He looked round him for a little shade, but found none. The sun was beating down perpendicularly, and there was not so much as a bush to shelter them. At last he noticed that at the end of the field, in a sort of little ditch, some wheat which was still standing threw a brown streak of shadow.
"Hullo there, Palmyre!" cried he. "Don't you follow our example?"
She was fifty paces off, and replied in a stifled voice, which reached them like a whisper:
"No, no! I haven't time."
She was now the only worker left in all the glowing plain. If she didn't take her franc-and-a-half home with her at night-time, Hilarion would beat her; for he no longer confined himself to his accustomed ill-usage, but robbed her as well, that he might have money to buy brandy with. However, her strength was now forsaking her. Her flat figure, planed straight like a plank by sheer hard work, creaked as if it were about to snap at every fresh sheaf she picked up and bound. With ashen face, worn like some old copper coin, seemingly sixty years of age though actually but thirty-five, she let the burning sun drink up her life-blood in the despairing efforts she made, like a beast of burden about to fall and perish.
Buteau and Françoise had stretched themselves side by side. They were steaming with sweat, now that they had ceased to move about, and they lay in silence with closed eyes. A leaden slumber instantly weighed them down; they slept for an hour; and the perspiration poured unceasingly from their limbs in the motionless, heavy, furnace-like atmosphere. When Françoise opened her eyes again, she saw Buteau lying on his side, watching her with the jaundiced look that had disturbed her for some time past. She re-closed her eyelids, and pretended to go to sleep again. Without his having yet spoken to her, she knew well enough that he desired her, now that she had grown up, and was quite a woman. The idea maddened her. Would he dare, the swine! he whom she heard rioting with her sister every night? Never before had his lustful manner so exasperated her. Would he dare? And she awaited his addresses, unconsciously wishing for them, but resolved, if he touched her, to strangle him.
As she closed her eyes Buteau suddenly seized hold of her.
"You swine! you swine!" she stammered, repulsing him.
He chuckled with a wild look, and whispered:
"Stupid! Keep still! I tell you they're asleep; no one is looking."