It rained but little, the crops were bad for four consecutive years, and at last Batiste did not know what to do nor where to turn. Then, in a trip to Valencia, he made the acquaintance of the sons of Don Salvador, excellent gentlemen (the Lord bless them), who offered to let him use these beautiful fields rent-free for two years, until they could be brought back completely to their old condition.
He had heard rumours of what had happened at the farm-house; of the causes which had compelled the owner to keep these beautiful lands unproductive; but such a long time had elapsed! Furthermore, poverty has no ears; the fields suited him, and in them he would remain. What did he care for the story of don Salvador and old Barret?
All of which was scorned and forgotten as he looked over the land. And Batiste felt himself filled with sweet ecstasy at finding himself the cultivator of the fertile huerta, which he had envied so many times as he passed along the high-road of Valencia to Sagunto.
This was fine land; always green; of inexhaustible fertility, producing one harvest after another; the red water circulating at all hours like life-giving blood through the innumerable canals and irrigation trenches which furrowed its surface like a complicated network of veins and arteries; so fertile that entire families were supported by patches so small that they looked like green handkerchiefs. The dry fields off there near Sagunto reminded him of an inferno of drought, from which he fortunately had liberated himself.
Now he was sure that he was on the right road. To work! The fields were ruined; there was much work to be done; but when one is so willing! And this big, robust, muscular fellow, with the shoulders of a giant, closely cropped round head, and good-natured countenance supported by the heavy neck of a monk, extended his powerful arms, accustomed to raising sacks of flour and the heavy skin sacks of the teamster's trade, aloft in the air, and stretched himself.
He was so absorbed in his lands that he scarcely noticed the curiosity of his neighbours.
Restless heads appeared between the cane-brake; men, stretched out at full-length on the sloping banks, were watching him; even the women and the children of the adjoining huertas followed his movements.
Batiste did not mind them. It was curiosity, the hostile expectation which recent arrivals always inspire. Well did he know what that was; they would get accustomed to it. Furthermore, perhaps they were interested in seeing how that desolate growth burned, which ten years of abandonment had heaped upon the fields of Barret.
And aided by his wife and children, he went about on the day after his arrival, burning up all the parasitic vegetation.
The shrubs writhed in the flames; they fell like live coals from whose ashes the loathsome vermin escaped all singed, and the farm-house seemed lost amid the clouds of smoke from these fires, which awakened silent anger in all the huerta.