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Updated: May 16, 2025
In fact, the man who thus went off, Cesaire Houlbreque, the son of deaf old Amable Houlbreque, wanted to marry, in spite of his father, Celeste Levesque, who had a child by Victor Lecoq, a mere laborer on her parents' farm, who had been turned out of doors for this act.
Large round baskets, full of frightened poultry, were standing in front of the peasant women. Cesaire Horlaville took them one after the other and packed them on the top of his coach; then more gently, he loaded on those containing eggs; finally he tossed up from below several little bags of grain, small packages wrapped in handkerchiefs, pieces of cloth, or paper.
There were no late frosts, and the apples bursting into bloom scattered on the grass their rosy white snow which promised a hail of fruit for the autumn. Cesaire toiled hard, rose early and left off work late, in order to save the expense of a hired man. His wife said to him sometimes: "You'll make yourself ill in the long run." He replied: "Certainly not. I'm a good judge."
And he gazed, without hate, at the distant outline of the man who was driving his plough along the horizon. But old Amable did not want this marriage. He opposed it with the obstinacy of a deaf man, with a violent obstinacy. Cesaire in vain shouted in his ear, in that ear which still heard a few sounds: "I'll take good care of you, daddy.
Victor replied in an indifferent tone: "Don't bother yourself. He'll come back when he's tired." Then she saw after the house, washed the plates and wiped the table, while the man quietly took off his clothes. Then he slipped into the dark and hollow bed in which she had slept with Cesaire. The yard gate opened and old Amable again appeared.
Caniveau was slapping his thigh, Cesaire Horlaville snapped his whip, the priest laughed like a braying donkey, the teacher cackled as though he were sneezing, and the two women were giving little screams of joy, like the clucking of hens.
The old man raised towards him an anxious eye full of suspicion, and, foreseeing danger, he was getting ready to climb up his ladder when the Abbe Raffin laid his hand on his shoulder, and shouted close to his temple: "I want to have a talk with you, Father Amable." Césaire had disappeared, taking advantage of the door being open.
All these people wore the blue blouse over quaint and antique coats of a black or greenish cloth, Sunday clothes which they would only uncover in the streets of Havre. Their heads were covered by silk caps at high as towers, the emblem of supreme elegance in the small villages of Normandy. Cesaire Horlaville closed the door, climbed up on his box and snapped his whip.
"I'd like to have a talk with you, M. le Curé." The man remained standing, intimidated, holding his cap in one hand and his whip in the other. "Well, talk." Césaire looked at the housekeeper, an old woman who dragged her feet while putting on the cover for her master's dinner at the corner of the table in front of the window. He stammered: "'Tis 'tis a sort of confession."
Three men were regular in their attendance at the bedside: Celestin Maloisel, a tall, thin fellow, somewhat gnarled, like the trunk of an apple-tree; Prosper Horslaville, a withered little man with a ferret nose, cunning as a fox; and Cesaire Paumelle, who never spoke, but who enjoyed Toine's society all the same.
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