"Eggs with chickens inside, perhaps!"
"We don't drink our wine, do we? We sell it!"
"It's jolly convenient not to do a blasted thing and be made warm and comfortable, while your children are toiling and moiling!"
The notary, who had heard the same thing often enough before, continued unmoved:
"All that is no argument. Come, come, Hyacinthe, sit down, will you? You're keeping out the light; you're a perfect nuisance! So that's settled, isn't it, all of you? You will pay the dues in kind, because otherwise you would become a by-word. We have, therefore, only to discuss the amount of the allowance."
Delhomme at length indicated that he had something to say. Everybody having resumed his place, he began slowly, amid general attention:
"Excuse me; what the father asks seems fair: he might be allowed eight hundred francs on the ground that he could let the property for eight hundred francs—only we don't reckon like that on our side. He is not letting us the land, but giving it to us, and what we have to calculate is: how much do he and his wife require to live on? That is all. How much do they require to live on?"
"That is, certainly," chimed in the notary, "the usual basis of calculation."
Another endless dispute set in. The two old folks' lives were dissected, exposed, and discussed, need by need. Bread, vegetables, and meat were weighed out; clothing appraised, linen and woollen, to the utmost farthing; even such trivial luxuries as the father's tobacco—cut down, after interminable recriminations, from two sous a day to one—were not beneath notice. When people were beyond work, they ought to reduce their expenditure. The mother, again; could she not do without her black coffee? It was like their twelve-year-old dog, who ate, and ate, and made no return; he ought to have had a bullet put through his head long ago! The calculation was no sooner finished than it was begun all over again, on the chance of finding some other item to suppress: two shirts or six handkerchiefs in the year. And thus, by cutting closer and closer, by pinching and scraping in the paltriest matters, they got down to five hundred and fifty odd francs, which left the children in a state of uncontrollable agitation, for they had set their hearts upon not giving more than five hundred.
Fanny, however, was growing tired. She was not a bad sort, having more of the milk of human kindness than the men, and not yet having had her heart or her skin hardened by rough life in the open air. Accordingly she spoke of making an end of it, and resigned herself to some concessions. Hyacinthe, for his part, shrugged his shoulders, in a most liberal, not to say maudlin mood; ready to offer, out of his own share, any little balance which, be it remarked, he would never have paid.