Jean waited patiently, hoping she would leave. She did not do so, however; but went on talking of her poor paralytic husband, who could now only move one hand. It was a great affliction. They had never been well off; but, when he could still work, he rented land which he turned to account, whereas now she had a world of trouble to cultivate by herself the patch that was their own. She struggled her hardest; collecting horse dung from the roads as manure, for they kept no animals; tending her salad stock, beans, and peas, plant by plant; and watering even her three plum and two apricot trees. The result was that she made an enormous profit out of the ground; and started every Saturday for the Cloyes market, staggering under the burden of two tremendous baskets, without reckoning the heavy vegetables which a neighbour conveyed for her in his cart. She rarely returned without two or three five-franc pieces, particularly in the fruit season. Her constant grievance was the lack of manure. Neither the horse dung, nor the sweepings from the few rabbits and hens she kept, made a sufficient supply. She had come at length to utilising the excrements of her old man and herself, that human manure so much despised, which provokes disgust even in the country. This had got abroad, and people chaffed her about it, and dubbed her Mother Caca—a nickname which did her a deal of harm at the market; she had seen shopkeepers' wives turn with aversion and disgust from her superb carrots and cabbages. Despite her great mildness, this set her beside herself with fury.
"Come, now, tell me—you, Corporal—is it reasonable? Isn't it permissible to use all that the good God has put in our way? And then to go and say that the dung of animals is cleaner! No; it's jealousy! Folks have a spite against me in Rognes, because the vegetables grow more vigorously on my ground. Tell me, Corporal, does it disgust you?"
Jean replied, in embarrassment: "Well, I don't find it exactly appetising. One ain't used to it. I daresay though, that it's only fancy."
This frankness threw the old woman into despair. Though she was not habitually a tale-bearer, she could not restrain her bitterness.
"Oh, that's it, is it? They've already set you against me. Ah, if you only knew how spiteful they are, if you had any idea of what they say about you!"
Then she let loose the gossip of Rognes about the young man. To begin with, they had execrated him because he was an artisan, and sawed and planed wood, instead of tilling the ground. Then, when he had taken to the plough, they had taxed him with taking the bread out of other people's mouths, by coming into a district that wasn't his own. Did any one know where he came from? Hadn't he done some evil deed at home, that he didn't even dare to go back there? Then they spied upon his intercourse with La Cognette, and asserted that some fine night the two of them would administer a bowl of devil's broth to Hourdequin, and rob him.
"Oh, the blackguards!" muttered Jean, who became pale with indignation.
Lise, who was drawing a jugful of boiling lye from the cauldron, started laughing at the mention of La Cognette, a name she sometimes twitted him with in jest.
"And since I've begun, I'd better make an end of it," pursued La Frimat. "Well, there's no kind of abomination they don't talk about, since you began visiting here. Last week—wasn't it?—you presented them both with silk neckerchiefs, which they were seen wearing on Sunday at mass. The filthy beasts say that you go to bed with the two of them!"