Collard! He
did everything. He swept the room and cooked the meals. He loved me as
though I were his own child; and after his day's work he used to come
back splashed with mud, and so tired that he could scarcely move, while
I stayed warm and comfortable in the house, and had nothing to do but
eat. And now they're going to shoot him!"

At this Lisa protested, saying that he would certainly not be shot. But
Quenu only shook his head.

"I haven't loved him half as much as I ought to have done," he
continued. "I can see that very well now. I had a wicked heart, and I
hesitated about giving him his half of the money."

"Why, I offered it to him a dozen times and more!" Lisa interrupted.
"I'm sure we've nothing to reproach ourselves with."

"Oh, yes, I know that you are everything that is good, and that you
would have given him every copper. But I hesitated, I didn't like to
part with it; and now it will be a sorrow to me for the rest of my life.
I shall always think that if I'd shared the fortune with him he wouldn't
have gone wrong a second time. Oh, yes; it's my fault! It is I who have
driven him to this."

Then Lisa, expostulating still more gently, assured him that he had
nothing to blame himself for, and even expressed some pity for Florent.
But he was really very culpable, she said, and if he had had more money
he would probably have perpetrated greater follies. Gradually she gave
her husband to understand that it was impossible matters could have had
any other termination, and that now everything would go on much better.
Quenu was still weeping, wiping his cheeks with his apron, trying to
suppress his sobs to listen to her, and then breaking into a wilder
fit of tears than before. His fingers had mechanically sought a heap
of sausage-meat lying on the block, and he was digging holes in it, and
roughly kneading it together.

"And how unwell you were feeling, you know," Lisa continued. "It was all
because our life had got so shifted out of its usual course. I was very
anxious, though I didn't tell you so, at seeing you getting so low."

"Yes, wasn't I?" he murmured, ceasing to sob for a moment.

"And the business has been quite under a cloud this year. It was as
though a spell had been cast on it. Come, now, don't take on so; you'll
see that everything will look up again now. You must take care of
yourself, you know, for my sake and your daughter's. You have duties to
us as well as to others, remember."

Que