"So, then, Master Gregory the Hollow-bellied slaughtered the travelers to rob them, I suppose.... One of them must have been beforehand with him and killed him.... But the devil take the tavern-keeper! His dog is now roasted. Let's eat!"
CHAPTER V.
THE DELIRIUM OF STARVATION.
Too old a man to think of contesting the spoils for which he had returned to Gregory's tavern, Yvon hurried back home and reached his hut towards midnight.
On entering, a torch of resinous wood, fastened near the wall by an iron ring, lighted a heart-rending spectacle. Stretched out near the hearth lay Den-Brao, his face covered by his mason's jacket; himself expiring of inanition, he wished to escape the sight of the agony of his family. His wife, Gervaise, so thin that the bones of her face could be counted, was on her knees near a straw pallet where Julyan lay in convulsions. Almost fainting, Gervaise struggled with her son who was alternately crying with fury and with pain and in the frenzy of starvation sought to apply its teeth to his own arms. Nominoe, the elder, lay flat on his face, on the pallet with his brother. He would have been taken for dead but for the tremor that from time to time ran over his frame still more emaciated than his brother's. Finally Jeannette, about three years old, murmured in her cradle with a dying voice: "Mother ... I am hungry.... I am hungry!"
At the sound of Yvon's steps, Gervaise turned her head: "Father!" said she in despair, "if you bring nothing with you, I shall kill my children to shorten their agony ... and then myself!"
Yvon threw down his bow and took his bag from his shoulders. Gervaise judged from its size and obvious weight that it was full. She wrenched it from Yvon's hands with savage impatience, thrust her hand in it, pulled out the chunk of roasted meat and raising it over her head to show it to the whole family cried out in a quivering voice: "Meat!... Oh, we shall not yet die! Den-Brao.... Children!... Meat!... Meat!" At these words Den-Brao sat up precipitately; Nominoe, too feeble to rise, turned on his pallet and stretched out his eager hands to his mother; little Jeannette eagerly looked up from her cradle; while Julyan, whom his mother was not now holding, neither heard nor saw aught but was biting into his arms in the delirium of starvation, unnoticed by either Yvon or any other member of the family. All eyes were fixed upon Gervaise, who running to a table and taking a knife sliced off the meat crying: "Meat!... Meat!"
"Give me!... Give me!" cried Den-Brao, stretching out his emaciated arms, and he devoured in an instant the piece that he received.
"You next, Jeannette!" said Gervaise, throwing a slice to the little girl who uttered a cry of joy, while her mother herself, yielding to the cravings of starvation bit off mouthfuls from the slice that she reached out to her oldest son, Nominoe, who, like the rest, pounced upon the prey, and fell to eating in silent voracity. "And now, you, Julyan," continued Gervaise. The lad made no answer. His mother stooped down over him: "Julyan, do not bite your arm! Here is meat, dear boy!" But his elder brother, Nominoe, having swallowed up his own slice, brusquely seized that which his mother was tendering to Julyan. Seeing that the latter continued motionless, Gervaise insisted: "My child, take your arm from your teeth!" But hardly had she pronounced these words than, turning towards Yvon, she cried: "Come here, father.... His arm is icy and rigid ... so rigid that I cannot withdraw it from his jaws."