Thérèse, “who had property in her blood,” was quite willing for the question to be put in that cynical way, but she hated the pretences under which the Larroques and the La Traves masked their common greed. When her father announced his “irrevocable devotion” to democracy, she would interrupt him, with “Oh, spare us that sort of thing; we are all friends here.” She said that lofty sentiments in politics made her feel sick: the horror of the class-war was not very obvious in a country where the poorest own property, and their only ambition is to own more: where the common love of land, sport, eating and drinking, draws every one together, middle-class and peasant, in the closest fellowship. Moreover, Bernard had some education: he was generally considered a very promising young man, and Thérèse even congratulated herself on the fact that he was a man one could talk to: “A good deal above the average in fact.” Such was the view she took of him until the day of her meeting with Jean Azévédo. * * * * * It was the time of year when the coolness of the night lasts through the morning: and by the early afternoon, hot as the sun had been, a faint mist foretold the dusk. The first pigeons were beginning to come over, and Bernard hardly ever came home before evening. On that day, however, after a bad night, he had gone straight off to Bordeaux to get himself examined. “I was feeling at peace with the world,” thought Thérèse: “I was walking along the road, I forget at what time, because a woman who is going to have a baby ought to take a little exercise. I avoided the woods where shooting was going on because you have to stop every minute, whistle, and wait until you hear a shout for you to go on: but sometimes a long whistle answers yours: a flight of birds has settled among the oaks, and you must crouch down and wait. Then I came back: I was dozing in front of the fire in the drawing-room or the kitchen, and Aunt Clara was bringing me anything I wanted. I paid no more attention to the old creature, who was always droning out stories about the kitchen and the farm, than a goddess does to her serving-maid: she talked and talked so as not to have to try and listen: mostly depressing anecdotes about the peasants whom she looked after with a sort of cynical kindness: old men who could do no more than die of hunger, others condemned to work until they died, sick men with none to care for them, and women broken by toil and exhaustion. Aunt Clara quoted some of their most shocking remarks in the ingenuous rustic patois, with a sort of amusement. As a matter of fact, I was the only person she cared for, though I never even noticed her kneel down, unlace my shoes, take off my stockings, and warm my feet with her old hands.