"Are there any arrangements that you would like to make?" he asked.
It did not seem as though Françoise heard him. Her eyes were closed, and her face was quite expressionless.
"If anything happened to you, you know, your sister would take everything. The paper is still there in the drawer."
He brought the sheet of stamped paper to her, and then continued, in a voice that grew more and more embarrassed:
"Would you like me to help you? Are you strong enough to write, do you think? I'm not thinking about myself; but I only fancied that you wouldn't like those folks who have treated you so badly to have anything you left behind."
Françoise's eyelids trembled slightly, proving to Jean that she had heard him. So she must still be averse to making a will! He was quite astounded; he could not understand it at all. Probably Françoise, herself, could not have explained why she persisted in thus lying like a corpse, before the time had come for her to be boxed-up within four boards. But the land and the house did not belong to this man, who had come athwart her life like some mere passer-by. She owed him nothing; the child would go away with herself. By what right should the property be taken away from the family? Her obstinate, childish ideas of justice protested against such a thing. This is mine, that is yours; let us each take our own and say good-bye! However, other thoughts besides these were vaguely floating through her mind. Her sister Lise seemed far away from her—lost in the distance—and it was Buteau alone who seemed really present to her; Buteau whom, in spite of all his ill-treatment, she pardoned and loved and longed for.
Jean was getting vexed. The desire for the soil was now gaining hold of him, too, and embittering his mind. He raised Françoise in bed, and attempted to get her into a sitting position and to put a pen between her fingers.
"Come now," he said, "see if you can't manage it. You can't like those scamps better than me, and want them to have everything!"
Then Françoise at last opened her eyes, and the look that she turned upon Jean quite stupefied him. She knew that she was going to die, and her big, widely-opened eyes were full of hopeless despair. Why was he torturing her like this? they seemed to say. She could not, and she would not! Besides, it was her own affair. A low moan of pain was the only sound that escaped her lips. Then she fell back again, her eyelids closed, and her head lay rigid and motionless on the pillow.
Ashamed of his unkind persistence, Jean now felt so miserable and confused that he was still standing there with the sheet of stamped paper in his hand when La Grande came back into the room. She saw it, and knew what it meant; and at once took Jean aside to inquire if Françoise had made a will. He stammered out that he had just been going to conceal the paper to prevent any one bothering his wife about it, a course which La Grande seemed to approve of, for she was on the Buteaus' side, foreseeing all kinds of rows and abominable scenes if they succeeded in inheriting the property. Then, seating herself in front of the table, and recommencing her knitting, she continued: