She's got all she wanted!’

With his bag of seed slung round his middle, Jean had started walking down the ploughed field, casting the corn with a regular sweep of his hand; and lifting his head, he watched the tiny figure of Françoise growing smaller and smaller as she went far away across the fields, with her large, placid cow lumbering in front. As he turned to come back up the slope she was hidden from sight, but as he went down a second time he could pick her out again, even smaller this time and so slender with her slim waist and white cap that she looked like a daisy. Three times this happened and each time she appeared smaller; then after that, when he looked for her, she must have turned off by the church.

It struck two o'clock. The sky was still dull and grey and icy, as though the sun had been buried beneath shovelfuls of fire-ash for months to come, until next spring. In this general bleakness, you could see a brighter patch in the cloud lighting up the sky towards Orléans, as though the sun were shining somewhere over there, miles and miles away. The steeple of Rognes church stood out against this livid break in the cloud while the village nestled unseen on the hidden slope, which dropped down to the little valley of the Aigre. But to the north, in the direction of Chartres, the skyline still remained clear cut and inky black, like a pen-stroke cutting across a wash drawing, between the monotonous ash-grey sky and the interminable rolling plain. Since lunchtime, the number of sowers seemed to have increased. Now every tiny plot of land could boast one; they had proliferated like disorderly swarms of black ants toiling confusedly at some giant task quite disproportionate to their size; and even with those further away, you could still distinguish the same stubborn, monotonous gesture, like so many insects, engaged in an implacable struggle against the vast expanse of earth, who finally triumph over their immense task, and over life.

Jean continued sowing until nightfall. After Post Field came Ditch Field and then Crossways Field. Up and down he walked over the ploughed land with steady stride; and as the wheat in his bag diminished, so behind him the good seed fructified the land.

Chapter 2

THE house of Maître Baillehache, the Cloyes notary, was in the Rue Grouaise on the left of the Châteaudun road. It was a small, single-storey dwelling at one corner of which hung the cord for lighting the only lamp in this broad paved street. Deserted during the week, it came to life on Saturday when people poured into market from the countryside around. The two resplendent escutcheons stood out from afar against the long low chalk-white buildings; at the back, a narrow garden sloped down to the Loir.

On this Saturday the office-boy, a pale and puny youngster of fifteen, had lifted one of the muslin curtains of the main office, which looked out on to the street, and was watching the passers-by. The two other clerks, one of them paunchy, old and extremely grubby, the other younger, gaunt and bilious-looking, were writing on a very large ebonized pine table; and together with seven or eight chairs and an iron stove (which was never lit until December, even when snow had fallen by All Hallows) this table constituted the sole furniture of the room. The pigeon-holes covering the walls, the dirty green cardboard boxes with dented corners, overflowing with faded yellow files, filled the room with a nauseating smell of stale ink and ancient dusty papers.

Meanwhile, two peasants, a man and a woman, were sitting quite still, patiently waiting in respectful silence. The sight of so much paper and, above all, of these gentlemen writing at high speed with their pens scratching in unison, inspired solemn thoughts of money and lawsuits. The woman, thirty-four years old and very dark, had a pleasant face marred by a big nose. Her toil-worn hands were crossed over her loose black woollen jacket with velvet hems; her quick eyes kept darting into every corner of the room, obviously fascinated by all the property deeds that were slumbering there; while the man, five years her senior, red-haired and placid, wearing black trousers and a long brand-new linen smock, sat holding his round felt hat on his lap, betraying not the slightest glimmer of thought on his broad, close-shaven, nut-brown face in which two large china-blue eyes were staring with bovine passivity.

But at this moment a door opened and Maître Baillehache, who had just finished lunching with his brother-in-law, the farmer Hourdequin, appeared, very red in the face, still fresh-looking despite his fifty-five years, with thick lips and little slit eyes whose crinkles gave him the appearance of perpetually smiling. He was wearing spectacles and kept tugging all the time at his long grizzled whiskers.

‘Ah, there you are, Delhomme,’ he said. ‘So old Fouan has decided to share out his property.’

It was the woman who replied:

‘That's right, Monsieur Baillehache. We've all arranged to meet here to come to an agreement and for you to tell us what's to be done.’

‘Good, Fanny, we'll see to that… It's only just one o'clock, we'll have to wait for the others.’

He chatted on for a few moments, enquiring about the price of wheat, which had been falling over the past couple of months, and showing the friendly consideration due to a man such as Delhomme, who farmed some fifty acres, had a hired hand and kept three cows. He then went back into his own office.

The clerks had kept their noses to their desk, scratching away more urgently than ever, and once again the Delhommes sat waiting without a movement. This young woman, Fanny, had been lucky to find a sweetheart ready to marry her who was not only a nice young man but rich into the bargain; she had not even been pregnant and could hardly have had expectations of more than eight acres or so from old Fouan, her father. What was more, her husband had not come to regret the marriage because he could never have found a more intelligent or more active helpmate; so much so, indeed, that he followed her lead in everything he did. His own intelligence was strictly limited, although he was always so calm and direct that people in Rognes often thought that it was he who made the decisions.

At this moment the office-boy who was looking out into the street put his hand to his mouth to stifle a laugh and murmured to his neighbour, the clerk who was very dirty and pot-bellied:

‘It's Jesus Christ!’

Fanny leaned sharply forward and whispered in her husband's ear:

‘Don't forget, leave everything to me… I'm very fond of Mother and Father but I'm not going to let them rob us, and we must look out for Buteau and that good-for-nothing Hyacinthe.’

She was talking about her two brothers, the elder of whom she had just seen through the window: Hyacinthe was known to all and sundry by his nickname Jesus Christ; a lazy, drunken fellow who on his return from military service – he had fought in Africa – had refused to settle down or accept regular employment and now made his living by poaching and pilfering as though still looting poor defenceless Arabs.

In he came, a tall, strapping, curly-headed, powerfully built man in the full prime of his forty years; his long, pointed, unkempt beard made him look like Jesus Christ but a Christ on whose face life had left its mark; the face of a drunkard not above raping women and waylaying men. He had spent the morning in Cloyes and was already drunk; he wore muddy trousers, a stained and filthy smock, a ragged cap pushed back on his head and he was chewing a cheap, foul-smelling, soggy black cigar. And yet in his bleary handsome eyes you could detect the sense of fun and generosity of heart often met with in dissolute but good-natured rogues.

‘Haven't my father and mother arrived yet, then?’ he enquired.

And when the thin, bilious-looking clerk replied with an angry shake of his head, he stood for a second looking at the wall, holding his smoking cigar in his hand. He had not bothered even to look at his sister and brother-in-law who, for their part, seemed not to have noticed his arrival. Then, without another word, he went outside and stood waiting on the pavement.

‘Oh Jesus Christ, oh Jesus Christ!’ chanted the office-boy, looking out towards the street and seemingly more amused than ever by this nickname which reminded him of so many different funny stories.

But five minutes had barely elapsed before the Fouans arrived, slow and cautious in their movements as befitted an elderly couple.