“Yes,” sighed the grandmother, “this is the age of pride, and my time has gone by.”
That is the common remark of all our old peasants.
“People didn’t read so many newspapers in those days,” continued Audiffret, “they didn’t worry so much about the affairs of the whole world, and every man paid much more attention to his own affairs. Things went better for it. Landowners lived on their estates and raised families, instead of going to Paris and dying there, of pride or debt or something else. The Livre de Raison up yonder describes our ancestors’ battles with the swamps and the fever. The pharmacy is still in good order, with the scales and the jars in the pigeon-holes, under the dust. And the book tells everything, diseases and deaths. To-day, hardly any one dies of the fever in our neighborhood. It is dying out. The dikes and canals have done good service, and this Cochin China of France, as that sailor called it that I took to see the Giraud rice-fields, this Camargue of ours is as healthy to-day as Crau!—However, be on your guard, I tell you, and take the remedy! don’t wait till to-morrow; Livette will give you what you need. Now, I am going to bed. Stay up a little longer, young people, if you choose. Are you coming, grandma?”
“No, I’ll stay out a moment longer with the young folks,” said the old woman.
Audiffret knocked the ashes out of his pipe against the corner of the bench, and having put it in his pocket, went up to bed.
Silence reigned upon the bench.
The grandmother was tired and sleepy: every little while she would raise her head as if suddenly awakened,—then it would begin to fall forward again, slowly, slowly——
“A heavy dew is falling,” observed Livette, suddenly.
“Yes, demoiselle.”
“See!” said she ingenuously, holding out her arm so that he could feel the dampness on the sleeve of her dress. But he did not put out his hand. He was not all Livette’s that evening, as usual. Strangely enough, she did not frighten him that evening. He was not, as usual, overcome with diffidence in her presence. She no longer dominated him. And he was angry with himself. He suffered. He realized that his thoughts were more frequently busied with the memory of the day than with his sweetheart, who was sitting so near him.