Barbette
and her little boy returned at the supper-hour, one with her heavy
burden of rushes, the other carrying fodder for the cattle. Entering
the hut, they looked about in vain for Galope-Chopine; the miserable
chamber never looked to them as large, so empty was it. The fire was
out, and the darkness, the silence, seemed to tell of some disaster.
Barbette hastened to make a blaze, and to light two /oribus/, the name
given to candles made of pitch in the region between the villages of
Amorique and the Upper Loire, and still used beyond Amboise in the
Vendomois districts. Barbette did these things with the slowness of a
person absorbed in one overpowering feeling. She listened to every
sound. Deceived by the whistling of the wind she went often to the
door of the hut, returning sadly. She cleaned two beakers, filled them
with cider, and placed them on the long table. Now and again she
looked at her boy, who watched the baking of the buckwheat cakes, but
did not speak to him. The lad's eyes happened to rest on the nails
which usually held his father's duck-gun, and Barbette trembled as she
noticed that the gun was gone. The silence was broken only by the
lowing of a cow or the splash of the cider as it dropped at regular
intervals from the bung of the cask. The poor woman sighed while she
poured into three brown earthenware porringers a sort of soup made of
milk, biscuit broken into bits, and boiled chestnuts.
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