The train sped on; it had cleared the plains of Beauce, even more melancholy to look at than in the grim days of the war.... And I recognized the small, humpy fields, their hedges of brushwood, the scattered apple trees, the narrow valleys, the poplars with their tops bent in the shape of hoods, which in the fields resembled a strange procession of blue penitents, the farms with high mossgrown roofs, highways deep cut and rough, bordered with girdled trees, which slanted down in the midst of sturdy verdure, the woods down yonder, black against the setting sun.... It was getting dark when I arrived at Saint-Michel. I liked it better so.... To cross the streets in full daylight, under the gaze of all these excellent people who had known me as a child, would have been too painful for me.... It seemed to me that I was laden with so much shame that they would turn away from me with horror as from a mangy dog.... I quickened my pace, rolling up the collar of my overcoat.... The grocery owner, named Madame Henriette, who in the past used to stuff me with cake, was standing in front of her store and talking to her neighbors.... I was afraid they might be talking about me and, leaving the sidewalk I took to the roadway.... Fortunately a cart passed by, the noise of which drowned the words of these women: The Presbytery ... the Convent of the Sisters ... the church ... the Priory!... At this hour the Priory was nothing but a huge black mass in the sky.... My heart failed me.... I had to lean against one of the posts of the gate to catch my breath.... A few steps away the forest murmured, its dull voice growing in amplitude, angry, like the raging roar of breakers.... Marie and Felix were waiting for me.... Marie older and more wrinkled, Felix, more stooping and shaking his head more than ever.... "Ah! Monsieur Jean!... Monsieur Jean!..." And forthwith taking possession of my valise, Marie said: "You ought to be pretty hungry by this time, Monsieur Jean!... I have some soup for you, the kind you used to like, and then I have put a nice chicken on the spit." "Thank you!" I said. "I shall not dine." I would have liked to embrace both of them, to open my arms for them, to cry upon their old, parched faces.... And instead! my voice was harsh, trenchant. I uttered "I shall not dine" in the manner of a threat. They looked at me somewhat frightened, but never stopped repeating: "Ah! Monsieur Jean!... It has been such a long time!... Ah! Monsieur Jean!... What a handsome young man you are!..." Then Marie, thinking that she would gain my interest thereby, began telling me the news of the place: "That poor Monsieur the curé is dead, you know. The new one in his place don't seem to be getting ahead at all, he is too young and anxious.... Baptiste has been crushed to death by a tree." I interrupted her: "All right, all right, Marie.... You'll tell me about it tomorrow." She took me to my bedroom and asked: