He sat down. She asked:

‘Well?’

He did not dare to say more, his eyes fixed on the table set in the middle of the room, with three places set, one of them a child’s. He looked at the chair, turned back to the fire, the plate, the napkin, the glasses, the bottle of red wine opened, and the bottle of white wine intact. It was his father’s place, back to the fire! He was expected. It was his bread that he saw, that he recognized beside the fork, for the crust had been taken off because of Hautot’s bad teeth. Then, raising his eyes, he saw, on the wall, his own picture, the big photograph taken in Paris in the year of the exhibition, the same that was nailed over his bed in his bedroom at Ainville.

The young woman said again:

‘Well, Mr. Cæsar?’

He looked at her. A spasm of anguish had made her livid, and she was waiting, her hands trembling with fear.

Then he dared to speak.

‘Well, mademoiselle, daddy died on Sunday, opening the hunting.’

She was so overwhelmed that she did not move. After several moments of silence, she murmured in an almost inaudible voice:

‘Oh, it’s not possible.’

Then suddenly, tears came to her eyes, and, raising her hands, she covered her face, and began to sob.

Then the boy turned his head, and seeing his mother in tears, howled; then, understanding that this sudden grief came from this unknown man, he rushed at Cæsar, seized his trousers with one hand, and with the other struck his thigh with all his force. And Cæsar remained bewildered, touched, between this woman who was weeping for his father, and this child who was defending his mother. He felt himself overcome by emotion, his eyes swollen by grief, and to save his face he began to speak.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the misfortune happened on Sunday morning about eight o’clock—’ And he recounted, just as if she were listening, not forgetting a single detail, telling all the slightest things with a peasant’s fondness for minutiæ. And the little boy went on striking him, kicking him this time on the ankles with his feet.

When he came to the moment when Hautot Senior had spoken of her, she heard her name, uncovered her face, and asked:

‘Pardon me, I was not following you, I would very much like to know—if it wouldn’t bother you to begin again.’

He began again in the same words:

‘The misfortune happened on Sunday morning about eight o’clock—’

He told her everything, at length, with pauses, stops, reflections of his own from time to time. She listened greedily, seeing with her woman’s nervous sensibility all the sudden twists of fortune that he recounted, and trembling with horror, ejaculating ‘Oh, my God!’ sometimes. The little boy, thinking her soothed, had stopped hitting Cæsar to take his mother’s hand, and he was listening also as if he understood.