Pale-faced, they listened intently, terrified that they might see a sudden invasion of black-faced men. Bravely, Buteau went to the door and opened it:

‘Who's that?’

And they saw Bécu and Jesus Christ, who, having quarrelled with Macqueron, had just left the tavern, taking their cards and a candle with them to finish their game elsewhere. They were so drunk and the others had been so frightened that everybody laughed.

‘All right, you can come in,’ Rose said, smiling at her great scamp of a son. ‘Your children are here, you can take them with you when you go.’

Jesus Christ and Bécu sat down on the ground next to the cows, placed the candle between them and went on with their game: ‘Trumps and trumps and still more trumps!’ But the conversation had moved on and they were now talking about the boys of the village who would be drawing lots for military service, Victor Lengaigne and three others. The women had become serious, they were talking slowly and sadly.

‘It's no joke,’ said Rose, ‘no, it's no joke at all for anybody.’

‘Yes, war's a dreadful thing,’ said Fouan in a subdued voice. ‘It's the ruination of agriculture… When the lads go off, it's the strongest who go, you can see it when there's hard work to be done; and when they come back, well, they've changed, their hearts are no longer in ploughing. Cholera's better than war.’

Fanny stopped knitting.

‘Well, I don't intend to let Nénesse go,’ she declared. ‘Monsieur Baillehache explained how to get round it, something like a lottery; several people club together and everyone contributes a certain amount and those whose number turns up are able to buy themselves out.’

‘You have to be rich to do that,’ remarked La Grande sharply.

But Bécu had overheard a word or two, between two games.

‘War? War makes a man of you, by God!… If you've never been, you can never understand, that's life, bashing each other about. What d'you think, eh? Those wogs down there…’

And he gave a wink with his left eye while Jesus Christ grinned with a knowing air. They had both fought in Africa, the gamekeeper at the beginning of the war, the other man later on at the time of the recent uprisings. So in spite of the difference in time, they both had common memories: cutting off Bedouins' ears and threading them on a string; Bedouin women with their bodies rubbed all over in oil whom you picked up behind the hedgerows and stuffed in every hole. Jesus Christ in particular would often tell a story which used to bring big guffaws from the peasants: a great cow of a woman as yellow as a lemon whom they'd made run about stark-naked with a pipe stuck up her behind.

‘For Christ's sake,’ said Bécu, addressing Fanny, ‘do you want Nénesse to be a cissy?… I'm going to make quite sure that Delphin goes into the army.’

The children had stopped playing. Delphin was looking up; his round, sturdy head already made him seem a proper peasant, young though he was.

‘No,’ he said bluntly, looking obstinate.

‘What did you say? I'll teach you what courage means, you unpatriotic little sod!’

‘I don't want to go into the army. I want to stay here.’

The gamekeeper was about to strike him when Buteau intervened.

‘Leave the child alone! He's right. Do they need him? There are plenty of others… Anyway, is that how things ought to be, to have to go away from home and get your mug bashed in for a lot of stupid rubbish… I never left the village and I'm none the worse for it!’

He had in fact been lucky in the draw; he was a real land-worker and loved it; he had never gone further than Chartres or Orléans or seen anything beyond the flat horizon of Beauce. And he seemed to be proud of it, proud at having his roots in his own patch of land, bound to it like a stubborn hardy tree. He had risen to his feet; the women were watching him.

‘When they come back from military service they're all so thin,’ Lise said quietly and timidly.

‘And how about you, Corporal?’ old Rose asked. ‘Did you go to foreign parts?’

Jean was a young man who preferred to think rather than talk. He had been quietly smoking his pipe, which he now slowly removed from his mouth.

‘Yes, I went quite a long way… But I didn't get as far as the Crimea. I was on the point of going when they took Sebastopol… But later on there was Italy…’

‘And what's Italy like?’

The question seemed to surprise him, he hesitated and searched his memory.

‘Well, Italy's no different from here. They grow things, they've got woods and rivers. It's the same as everywhere.’

‘So you took part in the fighting?’

‘Yes I did some fighting, of course.’

He was sucking at his pipe again, in no hurry to talk, and Françoise looked up, her lips parted, expecting a story. All the women were interested and even La Grande rapped the table again with her stick to stop Hilarion from whining, as La Trouille had hit upon the idea of slyly sticking a pin into his arm.

‘Solferino was a hot spot, all right, although it was raining, goodness me how it rained… I hadn't got a dry stitch on me, the water was pouring down my back into my shoes. We certainly got wet and no mistake.’

They waited but he had nothing to add; that was all he had seen of the battle of Solferino. After a minute's silence, he went on in his quiet, sensible way:

‘Well, war's not as bad as people think. You draw lots, don't you? You've got to do your duty. As for me, I left the army because I'd sooner be doing something else. All the same, it can be a good thing for someone who doesn't like his job and hates the idea of an enemy coming in and mucking us about in our own country.’

‘All the same, it's a nasty business,’ concluded old Fouan. ‘Everyone ought to defend his own home and that's all.’

Once again silence fell. It was very warm, a damp, living heat that seemed all the stronger because of the powerful smell of the cows' litter.