Nevertheless, he was sad. Few days passed that he did not weep for his
wife in secret, and, although solitude was beginning to weigh upon him,
he was more terrified at the thought of forming a new union, than
desirous to escape from his grief. He said to himself vaguely that love
might have consoled him if it had taken him by surprise, for love does
not console otherwise. One cannot find it by seeking it; it comes to us
when we do not expect it. This project of marriage, conceived in cold
blood, which Pere Maurice laid before him, the unknown fiancee, and,
perhaps, even all the good things that were said of her common-sense and
her virtue, gave him food for thought. And he went his way, musing as a
man muses who has not enough ideas to fight among themselves; that is to
say, not formulating in his mind convincing reasons for selfish
resistance, but conscious of a dull pain, and not struggling against an
evil which it was necessary to accept.
Meanwhile, Pere Maurice had returned to the farm-house, while Germain
employed the last hour of daylight, between sunset and darkness, in
mending the breaches made by the sheep in the hedge surrounding a
vineyard near the farm buildings. He raised the stalks of the bushes,
and supported them with clods of earth, while the thrushes chattered in
the neighboring thicket, and seemed to call to him to make haste, they
were so curious to come to examine his work as soon as he had gone.
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