We go out arm in arm, Porchon and myself. The night is not very dark. The piles of planks near the sheds rise in dark, geometrical masses. The village to the right is lightless and still; away to the left, towards the cemetery, a pale mist broods over the fields. An undulating line of willows marks the course of the stream which they veil. The line continues to the foot of an abrupt slope, rising to the south-east like a gigantic wall.
"Where are you taking me?" asks Porchon.
"Just wait a little and you will see."
We walk in silence, occasionally burying our feet in heaps of soft ashes, which mark the spots where braziers have burnt.
"Point of direction, that isolated house," I explain, after a time. "There are some steps and an iron railing. Hold on to me, old man! You are going to see what you are going to see."
I take the stone steps in three jumps and knock at the door. Children's voices die abruptly to silence, a step sounds over the floor, the latch clicks, and the door opening wraps us in a gust of warm air.
We are in a smoky kitchen, dimly lit by a single candle placed on the table. From a line across the room hang stockings, handkerchiefs, swaddling clothes, drying above a stove. The chairs, scattered here and there, are all encumbered with a heterogeneous collection of things—a wash hand basin, a pair of pants, dirty dishes. Beneath one's feet one crushes certain soft things, remains of food probably, or chewed tobacco.
Our host is still a young man, sickly, pale, thin as a skeleton, his moustache and hair light-coloured. He offers us his hand with a tired gesture; it is a feverish hand, in which one can discover no bones, but only cartilages; and which, when you release it, leaves some of its moisture on your palm.
"We have been awaiting you," says the man. "My wife has prepared beds for you in that corner there, against those sacks of bran."
The woman, who is also a blonde, but swollen and paunched, leaves her chair near the stove, shakes off three or four urchins hanging to her skirts, and raises the candle from the table.