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gate he could see the girl sitting on the canal embankment, her baby on her arm. She was feeding it at her breast. The bridge was raised. A boat was being poled imperceptibly forward. Farther off, on the other side of the water, he could see a brickyard. Pigeons flew heavily in the still air.
    â€œMind you, I don’t want to force you….”
    Just then he gazed at the mole which looked like a bit of fur, at the broad face, the cunning eyes, the squat, solid body, the pink slip showing more than ever under the dress.
    â€œWe can always try,” he said, “seeing you’re not afraid….”
    Leading him back to the house like captured prey, she replied, “It’ll take more than you to frighten me, my boy!”
    There was no mistaking the familiarity of her tone. She had taken possession of him.
    â€œDo you at least know how to use a crusher? Well, go and crush a sack of oats and wheat for the animals…. And you watch what a face Couderc pulls tonight!”

2
    H IS BED , an iron one, set in the middle of the loft, just under the skylight, smelled of hay, with perhaps a hint of mustiness, which was by no means unpleasant. What puzzled him the whole of the time it took him to fall asleep were the drops falling one by one, at long intervals, inside the loft itself, almost within reach of his hand. Yet there was not a tap in the house. It was not raining, else he would have heard the drumming of the raindrops on the sloping glass of the skylight.
    Abruptly, he switched from evening to morning and his only recollection of that night was of the smell, the smell of hay and mustiness, which became for him the smell of the countryside. The daylight cut out two bright rectangles above his head. In a corner of the loft stood a dressmaker’s dummy, with its monstrous black torso, full yet without breasts, the geometric curve of the waist and those hips which came to a sudden stop, to be replaced by a leg in turned wood.
    There was neither toilet nor basin, and he had to be content with pulling his trousers up over his shirttails, leaving the collar open, and smoothing his hair with his fingers.
    The drops were still falling, from a kind of obscene udder suspended from one of the beams—a muslin bag containing white cheese. And on the floor was a bowl half full of a yellowish liquid.
    All this, and other things besides, combined with the mattress to make up the smell: cloves of garlic, tied up with a scrap of bast, onions, shallots, and herbs that he didn’t know—medicinal herbs, no doubt—so dry that they tumbled in a shower of dust as soon as they were barely touched.
    He went down the staircase, which began by being no more than a miller’s ladder and came out into the kitchen, where a few logs were blazing on the hearth. The stove was never lit first thing in the morning. Close to the ashes he saw a blue enamel coffeepot, with a big black star chipped off the enamel, and, as though already at home, he took a bowl from the cupboard, helped himself to coffee, hunted for the sugar, found it.
    It was six o’clock in the morning. He saw nobody in the yard, but, hearing a noise in a shed, found Tati there busy scooping various ingredients out of bins and pouring them into a big cooking pot.
    â€œCome and give us a hand!” she called out, already used to harrying him around.
    Then, looking at his shoes, which he had not laced up: “There are some sabots in the washhouse. They’re a pair of Couderc’s sabots. Bring the hot water that’s standing on the stove.”
    What with the dew and the poultry droppings, the ground was slippery and the fowls’ prints formed a crisscross pattern upon it.
    The sun was up, but there was still some haze in the air. A long trail of mist straggled between the two rows of trees along the canal. The old man was evidently milking the cows in the shed, for the milk could be heard squirting rhythmically into the pail; a