On arriving home the peasant found his father already seated at table,
for he came late through his visit to the presbytery.

They dined in silence, face to face, ate a little bread and butter after
the soup and drank a glass of cider. Then they remained motionless in
their chairs, with scarcely a glimmer of light, the little servant girl
having carried off the candle in order to wash the spoons, wipe the
glasses and cut the crusts of bread to be ready for next morning's
breakfast.

There was a knock, at the door, which was immediately opened, and the
priest appeared. The old man raised toward 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."

Cesaire had disappeared, taking advantage of the door being open. He did
not want to listen, for he was afraid and did not want his hopes to
crumble slowly with each obstinate refusal of his father. He preferred to
learn the truth at once, good or bad, later on; and he went out into the
night. It was a moonless, starless night, one of those misty nights when
the air seems thick with humidity. A vague odor of apples floated through
the farmyard, for it was the season when the earliest applies were
gathered, the "early ripe," as they are called in the cider country. As
Cesaire passed along by the cattlesheds the warm smell of living beasts
asleep on manure was exhaled through the narrow windows, and he heard the
stamping of the horses, who were standing at the end of the stable, and
the sound of their jaws tearing and munching the hay on the racks.

He went straight ahead, thinking about Celeste. In this simple nature,
whose ideas were scarcely more than images generated directly by objects,
thoughts of love only formulated themselves by calling up before the mind
the picture of a big red-haired girl standing in a hollow road and
laughing, with her hands on her hips.

It was thus he saw her on the day when he first took a fancy for her. He
had, however, known her from infancy, but never had he been so struck by
her as on that morning. They had stopped to talk for a few minutes and
then he went away, and as he walked along he kept repeating:

"Faith, she's a fine girl, all the same. 'Tis a pity she made a slip with
Victor."

Till evening he kept thinking of her and also on the followin