He sprang to his feet and waved his book about with a terrible gesture. But the doctor caught hold of his hands and clasped them within his own, beseeching him to be calm. And for a long time he talked to him, saying all that he had upon his mind. He blamed himself, made fragmentary confessions of his fault, and vaguely hinted at those who had killed Albine.
‘Listen,’ he said in conclusion, ‘she is yours no longer; you must give her up.’
But Jeanbernat shook his head, and again waved his hand in token of refusal. However, his obstinate resolution was shaken; and at last he said:
‘Well, well, let them take her, and may she break their arms for them! I only wish that she could rise up out of the ground and kill them all with fright.... By the way. I have a little business to settle over there. I will go to-morrow.... Good-bye, then, doctor. The hole will do for me.’
And, when the doctor had left, he again sat down by the dead girl’s side, and gravely resumed the perusal of his book.
XVI
That morning there was great commotion in the yard at the parsonage. The Artaud butcher had just slaughtered Matthew, the pig, in the shed. Desirée, quite enthusiastic about it all, had held Matthew’s feet, while he was being bled, kissing him on the back that he might feel the pain of the knife less, and telling him that it was absolutely necessary that he should be killed, now that he had got so fat. No one could cut off a goose’s neck with a single stroke of the hatchet more unconcernedly than she could, or gash open a fowl’s throat with a pair of scissors. However much she loved her charges, she looked upon their slaughter with great equanimity. It was quite necessary, she would say. It made room for the young ones who were growing up. And that morning she was very gay.
‘Mademoiselle,’ grumbled La Teuse every minute, ‘you will end by making yourself ill. There is no sense in working yourself up into such a state, just because a pig has been slaughtered. You are as red as if you had been dancing a whole night.’
But Desirée only clapped her hands and turned away and bustled about again. La Teuse, for her part, complained that her legs were sinking under her. Since six o’clock in the morning her big carcass had been perpetually rolling between the kitchen and the yard, for she had black puddings to make. It was she who had whisked the blood in two large earthenware pans, and she had thought that she would never get finished, since mademoiselle was for ever calling her away for mere nothings.