As for Fouan, he poured the story of his wrongs into the ears of everybody he came across, waylaying every one he could, and bemoaning his piteous lot to them. In this way, one morning, he went into his niece's yard to pour out his troubles to Françoise and Jean.
Françoise was helping her husband to load a cart with manure. While the latter stood in the dung-hole and threw the manure into the vehicle with his pitchfork, Françoise, standing aloft, trampled it down with her feet to compress it.
The old man stood leaning on his stick in front of them, and began bewailing his sad fate.
"I'm dreadfully harassed about this money of mine, you know, which they have taken from me and won't give me back. What should you do if you were in my place?"
Françoise let him repeat the question three times before she said anything in reply. She was annoyed at his coming to talk to her in this way, and received him coldly, being anxious to avoid all cause of quarrel with the Buteaus.
"Well, uncle," she answered at last, "it's really no business of ours, you know. We are only too glad to have finished with our own troubles."
Then turning her back upon him, she continued treading down the dung which rose around her up to her thighs. As her husband went on tossing up forkful after forkful, she all but vanished amid the steamy smoke from the disturbed manure, and yet she felt at ease, with her heart in the right place, amid the asphyxiating fumes.
"I'm not mad; that can be seen, can't it?" Fouan continued, not seeming to have heard Françoise. "They ought to give me back my money. Do you and Jean, now, think me capable of destroying it?"
Neither Françoise nor Jean said a word.
"I should, indeed, have to be mad to do that, and I'm not mad—you and your husband could bear witness to that, couldn't you?"