But the harvests had been poor and his savings amounted to barely a hundred crowns hidden in an old jar behind the stove; and in addition, when he had for a moment toyed with the idea of borrowing from a moneylender in Cloyes, he had been seized by misgivings: he was scared at the thought of those properties formerly belonging to the nobility. Who could tell whether they wouldn't have to be returned later on? So, torn between desire and distrust, he had the mortification of seeing La Borderie bought up in the auction, lot by lot, by a rich townsman, Isidore Hourdequin, a former exciseman from Châteaudun, who acquired it for a fifth of its value.

In his old age, Joseph-Casimir divided up his twenty-one acres between his eldest daughter, Marianne, and his two sons, Louis and Michel, seven acres apiece; a younger daughter, Laure, who had learned dressmaking and was employed in Châteaudun, received financial compensation instead. But marriage destroyed this equal distribution. Whereas Marianne Fouan, nicknamed La Grande, married Antoine Péchard, a neighbour who owned roughly eighteen acres, Michel Fouan, whom everyone called Mouche, found himself saddled with a girl whose father eventually left her only two acres of vine. For his part, Louis Fouan had married Rose Maliverne, who had inherited twelve acres, and he had thus finished by owning nineteen acres which he was now about to divide between his own three children.

In the family La Grande was respected and feared, not for her age but for her wealth. Still very erect, very tall, lean, tough and big-boned, she had a long, withered, blood-red neck topped by a gaunt face like that of a bird of prey, in which the family nose had become a terrifying curved beak. Her eyes were round and staring; under her headscarf she was completely hairless but on the other hand she had kept all her teeth and her jaws would have made light work of a diet of stones. She always walked with her stick poised in the air, and never left home without it – a hawthorn stick reserved exclusively for cudgelling animals and people. She had been widowed when still young and had one daughter whom she had turned out of her house because the wretched girl had persisted in marrying, against her mother's wishes, a penniless young man called Vincent Bouteroue; and even now that this son-in-law and her daughter had died in poverty, leaving behind a granddaughter and grandson, Palmyre and Hilarion, already thirty-two and twenty-four years old, she had never relented; she refused to recognize their existence and was letting them starve. Ever since her man's death, she had personally taken over the farming of his land – she had three cows, a pig and a hired hand, whom she fed out of the common feeding trough. Everyone went in deadly terror of her, and nobody would ever dare to disobey her.

Seeing her standing in her doorway, Fouan went over to speak to her and pay his respects. She was ten years older than he and he shared the general deference and admiration which the whole village felt for her hardness, her greed, her zest for living and her single-minded devotion to material possessions.

‘I was wanting to see you, La Grande,’ he said. ‘I wanted to tell you that I've finally made up my mind and I'm on my way up to work out the various lots.’

She made no reply and held on to her stick more tightly in order to brandish it.

‘The other evening I wanted to ask your advice but no one answered when I knocked.’

Her harsh voice exploded:

‘You're an idiot! I gave you my advice! You're a stupid coward to give up your property as long as you're alive and kicking… Wild horses wouldn't have dragged that sort of decision out of me. Seeing other people own what belongs to you, leaving your house and home for the benefit of those wretched children of yours, not on your life!’

‘But suppose you're no longer able to farm the land,’ Fouan objected, ‘and the land is suffering as a result.’

‘Well, let it suffer! I'd sooner go along every day and watch the thistles growing than give up one square inch of it!’

She straightened up with her wild look that made her seem like an old vulture which has lost its feathers. Then, tapping him on the shoulder with her stick to emphasize her words, she said:

‘Listen to me… When you've got nothing left and they've got the lot, your children will push you into the gutter and you'll end up like a tramp with a begging bowl… And when that happens, don't think you can come and knock at my door, because I've given you plenty of warning and it'll be your fault… Do you know what I'll do then? Would you like to know?’

He stood there meekly, waiting with the deferential air of a younger son as she turned and went back into her house and slammed the door violently behind her.

‘That's what I'll do… You can die in the gutter!’

For a second, Fouan remained motionless in front of the slammed door. Then, with a gesture of resignation, he went up the pathway leading to the square in front of the church. It was here, in fact, that the Fouans' ancestral home stood; it had been given to Michel, or Mouche as he was called, at the time his father had shared out the estate, whereas Louis's house, down below on the road, had come to him from his wife Rose. Mouche, a widower of long standing, lived alone with his two daughters Lise and Françoise. Soured by his bad luck and smarting even now under the humiliation of having married a poor girl, he was still, forty years later, accusing his brother and sister of having cheated him when drawing the lots; and he never tired of telling how the worst lot had been reserved for him at the bottom of the hat, a story which seemed in the end to have turned out to be true, because he was so argumentative and such a slacker that in his hands his share had diminished by half. The man makes the land, as they say in Beauce.

That morning, Mouche was also standing in his doorway on the look-out when his brother came in at one corner of the square. He was fascinated at the thought that his brother should be dividing up his property, although he had nothing to gain from it; and it stirred old grievances. But in order to pretend that he was totally indifferent, he, too, brusquely turned his back on him and slammed the door.

Fouan had at once caught sight of Delhomme and Jesus Christ, who were standing waiting, twenty paces apart. He went up to the farmer and the latter then came up. Without speaking to each other, all three directed their gaze towards the path which ran along the edge of the plateau.

‘There he is,’ said Jesus Christ at last. It was Grosbois, the official surveyor, a farmer from the neighbouring little village of Magnolles. His skill at reading and writing had been his downfall. Called upon to undertake surveys over an area from Orgères to as far away as Beaugency, he had let his wife look after his own property and, since he was continually on the move, he had developed such drunken habits that he was now never sober. Very stout and hearty, despite his fifty years, he had a broad, ruddy face, spotted with grog blossoms, and although it was still early he was very badly the worse for drink through having spent the previous night carousing with some wine-growers of Montigny to celebrate the conclusion of a partition of some property amongst the next-of-kin. But this was of no importance; the drunker he was, the clearer his sight became; he had never been known to make a mistake in his measurements or calculations. People listened to him and showed him consideration, for he had the reputation of being a very spiteful customer.

‘All right, everybody here?’ he said.