The girl shrugged her shoulders, and in an angry tone said:
"Faith everyone knows it well—that it is Victor's. And what about it after all? I made a slip. Am I the only woman that did? My mother also made a slip before me, and then yours did the same before she married your dad! Who is it that hasn't made a slip in the country. I made a slip with Victor, because he took advantage of me while I was asleep in the barn, it's true, and afterwards it happened between us when I wasn't asleep. I certainly would have married him if he weren't a servant-man. Am I a worse woman for that?"
The man said simply:
"As for me, I like you just as you are, with or without the child. 'Tis only my father that opposes me. All the same, I'll see about settling the business."
She answered:
"Go to the curé at once."
"I'm going to him."
And he set forth with his heavy peasant's tread; while the girl, with her hands on her hips, turned round to pick her colza.
In fact, the man who thus went off, Césaire Houlbréque, the son of deaf old Amable Houlbréque, wanted to marry in spite of his father, Céleste Lévesque, who had a child by Victor Lecoq, a mere laborer on his parent's farm, turned out of doors for this act.
Moreover, the hierarchy of caste does not exist in the fields, and if the laborer is thrifty, he becomes, by taking a farm in his turn, the equal of his former master.