Marie Claire

by Marguerite Audoux

In the month of December the cows remained in the stables. I thought that we should keep the sheep in too, but the farmer's brother explained to me that Sologne was a very poor country, and that the farmers could not make enough forage to feed the sheep, as well. So now I used to go off all by myself with the sheep down the meadows and into the woods. All the birds had gone. Mist spread over the ploughed fields and the woods were full of silence.

There were days when I felt so lonely that I began to believe that the earth had fallen all to pieces round me, and when a crow cawed as it flew past in the grey sky its great hoarse voice seemed to me to be singing of the misfortunes of the world. Even the sheep were quiet. A dealer had taken away all the lambs, and the little ewes did not know how to play alone. They went along pressing up close to each other, and even when they were not cropping what grass there was, their heads were bent. Some of them made me think of little girls I had known. I used to pass them and stroke them, and make them raise their heads, but their eyes looked down again at once, and the pupils were like glass without a gleam in it.

One day I was surprised by such a thick fog that I could not see my way. All of a sudden I found myself near a big wood which I didn't know. The tops of the trees were lost in the fog, and the ferns looked as though they were all wrapped in wool. White shadows came down from the trees and glided with long transparent trains over the dead leaves. I pushed the sheep towards the meadow, which was quite near, but they clustered together and refused to go on. I went in front of them to see what was preventing them from going any further, and I recognized the little river which flowed at the bottom of the hill.

I could scarcely see the water. It seemed to be sleeping under a thick white woollen blanket. I stood looking at it for one long minute, then I got my sheep together and took them back along the road. While I was trying to find out where the farm was, the sheep ran round the wood and got into a lane with a hedge on each side of it. The fog was getting thicker than ever, and I thought I was walking between two high walls. I followed the sheep without knowing where they were taking me. Suddenly they left the lane and turned to the right; but I stopped them. I saw a church just in front of us. The doors were wide open, and on either side I could see two red lamps which lit up a grey vaulted roof. There were two straight lines of huge pillars, and at the other end one could just see the windows with their small panes on which a light was shining. It was all I could do to keep the sheep from going into the church, and as I was pushing them away I noticed that they were covered with little white beads. They shook themselves every moment and the beads made a tinkling sound. I got very anxious, for I knew that Master Silvain must be waiting for us, and wondering where we were. I felt sure that if I were to go back the way I had come I must soon find the farm, so making as little noise as I could I pushed the sheep back into the lane which led to the church. As I was going into the lane a man's voice sounded right over my head. The voice said, "Let the poor brutes go home." As he spoke the man turned the sheep back towards the church again, and I recognized Eugène, the farmer's brother. He passed his hand over the back of one of the sheep and said, "How pretty they are with their little frost balls. But it is not good for them."

I was not at all surprised at meeting him there. I showed him the church and asked him what it was. "It was for you," he said. "I was afraid that you would not find the avenue of chestnut trees, and I hung up a lantern on each side." I felt all confused. It was only a few moments afterwards that I understood that the great pillars, blackened and worn by centuries, were simply the trunks of the chestnut trees, and then I recognized the small-paned windows of the farmhouse kitchen, which the fire lit up from inside. Eugène counted the sheep himself. He helped me to make them a warm litter of straw, and as we left the pen together he asked me if I really didn't know what had become of the two lambs that had been lost. I felt dreadfully ashamed at the thought that he could believe that I had told a lie, and I could not help crying, and told him that they had disappeared without my having seen how or where they went. Then he told me that he had found them drowned in a water-hole. I thought he was going to scold me for not having watched them better, but he said gently, "Go and get warm; you have got all the rime of Sologne in your hair." I made up my mind that I would go and see the waterhole. But during the night snow fell so quickly that we couldn't go out to the fields next day.

I helped old Bibiche to mend the household linen; Martine sat down to her spinning wheel, and I sang to them while we sewed and Martine span.

While we sat at work that evening the dogs never stopped barking. Martine seemed anxious. She listened to the dogs, and then turning to the farmer she said, "I am afraid this weather will bring the wolves down." The farmer got up to go out and talk to the dogs, and took his lantern to make a round of the outhouses. During the week that the snow lasted hundreds of crows came to the farm. They were so hungry that nothing frightened them. They went into the cow-house and the pens and into the granary, and they made very free with the corn ricks. The farmer killed a lot of them. We cooked some of them with bacon and cabbage. Everybody thought them very good, but the dogs wouldn't eat them.