"We have not seen you for the last three days. Have you been ill?" "Yes, a little unwell. I get headaches from time to time." OLD AMABLE PART I The humid, gray sky seemed to weigh down on the vast brown plain. The odor of Autumn, the sad odor of bare, moist lands, of fallen leaves, of dead grass, made the stagnant evening air more thick and heavy. The peasants were still at work, scattered through the fields, waiting for the stroke of the Angelus to call them back to the farm-houses, whose thatched roofs were visible here and there through the branches of the leafless trees which protected the apple-gardens against the wind. At the side of the road, on a heap of clothes, a very small male child seated with its legs apart, was playing with a potato, which he now and then let fall on his dress, while five women bent down with their rumps in the air, were picking sprigs of colza in the adjoining plain. With a slow continuous movement, all along the great cushions of earth which the plow had just turned up, they drove in sharp wooden stakes, and then cast at once into the hole so formed the plant, already a little withered, which sank on the side; then they covered over the root, and went on with their work. A man who was passing, with a whip in his hand, and wearing wooden shoes, stopped near the child, took it up, and kissed it. Then one of the women rose up, and came across to him. She was a big, red-haired girl, with large hips, waist, and shoulders, a tall Norman woman, with yellow hair in which there was a blood-red tint. She said, in a resolute voice: "Here you are, Cesaire--well?" The man, a thin young fellow with a melancholy air, murmured: "Well, nothing at all--always the same." "He won't have it?" "He won't have it." "What are you going to do?" "What do you say I ought to do?" "Go see the cure." "I will." "Go at once!" "I will." And they stared at each other. He held the child in his arms all the time. He kissed it once more, and then put it down again on the woman's clothes. In the distance, between two farm-houses, could be seen a plow drawn by a horse, and driven along by a man. They moved on very gently, the horse, the plow, and the laborer, under the dim evening sky. The woman went on: "What, then, did your father say?" "He said he would not have it." "Why wouldn't he have it?" The young man pointed towards the child whom he had just put back on the ground, then with a glance he drew her attention to the man drawing the plow yonder there. And he said emphatically: "Because 'tis his--this child of yours." The girl shrugged her shoulders, and in an angry tone said: