There were five sallow spindled-shanked fellows, squatting on the ground, with large shears of shining steel. The shepherd passed the ewes over, ranging them on the ground like so many skin bottles, with their four feet tied together, and only just able to lift their heads and bleat. As soon as a shearer caught hold of one of them she became silent, and abandoned herself, blown out like a balloon by the thickness of her wool, which sweat and dust had coated with a hard black crust. Under the rapid shears, the animal came out from the fleece like a bare hand out of a dark glove, all pink and fresh, clad in the gleaming snowy inner wool. Held between the knees of a tall wizened man, one mother, set on her back, with her thighs apart, and her head erect and rigid, made exposure of her belly, which had the hidden whiteness, the quivering skin of an undressed person. The shearers earned three sous per head, and a good workman could shear twenty sheep a day.
Hourdequin, absorbed, was thinking that wool had fallen to eight sous a pound, and that he'd have to make haste and sell, or else it would get too dry, and lose in weight. The year before, congestion of the spleen had decimated the flocks of La Beauce. Everything was going from bad to worse; it meant ruin, bankruptcy, for grain had been falling more and more heavily every month. Once more a prey to agricultural worries, and feeling stifled in the yard, he left the farm and went to take a glance at his fields. His quarrels with La Cognette always ended thus. After swearing and clenching his fists, he gave way, oppressed by suffering, which was only relieved by the contemplation of the infinite green expanses of his wheat and oats.
Ah, how he loved that land of his! With a passion untainted by the keen avarice of the peasant; a sentimental, almost an intellectual, passion; for he felt her to be the common mother, who had given him his life and nourishment—to whom he would return. At first, when quite young, after being brought up upon her, his distaste for college, his impulse to burn his books and stop at the farm, had simply sprung from his free habits, his gay gallops over ploughed fields, his intoxicating open-air life amid the breezes of the plain. But later on, upon succeeding his father, he had loved the land like a lover; his love had ripened, as if he had thenceforward taken her in lawful wedlock to make her fruitful. That tenderness had grown and grown, until he now devoted to her his time, his money, his whole life, as to a good and fertile wife, whose caprices, whose treason even, he would condone. Many a time he flew into a rage when she proved shrewish, when, too damp or too dry, she consumed the seed without yielding a harvest. Then, he began to doubt, and at length accused himself as if he were an impotent or unskilful bridegroom: the fault must have been his if a child had not been born to her. Since then he had been haunted by new methods, had plunged into every innovation, regretting that he had been so lazy at college, and that he had not studied at one of those agricultural schools that he and his father used to make fun of. How many futile attempts; how many experiments ending in failure! And the machines that his servants put out of order; the chemical manure adulterated by the dealers! La Borderie had swallowed up his whole fortune, it now hardly brought him in bread and cheese, and he was expecting the agricultural crisis to finish him off. No matter; he would remain the prisoner of his own soil, and would bury his bones within it, after having kept it for wife up to the very last.
On that day, as soon as he got out of doors, he remembered his son, the captain. The two of them together might have achieved something fine! But he dismissed from his thoughts the memory of the fool who preferred trailing a sword! He had no child now; he would end his days in solitude. Then his neighbours came into his mind, more especially the Coquarts, some landowners who cultivated their farm of Saint-Juste—father, mother, three sons, and two daughters; and who succeeded scarcely better than he did. At La Chamade, the farmer, being near the end of his lease, had left off manuring, letting the property go to rack and ruin. So it was. There was calamity everywhere. One had to work one's self to death, and not complain. Little by little, a soothing calm rose from the broad green fields he was skirting. Some light showers, in April, had brought on the fodder-crops beautifully. The purple clover transported him with delight; he forgot everything else. Then as he was taking a short cut across some ploughed land, to have a look at the work of his two waggoners, the soil clung to his feet; he felt that it was rich and fertile, and it seemed to clasp and hold him back; taking him once more wholly to itself, while the virility, the vigour, the hey-day of his thirty years returned to him. Was not this the only wife for a man? Of what consequence were the whole set of Cognettes, plates out of which every one ate, and with which one might be well content, provided they were clean enough? This excuse, so consonant with his low craving for the baggage, crowned his gaiety. He walked for three hours, and jested with a girl—the servant of those very Coquarts—who was returning from Cloyes on a donkey, and showing her legs.
When Hourdequin went back to La Borderie, he noticed Jacqueline saying good-bye to the farm cats. There were always a troop of them; but whether a dozen, fifteen, or twenty, nobody precisely knew, for the she-cats used to litter in various odd nests of straw, and re-appear with trains of five or six kittens. Next, she went up to the kennels of Emperor and Massacre, the shepherd's two dogs; but they detested her, and growled.
The dinner, in spite of the farewells taken of the animals, went off just as on other days. The master ate and conversed as usual. And at the close of the day nothing more was said about anybody's departure. They all went to sleep, and darkness enwrapped the silent farm.
That very night, too, Jacqueline slept in the room of the late Madame Hourdequin: the state chamber, with its large bed in the depths of an alcove with red hangings. In this room there stood a wardrobe, a small round table, and an arm-chair of the Voltaire style; while above a little mahogany writing-table there hung some medals, framed under glass, and won by the farmer at agricultural competitions. When La Cognette in her chemise, had mounted on to the conjugal couch, she stretched herself upon it, with her turtle-dove chuckle, spreading out her arms and legs as if to take possession of the entire bed.
On the morrow, when she fell on Jean's neck, he repulsed her. Things having now taken a serious turn, it wasn't proper, and he wouldn't consent any more.