Her sister's persistent silence and contemptuous air now so thoroughly enraged her that she lost all control over herself, and rushed up to her, clenching her fists.
"So you think you can flout us as you please, do you, hussy? I am your elder sister, and I'll teach you to treat me with proper respect; and I'll make you go down on your knees and beg my pardon for all your impertinence to me!"
She was now standing in front of Françoise, mad with hate and anger, hesitating whether she should kill her sister with her fists, or whether she should kick her to death or knock out her brains with a stone.
"Down on your knees, hussy, down on your knees!"
Still persisting in her silence, Françoise now spat in her sister's face, just as she had done on the evening of the ejectment. Lise then broke out into a roar, but Buteau immediately interposed, and thrust her violently aside.
"Get away!" he said; "this is my business."
Ah, yes, she would gladly get away, and leave him to settle the matter. He was at perfect liberty to wring her sister's neck or break her back; he might cut her up and give her flesh to the dogs, or he might make her his drab; and, so far from trying to prevent him, she would do all she could to help him. She now braced herself up and glanced round her, keeping watch so that no one should come and interfere with whatever her husband chose to do. The vast grey plain stretched out beneath the gloomy sky, and not a single human being was in view.
"Now's the time! There's no one in sight!"
Buteau then stepped up to Françoise; and, as the young woman saw him advancing with stern-set face and stiff-braced arms, she thought he was going to thrash her. She still held her scythe, but she began to tremble, and Buteau seizing hold of the implement by the handle, tore it from her and tossed it into the lucern. Her only means of escaping him was by stepping backwards. She continued doing so till she reached the adjoining field, making for the rick which stood there, as though she hoped to use it in some way as a protecting rampart. Buteau followed her up quite leisurely; and he, on his part, seemed to be wishing to drive her towards the rick. His arms were slightly extended, and his face was broadened by a silent grin which disclosed his gums. Suddenly it flashed upon Françoise that he did not mean to thrash her. No, it was something very different that he meant; that something which she had so long refused him. She now began to tremble still more violently, and she felt as though all her strength were failing her; she who had always so valiantly resisted and belaboured him, and sworn that he should never gain his ends! But she was no longer the high-spirited girl she had been; she had just completed her twenty-third year, on Saint Martin's Day, and she was now a woman, with the fresh bloom already taken off her by hard work, though her lips were still red and her eyes as big as crown-pieces. She felt such a sensation of flushed languor that her limbs seemed quite enervated and lifeless.
Buteau, still continuing to force her backwards, at last spoke in a deep, excited voice.