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 explanation: 

“I will not have it!  I will not have it!  As long as I live, this won’t be done!”

And at this point they had remained for the last three months, without one or the other giving in, resuming at least once a week the same discussion, with the same arguments, the same words, the same gestures, and the same fruitlessness.

It was then that Celeste had advised Cesaire to go and ask for the cure’s assistance.

On arriving home the peasant found his father already seated at table, for he was kept late by his visit to the presbytery.

They dined in silence face to face, ate a little bread and butter after the soup and drank a glass of cider.  Then they remained motionless in their chairs, with scarcely a glimmer of light, the little servant-girl having carried off the candle in order to wash the spoons, wipe the glasses, and cut beforehand the crusts of bread for next morning’s breakfast.

There was a knock at the door, which was immediately opened; and the priest appeared.  The old man raised towards him an anxious eye full of suspicion, and, foreseeing danger, he was getting ready to climb up his ladder when the Abbe Raffin laid his hand on his shoulder, and shouted close to his temple: 

“I want to have a talk with you, Father Amable.”

Cesaire had disappeared, taking advantage of the door being open.  He did not want to listen, so much was he afraid, and he did not want his hopes to crumble with each obstinate refusal of his father.  He preferred to learn the truth at once, good or bad, later on; and he went out into the night.  It was a moonless night, a starless night, one of those foggy nights when the air seems thick with humidity.  A vague odor of apples floated through the farm-yard, for it was the season when the earliest apples were gathered, the “soon ripe” ones, as they are called in the language of the peasantry.  As Cesaire passed along by the cattle-sheds, the warm smell of living beasts sleeping on manure was exhaled through the narrow windows; and he heard near the stables the stamping of horses who remained standing, and the sound of their jaws tearing and bruising the hay on the racks.

He went straight ahead, thinking about Celeste.  In this simple nature, whose ideas were scarcely more than images generated directly by objects, thoughts of love only formulated themselves by calling up before the mind the picture of a big red-haired girl, standing in a hollow road, and laughing with her hands on her hips.