"How conceited that Cœlina used to be about her Berthe's delicate complexion!" said Flore to Madame Bécu, standing up and looking at Madame Macqueron in the adjoining vineyard; "why, the girl's face is now getting dreadfully yellow and shrunken."
"Yes," replied Madame Bécu, "that comes of not marrying the girl! They were wrong not to give her to the wheelwright's son. And they tell me, indeed, that she has done herself harm by bad habits."
Then bending double she went on cutting off the bunches.
"All that, however," she presently continued, "does not prevent the schoolmaster from being constantly about the place."
"Oh, that Lequeu," cried Flore; "he would grope with his nose in the mud if he thought he could pick up a copper or two! See, there he is coming to help them, the stupid fool!"
Then they relapsed into silence. Victor, who had returned from his regiment barely a fortnight before, was taking their baskets and emptying them into the one which Delphin carried on his back. That cunning snake, Lengaigne, had hired Delphin for the vintage, pretending that his own presence was necessary at the shop. The youngster, who had never left Rognes, gaped with amazement at sight of Victor, who had assumed a swaggering, rollicking manner; being, moreover, wonderfully altered in appearance, with his moustache and his little tuft of beard, his bumptious ways, and his forage-cap, which he still made a point of wearing. However, he was sorely mistaken if he thought that he was an object of envy to his companion; all his stories of barrack-life, and his exaggerated lying tales of merry-making, and girls, and drinking bouts, were quite thrown away. The young peasant shook his head in dazed stupefaction, and without feeling in the least attracted. To leave his nook would be paying too high a price for all those fine pleasures, he thought. He had already twice refused to go and make his fortune in a restaurant at Chartres with Nénesse.
"But when are you going to be a soldier, you whipper-snapper?" Victor asked.
"What? I a soldier! No, no! I shall draw a lucky number!"
The contemptuous Victor could not get any other answer from him. What a coward, he thought, was this big hulking fellow with the build of a Cossack! As he talked he went on emptying the women's baskets into the one which Delphin carried, and the young peasant did not so much as bend under the load. Then Victor pointed to Berthe, and joked about her in such a way that Delphin burst out into a fit of laughter, the basket on his back being almost capsized. As he went down the hill and emptied the grapes into one of the casks, he could still be heard almost choking with merriment.