I crawled slowly from my bed, for my back was still confoundedly painful, and put my head gently out of the window. “Here he is,” said I. “Cuckoo!”
“Colas!” they cried, laughing, while the tears ran down their faces, and I stuck out my tongue at them, telling them that I was not dead yet by a long sight, but if you will believe me those friends actually kept me shut up for ten days longer, till they were perfectly certain that I was entirely recovered. It is only fair to say that they kept me well supplied with bread and water,—I mean the kind that Noah drank,—and they came every day and sat under my window and told me all the news of town and country. When at last I was set free, Chamaille wanted me to go at once and return thanks to St. Roch, who according to him had delivered me from my mortal sickness. I told him I thought the saints that saved me had come out of three quart bottles.
“Well, Colas,” said he, “we will split the difference, you come first with me to St. Roch and I will help you afterwards to render due thanks to St. Vineyard.” So we made both these pious pilgrimages, all three together, for Paillard insisted on joining us.
“Friends,” said I, “you were not so anxious to go with me the other day.”
“You know I love you,” said Paillard, “but I love my own self better, and as the proverb says, ‘My skin fits tighter than my waistcoat.’”
“I am an old coward,” said Chamaille, thumping himself on the chest, and looking very shamefaced.
“Well then,” said I, “of what use are all the precepts of religion and of Cato?”
We all looked at each other and laughed. “Life is sweet,” we cried, “and good men are scarce; if God thought fit to put us into this world, it is our duty to stay here as long as we can.”
VIII
MY OLD WOMAN’S DEATH
Life tasted good to me after my illness, better than ever before; the flavor of everything was enhanced, and I sat down to the world’s table as Lazarus must have done, with a sharpened appetite. One day after hours, my foreman and I were in the shop amusing ourselves with a wrestling bout, when a neighbor looked in on his way from Morvan and told me that he had seen my wife there. I asked him how she was getting along. He said, “She was leaving when I saw her, making for a better world as fast as she was able.”