"Well, one thing must be clearly understood: I shall be forced to cut up the calf."
"Who cares a curse for the calf? Save our cow, Monsieur Patoir, save her!"
Then the veterinary, who had brought a large blue apron with him, borrowed a pair of canvas trousers. Stripping himself quite naked in a corner, behind Rougette, he slipped on the trousers, and then tied the apron round his loins. When he re-appeared in this scanty costume, with his genial bull-dog face and his fat and dumpy figure, La Coliche lifted her head and, no doubt from astonishment, ceased to complain. However, no one even smiled, so wrung with anxiety was every heart.
"Light some candles!" said Patoir.
He set four on the ground, and then lay down flat on his stomach in the straw, behind the cow, who was now unable to get up. For a moment he remained flat, examining her. Near by he had placed a little box, and, having raised himself on his elbow, he was taking a bistoury out of it, when a husky groan startled him, and he at once assumed a sitting posture.
"What, still there, my stout matron? Well, I thought that couldn't be the cow!"
It was Lise, seized with the final pangs.
"For goodness sake go and get your business over in your own room, and leave me to do mine here! It disturbs me; it acts on my nerves, 'pon my honour it does, to hear you straining behind me. Come, come! It's not common sense! Take her away, the rest of you!"
La Frimat and La Bécu decided to take her each by an arm and lead her to her room. She surrendered herself, no longer having the strength to resist. But on crossing the kitchen, where a solitary candle was burning, she asked to have all the doors left open, with the idea that she would thus not be so far off. La Frimat had already prepared the bed of anguish according to rural custom—a simple sheet spread out in the middle of the room over a truss of straw, and three chairs turned down. Lise squatted down and stretched herself, with her back against one chair and one leg against each of the others. She was not even undressed.
Buteau and Françoise had remained in the cow-house to light Patoir; they squatted on their heels, each holding a candle, while the veterinary, again stretched out on his stomach, cut a section round the left ham with his bistoury. He loosened the skin, and then pulled at the calf's shoulder, which came away. Françoise, pale and faint, dropped her candle and fled with a shriek.