On the morrow, as soon as he heard the girl set her pitcher down, he gently opened the door, sweeping away with a push the tall weeds which covered the threshold.  Stretching out his head, he saw Miette leaning over the brink of the well, looking into the water, absorbed in expectation.  Thereupon, in a couple of strides, he reached the recess formed by the wall, and thence called, “Miette!  Miette!” in a soft voice, which made her tremble.  She raised her head, thinking he was on the coping of the wall.  But when she saw him in the Jas, at a few steps from her, she gave a faint cry of surprise, and ran up to him.  They took each other’s hand, and looked at one another, delighted to be so near, thinking themselves far handsomer like this, in the warm sunshine.  It was the middle of August, the Feast of the Assumption.  In the distance, the bells were pealing in the limpid atmosphere that so often accompanies great days of festival, an atmosphere full of bright gaiety.

“Good morning, Silvere!”

“Good morning, Miette!”

The voices in which they exchanged their morning greetings sounded strange to them.  They knew only the muffled accents transmitted by the echo of the well.  And now their voices seemed to them as clear as the notes of a lark.  And ah! how delightful it was in that warm corner, in that holiday atmosphere!  They still held each other’s hands.  Silvere leaning against the wall, Miette with her figure slightly thrown backwards.  They were about to tell each other all the soft things which they had not dared to confide to the reverberations of the well, when Silvere, hearing a slight noise, started, and, turning pale, dropped Miette’s hands.  He had just seen aunt Dide standing before him erect and motionless on the threshold of the doorway.

The grandmother had come to the well by chance.  And on perceiving, in the old black wall, the white gap formed by the doorway which Silvere had left wide open, she had experienced a violent shock.  That open gap seemed to her like a gulf of light violently illumining her past.  She once more saw herself running to the door amidst the morning brightness, and crossing the threshold full of the transports of her nervous love.  And Macquart was there awaiting her.  She hung upon his neck and pressed against his bosom, whilst the rising sun, following her through the doorway, which she had left open in her hurry, enveloped them with radiance.  It was a sudden vision which roused her cruelly from the slumber of old age, like some supreme chastisement, and awakened a multitude of bitter memories within her.  Had the well, had the entire wall, disappeared beneath the earth, she would not have been more stupefied.  She had never thought that this door would open again.  In her mind it had been walled up ever since the hour of Macquart’s death.  And amidst her amazement she felt angry, indignant with the sacrilegious hand that had penetrated this violation, and left that white open space agape like a yawning tomb.  She stepped forward, yielding to a kind of fascination, and halted erect within the framework of the door.