"Listen, Petit-Pierre," he added, "I want her to be your mother and stay
with you always: she's the one that isn't willing. Try to make her do
what I want her to."
"Don't you be afraid, papa, I'll make her say yes: little Marie always
does what I want her to."
He walked away with the girl. Germain was left alone, more depressed and
irresolute than ever.
XII
THE VILLAGE LIONESS
However, when he had repaired the disorder of travel in his clothes and
his horse's accoutrements, when he was mounted upon Grise and had
ascertained the road to Fourche, he reflected that there was no drawing
back and that he must forget that night of excitement as a dangerous
dream.
He found Pere Leonard in the doorway of his white house, sitting on a
pretty wooden bench painted spinach green. There were six stone steps
leading to the frontdoor, showing that the house had a cellar. The wall
between the garden and hemp-field was roughcast with lime and pebbles.
It was an attractive place; one might almost have taken it for the abode
of a substantial bourgeois.
Germain's prospective father-in-law came to meet him, and, after five
minutes spent in questioning him concerning his whole family, he added
this phrase, invariably used to question courteously those whom one
meets as to the object of their journey: "So you have come out this way
for a little ride, eh?"
"I came to see you," replied the ploughman, "and to offer you this
little gift of game from my father-in-law, and to say, also from him,
that you would know my purpose in coming.
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