‘Ah! you must be hungry. You’re going to eat a morsel.’

‘No, thanks,’ he said, ‘I’m not hungry. I’m in too great torment.’

She answered:

‘In spite of sorrow, we must live. You won’t refuse me that! And you will stay a little longer. When you are gone, I don’t know what will become of me.’

He yielded, after some more resistance, and sitting with his back to the fire, opposite her, he ate a plateful of the tripe which was crackling on the stove, and drank a glass of red wine. But he did not allow her to uncork the white wine.

Several times he wiped the little boy’s mouth, who had smeared all his chin with sauce.

As he rose to go away, he asked:

‘When would you like me to come back to speak of our business, Mademoiselle Donet?’

‘If it’s all the same to you, next Thursday, Mr. Cæsar. That way I would lose no time. I always have my Thursdays free.’

‘That suits me, next Thursday.’

‘You will come for lunch, won’t you?’

‘Oh, as to that, I can’t promise.’

‘Because it’s easier to talk eating. We’ve more time too.’

‘Oh, well, all right. Twelve o’clock, then.’

And he went away, after kissing little Émile again, and pressing Mademoiselle Donet’s hand.

III

The week seemed long to Cæsar Hautot. He had never been alone, and the isolation appeared intolerable to him. Up to then he had lived beside his father, like his shadow, following him to the fields, surveying the execution of his orders, and when he had left him for some time, he found him again at dinner. They passed every evening smoking their pipes opposite one another, talking of horses, cows or sheep, and the handclasp which they exchanged at waking seemed the exchange of a deep family affection.

Now Cæsar was alone. He wandered through the autumn work in the fields, always expecting to see appear at the edge of the plain the tall gesticulating silhouette of his father. To kill the time, he went over to his neighbours, told the story of the accident to all those who had not heard it, repeated it sometimes to the others. Then, at the end of his occupations and his thoughts, he would sit at the side of the road, and ask himself if this kind of life was going to last a long time.

Often he thought of Mademoiselle Donet. He had found her satisfactory, a gentle, good woman as his father had said—yes, a fine woman, assuredly a fine woman. He was resolved to do the thing in style and to give her two thousand francs income on a capital settled on the child. He even felt a certain pleasure in thinking that he was going to see her again the following Thursday, and arrange that with her. And then the idea of this brother, of this little fellow of five, who was his father’s son, worried him, annoyed him a little, and at the same time warmed his heart. It was a kind of family he had there in that little clandestine urchin who would never call himself Hautot, a family that he could take up or leave at his pleasure, but which recalled his father.