And though filled with desire to own the land and with joy at the prospect of finally laying hands on it, another feeling was welling up within him, a dull, bitter rage at not being able to possess the lot: what a lovely field it was – five acres of it all in one piece! He had insisted on its being carved up so that if he could not be the sole owner, it should at least not belong to anyone else – yet now he felt appalled at such butchery.

Fouan had stood silently watching his property being divided up, his arms dangling at his side.

‘That's that,’ said Grosbois. ‘And between this bit and those over there, you couldn't squeeze ten francs difference out of any of 'em!’

On the plateau there still remained some ten acres of land under the plough but divided into ten fields or more, none of them larger than an acre; one was even less than half an acre and when the surveyor asked sardonically whether he was to split that one up, too, another argument arose. Once more Buteau repeated his instinctive gesture of bending down, taking a handful of earth and holding it up to his face, as if intending to taste it. Then, blissfully wrinkling his nose, he seemed to be suggesting that this was the best of the lot; and letting the soil slip gently through his fingers he said that he would be agreeable if the plot of land could be allotted to him; otherwise, it would have to be split up… Annoyed by this, Delhomme and Jesus Christ both refused and demanded their share. ‘All right then, an eighth of an acre each, that was the only fair thing to do.’ And so all the fields were divided up, so that everyone was certain that none of the three would have any more than the other two.

‘Let's go over to the vineyards,’ said Fouan.

But as they were going back to the church, he cast one last glance over the immense plain and, as his eye settled for a second on the farm buildings of La Borderie in the distance, he uttered an exclamation of inconsolable grief at the thought of the opportunity they had let slip when the national estates had been sold, so long ago.

‘Ah, if only my father had been prepared to go ahead, Grosbois, you'd've been measuring all that!’

His two sons and son-in-law suddenly stopped and turned round to cast a lingering look at the farm's five hundred acres spread out before their eyes:

‘Ah well,’ grunted Buteau, as he went on his way, ‘a fat lot of good that'll do us. And townsfolk always do us down, don't they?’

It was striking ten o'clock. They quickened their steps because the wind had slackened and a large black cloud had just released its first shower of rain. Rognes's few vineyards lay beyond the church, on the hillside which sloped down to the Aigre. This was where the castle had formerly stood in its park and it was barely a century ago that, encouraged by the success of the vines at near-by Montigny, the Cloyes farmers had had the idea of planting this hillside with vines, since its steep south-facing slope seemed suitable for that purpose. They produced a poorish wine which was, however, pleasantly tart and reminiscent of the light table wines from the region of Orléans. Anyway, none of the inhabitants of Rognes had more than a few patches of vineyard; the richest of them, Delhomme, had six acres; the main crops of the area were cereals and fodder.

They passed round the back of the church and along the side of the former presbytery; then they made their way down to the patchwork of small vineyards.

As they were crossing a stretch of stony ground overgrown with shrubs, they heard a shrill voice coming from a hole:

‘Dad, it's raining, I'll bring my geese out!’

It was La Trouille, Jesus Christ's daughter, a twelve-year-old with a tangled mop of hair and as thin and wiry as a holly branch. She had a large mouth, screwed up in its left corner, and staring green eyes; she could easily have been mistaken for a boy, for instead of a dress she wore one of her father's smocks tied round the middle with a piece of string. And if everyone called her the Brat, even though she bore the splendid name of Olympe, it was because Jesus Christ, who used to bawl abuse at her from morning till night, whenever he addressed her always finished by saying: ‘You wait, you little brat, I'll give you something you won't forget!’

He had produced this tomboy with the aid of some slut whom he had picked up in a ditch after a fair and then settled in his den, to the great scandal of the village. For nearly three years the couple had lived a cat-and-dog life together and then one night at harvest-time the trollop had taken herself off with another man, just as she had come. The daughter, scarcely weaned, had flourished like the green bay, and ever since she could walk she had prepared the meals for her father, whom she feared and adored. But her real passion was for her geese. At first, she only had two, a goose and a gander which had been abstracted while goslings through a gap in a farmer's hedge. Then, thanks to her motherly care, the flock had prospered and now she had twenty geese which she fed on stolen food.

When La Trouille appeared with her saucy little faunlike face, driving her geese in front of her with a stick, Jesus Christ exploded:

‘You get back and see to the dinner or else you'd better look out. And shut up the house, you little brat, in case of burglars!’

Buteau gave a grin and the others were also unable to hide a smile at the thought of Jesus Christ being burgled, for his house was a disused cellar, or three walls of one, below ground, a proper foxhole, set amongst tumbled-down stones and overgrown with old lime trees. It was all that remained of the castle; and when, after a quarrel with his father, the poacher had taken refuge in this retreat among the ruins, which belonged to the parish, he had had to build another wall of dry stones to enclose the cellar, leaving two openings for a window and a door. It was overhung by brambles and the window was hidden behind a tall dog-rose. The locals called it the Castle.

A fresh downpour overtook them but fortunately the vineyard was close by and the division into three was speedily concluded without arousing further disagreement. All that was now left was seven and a half acres of meadow, down by the bank of the Aigre. But at that moment, the rain started falling so heavily that as they were passing by the entrance to an estate the surveyor suggested that they might go in.

‘What do you think? Shall we take shelter with Monsieur Charles for a minute?’

Fouan had stopped and was hesitating in awe of his brother-in-law and sister who, having made their fortune, had retired to end their days in this opulent property.

‘No, I don't think so,’ he said, lowering his voice, ‘they have lunch at noon, we'll be disturbing them.’

But Monsieur Charles had appeared on the terrace, under the glass porch, to look at the rain, and recognizing them he called out:

‘Won't you come in?’

And as they were all dripping wet, he shouted to them to go round the back and into the kitchen, where he joined them. He was a handsome man of sixty-five, clean-shaven, with heavy lids, lack-lustre eyes, and the dignified, jaundiced face of a judge. Dressed in coarse blue flannel and fur-lined slippers, he wore on his head a priest's cap with the self-assurance of a man who had spent his life in positions requiring tact and authority.

When Laure Fouan, a dressmaker in Châteaudun at the time, had married Charles Badeuil, he was running a small café in the Rue d'Angoulême. Anxious to make money fast, the ambitious young couple moved to Chartres. But at first every venture proved unprofitable; in succession they tried keeping a tavern, a restaurant and even a dry fish-shop; and they were beginning to despair of ever having two pennies to rub together when Monsieur Charles, an enterprising young man, hit on the idea of buying one of the brothels in the Rue aux Juifs, which had fallen on hard times owing to the shortcomings of its staff and its well-earned reputation for lack of cleanliness. He had summed up the situation at a glance: as a county town Chartres needed a reputable establishment providing comfort and safety in line with modern progressive ideas and this need was not being met. In fact by its second year, No.