The warm autumn sun was beating down on the farmyard.
Under the grass, which had been cropped close by the
cows, the earth soaked by recent rains, was soft and
sank in under the feet with a soggy noise, and the
apple trees, loaded with apples, were dropping their
pale green fruit in the dark green grass.
Four young heifers, tied in a line, were grazing and
at times looking toward the house and lowing.
The fowls made a colored patch on the dung-heap before
the stable, scratching, moving about and cackling,
while two roosters crowed continually, digging worms
for their hens, whom they were calling with a loud
clucking.
The wooden gate opened and a man entered. He
might have been forty years old, but he looked at
least sixty, wrinkled, bent, walking slowly, impeded
by the weight of heavy wooden shoes full of straw.
His long arms hung down on both sides of his body.
When he got near the farm a yellow cur, tied at the
foot of an enormous pear tree, beside a barrel which
served as his kennel, began at first to wag his tail
and then to bark for joy. The man cried:
“Down, Finot!”
The dog was quiet.
A peasant woman came out of the house. Her large,
flat, bony body was outlined under a long woollen
jacket drawn in at the waist. A gray skirt, too
short, fell to the middle of her legs, which were encased
in blue stockings. She, too, wore wooden shoes,
filled with straw. The white cap, turned yellow,
covered a few hairs which were plastered to the scalp,
and her brown, thin, ugly, toothless face had that
wild, animal expression which is often to be found
on the faces of the peasants.
The man asked:
“How is he gettin’ along?”
The woman answered:
“The priest said it’s the end—that
he will never live through the night.”
Both of them went into the house.
After passing through the kitchen, they entered a
low, dark room, barely lighted by one window, in front
of which a piece of calico was hanging. The big
beams, turned brown with age and smoke, crossed the
room from one side to the other, supporting the thin
floor of the garret, where an army of rats ran about
day and night.
The moist, lumpy earthen floor looked greasy, and,
at the back of the room, the bed made an indistinct
white spot. A harsh, regular noise, a difficult,
hoarse, wheezing breathing, like the gurgling of water
from a broken pump, came from the darkened couch where
an old man, the father of the peasant woman, was dying.
The man and the woman approached the dying man and
looked at him with calm, resigned eyes.
The son-in-law said:
“I guess it’s all up with him this time;
he will not last the night.”
The woman answered:
“He’s been gurglin’ like that ever
since midday.” They were silent. The
father’s eyes were closed, his face was the color
of the earth and so dry that it looked like wood.
Through his open mouth came his harsh, rattling breath,
and the gray linen sheet rose and fell with each respiration.
