Jean only shook his head sadly. He had been very gloomy ever since he believed that he had lost Françoise.
"Ah! there's some woman in the matter, I expect," continued the old man. "The confounded hussies, they ought all to have their necks wrung!"
Thereupon the giant-limbed Tron began to laugh with an innocent air.
"Ah!" he said, "it's only those who are past everything that say that."
"Do you mean to say that I am past everything?" exclaimed the shepherd, contemptuously. "When did you find that out? But there's one wench, my lad, whom it's best for you not to touch, or you may be sure that matters will have a bad ending."
This allusion to Tron's connection with Madame Jacqueline made the farm-hand blush up to his ears. Soulas had caught them together one morning in the barn behind some sacks of oats; and in his detestation of the ex-scullerymaid, who was now so stern and harsh towards her old pals, he had, after much deliberation, determined to open his master's eyes as to her conduct. However, at his first word, the farmer had looked at him with so angry an expression that he had said no more, resolving to remain silent, unless La Cognette forced him to extreme measures by bringing about his dismissal. The consequence was that they were now living together in a state of hostility: Soulas dreading that he might be turned away like a broken-down old beast of burden, and Jacqueline biding her time till her influence became sufficiently consolidated to induce Hourdequin, who was attached to his shepherd, to dismiss him. Throughout La Beauce nobody understood the art of sheep-grazing better than Soulas did. His flocks were well-fed and there was neither loss nor waste, the fields being clean shaved from one end to the other, without a blade of grass being left behind.
The old man, possessed by the propensity for talking which often leads those who live solitary lives to take any opportunity of unbosoming themselves, now continued:
"Ah, if my jade of a wife, before she managed to kill herself, hadn't put all my brass down her throat as fast as I earned it, I'd have taken myself off the farm of my own accord before now, so as to get away from the sight of so much beastliness. That Cognette has made a lot more money by her face than with her hands, and it's her looks, not her deserts, that have gained her her present position! Just to think of the master letting her lie in his dead wife's bed, and being so infatuated with her that he has ended by taking his meals alone with her, just as though she were his lawful wife! She'll turn us all out of the place, neck and crop, at the first opportunity, and the master himself into the bargain. A filthy sow who has wallowed with every dirty hog!"
At every sentence spoken by the old man, Tron clenched his fists more tightly. He was brimming over with suppressed rage, which was rendered the more terrible by his giant-like strength.
"There that will do!" he cried; "you'd better just shut up. If you hadn't got into your dotage, I'd have knocked you down before now. There's more decency in her little finger than there is in the whole of your old carcass."