Marthe was obliged to stop for a moment or two to speak to her uncle, and to explain to him that she was not well, and could not stay to dine with him. He had expressed his determination to kill a fowl for the meal.
'Well,' he said at last, 'I'll kill it all the same, and you shall take it away with you.'
Then he hurried off to kill the fowl at once. When he came back with it, he laid it on a stone table in front of the house, and exclaimed with an expression of satisfaction:
'Isn't it a plump, splendid fellow?'
At the moment of Marthe's arrival Macquart had been on the point of drinking a bottle of wine under the shade of his mulberry trees, in company with a tall thin young fellow, dressed entirely in grey. He persuaded the two women to leave the carriage and sit down beside him for a time, bringing them chairs, and doing the honours of his house with a snigger of satisfaction.
'I have a very nice little place here, haven't I? My mulberries are very fine ones. In the summer I smoke my pipe out here in the fresh air. In the winter I sit down yonder with my back to the wall in the sun. Do you see my vegetables? The fowl-house is at the bottom of the garden. I have another strip of ground as well, behind the house, where I grow potatoes and lucern. I am getting old now, worse luck, and it's quite time that I should enjoy myself a little.'
He rubbed his hands together and gently wagged his head, as he cast an affectionate glance over his little estate. Then some thought seemed to sadden him.
'Have you seen your father lately?' he abruptly asked. 'Rougon isn't very amiable, you know. That cornfield over yonder to the left is for sale. If he had been willing we might have bought it. What would it have been for a man of his means? A paltry three thousand francs is all that is asked, but he refuses to have anything to do with it. The last time I went to see him he even made your mother tell me that he wasn't at home. But, you'll see, it will be all the worse for them in the end.'
He wagged his head and indulged in his unpleasant laugh, as he repeated:
'Yes, yes; it will be all the worse for them.'