And she said no more, while Chicot watched her going on with her work.  Her crooked, knotted fingers, hard as a lobster’s claws, seized the tubers, which were lying in a pail, as if they had been a pair of pincers, and she peeled them rapidly, cutting off long strips of skin with an old knife which she held in the other hand, throwing the potatoes into the water as they were done.  Three daring fowls jumped one after the other into her lap, seized a bit of peel and then ran away as fast as their legs would carry them with it in their beak.

Chicot seemed embarrassed, anxious, with something on the tip of his tongue which he could not say.  At last he said hurriedly: 

“Listen, Mother Magloire—­”

“Well, what is it?”

“You are quite sure that you do not want to sell your land?”

“Certainly not; you may make up your mind to that.  What I have said I have said, so don’t refer to it again.”

“Very well; only I think I know of an arrangement that might suit us both very well.”

“What is it?”

“Just this.  You shall sell it to me and keep it all the same.  You don’t understand?  Very well, then follow me in what I am going to say.”

The old woman left off peeling potatoes and looked at the innkeeper attentively from under her heavy eyebrows, and he went on: 

“Let me explain myself.  Every month I will give you a hundred and fifty francs.  You understand me! suppose!  Every month I will come and bring you thirty crowns, and it will not make the slightest difference in your life—­not the very slightest.  You will have your own home just as you have now, need not trouble yourself about me, and will owe me nothing; all you will have to do will be to take my money.  Will that arrangement suit you?”

He looked at her good-humoredly, one might almost have said benevolently, and the old woman returned his looks distrustfully, as if she suspected a trap, and said: 

“It seems all right as far as I am concerned, but it will not give you the farm.”

“Never mind about that,” he said; “you may remain here as long as it pleases God Almighty to let you live; it will be your home.  Only you will sign a deed before a lawyer making it over to me; after your death.  You have no children, only nephews and nieces for whom you don’t care a straw.  Will that suit you?  You will keep everything during your life, and I will give you the thirty crowns a month.  It is pure gain as far as you are concerned.”

The old woman was surprised, rather uneasy, but, nevertheless, very much tempted to agree, and answered: 

“I don’t say that I will not agree to it, but I must think about it.  Come back in a week, and we will talk it over again, and I will then give you my definite answer.”

And Chicot went off as happy as a king who had conquered an empire.

Mother Magloire was thoughtful, and did not sleep at all that night; in fact, for four days she was in a fever of hesitation.  She suspected that there was something underneath the offer which was not to her advantage; but then the thought of thirty crowns a month, of all those coins clinking in her apron, falling to her, as it were, from the skies, without her doing anything for it, aroused her covetousness.