One evening Bernard had said to her: “I am only asking you to wait until Anne’s marriage: we must be seen in company once more by the whole neighbourhood: after that you will be free.” She had not been able to sleep during the following night: her joy made her restless and her eyes would not close. At dawn she heard the innumerable cocks, who did not seem to be answering each other: they were all crowing together and filling earth and heaven with their united clamour. Bernard would let her loose into the world, just as in days gone by he had let loose on the moors that wild sow he had not been able to tame. When Anne was at last married, people might say what they liked: Bernard would fling Thérèse into the depths of Paris and then hurriedly retire; this was understood between them. There would be no divorce or official separation; some reason of health would be invented for the sake of appearances,--“She is never well except when she is travelling.” And Bernard would render, every All-Saints’ Day, an exact account of the income from the sale of her resin. Bernard did not question Thérèse about her plans, let her go and hang herself somewhere else. “I shan’t have any peace,” he said to his mother: “until she is off the premises.” And she had replied: “I’ve no doubt she will take her maiden name again ... however, if she gets into trouble, you will be dragged into it fast enough.” “But Thérèse,” he said, “only kicked in harness; no one could be more sensible when she had her freedom.” In any case, they must take the risk. That was Monsieur Larroque’s opinion also. All things considered, it was better that Thérèse should disappear; she would be more quickly forgotten, and people would get out of the habit of talking about her. Silence was the essential thing. This notion was so firmly fixed in their minds that nothing could have uprooted it. They must get Thérèse out of harness; and how impatient they were to do it! Thérèse loved to watch the close of winter despoiling the already barren land, though the oaks had never shed their stubborn mantle of dead leaves. She discovered that the silence of Argelouse had no real existence. In the calmest weather the forest moaned like a sorrowing human soul, and lulled itself to sleep: and the nights were full of a murmur that never ceased. In her future life; that unimaginable life before her, there would be dawns so barren that she would perhaps regret the hour of awakening at Argelouse: that marvellous clamour of myriad cocks. She would remember, in the summers to come, the grasshoppers by day and the crickets by night. Paris: no longer the torn and battered pines, but human beings to be feared: a world of men, no longer a world of trees.