"There, take your filthy things! They stink so vilely that they'd have given us all some disease if they'd stayed any longer in the house!"
Jean picked them up and went off. However, when he got out of the yard, and once more found himself on the high-road, he turned round and shook his fists at the house, shouting out a single word which reverberated in the surrounding silence: "Murderers!"
Then he disappeared in the black darkness.
Buteau was standing in a state of terrified consternation, for he had heard what old Fouan had growled out, and Jean's word had penetrated his heart like a bullet. What was in store for him? Would the gendarmes be down upon him, now when he had just fancied that the secret of Françoise's death would be buried for ever with her in her coffin? When he had seen her lowered into her grave in the morning he had begun to breathe freely again, and yet now it was evident that the old fellow knew everything! Was it possible that he had been shamming idiocy for the sake of playing the spy upon them? This last thought completed Buteau's terrified alarm, and he was so completely upset when he went back into the house that he left half of his plateful of soup untouched. Lise, to whom he had told what had happened, shivered and trembled, and could eat no more than he did.
They had looked forward to keeping high festival upon this their first night in the reconquered house, but it was a night of abominable unhappiness. They had put Laure and Jules to bed on a mattress in front of the chest of drawers, pending an opportunity to arrange other accommodation; and the children were still wide awake when they themselves got into bed, after blowing out the candle. But they could not sleep, they tossed about as though they were on a red-hot gridiron. At last they began to talk to each other in muttered tones. Oh, what a burden the old man had become, now that he had fallen into his dotage! It was really more than they could bear, such an expense he was! No one could believe the quantity of bread he swallowed! And then, too, he was so greedy, seizing the meat in his fingers, and spilling the wine on his beard, and making such a dirty mess of himself that one felt ill merely on looking at him. Besides all that, he was constantly going about with his trousers disarranged; a sad ending for a man who had once been as cleanly and as respectable as any of his fellows. Really, since he seemed determined not to go off of his own accord, it made one feel inclined to make an end of him with a pick-axe.
"When one thinks that a breath would blow him over!" muttered Buteau. "Ah! I really believe that he sticks on just for the sake of annoying us! Those gibbering old idiots, the less good they are the more closely they hug on to life! I don't believe he will ever die, ever!"
Then Lise, lying on her back, replied:
"It's a pity he came here. He'll feel too comfortable, and be inclined to take a fresh lease of life. If I had been a praying woman I should have prayed that he might not be allowed to pass a single night in the house."
Neither of them spoke of the real source of their anxiety, of the old man's knowledge of their secret, and the possibility of his betraying them, even without meaning to do so. That was the bother. Although he was an expense and a nuisance, and prevented them from enjoying the dividends of the stolen scrip at their ease, they had still put up with his presence for a long time. But now that a word from him might endanger their necks, all limits of toleration were past. Something definite would have to de done.