Thus La Beauce spread her verdure before him, from November to July, from the moment when the green tips first emerged to that when the lofty stalks turned yellow. Wishing to have the country under his eye without leaving the house, he unbarred the kitchen window—the rear one, that looked out on the plain—and there he used to station himself and survey ten leagues of country: an immense broad bare expanse, stretching under the vaulted skies. Not a single tree; nothing but the telegraph posts of the Châteaudun and Orleans road, running on unswervingly till they were lost to sight. At first there was a greenish, scarcely perceptible shade, peeping just above the soil of the large squares of brown earth. Then this soft green strengthened into velvet stretches, almost uniform in tint. Then, as the stems grew taller and thicker, each plant developed its own tinge of colour. He distinguished from afar the yellowish green of the wheat, the bluish green of the oats, the greyish green of the barley; infinite expanses of ground spread out in all directions, amid glowing patches of crimson trifolium. It was the time when La Beauce is fair and young, thus clothed about with spring, and smooth and cool to the eye in her monotony. The stalks grew taller; and there was then one deep, rolling, boundless sea of cereals. At morn, in the fine weather, a pink mist used to rise. As the sun climbed in the limpid atmosphere a breeze would blow in large regular puffs, furrowing the fields with a swell that started on the horizon, and rolled along till it died away in the opposite direction. As the plants swayed, their colour became paler; a moiré-like effect—waterings of the shade of old gold—rippled over the wheat; the oats took a bluish hue; while the barley quivered with violet lights. Undulation continually succeeded undulation; a ceaseless ebb would set in under the winds from the offing. When evening fell, the fronts of distant buildings, brightly lit, showed like white sails; steeples looked like masts, uprising behind folds in the surface of the plain. It grew cold; the gloom enhanced the damp and the murmuring character of the ocean-like prospect; a distant plantation became indistinct, and looked like the dim coast-line of some continent.
In the bad weather, also, Buteau gazed out over La Beauce, thus spread out at his feet, just as the fisher gazes from his cliff over the raging sea, when the tempest is robbing him of his livelihood. He saw a violent storm; a dark cloud shedding a livid, leaden light, and red flashes glowing over the grass-tips amid claps of thunder. He saw a waterspout come from more than six leagues away; at first a thin, tawny cloud twisted like a rope, then a howling mass galloping on like a monster; then, as it passed away, the crops could be seen torn up, and everything trampled upon, broken, and razed along a track two miles wide. His own fields had escaped, and he pitied the disasters of others with inward chuckles of delight. As the wheat grew, his enjoyment increased. A grey islet formed by a village had disappeared on the horizon behind the rising level of verdure. There only remained the roofs of La Borderie which, in their turn, were submerged. A mill, with its sails, remained alone like a waif. On all sides there was corn—an encroaching, overflowing sea of corn, covering the earth with its immensity of verdure.
"God a' mercy!" said he, every evening, as he sat down to table; "if the summer's not too dry, we shall never be at a loss for bread."
The Buteaus had established themselves in their new home. The married pair had taken the large room downstairs, and Françoise, above them, put up with a little room, formerly occupied by old Mouche, which had been scoured and furnished with a fold-up bedstead, an old chest of drawers, a table and two chairs. She still busied herself with her cows, and led much the same life as of old. However, although all was outwardly calm, there was a dormant source of disagreement: that question of dividing the property between the two sisters, which had remained in abeyance. On the day after the marriage of the elder girl, old Fouan, as guardian of the younger one, had pressed for the division of the property, so as to avoid all unpleasantness in the future. But Buteau had protested. What was the good? Françoise was too young; she didn't want her land. Wasn't everything just as before? She lived with her sister still, she was boarded and clothed. In short, she certainly could have no cause of complaint. At all these reasons the old man shook his head. No one knew what might happen, the best thing to do was to settle everything in due form; and the girl herself was anxious to know what her share would consist of, though that point being settled she was ready to leave it in charge of her brother-in-law. The latter, however, had his own way, by means of his genial, obstinate, humbugging bluffness. Nothing further was said, and he proclaimed everywhere what a happy, charming, domestic mode of life theirs was.
"There's nothing like having a good understanding with one another!" said he.
In point of fact there had not been any quarrel between the two sisters, nor any domestic disagreement during the first ten months; but then matters gradually became unpleasant. It started with displays of bad temper. There were fits of sulking, and at last loud words were exchanged; and, beneath it all, the fermenting question of "mine" and "thine" was at its ravaging work, gradually destroying affection.
Certainly Lise and Françoise no longer loved one another as tenderly as of old. No one now met them with their arms round each other's waists, walking out in the gloaming wrapped in the same shawl. A separation had come between them; a coolness was growing up. Since there had been a man in the house, it seemed to Françoise that her sister had been taken from her. She who once had shared everything with Lise, had no share in this man; and he had thus become a something foreign, an obstacle shutting her out from the heart in which she had lived alone. All this, moreover, had a material side. She used to leave without kissing her elder sister when Buteau did so, feeling as shocked as if some one had drunk out of her glass. In matters of ownership, she kept to her childish notions with passionate earnestness. "This is mine, that is yours;" and, as her sister belonged thenceforward to another, she let her go. But she wanted what was her own, one-half of the land and of the house.
This wrath of hers was also caused by another matter which she herself could not have explained. There had, so far, been nothing to disturb her in the house, where love scenes had been unknown, a chill having fallen upon the place when old Mouche became a widower. But now it was inhabited by a brutal man with the instincts of his sex, who had always been in the habit of running after the girls in the fields, and whose unrestrained dalliance with her sister, which she was obliged to be cognisant of, made her feel alike disgusted and exasperated. During the daytime she preferred to go out, and let them indulge in their dirty tricks unrestrained. In the evening, if they began laughing on getting up from table, she called to them to wait till she had finished washing up the dishes. And then she rushed madly to her room, slamming the doors and muttering insults: "The beasts! The beasts!" between her clenched teeth. In spite of all, she still fancied that she could hear what was going on below her, downstairs. With her head buried in the pillow, and with the sheets drawn up to her eyes, she grew hot and feverish; her hearing and her sight were haunted by hallucinations, and her revolting puberty made her suffer.
The worst of it was that Buteau, seeing so much of her attention given to these matters, used to chaff her about them by way of a joke. Goodness gracious! what next? What would she say when she had to go through the same thing herself? Lise, too, used to laugh, seeing nothing whatever wrong about it; and then Buteau would explain his ideas on the subject. The pleasure cost nothing, and it was perfectly lawful to indulge in it. But no children; no, no! No more of them! There was always too much of that sort of thing before marriage; people were so stupid. Thus little Jules had made his appearance, for instance; a confounded nuisance, which had to be put up with all the same. But when folks were married, they sobered down. He'd rather be a capon than have any more children. A likely thing! Bringing another mouth into a house where there wasn't too much to eat as it was! And so he kept constantly on the alert with regard to his wife, who was so plump, the hussy! that she'd get in the family-way in a trice if he'd only let her. He'd be glad to reap as much corn as the full womb of the earth could be made to yield; but no babies! They had done with children for ever!
Amidst these constant details, this copulation that rustled audibly near her, as it were, Françoise's agitation kept increasing. Folks asserted that her temper was changing; and she did yield to inexplicable moods which abruptly changed: first merry, then sad, and then surly and spiteful. In the morning she watched Buteau with a black look, whenever he unceremoniously crossed the kitchen, half undressed. Quarrels, too, broke out between herself and her sister about the most trivial matters—a cup that she had just broken, for instance. Wasn't the cup hers as well, half of it at all events? Couldn't she break half of everything, if she liked? On these questions of ownership their disputes always became most bitter, entailing grudges that lasted days and days.