"Certainly I can, dad! We'll squeeze together to find a corner for you. It will bring us luck, too. Ah, I should be a rich man, if merely a good heart were needed to make one so!"
Françoise and Jean had slowly entered the empty house. The night was closing in, and the rooms lay silent in the mournful, fading light. Everything there was very old. This patrimonial roof had sheltered the toil and wretchedness of three centuries, and there was an air of solemnity about the place such as dwells in the gloom of an ancient village church. The doors were still standing open. It seemed as though a storm of wind had blown through the house; the chairs lay overturned on the ground amid the general chaos of the removal. The place looked as though it were dead.
Françoise slowly went over it, examining every corner. Vague recollections and confused sensations awoke in her as she proceeded. In that spot she had played as a child. It was in the kitchen, near that table, that her father had died. As she stood in the bedroom, in front of the bed stripped of its mattress, she thought of Lise and Buteau, and of the nights when they had embraced each other so vigorously that she could hear the sound of their panting breath through the ceiling. Was she even now to be tormented by them? She felt as though Buteau were still there. Here he had seized hold of her one night, and she had bitten him. And here again, too, and here. There was not a corner in the whole house that did not suggest some painful recollection.
Then as Françoise turned round, she started at seeing Jean. What was this stranger doing in the house? There was an air of constraint about him, as though he were on a visit, and did not like to take the liberty of touching anything. She felt overwhelmed with a feeling of solitude, and grew sick at heart to find that her victory had not made her more joyful. She had fancied she would enter the house, full of happiness, triumphant in the thought of having ejected her sister; but now the house afforded her no pleasure, and her heart was heavy and ill at ease. Perhaps it was the dying day that was filling her with melancholy!
When the night had quite fallen, she and her husband were still wandering from one room to another in the darkness, without having had the courage even to light a candle.
Presently, however, a noise brought them back into the kitchen, and they became merry on recognising Gédéon, who had effected an entrance after his usual custom, and had his head inside the side-board, which had been left open. Close by, inside the stable, they could hear old La Coliche lowing.
Then Jean, taking Françoise in his arms, kissed her tenderly, as though to say that, despite everything, they would be happy.