He was struck dumb, his eyes on the table in the middle of the room laid for three including a child. He looked at the chair with its back to the fire, the plate, the napkin, the glasses, one bottle of red wine, already drunk from, and one unopened bottle of white. That must be his father’s usual place with his back to the fire! He was still expected by her! That would have been his father’s bread with all the crust removed because of his poor teeth. Raising his eyes, he saw hanging on the wall a large photograph of his father taken at the Paris Exhibition,2 the duplicate of one which hung over the bed in the master bedroom at Ainville.

The young woman went on: ‘So? Monsieur César?’

He looked at her. She was pale with dread and her hands were trembling fearfully as she waited for him to speak. Eventually he gathered up enough courage to do so. ‘Well Mam’zelle, I’m afraid Papa died on Sunday on the opening day of the shooting season.’

She was shocked literally rigid. After a few moments’ silence she said in a barely audible voice, ‘Oh no! He can’t have!’

Then suddenly her eyes filled with tears. She raised her hands to cover her face and began to sob. The little boy, seeing his mother burst into tears and deducing that this stranger was the cause, hurled himself on César, grabbed him by the trouser-leg with one hand and started smacking him on the thigh as hard as he could with the other. César, frantic with grief himself, his own eyes still swollen with crying, was moved at the sight of this woman weeping for his father and the little boy defending the mother. He felt almost overwhelmed with emotion and, in order to keep from breaking down himself, started to speak: ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the tragedy occurred on Sunday morning at eight o’clock …’

He went on, assuming she was hearing it all and forgetting no detail, omitting not the smallest incident in a painstaking, plodding peasant way. The little boy continued to smack him and had now begun to kick him on the ankles. When Hautot junior came to the part where Hautot senior had talked about her, the young woman, hearing her own name, uncovered her face and asked: ‘I’m sorry. Could you start again please? I wasn’t taking it in … I really want to know what happened …’

He began again, using exactly the same words: ‘The tragedy occurred on Sunday morning at eight o’clock …’