seem like some new kind of dandelion, with her slight figure

and her white cap. Thrice she dwindled thus; then, when he once more

looked for her, she had apparently turned down by the church.

Two o'clock struck. The sky remained grey, dull, and cold, as if the

sun were buried under spadefuls of ashes for weary months, till the

spring-time returned. The dreariness of the clouds was relieved by one

lighter patch towards Orleans, as if the sun were shining somewhere in

that direction, leagues away; and against that glimmering patch the

steeple of Rognes stood out, the village itself sloping down from

view into the fold made by the valley of the Aigre. But on the north,

towards Chartres, the level line of the horizon clearly separated the

leaden uniformity of the waste sky from the endless vista of La Beauce,

like an ink-stroke across a monochrome sketch. Since the mid-day meal,

the number of sowers seemed to have increased. Now each patch of the

little farm-lands had one to itself; they multiplied and teemed like

black laborious ants roused to activity by some heavy piece of work,

and straining every nerve over a mighty task, giant-like in size as

compared with their littleness. And still you might descry, even in the

most remote, the one persistent never-varying gesture; still did the

pertinacious insect-like sowers wrestle with the vast earth, and become

eventually the victors over space and life.

Till night-fall Jean sowed. After the Poteau field there were the

Rigoles and the Quatre-Chemins. To and fro, to and fro, he paced the

fields, with long, rhythmical steps, till the corn in his bag came to

an end; while, in his wake, the seed strewed all the soil.