“To Cognin, to take my wood to the baker’s.”
“Wait a moment.”
He took out a five-franc piece, wanting to help her in her misfortunes, but she would not accept it.
“Take it, I want you to,” he said.
“Master Francis,” she answered, “La Vigie doesn’t belong to you any more, if what they say is true.”
The lawyer’s brow clouded over.
“No, La Vigie isn’t mine any more. Take the money just the same. It will bring me luck.”
She saw that she was humiliating him by her refusal, and held out her hand. Then she went on down the hillside, bending her knees at each step to keep from slipping. He watched her figure growing smaller in the distance, until it was no more than a dark spot against the background of the valley. Her going left him alone again, but changed. This poor old woman here had returned to him a hundredfold the succour and strength that he had given her a year ago at the vintage time.
While they had been talking together evening had come on. All nature, motionless and as if congealed beneath the snow, submitted to the solemn and mysterious calm that precedes the flight of day. The outlines of the mountains melted more and more into the borders of the pale sky. Not a sound broke the silence, more impressive in its aloof stillness than the roaring of a storm.
At the foot of the hill the little stream slipped slyly by under a thin bed of ice, where it had broken and reformed again. The earth, all of an even hue, seemed shrouded in its whiteness, like a jewel wrapped in cotton-wool.