e, I like you just as you are, with or without the child. 'Tis
only my father that opposes me. All the same, I'll see about settling the
business."

She answered:

"Go to the cure at once."

"I'm going to him."

And he set forth with his heavy peasant's tread; while the girl, with her
hands on her hips, turned round to pick her colza.

In fact, the man who thus went off, Cesaire Houlbreque, the son of deaf
old Amable Houlbreque, wanted to marry in spite of his father, Celeste
Levesque, who had a child by Victor Lecoq, a mere laborer on his parent's
farm, turned out of doors for this act.

Moreover, the hierarchy of caste does not exist in the fields, and if the
laborer is thrifty, he becomes, by taking a farm in his turn, the equal
of his former master.

So Cesaire Houlbreque went off with his whip under his arm, brooding over
his own thoughts, and lifting up one after the other his heavy wooden
shoes daubed with clay. Certainly he desired to marry Celeste Levesque.
He wanted her with her child, because it was the woman he required. He
could not say why: but he knew it, he was sure of it. He had only to look
at her to be convinced of it, to feel himself quite jolly, quite stirred
up, as it were turned into a pure animal through contentment. He even
found a pleasure in kissing the little boy, Victor's little boy, because
he had come out of her.

And he gazed, without hate, at the distant profile of the man who was
driving his plow along on the horizon's edge.

But old Amable did not want this marriage. He opposed it with the
obstinacy of a deaf man, with a violent obstinacy.

Cesaire in vain shouted in his ear, in that ear which still heard a few
sounds:

"I'll take good care of you, daddy. I tell you she's a good girl and
strong, too, and also thrifty."

The old man repeated:

"As long as I live, I won't see her your wife."

And nothing could get the better of him, nothing could bend his severity.
One hope only was left to Cesaire. Old Amable was afraid of the cure
through apprehension of the death which he felt drawing nigh. He had not
much fear of the good God nor of the Devil nor of Hell nor of Purgatory,
of which he had no conception, but he dreaded the priest, who represented
to him burial, as one might fear the doctors through horror of diseases.
For the last eight days Celeste, who knew this weakness of the old man,
had been urging Cesaire to go and find the cure; but Cesaire always
hesitated,