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Updated: June 25, 2025
Marianne raised her eyes, smiling and all attention. "Yes, tell me your secret if the time has come. Oh! I could guess that you had some great hope in you. But I did not ask you anything; I preferred to wait." He did not give a direct reply, for at a sudden recollection his feelings rebelled. "That Lepailleur," said he, "is simply a lazy fellow and a fool in spite of all his cunning airs.
I've come to return your visit, since you called upon me yesterday. Only, bad words never did good work, and the best course, since this misfortune has happened, is to repair it as speedily as possible. When would you have us marry off those bad children?" Thunderstruck by the quiet good nature of this frontal attack, Lepailleur did not immediately reply.
Lepailleur, in particular, distinguished himself by the violent raillery he levelled at this Parisian, a gentleman born, with a good berth, who was so stupid as to make himself a peasant, and fling what money he had to that rascally earth, which would assuredly swallow him and his children and his money all together, without yielding even enough wheat to keep them in bread.
Then Mathieu also, catching sight of the scene, sternly summoned Gregoire: "Please to place your wheel with the others. You know what I have already said to you, so don't begin again." It was war. Lepailleur impudently growled ignoble threats, which fortunately were lost amid the strains of a barrel organ.
This morning she began again, and of course she convinced me, more particularly as, with the thought of poor mamma lying ill through our fault, I had hardly slept all night. But father Lepailleur still had to be convinced, and Therese undertook to do that also. She even hit upon something extraordinary, so that the old man might imagine that he was the conqueror of conquerors.
Thus, on the morning of the day when Mathieu repaired to the mill, she had once more gone to Paris after a frightful quarrel with her husband, who asked if their good-for-nothing son ever meant to cease fooling them and spending their money, when he had not the courage even to turn a spit of earth. Alone in the mill that morning Lepailleur did not cease storming.
The worst was that for some months past all the gossips of Janville had been relating that he had renewed his former boyish friendship with Therese Lepailleur, the miller's daughter, and that they were to be met of an evening in shady nooks under the pollard-willows by the Yeuse.
Mathieu was on the point of explaining these things to his wife, but he hesitated, and then simply said: "Lepailleur does wrong to complain; he has two cows and a horse, and when there is urgent work he can take an assistant. We, this morning, had just thirty sous belonging to us, and we own no mill, no scrap of land. For my part I think his mill superb; I envy him every time I cross this bridge.
Her arrival had upset everything in the house; things would have been much better if she had never been born. Then, as Marianne began to protest, saying that she had seldom seen a more intelligent and prettier little girl, Madame Lepailleur answered more gently: "Oh! she's sharp; that's true enough; but one can't send girls to Paris.
And doubtless he would cede it to the farm as soon as he should be the master. The thought that Chantebled might yet be increased by the fields which he, Lepailleur, had withheld from it brought the miller's delirious rage to a climax. "Your son, I'll send him to the galleys! And you, if you don't go, I'll throw you out! Be off with you, be off!"
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