To-morrow begins the new year and every peasant girl's cheeks are scrubbed bright and her hair neatly dressed, for to-morrow all France embraces—so the cheeks are rosy in readiness.
"Tiens, mademoiselle!" exclaims the butcher's boy clattering into my kitchen in his sabots.
Eh, voilà! My good little maid-of-all-work, Suzette, has been kissed by the butcher's boy and a moment later by Père Bordier, who has left the cider press for a steaming bowl of café au lait; and ten minutes later by the Mère [Péquin] who brings the milk, and then in turn by the postman—by her master, by the boy in eartabs and by every child in the village since daylight for they have entered my courtyard in droves to wish the household of my house abandoned a happy new year, and have gone away content with their little [stomachs] filled and two big sous in their pockets.
And now an old fisherman enters my door. It is the Père Varnet—he who goes out with his sheep dog to dig clams, since he is eighty-four and too old to go to sea.
"Ah, malheur!" he sighs wearily, lifting his cap with a trembling hand as seamed and tough as his tarpaulin. "Ah, the bad luck," he repeats in a thin, husky voice. "I would not have deranged monsieur, but bon Dieu, I am hungry. I have had no bread since yesterday. It is a little beast this hunger, monsieur. There are no clams—I have searched from the great bank to Tocqueville."
It is surprising how quick Suzette can heat the milk.
The old man is now seated in her kitchen before a cold duck of the curé's killing and hot coffee—real coffee with a stiff drink of applejack poured into it, and there is bread and cheese besides. Like hungry men, he eats in silence and when he has eaten he tells me his dog is dead—that woolly sheep dog of his with a cast in one fishy green eye.
"Oui, monsieur," confided the old man, "he is dead. He was all I had left. It is not gay, monsieur, at eighty-four to lose one's last friend—to have him poisoned."