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Updated: June 25, 2025
There were two disastrous winters with snow and ice, and March brought hail-storms and hurricanes which left the crops lying low. Even as Lepailleur had threateningly predicted with a laugh of impotent envy, it seemed as if the earth meant to prove a bad mother, ungrateful to them for their toil, indifferent to their losses.
Antonin, however, had no desire to return home; he held the country in horror and feared, too, that his father might chain him up like a dog. So his mother placed him with some people of Batignolles, paying for his board and for the attendance of a doctor of the district. This had been going on for three months or so, and every fortnight La Lepailleur went to see her son.
Thus, the people of the farm might assert that they had made a mistake in all good faith, or even that they had remained within their limits. But Lepailleur ragefully maintained the contrary, entered into particulars, and traced what he declared to be the proper frontier line with his stick, swearing that within a few inches it was absolutely correct.
In your place I would lay myself out to obtain from her, by increase of care, all that I might want. As in the world's early days, she is still the great fruitful spouse, and she yields abundantly when she is loved in proper fashion." But Lepailleur, raising his fists, retorted: "No, no; I've had enough of her!"
Since Mathieu's victory, since the whole of the estate of Chantebled had been conquered and fertilized, Lepailleur had shown some respect for his bourgeois rival. Nevertheless, although he could not deny the results hitherto obtained, he did not altogether surrender, but continued sneering, as if he expected that some rending of heaven or earth would take place to prove him in the right.
As Lepailleur would not part with his enclosure on any reasonable terms, Seguin had to content himself for the time with selling Mathieu the selected marshland on the plateau. A deed of conveyance having been prepared, they exchanged signatures.
Briefly it was a real bicycle lesson which the little rascal was giving, and which the little hussy took with all the pleasure in the world. When Therese returned home that evening she had her ears soundly boxed for her pains. "Where can that little gadabout have got to?" La Lepailleur continued shouting. "One can no sooner take one's eyes off her than she runs away."
The son, standing there with his hands in his pockets, presented a sorry sight with his bent back, his bald head, and pale face. All three were seeking to devise something disagreeable when an opportunity presented itself. "Why, where is Therese?" exclaimed La Lepailleur. "She was here just now: what has become of her? I won't have her leave me when there are all these people about!"
"Mon Dieu, who knows?" Mathieu quietly concluded. "When one only loves strongly one may work miracles." La Lepailleur, after going to fetch a dozen eggs, now stood erect before her husband in admiration at hearing him talk so eloquently to a bourgeois.
The land would soon be bankrupt, and the peasantry no longer believed in it, so old and empty and worn out had it become. And even the sun got out of order nowadays; they had snow in July and thunderstorms in December, a perfect upsetting of seasons, which wrecked the crops almost before they were out of the ground. "No, monsieur," said Lepailleur, "what you say is impossible; it's all past.
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