The girl was boldly staring at the young priest, scrutinising his white hands and slender, feminine neck, as if trying to make him redden. He, however, bluntly and with unruffled countenance, as if speaking of something quite indifferent, continued:
‘You know what I mean, Bambousse. She must get married.’
‘Oh, that’s it, is it?’ muttered the old man, with a bantering look. ‘Many thanks for the message. The Brichets sent you, didn’t they? Mother Brichet goes to mass, and so you give her a helping hand to marry her son—it’s all very fine. But, I’ve got nothing to do with that. It doesn’t suit me. That’s all.’
Thereupon the astonished priest represented to him that the scandal must be stopped, and that he ought to forgive Fortune, as the latter was willing to make reparation for his transgression, and that, lastly, his daughter’s reputation demanded a speedy marriage.
‘Ta, ta, ta,’ replied Bambousse, what a lot of words! I shall keep my daughter, please understand it. All that’s got nothing to do with me. That Fortune is a beggarly pauper, without a brass farthing. What an easy job, if one could marry a girl like that! At that rate we should have all the young things marrying off morning and night. Thank Heaven! I’m not worried about Rosalie: everybody knows what has happened; but it makes no difference. She can marry any one she chooses in the neighbourhood.’
‘But the child?’ interrupted the priest.
‘The child indeed! There’ll be time enough to think of that when it’s born.’
Rosalie, perceiving the turn the priest’s application was taking, now thought it proper to ram her fists into her eyes and whimper. And she even let herself fall upon the ground.
‘Shut up, will you, you hussy!’ howled her father in a rage. And he proceeded to revile her in the coarsest terms, which made her laugh silently behind her clenched fists.
‘You won’t shut up? won’t you? Just wait a minute then, you jade!’ continued old Bambousse. And thereupon he picked up a clod of earth and flung it at her. It burst upon her knot of hair, crumbling down her neck and smothering her in dust. Dizzy from the blow, she bounded to her feet and fled, sheltering her head between her hands. But Bambousse had time to fling two more clods at her, and if the first only grazed her left shoulder, the next caught her full on the base of the spine, with such force that she fell upon her knees.