t of the boiling water enter into him, into his
old body stiffened by so many winters.

Then he took his sticks and went out into the fields, covered with ice,
till it was time for dinner, for he had seen Celeste's youngster still
asleep in a big soap-box.

He did not take his place in the household. He lived in the thatched
house, as in bygone days, but he seemed not to belong to it any longer,
to be no longer interested in anything, to look upon those people, his
son, the wife, and the child as strangers whom he did not know, to whom
he never spoke.

The winter glided by. It was long and severe.

Then the early spring made the seeds sprout forth again, and the peasants
once more, like laborious ants, passed their days in the fields, toiling
from morning till night, under the wind and under the rain, along the
furrows of brown earth which brought forth the bread of men.

The year promised well for the newly-married pair. The crops grew thick
and heavy. There were no slow frosts, and the apples bursting into bloom
let fall into the grass their rosy white snow, which promised a hail of
fruit for the autumn.

Cesaire toiled hard, rose early and left off work late, in order to save
the expense of a laboring man.

His wife said to him sometimes:

"You'll make yourself ill in the long run."

He replied:

"Certainly not. I'm a good judge."

Nevertheless, one evening he came home so fatigued that he had to go to
bed without supper. He rose up next morning at the usual hour, but he
could not eat, in spite of his fast on the previous night, and he had to
come back to the house in the middle of the afternoon in order to go to
bed again. In the course of the night, he began to cough; he turned round
on his straw couch, feverish, with his forehead burning, his tongue dry,
and his throat parched by a burning thirst.

However, at daybreak, he went towards his grounds, but, next morning,
the doctor had to be sent for, and pronounced him very ill from an
inflammation of the chest.

And he no longer quitted the obscure niche which he made use of to sleep
in. He could be heard coughing, panting, and tossing about in the
interior of this hole. In order to see him, to give his medicine, and to
apply cupping-glasses, it was necessary to bring a candle towards the
entrance. Then one could see his narrow head with his long matted beard
underneath a thick lacework of spiders' webs, which hung and floated when
stirred by the ai