Alone in the mill that morning Lepailleur did not cease storming.  At the slightest provocation he would have hammered his plough to pieces, or have rushed, axe in hand, and mad with hatred, on the old wheel by way of avenging his misfortunes.  When he saw Mathieu come in he believed in some act of bravado, and almost choked.

“Come, neighbor,” said the master of Chantebled cordially, “let us both try to be reasonable.  I’ve come to return your visit, since you called upon me yesterday.  Only, bad words never did good work, and the best course, since this misfortune has happened, is to repair it as speedily as possible.  When would you have us marry off those bad children?”

Thunderstruck by the quiet good nature of this frontal attack, Lepailleur did not immediately reply.  He had shouted over the house roofs that he would have no marriage at all, but rather a good lawsuit by way of sending all the Froments to prison.  Nevertheless, when it came to reflection, a son of the big farmer of Chantebled was not to be disdained as a son-in-law.

“Marry them, marry them,” he stammered at the first moment.  “Yes, by fastening a big stone to both their necks and throwing them together into the river.  Ah! the wretches!  I’ll skin them, I will, her as well as him.”

At last, however, the miller grew calmer and was even showing a disposition to discuss matters, when all at once an urchin of Janville came running across the yard.

“What do you want, eh?” called the master of the premises.

“Please, Monsieur Lepailleur, it’s a telegram.”

“All right, give it here.”

The lad, well pleased with the copper he received as a gratuity, had already gone off, and still the miller, instead of opening the telegram, stood examining the address on it with the distrustful air of a man who does not often receive such communications.  However, he at last had to tear it open.  It contained but three words:  “Your son dead”; and in that brutal brevity, that prompt, hasty bludgeon-blow, one could detect the mother’s cold rage and eager craving to crush without delay the man, the father yonder, whom she accused of having caused her son’s death, even as she had accused him of being responsible for her daughter’s flight.  He felt this full well, and staggered beneath the shock, stunned by the words that appeared on that strip of blue paper, reading them again and again till he ended by understanding them.  Then his hands began to tremble and he burst into oaths.

“Thunder and blazes!  What again is this?  Here’s the boy dying now!  Everything’s going to the devil!”

But his heart dilated and tears appeared in his eyes.  Unable to remain standing, he sank upon a chair and again obstinately read the telegram; “Your son dead—­Your son dead,” as if seeking something else, the particulars, indeed, which the message did not contain.  Perhaps the boy had died before his mother’s arrival.  Or perhaps she had arrived just before he died.  Such were his stammered comments.  And he repeated a score of times that she had taken the train at ten minutes past eleven and must have reached Batignolles about half-past twelve.  As she had handed in the telegram at twenty minutes past one it seemed more likely that she had found the lad already dead.