“Ah, yes,” cried father, “you happened upon that rascal Barbeau. I think I did save him from death. He lives mostly by poaching and smuggling and owes me his bill yet. I am just as willing he should not pay it. The colour of his money is not clean.”
I considered that he was too severe upon so polite and generous a man. We went again to visit Barbeau, and were received by his wife. She was an aged, grey, gnarled, blear-eyed woman, who found nothing better to offer us than a miserable crust of gruyère cheese, which greatly vexed us. She said nothing as to her husband’s occupation but pursed up her lips to confide to us the fine places that her sons enjoyed. The eldest was postman in town, the second an employe at the railway station, and as for the third, oho! he was earning thousands and hundreds.
“Waiter in a hotel in Paris, Monsieur Rambert, waiter in a furnished hotel. He sends us money.”
“Bad trade,” observed grandfather.
“There is no bad trade,” insisted the old woman. “The one thing is to get money.”
“And you have none left?”
“Surely not,—there is none left. There is nobody any more who eats chestnuts and drinks cider, Monsieur Rambert. As for the land, see! I spit upon it!”
And the old hag did in fact spit upon the growing grain, now a pale green about to change to gold, which grew close around her hovel. One would have said that she was banning all the country-side.
It did not occur to me that this grain was the flour which at our house was blessed before being kneaded into dough, the bread which my father never cut before tracing upon the loaf the sign of the cross. All I saw was a disgusting act and involuntarily I laid down my share of the cheese which I had been eating without pleasure.
“Let’s go,” said grandfather abruptly.