[Footnote 11: Written before universal service
was obligatory, and when soldiers were selected by
conscription, a certain amount of those who drew high
numbers, being exempt from service.—TRANSLATOR.]
Tiennou prowled about the house, like a starving beggar,
and one morning, while the miller was mending the
wheel, he managed to see Margot.
“I will wait for you in the old place to-night,”
he whispered, in terrible grief. “I know
it is the last time ... I shall throw myself
into some deep hole in the river if you do not come!
...”
“I will be there, Tiennou,” she replied,
in a bewildered manner. “I swear I will
be there ... even if I have to do something terrible
to enable me to come!”
* * * *
*
The village was burning in the dark night, and the
flames, fanned by the wind, rose up like sinister
torches. The thatched roofs, the ricks of corn,
the haystacks, and the barns fell in, and crackled
like rockets, while the sky looked as if they were
illuminated by an aurora borealis. Fresquyl’s
mill was smoking, and its calcined ruins were reflected
on the deep water. The sheep and cows were running
about the fields in terror, the dogs were howling,
and the women were sitting on the broken furniture,
and were crying and wringing their hands; while during
all this time Margot was abandoning herself to her
lover’s ardent caresses, and with her arms round
his neck, she said to him, tenderly:
“You see that I have kept my promise ...
I set fire to the mill so that I might be able to
get out. So much the worse if all have suffered.
But I do not care as long as you are happy in having
me, and love me!”
And pointing to the fire which was still burning fiercely
in the distance, she added with a burst of savage
laughter:
“Tiennou, we shall not have such beautiful tapers
at out wedding Mass when you come back from your regiment!”
And thus it was that for the second time Margot Fresquyl
yielded to the mortal sin of love.
“It is certain,” Sulpice de Laurier said,
“that I had absolutely forgotten the date on
which I was to allow myself to be taken in the very
act, with a mistress for the occasion. As neither
my wife nor I had any serious nor plausible reason
for a divorce, not even the slightest incompatibility
of temper, and as there is always a risk of not softening
the heart of even the most indulgent judge when he
is told that the parties have agreed to drag their
load separately, each for themselves, that they are
too frisky, too fond of pleasure and of wandering
about from place to place to continue the conjugal
experiment, we between us got up the ingenious stage
arrangement of, ’a serious wrong...’
