The sudden shock of
the tragedy had staggered him, and he had hitherto waited in silence. But
now he offered his services and spoke of accompanying the other to Paris.
He had to retreat, however, for the miller rose to his feet, seized with
wild exasperation at perceiving him still there in his house.
"Ah! yes, you came; and what was it you were saying to me? That we ought
to marry off those wretched children? Well, you can see that I'm in
proper trim for a wedding! My boy's dead! You've chosen your day well. Be
off with you, be off with you, I say, if you don't want me to do
something dreadful!"
He raised his fists, quite maddened as he was by the presence of Mathieu
at that moment when his whole life was wrecked. It was terrible indeed
that this bourgeois who had made a fortune by turning himself into a
peasant should be there at the moment when he so suddenly learnt the
death of Antonin, that son whom he had dreamt of turning into a Monsieur
by filling his mind with disgust of the soil and sending him to rot of
idleness and vice in Paris! It enraged him to find that he had erred,
that the earth whom he had slandered, whom he had taxed with decrepitude
and barrenness was really a living, youthful, and fruitful spouse to the
man who knew how to love her! And nought but ruin remained around him,
thanks to his imbecile resolve to limit his family: a foul life had
killed his only son, and his only daughter had gone off with a scion of
the triumphant farm, while he was now utterly alone, weeping and howling
in his deserted mill, that mill which he had likewise disdained and which
was crumbling around him with old age.
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