Luc ran back to the barracks, crazed, and with eyes and voice full of tears, he related the accident: “He leaned—he—he was leaning —so far over—that his head carried him away—and—he—fell —he fell——”
Emotion choked him so that he could say no more. If he had only known.
FATHER MILON
For a month the hot sun has been parching the fields. Nature is expanding beneath its rays; the fields are green as far as the eye can see. The big azure dome of the sky is unclouded. The farms of Normandy, scattered over the plains and surrounded by a belt of tall beeches, look, from a distance, like little woods. On closer view, after lowering the worm-eaten wooden bars, you imagine yourself in an immense garden, for all the ancient apple-trees, as gnarled as the peasants themselves, are in bloom. The sweet scent of their blossoms mingles with the heavy smell of the earth and the penetrating odor of the stables. It is noon. The family is eating under the shade of a pear tree planted in front of the door; father, mother, the four children, and the help—two women and three men are all there. All are silent. The soup is eaten and then a dish of potatoes fried with bacon is brought on.
From time to time one of the women gets up and takes a pitcher down to the cellar to fetch more cider.
The man, a big fellow about forty years old, is watching a grape vine, still bare, which is winding and twisting like a snake along the side of the house.
At last he says: “Father's vine is budding early this year. Perhaps we may get something from it.”
The woman then turns round and looks, without saying a word.
This vine is planted on the spot where their father had been shot.