He strode roughly towards Ragu: 'You are a bad man,' he cried, 'why do you stab me in the heart like that? Who are you? Where have you sprung from? Don't you know that my dear wife is dead, and that every evening I still ask her forgiveness, accusing myself of having caused her death? If I haven't become a bad man, I owe it to her dear memory, for she is always with me, she is my good counsellor. But you, you are a bad man, I don't want to recognise you, I don't want to know your name. Go away, go away from our city!'
He was superb in his dolorous violence. The poetic spirit that dwelt within his rugged form, and which had formerly manifested itself in vengeful flights of fancy of a sombre grandeur, had now softened, tempering his heart with infinite quivering kindliness.
'Have you recognised him then?' asked Bonnaire anxiously. 'Who is he? Tell me.'
'I do not wish to recognise him,' Lange repeated yet more rigorously. 'I shall not say anything—let him go his way, let him go his way at once! He isn't fit to be one of us.'
Thereupon Bonnaire, feeling convinced that the potter had recognised Ragu, gently led the latter away in order to avoid any painful explanations. For his part Ragu evinced no desire to linger and quarrel, but retired in silence. All that he had seen and heard had dealt him blow after blow in the heart, filling him with bitter regret and boundless envy. He had begun to stagger beneath the shock of that happiness, in which he had not, and would never have, the slightest part.
But it was particularly the aspect of Beauclair in the evening that upset him. It had become a custom for each family to set its table in the street and dine there on that first day of summer. The repast was like a fraternal communion of the whole city, the bread was broken, and the wine was drunk in public, and the tables were at last brought together in such wise that they formed but one table, the whole town changing into a vast banqueting-hall, where the people became one sole family.
At seven o'clock, whilst the sun was still shining, the tables were set out, decorated with roses, that rain of roses which had perfumed Beauclair ever since the morning. The white cloths, the decorated crockery, the glass and the silver reflected the purple glow of the sunset. As silver money, like gold money, was fast disappearing, each now had his or her silver goblet, even as in olden time one had goblets or mugs of pewter. And Bonnaire insisted on Ragu taking his seat at his table, or rather at that of his granddaughter Claudine, who had married Luc's son, Charles Froment.
'I have brought you a guest,' he simply said to the others, without naming Ragu. 'He is a stranger, a friend.'
And all made answer: 'He is welcome.'
Bonnaire kept Ragu near him. But the table was a long one, for four generations elbowed one another. When Bonnaire the patriarch looked round he could see his son Lucien and his daughter-in-law Louise Mazelle, both of whom were now over fifty. He could also see his granddaughter Claudine and his grandson-in-law, Charles Froment, both in their prime; and he could likewise see his great-granddaughter Alice, a charming little maid, eight years of age. And all manner of kith and kin followed. Bonnaire explained to Ragu that a gigantic table would have been needed if his three other children, Antoinette, Zoé, and Séverin, had not arranged to dine at other tables with their own offspring. At dessert, however, they would bring the tables together in a neighbourly fashion, in suchwise that they would end by being all together.