raw.

He came back at the close of the day, took his place at the end of the
table, in the kitchen, and when the earthen pot containing the soup had
been placed before him, he caught it between his crooked fingers, which
seemed to have kept the round form of the jar, and, winter and summer, he
warmed his hands, before commencing to eat, so as to lose nothing, not
even a particle of the heat that came from the fire, which costs a great
deal, neither one drop of soup into which fat and salt have to be put,
nor one morsel of bread, which comes from the wheat.

Then, he climbed up a ladder into a loft where he had his straw-bed,
while his son slept below-stairs at the end of a kind of niche near the
chimney-piece and the servant shut herself up in a kind of cave, a black
hole which was formerly used to store the potatoes.

Cesaire and his father scarcely ever talked to each other. From time
to time only, when there was a question of selling a crop or buying
a calf, the young man took the advice of his father, and making a
speaking-trumpet of his two hands, he bawled out his views into his ear,
and old Amable either approved of them or opposed them in a slow, hollow
voice that came from the depths of his stomach.

So, one evening, Cesaire, approaching him as if about to discuss the
purchase of a horse or a heifer, communicated to him at the top of his
voice his intention to marry Celeste Levesque.

Then, the father got angry. Why? On the score of morality? No, certainly.
The virtue of a girl is scarcely of importance in the country. But his
avarice, his deep, fierce instinct for sparing, revolted at the idea
that his son should bring up a child which he had not begotten himself.
He had thought suddenly, in one second, on the soup the little fellow
would swallow before being useful in the farm. He had calculated all
the pounds of bread, all the pints of cider, that this brat would consume
up to his fourteenth year; and a mad anger broke loose from him against
Cesaire who had not bestowed a thought on all this.

He replied, with an usual strength of voice:

"Have you lost your senses?"

Thereupon, Cesaire began to enumerate his reasons, to speak about
Celeste's good points, to prove that she would be worth a thousand times
what the child would cost. But the old man doubted these advantages,
while he could have no doubts as to the child's existence; and he replied
with emphatic repetition, without giving any further exp