Then on market days Jean-Pierre was seen bargaining bitterly, quarrelsome and greedy; then getting drunk with taciturn earnestness; then driving home in the dusk at a rate fit for a wedding, but with a face gloomy enough for a funeral.  Sometimes he would insist on his wife coming with him; and they would drive in the early morning, shaking side by side on the narrow seat above the helpless pig, that, with tied legs, grunted a melancholy sigh at every rut.  The morning drives were silent; but in the evening, coming home, Jean-Pierre, tipsy, was viciously muttering, and growled at the confounded woman who could not rear children that were like anybody else’s.  Susan, holding on against the erratic swayings of the cart, pretended not to hear.  Once, as they were driving through Ploumar, some obscure and drunken impulse caused him to pull up sharply opposite the church.  The moon swam amongst light white clouds.  The tombstones gleamed pale under the fretted shadows of the trees in the churchyard.  Even the village dogs slept.  Only the nightingales, awake, spun out the thrill of their song above the silence of graves.  Jean-Pierre said thickly to his wife—­

“What do you think is there?”

He pointed his whip at the tower—­in which the big dial of the clock appeared high in the moonlight like a pallid face without eyes—­and getting out carefully, fell down at once by the wheel.  He picked himself up and climbed one by one the few steps to the iron gate of the churchyard.  He put his face to the bars and called out indistinctly—­

“Hey there!  Come out!”

“Jean!  Return!  Return!” entreated his wife in low tones.

He took no notice, and seemed to wait there.  The song of nightingales beat on all sides against the high walls of the church, and flowed back between stone crosses and flat gray slabs, engraved with words of hope and sorrow.

“Hey!  Come out!” shouted Jean-Pierre, loudly.

The nightingales ceased to sing.

“Nobody?” went on Jean-Pierre.  “Nobody there.  A swindle of the crows.  That’s what this is.  Nobody anywhere.  I despise it. Allez!  Houp!”

He shook the gate with all his strength, and the iron bars rattled with a frightful clanging, like a chain dragged over stone steps.  A dog near by barked hurriedly.  Jean-Pierre staggered back, and after three successive dashes got into his cart.  Susan sat very quiet and still.  He said to her with drunken severity—­

“See?  Nobody.  I’ve been made a fool! Malheur! Somebody will pay for it.  The next one I see near the house I will lay my whip on . . . on the black spine . . .  I will.  I don’t want him in there . . . he only helps the carrion crows to rob poor folk.  I am a man. . . .  We will see if I can’t have children like anybody else . . . now you mind. . . .  They won’t be all . . . all . . . we see. . . .”

She burst out through the fingers that hid her face—­