Four days later he came again. The old woman was outside her door cutting up the bread for her soup.
He went up to her, and put his face close to hers, so that he might smell her breath; and when he smelled the alcohol he felt pleased.
"I suppose you will give me a glass of the special?" he said. And two or three times they drank each other's health.
Soon, however, it began to be whispered abroad that Mother Magloire was in the habit of getting drunk all by herself. She was picked up, sometimes in her kitchen, sometimes in her yard, sometimes on the roads in the neighbourhood, and was often brought home dead to the world.
Chicot did not go near her any more, and, when people spoke to him about her, he used to say, putting on a distressed look:
"It is a great pity that she should have taken to drink at her age; but when people get old there is no remedy. It will be the death of her in the long run."
And it certainly was the death of her. She died the next winter, about Christmas time, having fallen down drunk in the snow.
And when Maître Chicot inherited the farm he said:
"It was very stupid of her; if she had not taken to drink she might very well have lived for ten years longer."