"Stop where you are, Mathurin; and you, Nesmy, loose your hold of my daughter!"
And he advanced to them, without haste, as a man not desiring to compromise his dignity. The cripple stopped short, let go of his crutches, and sank exhausted to the ground.
But Jean Nesmy continued to retreat. He had placed his hand in Rousille's; and soon they were within the portal of the gateway, framed in sunshine. There lay the road. The young man bent towards Rousille and kissed her cheek.
"Farewell, my Rousille," he said.
And she, running across the courtyard without looking back, her hands to her face, wept bitterly.
Having watched her disappear round the corner of the house by the barn, Nesmy called out:
"Mathurin Lumineau, I shall come back!"
"Only try!" retorted the cripple.
The whilom farm-servant of La Fromentière began to mount the hill beside the farm; clad in his russet work-day clothes he walked with difficulty as if worn out with fatigue. His whole wardrobe, slung on to his gun, consisted of but one coat, a blouse, three shirts, a couple of boxwood bird calls for quails that clapped together as he walked, and yet the load seemed heavy. A feeling of dismay at having to go back to the daily seeking of employment had come over him while making up the modest bundle. He was already thinking of his mother's alarm at this sudden return. Every step was a wrench from some loved object, for he had lived three years in this Fromentière. His heart was heavy with memories; he walked on slowly, looking at nothing yet seeing every stick and stone. The trees he brushed past had all been pruned by him, or flicked by his whip; every inch of ground had been ploughed and reaped by him; he knew how every furrow was to be sown on the morrow.
Having reached the back of the farm, at the rise of the road where formerly four mills had been busily grinding corn and now only two were at work, he turned to look back that he might increase the pain of parting.