"You know very well that all is not over between us. This time I mean to succeed!"
He had now managed to bring her to a stand against the rick; and he abruptly took her by the shoulders and threw her upon her back. Dazed and enervated though she was, for a moment or two she began to struggle and fight, instinctively prompted thereto by her old habits of resistance. Buteau, however, dodged her kicks.
"What difference can it make to you, you silly idiot?" said he. "You needn't be afraid!"
Françoise now burst into tears, and seemed taken with a sort of fit. Though she made no further effort to defend herself, she was so violently shaken by nervous contortions that Buteau could not succeed in his purpose. His anger at being thus foiled maddened him, and, turning towards his wife, he cried out:
"You damned helpless idiot, what are you standing staring there for. Come and help me!"
Lise had remained standing bolt upright some ten yards away, without ever stirring; now scanning the distance to see if any one was coming, and now glancing at Françoise and Buteau, without any sign of feeling on her face. When her husband called her, she did not evince the slightest hesitation, but strode up to him, and seizing hold of her sister, she sat down upon her as heavily as if she wanted to crush her. Finally Buteau proved victorious. He was just rising when old Fouan popped out his head from behind the rick, where he had sought shelter from the cold. The old man had seen all, and it evidently frightened him, for he at once concealed himself behind the straw again.
Buteau having risen to his feet, Lise looked at him keenly. In his eagerness he had forgotten all about the three signs of the cross, and the Ave repeated backwards. His wife stood frenzied with wild indignation. It was merely for his own pleasure that he done the deed!
Françoise, however, left him no time for explanations. For a moment she had remained lying motionless on the ground, as though she had fainted beneath a sensation such as she had never before experienced. The truth had suddenly dawned upon her. She loved Buteau! She never had, and never would, love any other. This discovery filled her with shame, and she was angered against herself at finding how false she was to her own ingrained ideas of justice. A man who did not belong to her! A man who belonged to that sister whom she now so hated! The only man in the world whom she could not possess without being false to her own oath!
Springing wildly to her feet, with her hair dishevelled and her clothes all disarranged, she spat out the anger that was raging within her in spasmodic bursts of abuse.
"You filthy swine! Yes, both of you! you're both filthy swine! You have ruined and destroyed me! People have been guillotined for doing less than you've done! I will tell Jean, you filthy swine, and he'll settle your accounts for you!"