Drawing herself up, Palmyre, quite bewildered, gave vent to her passion and pain:
"Well, and supposing that it were true," she exclaimed, "what the devil is it to you? The poor boy hasn't so happy a life as it is."
A couple of tears rolled down her cheeks, so wrung was she by her feeling of motherhood for the cripple. After earning him his bread, supposing she did accord him what others refused him, why it cost them nothing! With the darkened intellect of clod-like beings, these pariahs and outcasts of love would have been at a loss to relate how the thing had been brought about. An instinctive approach without deliberate consent, he stung by desire, she passively yielding to his purpose; thus it had begun. Then, too, there was the happiness of their feeling warmer, in that miserable hovel where they both shivered with the cold.
"She is right, what is it to us?" resumed Jean, in his grave, kindly way, touched to see her in such agitation. "It's their own concern and nobody else's."
Besides, another circumstance took up their attention. Hyacinthe had just come down from the Château, the old cellar in which he dwelt amid the brushwood, half-way up the hill; and from the top of the road he was calling for La Trouille with all his might, cursing and bawling out that his drab of a daughter had disappeared two hours ago, without troubling her head about their evening meal.
"Your daughter," cried Jean to him, "is under the willows with Victor."
Hyacinthe raised both his hands to heaven.
"Oh, the cursed troll! Bringing dishonour upon me! I'll go and fetch my whip."
He then ran back again to fetch the large horse-whip he kept hung up behind his door for use on these occasions.
La Trouille must have heard him, for there was a prolonged rustling under the leaves, as of some one escaping; and, two minutes later, Victor carelessly strolled back. He examined his scythe, and finally returned to his work. When Jean called over to him to ask if he had got the stomach-ache, he replied: