He replied in an unusually strong voice: 

“Have you lost your senses?”

Thereupon Cesaire began to enumerate his reasons, to speak about Celeste’s good qualities, 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 came late through 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 the crusts of bread to be ready for next morning’s breakfast.

There was a knock, at the door, which was immediately opened, and the priest appeared.  The old man raised toward 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, for he was afraid and did not want his hopes to crumble slowly 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, starless night, one of those misty nights when the air seems thick with humidity.  A vague odor of apples floated through the farmyard, for it was the season when the earliest applies were gathered, the “early ripe,” as they are called in the cider country.  As Cesaire passed along by the cattlesheds the warm smell of living beasts asleep on manure was exhaled through the narrow windows, and he heard the stamping of the horses, who were standing at the end of the stable, and the sound of their jaws tearing and munching 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.

It was thus he saw her on the day when he first took a fancy for her.  He had, however, known her from infancy, but never had he been so struck by her as on that morning.  They had stopped to talk for a few minutes and then he went away, and as he walked along he kept repeating: