At that very moment Rosalie reduced them all to silence by murmuring: ‘See! there he is, the Philosopher.’
Jeanbernat was, indeed, just entering the graveyard. He walked straight to the group that stood around Albine’s grave; and he stepped along with so lithe, so springy a gait, that none of them heard him coming. When he was close to them, he remained for a moment behind Brother Archangias and seemed to fix his eyes, for an instant, on the nape of the Brother’s neck. Then, just as the Abbé Mouret was finishing the office, he calmly drew a knife from his pocket, opened it, and with a single cut sliced off the Brother’s right ear.
There had been no time for any one to interfere. The Brother gave a terrible yell.
‘The left one will be for another occasion,’ said Jeanbernat quietly, as he threw the ear upon the ground. Then he went off.
So great and so general was the stupefaction that nobody followed him. Brother Archangias had dropped upon the heap of fresh soil which had been thrown out of the grave. He was staunching his bleeding wound with his handkerchief. One of the four peasants who had carried the coffin, wanted to lead him away, conduct him home; but he refused with a gesture and remained where he was, fierce and sullen, wishing to see Albine lowered into the pit.
‘There! it’s our turn at last!’ said Rosalie with a little sigh.
But Abbé Mouret still lingered by the grave, watching the bearers who were slipping cords under Albine’s coffin in order that they might let it down gently. The bell was still tolling; but La Teuse must have been getting tired, for it tolled irregularly, as though it were becoming a little irritated at the length of the ceremony.
The sun was growing hotter and the Solitaire’s shadow crept slowly over the grass and the grave mounds. When Abbé Mouret was obliged to step back in order to give the bearers room, his eyes lighted upon the marble tombstone of Abbé Caffin, that priest who also had loved, and who was now sleeping there so peacefully beneath the wild-flowers.
Then, all at once, even as the coffin descended, supported by the cords, whose knots made it strain and creak, a tremendous uproar arose in the poultry-yard on the other side of the wall. The goat began to bleat. The ducks, the geese, and the turkeys raised their loudest calls and flapped their wings. The fowls all cackled at once. The yellow cock, Alexander, crowed forth his trumpet notes. The rabbits could even be heard leaping in their hutches and shaking their wooden floors. And, above all this lifeful uproar of the animal creation, a loud laugh rang out. There was a rustling of skirts. Desirée, with her hair streaming, her arms bare to the elbows, and her face crimson with triumph, burst into sight, her hands resting upon the coping of the wall. She had doubtless climbed upon the manure-heap.
‘Serge! Serge!’ she cried.