here, Delphine! Think of your daughters!"

Then she turned on both of them a glance of sovereign contempt, and,
after that, flying with a bound towards the staircase, she flung at them
these scornful words:

"You are a pair of wretches!"

Left alone, they gazed at each other for a moment, both equally
crestfallen, equally crushed. M. Poincot picked up his hat, which had
fallen down near where he sat, dusted off his knees the signs of
kneeling on the floor, then raising both hands sorrowfully, while
Renoldi was seeing him to the door, remarked with a parting bow:

"We are very unfortunate, Monsieur."

Then he walked away from the house with a heavy step.

* * * * *

NO QUARTER

The broad sunlight threw its burning rays on the fields, and under this
shower of flame life burst forth in glowing vegetation from the earth.
As far as the eye could see, the soil was green; and the sky was blue to
the verge of the horizon. The Norman farms scattered through the plain
seemed at a distance like little doors enclosed each in a circle of thin
beech trees. Coming closer, on opening the worm-eaten stile, one fancied
that he saw a giant garden, for all the old apple-trees, as knotted as
the peasants, were in blossom. The weather-beaten black trunks, crooked,
twisted, ranged along the enclosure, displayed beneath the sky their
glittering domes, rosy and white. The sweet perfume of their blossoms
mingled with the heavy odors of the open stables and with the fumes of
the steaming dunghill, covered with hens and their chickens. It was
midday. The family sat at dinner in the shadow of the pear-tree planted
before the door--the father, the mother, the four children, the two
maid-servants, and the three farm laborers. They scarcely uttered a
word. Their fare consisted of soup and of a stew composed of potatoes
mashed up in lard.

From time to time one of the maid-servants rose up and went to the
cellar to fetch a pitcher of cider.

The husband, a big fellow of about forty, stared at a vine-tree, quite
exposed to view, which stood close to the farm-house twining like a
serpent under the shutters the entire length of the wall.

He said, after a long silence:

"The father's vine-tree is blossoming early this year. Perhaps it will
bear good fruit."

The peasant's wife also turned round, and gazed at the tree without
speaking.

This vine-tree was planted exactly in the place where the father