"True ... it is true," said all the group, supporting the arguments of Pimentó, with furious nods.
All confessed that their landlords had changed as they recalled the details of their last interview; the threats of ejection, the refusal to accept the incomplete payments, the ironical way in which they had spoken of the lands of old Barret, cultivated again in spite of the hatred of all the huerta. And now, all at once, after the sweet laziness of ten years of triumph, with the reins on their shoulders and the master at their feet, had come the cruel pull, the return to other times, the finding of the bread bitter and the wine more sour, thinking of the accursed half-year, and all on account of an outsider, a lousy fellow who had not even been born in the huerta, and who had hung himself upon them to interfere in their business and make life harder for them. And should this rogue still live? Did the huerta not have any men?
Good-bye, new friendships, respect born by the side of the coffin of a poor child! All the consideration created by misfortune went tumbling down like a stock of playing-cards, vanishing like a nebulous cloud, and the old hatred reappeared at a single bound—the solidarity of all the huerta, which in combating the intruder was defending its very life.
And at what a moment the general animosity arose! The eyes fixed upon him burned with the fire of hatred; heads muddled with alcohol seemed to feel a horrible itching for murder; instinctively they all started toward Batiste, who felt himself pushed about from all sides as if the circle were tightening in order to devour him.
He repented now of having remained. He felt no fear, but he cursed the hour in which the idea of going to the tavern occurred to him—an alien place which seemed to rob him of his strength, that self-possession which animated him when he felt the earth beneath his feet—the earth which he had cultivated at the cost of so much sacrifice, and in whose defence he was ready to lose his very life.
Pimentó, as he gave way to his anger, felt all the brandy he had drunk during the past two days fall suddenly like a heavy blow upon his brain. He had lost the serenity of an unshakable drunkard; he arose staggering, and it was necessary for him to make an effort to sustain himself upon his legs. His eyes were inflamed as though they were dripping blood; his voice was laboured as though the alcohol and anger were drawing it back and not letting it come forth.
"Go," he said imperiously to Batiste, threateningly, extending a hand, till it almost touched his face. "Go, or I will kill you!"
Go!... It was this that Batiste desired; he grew paler and paler, repenting more and more that he was here. But he well divined the significance of that imperious "Go!" of the bully, supported by signs of approval on the part of all the others.
They did not demand that he should leave the tavern, ridding them of his odious presence; they were ordering him with threats of death to abandon the fields, which were like the blood of his body; to give up for ever the farm-house where his little one had died, and in which every corner bore a record of the struggles and the joys of the family in their battle with poverty. And swiftly he had a vision of himself and all his furniture piled on the cart, wandering over the roads, in search of the unknown, in order to create another existence: carrying along with them like a gloomy companion, that ugly phantom of famine which would be ever following at their heels....
No! He shunned quarrels, but let them not put a finger on his children's bread!