He continued to eat, but more slowly, and dipping his bread into the
soup. His skin had become burning, and especially his forehead, where
the veins were throbbing. But suddenly the church bells began to ring.
Mass was over, and instinct rather than fear, the instinct of
prudence, which guides all beings and makes them clear-sighted in
danger, made the carpenter get up. He put the remains of the loaf into
one pocket and the brandy bottle into the other, and he furtively went
to the window and looked out into the road. It was still deserted, so
he jumped out and set off walking again, but instead of following the
highroad he ran across the fields toward a wood he saw a little way
off.
He felt alert, strong, light-hearted, glad of what he had done, and so
nimble that he sprang over the enclosure of the fields at a single
bound, and as soon as he was under the trees he took the bottle out of
his pocket again and began to drink once more, swallowing it down as
he walked, and then his ideas began to get confused, his eyes grew
dim, and his legs as elastic as springs, and he started singing the
old popular song:
"Oh! what joy, what joy it is,
To pick the sweet, wild strawberries."
He was now walking on thick, damp, cool moss, and that soft carpet
under his feet made him feel absurdly inclined to turn head over heels
as he used to do when a child, so he took a run, turned a somersault,
got up and began over again. And between each time he began to sing
again:
"Oh! what joy, what joy it is,
To pick the sweet, wild strawberries."
Suddenly he found himself above a deep road, and in the road he saw a
tall girl, a servant, who was returning to the village with two pails
of milk. He watched, stooping down, and with his eyes as bright as
those of a dog who scents a quail, but she saw him, raised her head
and said: "Was that you singing like that?" He did not reply, however,
but jumped down into the road, although it was a fall of at least six
feet and when she saw him suddenly standing in front of her, she
exclaimed: "Oh! dear, how you frightened me!"
But he did not hear her, for he was drunk, he was mad, excited by
another requirement which was more imperative than hunger, more
feverish than alcohol; by the irresistible fury of the man who has
been deprived of everything for two months, and who is drunk; who is
young, ardent and inflamed by all the appetites which nature has
implanted in the vigorous flesh of men.
The girl started back from him, frightened at his face, his eyes, his
half-open mouth, his outstretched hands, but he seized her by the
shoulders, and without a word, threw her down in the road.
She let her two pails fall, and they rolled over noisily, and all the
milk was spilt, and then she screamed lustily, but it was of no avail
in that lonely spot.
When she got up the thought of her overturned pails suddenly filled
her with fury, and, taking off one of her wooden sabots, she threw it
at the man to break his head if he did not pay her for her milk.