Five days later, a Sunday, matters became even worse.  As the search for the runaways remained fruitless Lepailleur, boiling over with rancor, went up to the farm, and from the middle of the road—­for he did not venture inside—­poured forth a flood of ignoble insults.  It so happened that Mathieu was absent; and Marianne had great trouble to restrain Gervais as well as Frederic, both of whom wished to thrust the miller’s scurrilous language back into his throat.  When Mathieu came home in the evening he was extremely vexed to hear of what had happened.

“It is impossible for this state of things to continue,” he said to his wife, as they were retiring to rest.  “It looks as if we were hiding, as if we were guilty in the matter.  I will go to see that man in the morning.  There is only one thing, and a very simple one, to be done, those unhappy children must be married.  For our part we consent, is it not so?  And it is to that man’s advantage to consent also.  To-morrow the matter must be settled.”

On the following day, Monday, at two o’clock in the afternoon, Mathieu set out for the mill.  But certain complications, a tragic drama, which he could not possibly foresee, awaited him there.  For years now a stubborn struggle had been going on between Lepailleur and his wife with respect to Antonin.  While the farmer had grown more and more exasperated with his son’s idleness and life of low debauchery in Paris, the latter had supported her boy with all the obstinacy of an illiterate woman, who was possessed of a blind faith in his fine handwriting, and felt convinced that if he did not succeed in life it was simply because he was refused the money necessary for that purpose.  In spite of her sordid avarice in some matters, the old woman continued bleeding herself for her son, and even robbed the house, promptly thrusting out her claws and setting her teeth ready to bite whenever she was caught in the act, and had to defend some twenty-franc piece or other, which she had been on the point of sending away.  And each time the battle began afresh, to such a point indeed that it seemed as if the shaky old mill would some day end by falling on their heads.

Then, all at once, Antonin, a perfect wreck at thirty-six years of age, fell seriously ill.  Lepailleur forthwith declared that if the scamp had the audacity to come home he would pitch him over the wheel into the water.  Antonin, however, had no desire to return home; he held the country in horror and feared, too, that his father might chain him up like a dog.  So his mother placed him with some people of Batignolles, paying for his board and for the attendance of a doctor of the district.  This had been going on for three months or so, and every fortnight La Lepailleur went to see her son.  She had done so the previous Thursday, and on the Sunday evening she received a telegram summoning her to Batignolles again.  Thus, on the morning of the day when Mathieu repaired to the mill, she had once more gone to Paris after a frightful quarrel with her husband, who asked if their good-for-nothing son ever meant to cease fooling them and spending their money, when he had not the courage even to turn a spit of earth.