“Down, Finot!”

The dog was quiet.

A peasant woman came out of the house.  Her large, flat, bony body was outlined under a long woollen jacket drawn in at the waist.  A gray skirt, too short, fell to the middle of her legs, which were encased in blue stockings.  She, too, wore wooden shoes, filled with straw.  The white cap, turned yellow, covered a few hairs which were plastered to the scalp, and her brown, thin, ugly, toothless face had that wild, animal expression which is often to be found on the faces of the peasants.

The man asked: 

“How is he gettin’ along?”

The woman answered: 

“The priest said it’s the end—­that he will never live through the night.”

Both of them went into the house.

After passing through the kitchen, they entered a low, dark room, barely lighted by one window, in front of which a piece of calico was hanging.  The big beams, turned brown with age and smoke, crossed the room from one side to the other, supporting the thin floor of the garret, where an army of rats ran about day and night.

The moist, lumpy earthen floor looked greasy, and, at the back of the room, the bed made an indistinct white spot.  A harsh, regular noise, a difficult, hoarse, wheezing breathing, like the gurgling of water from a broken pump, came from the darkened couch where an old man, the father of the peasant woman, was dying.

The man and the woman approached the dying man and looked at him with calm, resigned eyes.

The son-in-law said: 

“I guess it’s all up with him this time; he will not last the night.”

The woman answered: 

“He’s been gurglin’ like that ever since midday.”  They were silent.  The father’s eyes were closed, his face was the color of the earth and so dry that it looked like wood.  Through his open mouth came his harsh, rattling breath, and the gray linen sheet rose and fell with each respiration.

The son-in-law, after a long silence, said: 

“There’s nothing more to do; I can’t help him.  It’s a nuisance, just the same, because the weather is good and we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

His wife seemed annoyed at this idea.  She reflected a few moments and then said: 

“He won’t be buried till Saturday, and that will give you all day tomorrow.”

The peasant thought the matter over and answered: 

“Yes, but to-morrow I’ll have to invite the people to the funeral.  That means five or six hours to go round to Tourville and Manetot, and to see everybody.”

The woman, after meditating two or three minutes, declared: 

“It isn’t three o’clock yet.  You could begin this evening and go all round the country to Tourville.  You can just as well say that he’s dead, seem’ as he’s as good as that now.”

The man stood perplexed for a while, weighing the pros and cons of the idea.  At last he declared: