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Nostalgia Marketing
Rekindling the Past to
Influence Consumer
Choices

Marco Pichierri
Nostalgia Marketing
 Marco Pichierri

Nostalgia Marketing
Rekindling the Past to Influence Consumer Choices
Marco Pichierri
University of Bari “Aldo Moro”
Bari, Italy

ISBN 978-3-031-21545-2    ISBN 978-3-031-20914-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20914-7

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
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The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Foreword and Reverse

I was tempted to title this brief foreword as “In Search of Lost Time,” but
the phrase is over-used. It is noteworthy that the English translation of
Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu was previously given the title
Remembrance of Things Past. The two titles highlight two different ways
of looking at the past. The earlier title, Remembrance, suggests that we
invoke a remembered autobiographical past that we need to only get in
touch with through clues like the taste of Proust’s petite madeleines and
lime blossom tea. It envisions nostalgia as a melancholy longing for past
days tinged with a bittersweetness. This is the nostalgia of Susan Stewart’s
book, On Longing:

Nostalgia is a sadness without an object, a sadness which creates a longing

that of necessity is inauthentic because it does not take part in lived experi-
ence. … the past it seeks has never existed. (23)

In this definition nostalgia is misremembrance. It is a search for a fictive

past rather than an accurate memory. The past remembered in this view is
a false narrative that is unconsciously perpetuated and reshaped in order to
valorize an otherwise tenuous present self.
This earlier title, Remembrance of Things Past, is taken from
Shakespeare’s sonnet 30, which begins:

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

v
vi FOREWORD AND REVERSE

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste.

Wasted time, loves lost, goals unfulfilled, and sights never to be seen
again, all give this sonnet about nostalgia a somber and sad tone focusing
on loss. But several stanzas later in its final couplet, there is a reversal in
which the sonnet offers a more positive take on nostalgia:

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restor’d, and sorrows end.

In other words, there are likely selective sweet parts of our past that
redeem any bitter regrets it might evoke. These are the memories we are
more apt to cling to in reimagining our past.
The current title of Proust’s seven-volume work, In Search of Lost Time,
evokes a more positive take on nostalgia. The search is a quest of discov-
ery. The past may be past, but it is also a record of our joys and sorrows
that make us who we are. Nostalgia in this view is a search for one’s self.
This positive view is something that becomes clearer in the book you are
about to read.
My own professional connection with nostalgia has focused on indi-
vidual nostalgia through personal possessions. For example, I have studied
how people help construct their identity through things we see as not only
ours but as expressing and defining us. I call this concept the extended self
or extended sense of self. I stipulate that it includes all the things, pets,
people, and places that make us who we are. I claim that there is also a
subset of these things that define our sense of past that helps make us who
we are in the present. We define our self, in part, through possessions that
remind us of our past self and past experiences with family, friends, and
significant others. This is where individual nostalgia becomes interper-
sonal rather than merely personal.
In further contrast to the individual nostalgia, the emphasis in Marco
Pichierri’s Nostalgia Marketing is on collective nostalgia stirred through
music, movies, celebrities, fashions, and events from our shared past. This
is not the same as nationalism because, in marketing terms, we fall into
different segments and we connect with different objects of nostalgia
depending on our age cohort and subcultures. In secondary school (high
school) together with our group or clique of friends we may even have
sought to define ourselves collectively through the music, fashions,
 FOREWORD AND REVERSE vii

grooming, heroes, films, and hangouts that we chose to define “us” as

opposed to “them”—the others who did not share our collective tastes.
That is, we expressed our identities not only through the things we liked
but also by the things we didn’t like—our distastes.
The 2019–2021 COVID pandemic was shared with most of the world
and will someday be an item of nostalgia cued by facemasks, reminders of
our ingenuity of overcoming shortages, and the bravery of frontline work-
ers. We will not be nostalgic for the policies that barred us from saying
goodbye to dying loved ones, that confined us to home, and that forced
restrictions on our travel and group activities. Thus, both positive and
negative shared experiences can become cues for collective nostalgia.
In the Chapters that follow Pichierri reports the results of a series of
clever experiments with various aspects of the past that can make us more
or less inclined to patronize certain brands, make certain monetary dona-
tions, eat more sustainably, or buy tickets to certain sports events. Our
collective nostalgia is filtered through the lenses of variables such as our
degree of fandom, our sports teams’ strong or weak performance, the
degree to which we see tradition as important, our tendency to be pru-
dent, our proneness to nostalgia, our success in achieving flow, and our
embrace of environmentalism. These factors are found to affect our food
preferences (sustainable vs. non-sustainable), sports tourism (nostalgic vs.
heritage motivations), and charitable donations (amounts).
Other nostalgia marketing is assessed by Pichierri from a systematic
literature review (SLR) and synthesis, including some interesting phenom-
ena impacted by nostalgia. They include moving a sports franchise to
another city, pond hockey in Canada, French-speaking Swiss and authen-
tic heritage goods, West Indies diaspora and cricket fandom exhibited by
Caribbean Canadians, Tour de France followers, visits to a sports museum,
retro sports apparel, the Persian Gulf Pro football League, South Korean
baseball, European football, fans of foreign sports teams in Singapore, and
visits to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
In most of these cases, the book reports positive results from advertis-
ing cueing nostalgia. But Pichierri also reports some negative findings uti-
lizing nostalgic advertising appeals. For instance, in Chap. 4 he cautions
against using nostalgic appeals in food advertising. But there may also be
some deeper and more subtle effects of utilizing nostalgia in advertising
appeals. A focus on using the past as a balm and buffer against dealing with
the present and future may handicap a person from going forward with
their life.
viii FOREWORD AND REVERSE

At the end of Chap. 2 there is a note that “nostalgic feelings may differ
based on gender and age.” This is fundamental. Teenagers don’t want to be
pre-teens again; they long to be 20. But 70-year-olds would rather be 50-
or 60-year-olds. There is some systematicity to such patterns as
Csikszentmihalyi & Rochberg-Halton found in The Meaning of Things
(1981). By studying the favorite possessions of three generations in the
same families, they found that the favorite possessions of those of the
youngest generation were more forward-looking, while those of the oldest
generation were objects that inclined them to look more in reverse at
things that connect them to their earlier lives and families. This suggests
that nostalgia likely increases with age. Something that has been found in
studies by Turner and Stanley (2021, Emotion, 21(5)).
In Nostalgia Marketing, although some pro-social behaviors are found
in reviewing past studies of nostalgia-prone consumers, it is also found by
Pichierri that those influenced by these appeals are less likely to be green
consumers because nostalgia discourages people from adopting innovative
products. He reports (p. 110), “As this advertising type leads the audience
to dwell on the past, it may temporarily hinder their ability to focus on the
future (e.g., sustainable food consumption choices).”
Pichierri (p. 2) also observes, “The idea of harkening to a simpler, reas-
suring past offers consumers an anchor of stability in turbulent times.” But
simpler times may unfortunately also invoke nostalgia for a past that was
more racist, segregated, homophobic, patriarchal, and intolerant. Not that
we are free of these prejudices now, but they were more open and blatant
in the past. Listening to a familiar old tune or watching clips from an old
movie or old sporting event may seem innocent enough, but it may also
cue a return of such problematic attitudes. So, when we tie our brand to
cues from the past, we may also be tying it to some troublesome past values.
Discomfort with present times is a major condition increasing suscepti-
bility to nostalgia. It even was found after the fall of communism in Eastern
Europe that there were many who believed that life was better under com-
munism (Todorova and Gille 2010, Post-Communist Nostalgia). This can
also operate at an individual level. Nostalgia may reflect a desire for a
younger self, my glory days, earlier successes, and high points in life. And
it may lead to pursuing vicarious satisfaction from non-participant activi-
ties that replace what were once participant activities. Perhaps this is like
collecting where I have found that a lack of control in everyday life is
sometimes compensated by achieving feelings of control in the collection,
 FOREWORD AND REVERSE ix

a “little world” of nostalgic revelries where we have a greater chance of

competitive success (Belk 1995).
In focusing on nostalgia, Pichierri deals with a fascinating topic. He has
made great inroads into marketing opportunities and dangers in exploit-
ing the past. He also does a great service in systematically reviewing and
synthesizing the relevant literature. In these comments I’ve tried to widen
the field of view even farther by pointing out several connections to adja-
cent concerns. The book is an excellent invitation to go forward by look-
ing in reverse. And the rear-view mirror of our re-imagined past is a key
means for formulating who we are and consolidating a sense of self.

Schulich School of Business Russell W. Belk

York University, Toronto, ON, Canada
 Contents

1 Nostalgia
 Marketing and Consumer Behavior  1
1 An Introduction to Nostalgia Marketing  1
2 Nostalgia in the Academic Literature  3
3 The Effects of Nostalgia on Consumers  5
4 On the Mechanisms Behind Nostalgia  6
5 The Structure of the Book  6
6 A Detailed Overview of the Extant Research on Nostalgia in
the Marketing Literature 48
References 49

2 Nostalgic
 Advertising Usage in Sports Season Tickets
Campaigns 59
1 Introduction 59
2 Theoretical Background 60
3 The Experimental Study 63
3.1 Method 63
3.2 Results 64
4 General Discussion 68
Appendix 1: Fictitious Advertisements Used as Experimental
Stimuli in the Study  70
Appendix 2: Measures and Items Used in the Questionnaire  70
References 71

xi
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xii Contents

3 The
 Impact of Nostalgic Advertising on Consumer
Willingness to Donate During a Crisis 77
1 Introduction 77
2 Theoretical Background 79
3 Methodology 83
4 Results 84
5 Discussion 86
Appendix: Sketches of the Experimental Stimuli Used in the Study 89
References 90

4 Examining
 Nostalgic Advertising Effectiveness in
Sustainable Food Consumption Behavior 95
1 Introduction 95
2 Theoretical Background 96
3 Study 1100
3.1 Methodology100
3.2 Results101
4 Study 2103
4.1 Methodology103
4.2 Results104
5 Study 3106
5.1 Methodology106
5.2 Results107
6 General Discussion108
Appendix: Experimental Stimuli Used in the Studies111
Studies 1–2 111
Study 3 112
References112

5 A
 Systematic Review of Nostalgia-Based Marketing
Strategies in Sport Tourism117
1 Introduction117
2 Method118
3 Measuring and Assessing Nostalgia in the Sport Tourism
Domain128
4 Theoretical Contributions and Reflections on Nostalgia
in the Sport Tourism129
5 Cases in Point and Analysis of Real Events132
 Contents  xiii

6 Navigating among the Nostalgic: Exploring Fans’ Inner

Motives in Choosing an Experience134
7 Quantitative Approaches to Examine Sport Tourism
Nostalgia136
8 Discussion141
References143

6 Conclusions147
1 In Summary147
2 Final Considerations149
References150

Index153
 About the Author

Marco Pichierri (Ph.D. in Business Economics) is Assistant Professor of

Marketing and Business Management at the University of Bari “Aldo
Moro,” Bari, Italy. His main research focus is on consumer behavior and
advertising effectiveness. His works have been published in several inter-
national peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Advertising Research,
Journal of Business Research, Journal of Interactive Marketing, Marketing
Letters, Computers in Human Behavior, Journal of Services Marketing, and
Current Issues in Tourism.

xv
 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Temporal distribution of the research documents on nostalgia

marketing listed by Scopus in the period 1993-2021 3
Fig. 2.1 Purchase Intention (A) and Word-of-Mouth Intention (B) as a
function of Advertising Type and Attitude Toward the Team 66
Fig. 2.2 Purchase Intention (A) and Word-of-Mouth Intention (B) as a
function of Advertising Type and Fandom Level 67
Fig. 3.1 The conceptual model of the research 83
Fig. 4.1 Purchase intention (mean values and standard errors) as a
function of advertising type and product type 102
Fig. 4.2 The conceptual framework (S2) 104
Fig. 4.3 The conceptual framework (S3) 107
Fig. 5.1 Distribution of the articles by year of publication 127
Fig. 5.2 Distribution of the articles by author 127
Fig. 5.3 Distribution of the articles by country 128

xvii
 List of Tables

Table 1.1 Some relevant studies related to the use of nostalgia in the
marketing, consumer, advertising, and management domains 9
Table 2.1 Mean scores and standard deviations for measures of Purchase
Intention and Word-of-Mouth Intention as a function of
Advertising Type and Attitude Toward the Team 67
Table 2.2 Mean scores and standard deviations for measures of Purchase
Intention and Word-of-Mouth Intention as a function of
Advertising Type and Fandom levels 68
Table 3.1 Coefficient estimates for the moderated mediation model for
willingness to donate 86
Table 3.2 Bootstrap results for the conditional indirect effects 87
Table 4.1 Summary table for the two-way ANOVA of the effects of
advertising type and product type on purchase intention 102
Table 4.2 Summary of Study 2’s main results 105
Table 4.3 Summary of Study 3’s main results 109
Table 5.1 Synoptic table related to the academic studies included in
the analysis 119

xix
 CHAPTER 1

Nostalgia Marketing and Consumer Behavior

1   An Introduction to Nostalgia Marketing

In an era characterized by an unprecedented uncertainty, seeking refuge in
the past is a common ploy for consumers. Therefore, it should come as no
surprise that companies are extensively utilizing nostalgia marketing, i.e.,
a marketing strategy aimed at deliberately evoking nostalgic feelings in the
target audience. Indeed, recent years have shown that marketers resort to
nostalgia in the aftermath of crises (e.g., after 9/11 and the financial crisis
of 2008; Dan, 2020). Recently, a study by MRC (2020), investigating the
impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on entertainment choices, found that
a majority of consumers sought comfort in past-related content (e.g., TV
shows, movies, and songs from their youth).
Various sectors are awash in real-world examples of nostalgic market-
ing. In the entertainment industry, the successful TV series Stranger
Things is imbued with nostalgic references; Netflix specifically marketed
the show by partnering with several brands that appeal to fans of 1980s
media (CNN, 2019). Likewise, the award-winning TV series Mad Men
was built on the aesthetic and style associated with the sixties (Kessous
et al., 2015). Meanwhile, The Last Dance sport docuseries increased the
nostalgia for the epic achievements of Micheal Jordan, which inclined
more players of the NBA 2K20 videogame to play with the classic Bulls
team (Mazique, 2020). In the food industry, Burger King pursued a
rebranding strategy in January 2021 wherein they applied a classic style to

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
M. Pichierri, Nostalgia Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20914-7_1
2 M. PICHIERRI

their logo (basically resembling the logo they used 30 years prior) to lever-
age the power of nostalgia (Beausoleil, 2021; Meisenzahl, 2021). In this
vein, an Ad Age-Harris Poll survey (The Harris Poll, 2021) revealed that
some companies (e.g., fast-food ones) fully embrace nostalgic stimuli in
their marketing strategies, adapting some of their product features (e.g.,
packaging) to influence consumers’ attitudes and purchases (e.g., Pepsi’s
throwback versions of Pepsi and Mountain Dew that imitated the original
iterations with retro packages and taste; Horovitz, 2011).
Brands may also decide to revive products from the past in order to
evoke nostalgia: Following persistent urging on social media, Coca-Cola
restarted production on its Surge soda after a 12-year hiatus. The beverage
sold out within hours (CNBC, 2014).
Examples of nostalgia-based marketing strategies abound in other
industries: Nokia rebooted its historical 3310 model 17 years after its
debut (BBC, 2017); Fisher-Price pursued a nostalgic-tinged campaign fea-
turing the famous American actor John Goodman immersed in classic
children toys (Dan, 2020); Nintendo, Sega and Sony introduced mini-­
versions of their famous gaming consoles (Hill, 2022); and the National
Basketball Association and other sports leagues launched their nostalgic
throwback uniforms (Spaid, 2013). Some companies, meanwhile, utilize
nostalgia as a positioning strategy: Moleskine, for instance, claims that its
notebooks are the successors to those used by famous creative personali-
ties such as Hemingway and Picasso (Heinberg & Katsikeas, 2019). Lastly,
social media are awash in nostalgic content: Throwback Thursdays and a
plethora of past-based memes represent just a sample of the content posted
by companies and users in these virtual arenas to evoke nostalgic feelings
(Muehling et al., 2014).
The proliferation of this trend begs a simple question: Why has nostal-
gia marketing become so popular? The idea of harkening to a simpler,
reassuring past offers consumers an anchor of stability in turbulent times
(Tannock, 1995). As customers become more dissatisfied, this tactic may
become more persuasive (Merchant & Ford, 2008). Indeed, nostalgia
represents a romantic glance to the past, often for the purpose of preserv-
ing individuals’ identities (Kessous et al., 2015) and satisfying the need for
interpersonal belongingness (Zhou et al., 2012). Furthermore, for many
consumers, the attractiveness of nostalgia lies in its implied authenticity
(Belk, 1990; Spaid, 2013)—its presentation of the past as a genuine refuge
from the artificiality of the present. Practitioners are increasingly leverag-
ing nostalgia in their appeals to Millennials (Friedman, 2016), i.e.,
 1 NOSTALGIA MARKETING AND CONSUMER BEHAVIOR 3

30
28
26
24
Number of documents

22
20
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0

Year of publication

Note: Author’s elaboration on Scopus data.

Fig. 1.1 Temporal distribution of the research documents on nostalgia market-

ing listed by Scopus in the period 1993-2021

consumers born between 1981 and 1999 (Liu et al., 2019), given that this
aging consumer segment has overtaken Baby Boomers in terms of popula-
tion size and per-capita spending (Bona et al., 2020).
According to some authors (e.g., Demirbag-Kaplan et al., 2015), nostal-
gia remains a largely under-researched area in the field of consumer behav-
ior. However, interest has been growing: A cursory review of Scopus (www.
scopus.com)—using the keywords ‘nostalgia’ and ‘marketing’ in the article
title, abstract and keywords fields—returned 254 documents in the period
1993-2021 (see Fig. 1.1), with the bulk being published in the last decade.

2  Nostalgia in the Academic Literature

Scholars usually refer to nostalgia as individuals’ yearning for the past
(Holbrook, 1993) or romanticization of former time periods (Stern,
1992). This orientation arises from feeling unintentionally detached from
a preceding period of time that they value or are fond of (Davis, 1979;
Holbrook, 1993; Zhou et al., 2012). This perception fosters affections for
tangible or intangible objects and actions connected with the past (Davis,
1979; Holbrook, 1993). However, while the first recorded references to
nostalgia may be traced in Homer’s Ulysses and some Biblical psalms
(Shields & Johnson, 2016), our current conception has its roots in the
4 M. PICHIERRI

medical field—where it initially described a pathological condition associ-

ated with homesickness (Kessous & Roux, 2008) and characterized by
psychological negatives and symptoms (Sedikides et al., 2004). Indeed,
the term ‘nostalgias’—a merge of the Greek words ‘nosos’ (i.e., return to
the native land) and ‘algos’ (i.e., pain, suffering)—was coined in the mid-­
seventeenth century by Johannes Hofer (1688) in his medical dissertation
about the psychological underpinnings of missing home. This origin
explains why nostalgia was treated as a sort of medical illness until the late
19th century, when it was relegated to a psychosomatic disorder (Batcho,
1998; Shields & Johnson, 2016).
Scholars have since extended the notion of nostalgia to depict a socio-
logical phenomenon (Davis, 1979) about the contemporaneous interest
toward elements belonging to the past (Hamilton & Wagner, 2014). For
instance, scholars started to refer to nostalgia as a mixed emotion related
to the longing for the past (Baumgartner, 1992) or as individuals’ ten-
dency to look back to and desire an idealized past (Lowenthal, 1985).
This yearning for yesteryear, observed in sociology and anthropology
(Davis, 1979; McCracken, 1988), was soon connected to individuals’
attempt to restructure some elements of the past in their present life
through consumption (Holbrook, 1993). Thus, the bittersweet longing
for home (Holak & Havlena, 1992), delineated in the psychological litera-
ture, soon became a lens for interpreting individuals’ behavior in the mar-
keting domain. As a consequence, nostalgia conceptually evolved into a
convincing promotional appeal (Muehling & Pascal, 2012; Naughton,
1998), giving rise to studies on consumer nostalgia in the early 1990s
(Kazlauske & Gineikiene, 2017). Scholars’ efforts in the consumer domain
resulted in definitions of the phenomenon that directly apply to the mar-
keting field. Thus, in the consumer behavior domain, nostalgia has been
conceptualized as a time-related preference for experiences associated with
items or elements that were more widespread or popular in one’s youth
(Holbrook & Schindler, 2003). Consumers develop this preference
toward past-related objects through some combination of socialization
and the media (Fairley, 2003), which allows past-related thoughts to trig-
ger a certain mood or emotion (Muehling, Sprott, & Sultan, 2014).
Nostalgic individuals experience an amplified focus on past things, reflected
in a partial detachment from everyday life (Brown & Humphreys, 2002)—
and this phenomenon may affect individuals regardless of age, gender and
social class (Greenberg et al., 2004).
 1 NOSTALGIA MARKETING AND CONSUMER BEHAVIOR 5

3  The Effects of Nostalgia on Consumers

Consumers may be attracted by elements that positively evoke the past,
especially in the presence of some negative attitudes toward the present
(Davis, 1979). As scholars have found in the last few decades (Spaid,
2013), nostalgia may be cued by marketers in a number of ways and by a
number of sources (e.g., music, photographs, movies, family members,
events, jingles, e.g., Havlena & Holak, 1991; Marchegiani & Phau, 2010).
Indeed, the nostalgic feelings produced through relevant stimuli have the
ability to influence consumers’ preferences and decision-making process
(e.g., Holak & Havlena, 1998). Specifically, nostalgia has been found to
affect consumers’ attitudes toward products and brands (e.g., Muehling &
Pascal, 2012; Muehling & Sprott, 2004) and influence a wide range of
consumer responses, including brand loyalty (Muehling & Sprott, 2004;
Olsen, 1995), brand meaning (Brown et al., 2003), and purchase inten-
tions (e.g., Muehling et al., 2014; Sierra & McQuitty, 2007).
In the advertising domain, research has confirmed that nostalgia is
effective in communication strategies (e.g., Havlena & Holak, 1991;
Muehling & Sprott, 2004; Rindfleisch & Sprott, 2000) and has been
widely adopted (Khoshghadam et al., 2019) due to its advantages over
similar, but non-nostalgic advertising (Muehling & Pascal, 2012).
Notably, nostalgia represents a perspective through which scholars can
explore the role of individuals’ identity in consumption behavior (Belk,
1990). Indeed, consumers may extend their identity beyond the physical
confines of the body and along the time dimension (Belk, 1988), purpose-
fully buying and collecting objects that allow them to relive previous and
cherished time periods. Owning nostalgic objects may offer a “buffer”
against existential threats stemming from the passage of time (Sedikides &
Wildschut, 2018), and can therefore serve as a tool for managing one’s
identity and feelings (Belk, 1991). In this view, purchasing nostalgic items
serves to recall one’s past and support a sense of self-continuity (Sierra &
McQuitty, 2007). Additionally, feeling nostalgic seems to decrease
people’s desire for money and thereby facilitates a willingness to spend
money (Lasaleta et al., 2014). These effects appear to extend across several
industries (e.g., hospitality and entertainment; see Li et al., 2019) and
domains, with recent research connecting nostalgia to pro-social behaviors
(i.e., intention to volunteer and donate; Zhou et al., 2012) and psycho-
logical benefits (e.g., improving individuals’ identity and social attach-
ments; Brown & Humphreys, 2002; Sedikides et al., 2008). Notably, the
first applications of neuroscience to this topic have found that recalling
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He was going off once more, when she called him back in a choking
voice.
"Well, then, you brute, take her! But, by God! if I had to go through
it all again, I'd slap your face first!"
She was beside herself, and quivering with rage. He laughed noisily,
added some gallant speeches, and offered to sleep with her for the
balance.
Lise had immediately come up. She took the woman aside and paid
her the three hundred francs behind a tree. Françoise had already
got hold of the cow, but Jean had to push the creature behind, for
she refused to budge. They had been trotting backwards and
forwards for a couple of hours, Rose and Fanny having silently and
untiringly awaited the end. Finally, on taking their departure, and
searching for Buteau, who had vanished, they found him hail-fellow-
well-met with the pig-dealer. He had just got his porker for twenty
francs; and, in paying, he counted his money out first in his pocket,
then produced the exact sum, and counted it again in his half-closed
hand. It was quite a job to get the pig into the sack which he had
brought under his blouse. The rotten canvas burst, and the paws of
the animal came through, as well as its snout. In this condition
Buteau shouldered his burden, and carried the beast off, kicking,
grunting, and squealing with alarm.
"I say, Lise, how about those five francs I won?"
She gave them to him, for fun, not expecting that he would take
them. But he did take them, and put them out of sight in no time.
Then they all made their way slowly towards "The Jolly Ploughman."
The market was at an end. Money was gleaming in the sunlight and
chinking on the tables of the wine-shops. At the last moment
everything was hurried to a conclusion. In the corner of the Place
Saint-Georges there only remained a few animals unsold. Little by
little, the crowd had ebbed away towards the Rue Grande, where the
vegetable and fruit-sellers were clearing the roadway and carrying
off their empty baskets. In a similar way there was nothing left at
the poultry market save straw and feathers. The carts were already
starting off again. Vehicles were being harnessed in the inn-yards;
horses' reins, knotted to the pavement-rings, were being untied.
Along all the roads, on every side, wheels were rolling, and blue
blouses were blown about by the wind as the vehicles jolted over
the pavement.
Lengaigne went by in this fashion, trotting on his little black pony,
having turned his journey to account by buying a scythe. Macqueron
and his daughter Berthe were still lingering in the shops. As for La
Frimat, she went back on foot, laden as when she started, for she
was carrying back her basket full of horse-dung, which she had
picked up on the road. Among the gilding at the chemist's in the Rue
Grande, Palmyre had been waiting half-an-hour to have a draught
made up for her brother, who had been ill for a week past—some
vile drug it was, that took one franc out of the couple she had so
laboriously earned. But what made the Mouche girls and their party
hasten their sauntering steps was the sight of Hyacinthe, staggering
along very drunk, and taking up all the street. They presumed that
he had got another loan that day by mortgaging his last bit of land.
He was chuckling to himself, and some five-franc pieces were
jingling in his capacious pockets.
On arriving at "The Jolly Ploughman," Buteau said, simply and
bluffly:
"So you're off? Look here, Lise, why not stop with your sister and
have something to eat?"
She was surprised, and as she turned towards Jean, he added:
"Jean can stop too. I shall be very pleased if he will."
Rose and Fanny exchanged glances. The lad had certainly some idea
in his head. Had he decided on marriage after going to the notary's
to accept? The expression of his face still gave no clue. No matter!
They ought not to hamper the course of things.
"Very good, then. You stay here and I'll go on with mother," said
Fanny. "We are expected."
Françoise, who had never let go of the cow, now drily remarked: "I
am going too."
She persisted in doing so. She always felt on thorns at the inn, she
said, and she wanted to take her animal away at once. They had to
give way, she made herself so disagreeable; and accordingly, as
soon as the horse had been put to, the cow was tied behind the
cart, and the three women got up.
Not till that moment did Rose, who expected a confession from her
son, venture to ask him:
"You have no message for your father?"
"No, none," replied Buteau.
She looked him full in the face and pressed him: "There's no news,
then?"
"If there is, you'll know it all in good time."
Fanny flicked the horse, which set off leisurely, while the cow
behind, stretching out her neck, allowed herself to be dragged
along. Lise was left between Buteau and Jean.
At six o'clock the three of them sat down at a table in a dining-room
of the inn, communicating with the café. Buteau, without any one
knowing whether he was standing treat or not, had gone into the
kitchen and ordered an omelette and a rabbit. Meantime, Lise had
urged Jean to have an explanation with him, so as to bring matters
to an end, and save a journey. However, they had got through the
omelette, and were eating the rabbit, without the young fellow, who
was ill at ease, having as yet taken any steps. Neither did the other
seem to have the thing at all on his mind. He ate heartily, laughed
from ear to ear, and in a friendly way nudged his cousin and his
companion with his knee under the table. Then they talked on more
serious topics: of the new Rognes road; and although not a word
was spoken about the five hundred francs' compensation, or the
increased value of the land, these weighty considerations underlay
all that was said. At last Buteau returned to his jests, and began
clinking glasses; while into his grey eyes there visibly passed the
idea of this piece of good business—this old flame he might marry,
whose field, adjacent to his own, had almost doubled in value.
"Good Lord!" cried he, "aren't we to have any coffee?"
"Three coffees!" ordered Jean.
Another hour passed in sipping, and the decanter of brandy was
exhausted without Buteau declaring himself. He advanced and
retired, and spun matters out, just in the same way as he had
haggled for the cow. The thing was as good as settled; but, all the
same, a certain amount of consideration was necessary. At last he
turned abruptly to Lise and said to her:
"Why haven't you brought the child?"
She began to laugh, understanding this time that the affair was
clenched. Then she gave him a slap, feeling pleased and indulgent,
and confined herself to replying:
"Isn't this Buteau a horrid fellow?"
That was all. He laughed too. The marriage was decided.
Jean, hitherto embarrassed, now seemed relieved, and became gay.
At last he even spoke right out.
"You have done well, you know, to return; I was about to step into
your shoes."
"Yes, so I was told. Oh, I wasn't uneasy; you would, no doubt, have
given me warning!"
"Why, certainly! The more so as it's better it should be you, on
account of the child. That's what we always said, didn't we, Lise?"
"Always. That's the simple truth!"
The faces of all three melted into tenderness. They fraternised;
especially Jean, who was free from jealousy, and felt astonished at
finding himself helping on this marriage. He called for some beer,
Buteau having shouted that, good Lord! they'd have something more
to drink. With their elbows on the table, seated on each side of Lise,
they now chatted about the recent rains which had beaten down the
corn.
In the adjacent room, used as a café, Hyacinthe, seated at the same
table as an old peasant, who was drunk like himself, was kicking up
an intolerable row. For that matter, nobody there could speak
without shouting. There they sat, in blouses, drinking, smoking, and
spitting amid the ruddy smoke of the lamps; and Hyacinthe's brazen,
deafening voice was ever the loudest of all. He was playing
"chouine," and a quarrel had just arisen anent the last trick between
him and his companion, who stuck to his winnings with an air of
calm obstinacy. He appeared, however, to be in the wrong. There
was no settling it, and Hyacinthe, infuriated at last, yelled so loudly
that the landlord interfered. Then he got up and went from table to
table, with maudlin persistence, taking his hand with him to lay the
point before the other customers. He bored everybody; and finally,
beginning to shout again, he returned to the old man, who, with the
imperturbability of injustice, bore the abuse like a stoic.
"Poltroon! Ne'er-do-weel! Just come outside, and see how I'll pitch
into you!" shouted Hyacinthe.
Then he abruptly resumed his chair facing the other, and coolly said:
"I know a game. But you must bet. Will you?"
He had taken out a handful of fifteen or twenty five-franc pieces,
and piled them up in front of him.
"That's the thing. You do the same."
The old man, feeling interested, took out his purse without a word,
and set up an equal pile.
"Then I take one from your heap. Now look!"
He seized the coin, put it gravely on his tongue as if it had been a
wafer, and swallowed it at a gulp.
"Now, it's your turn. Take one of mine. And the one who eats the
most of the other's money, keeps it. That's the game!"
The old man, whose eyes were wide open with surprise, agreed to
the suggestion, and with some difficulty he caused one coin to
disappear. However, Hyacinthe, while crying out that there was no
hurry, gulped down the crowns like so many plums. At the fifth one
he swallowed, a rumour ran round the café, and a circle of people
collected, petrified with admiration. What a throat the beggar must
have, to stick money down his gizzard like that! The old man was
swallowing his fourth coin, when he tumbled backwards, black in the
face, choking and gurgling. For a moment they thought him dead.
Hyacinthe had risen up, quite comfortable and wearing a bantering
air. He, for his part, had ten of the coins in his stomach, so that
there was a balance of thirty francs to his credit.
Buteau feeling anxious, and fearing he might be compromised if the
old man did not recover, had left the table and given orders for the
horses to be put to. As he stared vaguely at the walls, without
saying a word about paying, although the invitation had come from
him, Jean settled the bill. This capped Buteau's good spirits; and in
the yard, where the two vehicles were waiting, he took his
companion by the shoulders, saying:
"I expect you to come, you know. The wedding will take place in
three weeks' time. I've been to the notary's and signed the deed; all
the papers will be ready."
Then, helping Lise into his own cart: "Now then, up!" he added, "I'll
see you back. I'll drive through Rognes, it won't be much farther."
Jean returned in his vehicle by himself. He considered this natural,
and followed the others. Cloyes had relapsed into its death-like
lethargy and was now asleep, lighted only by the yellow stars of the
street lamps. Of the hubbub of the market nothing remained save
the staggering, belated steps of some drunken peasant. The road
stretched afar in deep darkness. Jean, however, did at last descry
the other vehicle which was conveying the affianced pair. Better so,
he thought; all was as it should be. And he whistled loudly,
freshened up by the night air, and feeling free and cheery.

CHAPTER VII.

Once more had the hay-making time come round, with a blue
scorching sky, cooled by occasional breezes. The marriage had been
fixed for Midsummer-Day, which fell that year on a Saturday.
The Fouans had enjoined upon Buteau to begin the invitations with
La Grande, who was the oldest of the family. Like a rich and dreaded
queen, she required to be treated with respect. Accordingly, one
evening, Buteau and Lise, rigged out in their Sunday clothes, went
to beg her to attend the wedding ceremony, and afterwards the
dinner, which was to take place at the bride's house.
When they arrived, La Grande was knitting in the kitchen by herself;
and, without checking the play of her needles, she gazed at them
fixedly, and let them explain their errand, and repeat the same
phrases twice over. At last, in her shrill voice:
"The wedding? Nay, nay, certainly not!" said she. "What should I find
to do at a wedding? Such things are only for those who amuse
themselves."
They had seen her parchment face light up at the thought of the
junketing that would cost her nothing, and they were convinced that
she would accept. But it was always customary to press her a great
deal.
"Oh, but, aunt! Really it couldn't go off without you," they said.
"No, no! It's not for folk like me. How am I to find the time, and get
the clothes I should want. It's always an expense. People can get on
very well without going to weddings."
They had to repeat the invitation a dozen times before she
eventually said, sulkily:
"All right; since I can't get out of it, I'll go. But I wouldn't put myself
out for anybody but you."
Then, seeing that they did not leave, she battled with herself; for, in
such a case as the present one, a glass of wine was usually offered.
Making up her mind, she at last went down into the cellar, although
there was already an open bottle upstairs. However, the fact was she
kept for these occasions a remnant of wine which had turned, and
which she could not drink, it was so sour. She called it "the gnat
destroyer." Having filled two glasses, she fixed her nephew and niece
with so full an eye that they were obliged to drain them without
blenching, for fear of giving offence. They left her with their throats
burning.
The same evening, Buteau and Lise repaired to Roseblanche, where
Monsieur Charles lived, arriving there in the midst of a tragic
occurrence.
Monsieur Charles was in his garden, in a state of great agitation. No
doubt some violent emotion had come upon him just as he was
trimming a climbing rose-tree, for he had his pruning scissors in his
hand, and the ladder was still resting against the wall. Controlling
himself, however, he showed them into the drawing-room, where
Elodie was embroidering with her modest air.
"So you're marrying each other in a week's time. That's quite right,
my children," he said. "But we can't be of your party, for Madame
Charles is at Chartres, and won't be back for a fortnight."
So saying, he raised his heavy eyelids to glance at the young girl,
and then resumed:
"At busy times, during the large fairs, Madame Charles goes over
there to lend her daughter a helping hand. Business has its
exigencies, you know, and there are days when they are
overwhelmed with work at the shop. True, Estelle has taken over the
management; but her mother is of great use to her, the more so as
our son-in-law Vaucogne certainly doesn't do much. And besides,
Madame Charles is glad to see the house again. No wonder! We've
left thirty years of our lives there, and that counts for something!"
He was growing sentimental, and his eyes moistened as he vaguely
gazed, as it were, into that past of theirs. It was true. In her dainty,
snug retirement, full of flowers, birds, and sunshine, his wife was
often seized with home-sickness for the little house in the Rue aux
Juifs. Whenever she shut her eyes, a vision of old Chartres, sloping
down from the Place de la Cathédrale to the banks of the Eure, rose
up before her. She saw herself, on her arrival, threading the Rue de
la Pie, and the Rue Porte-Cendreuse; then, in the Rue des Ecuyers,
she took the shortest cut down the Tertre du Pied-Plat, where just at
the bottom—at the corner of the Rue aux Juifs and the Rue de la
Planche-aux-Carpes, Number 19 came into sight, with its white
frontage and its green shutters, which were always closed. The two
streets which it overlooked were wretched ones, and during thirty
years she had beheld their miserable hovels and squalid inhabitants,
with the gutter in the middle running with filthy water. But, then,
how many weeks and months she had spent at home there, in the
darkened rooms, without even crossing the threshold! She was still
proud of the divans and mirrors of the drawing-room, of the bedding
and the mahogany of the sleeping apartments, of all the chaste and
comfortable luxury—their creation, their handiwork, to which they
owed their fortune. A melancholy faintness came over her at the
recollection of certain private corners, the clinging perfume of the
toilet-waters, the peculiar scent of the whole house, which she had
retained about her own person like a lingering regret. Thus she
looked forward to all the periods of heavy work, and set out radiant
and joyful, after receiving from her grand-daughter two hearty
kisses, which she promised to give mamma that evening in the
confectionery shop.
"How disappointing! How disappointing!" said Buteau, really vexed
at the idea of Monsieur and Madame Charles not coming to the
wedding. "But suppose our cousin wrote to aunt to come back?"
Elodie, who was in her fifteenth year, thin-haired, and so poor-
blooded that the fresh air of the country seemed to make her more
anæmical still, raised her puffy, chlorotic, virginal face:
"Oh, no!" she murmured, "grandmamma told me the sweetmeats
would be sure to keep her more than a fortnight. She is to bring me
back a bag of them, if I'm good."
This was a pious fraud. At each journey she was brought some
sweetmeats, which, she believed, had been manufactured at her
parents' place.
"Well!" proposed Lise at length, "come without her, uncle, and bring
the girl."
Monsieur Charles was not listening, however, having relapsed into an
agitated state. He was going to the window, seemingly on the look-
out for some one, and was swallowing a rising burst of anger.
Unable to contain himself any further, he dismissed the young girl
with a word.
"Go away and play for a minute or two, my darling," he said.
Then, when she had left—being accustomed to be sent away while
grown-up people talked—he took his stand in the middle of the room
and folded his arms, while his full, yellow-tinted, respectable face—
very like that of a retired magistrate—quivered with indignation.
"Would you believe it? Such an abominable thing! I was trimming my
rose-tree, and I had got on to the highest rung of the ladder, and
was bending mechanically over the wall, when what do I see?
Honorine, my maid Honorine, with a man, at their dirty tricks! At the
foot of my wall, too, the swine, the swine!"
He was choking, and began to pace up and down, with noble
maledictory gestures.
"I'm waiting for her to pack her off, the disreputable hussy! We can't
keep one. They're always put into the family-way. Regularly, at the
end of six months, they become a perfect sight, and there's no
having them in a respectable family. And now this one, caught in the
act! Ah! the end of the world is come; there are no bounds to
debauchery now-a-days!"
Buteau and Lise, who were astounded, joined, out of deference, in
his indignation.
"Certainly, it's not proper; not at all proper—oh, no!"
He set himself in front of them once more.
"And just fancy Elodie climbing up that ladder, and coming on a
scene like that! She, so innocent, who knows nothing at all, over
whose very thoughts we watch! On my honour, it makes one shiver!
What a shock, if Madame Charles were here!"
At that very moment, glancing out of the window, he perceived the
child, who had set her foot on the lowest rung of the ladder, out of
mere curiosity. He rushed forward and called out, in an agonised
voice, as if he had seen her on the brink of a precipice:
"Elodie! Elodie! Come down; go away for the love of Heaven!"
Then his legs gave way, and he sank into an arm-chair, continuing to
lament over the immorality of servants. Had he not come upon one
in the kitchen showing the child what the posteriors of fowls were
like? He had quite enough worry as it was to keep her clear of the
grossness of the peasantry, and the cynicism of animals; and he lost
heart altogether to find a constant hot-bed of immorality in his own
house.
"There she is coming in," he said, sharply. "You shall see."
He rang the bell, and having by an effort recovered his calm dignity,
he received Honorine seated, and in solemn fashion.
"Mademoiselle," he said, "pack up your box and leave at once. You
shall be paid a week's wages in lieu of notice."
The servant, a skinny, insignificant chit of a thing, of humble and
shame-faced aspect, attempted to explain, stammering out excuses.
"It's no use. All I can do for you is not to hand you over to the
authorities for indecent behaviour."
Then she turned upon him.
"Oh, so it's because I omitted to pay the fee."
He rose from his seat, tall and upright, and dismissed her with a
majestic gesture, his finger pointing to the door. When she had gone
he relieved his feelings coarsely.
"The idea of a strumpet like that bringing dishonour on my house."
"Ah, sure, she's one; that she is!" repeated Lise and Buteau,
complaisantly.
The latter thereupon resumed:
"Then it's settled, isn't it, uncle? You'll come with the child?"
Monsieur Charles was still quivering. Feeling anxious, he had gone to
look at himself in the glass, and was returning satisfied.
"Where? Oh, to be sure, to your wedding. It's the right thing to do,
my children, to marry. Rely on me. I will be there; but I don't
promise to bring Elodie, because, you know, people are a little free
at weddings. I turned the baggage out pretty sharp, eh? I won't put
up with women annoying me. Good-bye, rely on my coming."
The Delhommes, whom Buteau and Lise next invited, also accepted,
after the usual refusal and insistence. Hyacinthe was the only one of
the family that remained to be invited. But, in sooth, he had become
unbearable, being on bad terms with everybody, and bringing all his
people into discredit by playing the lowest pranks. So it was decided
to put him on one side, though apprehensions were entertained that
he would revenge himself in some abominable manner.
Rognes was on the tip-toe of expectation. This marriage, so long
deferred, was quite an event. Hourdequin, the mayor, took the
trouble to officiate in person at the civil ceremony; but when asked
to attend the evening repast, he excused himself, as he was obliged
to pass that very night at Chartres on account of a law-suit. Still, he
promised that Madame Jacqueline should come, as they had the
politeness to invite her also. For a moment, moreover, they had
thought of inviting the Abbé Godard, by way of having some
superior kind of person with them; but, as soon as the wedding was
even mentioned, the priest lost his temper, because it was fixed for
Midsummer-Day. He had to officiate that day at high mass,
established by foundation, at Bazoches-le-Doyen, so how could he
be expected to come to Rognes in the morning? However, the
women—Lise, Rose, and Fanny—became obstinate, and he finished
by giving way. He came at mid-day in such a passion that he flung
their mass at their heads, as it were, and left them smarting under a
deep sense of injury.
After discussion, it had been resolved that the wedding should take
place quietly among the family, on account of the bride's position—
with a child now nearly three years old. They had been, however, to
the Cloyes pastry-cook to order a pie and some dessert, on which
they determined to spare no expense, so as to show people that
they could make the money fly on proper occasions. As at the
marriage of the eldest daughter of the Bordiers—some rich farmers
at Mailleville—they were to have a regular wedding-cake, two ice
creams, four sweet dishes, and some little tarts. At home, some
meat soup would be provided, together with chitterlings, four
stewed chickens, four rabbits, also stewed, and some roast beef and
veal. And all this for fifteen or twenty people—they did not know the
exact number. If there were any food left after the repast, they
would finish it up on the morrow.
The sky, which had been a little dull in the morning, had cleared,
and the day was drawing to its close, amid cheerful warmth and
glow. The covers had been set in the middle of the spacious kitchen,
right in front of the fireplace and the oven, where meats were
roasting, and pots boiling over large fires. This made the room so
hot that the two windows and the door were left wide open, and the
sweet, penetrating scent of new-mown hay came in.
Since the day before, the Mouche girls had had the assistance of
Rose and Fanny. There was a sensation when the pastry-cook's cart
made its appearance at three o'clock, bringing all the women in the
village to their doors. The dessert was at once laid out on the table
to see how it looked. Just then La Grande arrived, before the time.
She sat down, clasped her stick between her knees, and never once
took her hard eyes off the food. She questioned whether it wasn't
sinful to go to such an expense. She herself, however, had eaten
nothing all the morning, so that she might be able to do full justice
to the feast.
The men—Buteau, Jean who had been the former's "best-man," old
Fouan, Delhomme and his son Nénesse—all in frock-coats, black
trousers, and tall silk hats, that nothing would induce them to part
with, were playing at pitch and toss in the yard. Monsieur Charles
came by himself, having on the day before conducted Elodie to her
boarding school at Châteaudun; and, without joining in the game, he
took an interest in it and made some judicious suggestions.
At six o'clock, when all was ready, Jacqueline had to be waited for.
The women now let down their skirts, which they had pinned up, so
that the stove might not soil them. Lise was in blue, Françoise in
pink; hard-coloured, old-fashioned silks which Lambourdieu had sold
to them at double their value, passing them off as the latest Parisian
novelty. Old Madame Fouan had looked out the violet poplin which
she had paraded for forty years at all the country weddings, and
Fanny, dressed in green, wore all her jewels; her watch and chain, a
brooch, rings in her ears and on her fingers. Every minute one of the
women would go out on to the road and run as far as the church
corner to see whether the lady from the farm was not in sight. The
sauces were burning, and the soup, which had unfortunately been
served, was getting cold in the plates. At length there was a shout:
"There she is! There she is!"
The gig appeared, and Jacqueline leapt lightly out. She looked
charming, having had the good taste to set off her attractions by a
simple white cretonne dress with red spots. There were no jewels
about her bare skin, save some little brilliants in her ears: a present
from Hourdequin, which had set the neighbouring farms in a
ferment. They were surprised that she did not dismiss the farm-hand
who had brought her, when they had helped him to stable the
vehicle. He was a kind of giant, named Tron, with white skin, red
hair, and a child-like look. He came from Le Perche, and had been at
La Borderie for a fortnight as yard-helper.
"Tron remains, you know," said she gaily. "He'll see me home."
In La Beauce, people are not partial to the Percherons, whom they
accuse of being false and sly. Glances were exchanged. This, then,
was La Cognette's last fancy, this big brute! However, Buteau, who
had been very agreeable and jocular since the morning, replied:
"Certainly he can stop! It's enough that he comes with you."
Lise having given the word to begin, they sat down to table, with a
deal of bustle and noisy talk. There were three chairs short, so they
ran and fetched two stools, with their straw seats worn through, and
laid a plank across them. Spoons were already briskly rattling against
the plates. The soup was cold, and covered with congealed bubbles
of fat. They didn't mind that, however. Old Fouan made the remark
that it would get warm in their bellies, an idea which provoked
tempestuous laughter. From that moment the scene was one of
gluttonous massacre: the chickens, rabbits, meats appeared and
vanished in succession, amid a gruesome sound of munching.
Although very temperate at their own homes, they stuffed till they
almost burst when visiting. La Grande did not speak, in order to eat
the more, and she kept at it with never-resting jaws; it was indeed
frightful to see how much her lean, shrivelled, octogenarian stomach
could engulf, without so much as swelling. It had been settled that,
for the look of the thing, Françoise and Fanny should see to the
guests, so that the bride might not have to get up; but she could not
keep still; she left her chair every instant, tucking up her sleeves,
and giving her best attention to the pouring out of a sauce, or the
dishing of a joint. In a short time, however, the whole table took a
share in the waiting, and some one was always on his legs, cutting
bread or trying to get hold of a dish. Buteau, who had taken charge
of the wine, no longer sufficed as butler, though to save himself the
trouble of corking and uncorking bottles he had simply put a cask on
tap. However he could not get any time to eat, and at last Jean had
to relieve him and replenish the pitchers. Delhomme, seated at his
ease, declared in his sagacious way that there must be plenty of
liquor if one didn't want to be stifled. When the pie, which was as
broad as a cart wheel, was served there was a thrill, the force-meat
balls making a deep impression. Monsieur Charles carried his
politeness so far as to swear upon his honour that he had never
seen a finer one at Chartres. At this point, old Fouan, in high feather,
sparkled once more.
"I say," he remarked, "if a fellow had any chaps on his buttocks, he
could cure them by sticking that on behind."
On hearing this the table went into fits, especially Jacqueline, who
laughed till she cried. She stuttered out some emendatory remarks,
which were lost amid her laughter.
The bridal pair faced each other, Buteau being between his mother
and La Grande, and Lise between old Fouan and Monsieur Charles.
The other guests were disposed according to their own fancy;
Jacqueline beside Tron, who watched her with his soft, stupid eyes:
Jean near Françoise, and only separated from her by little Jules,
upon whom both of them had engaged to keep an eye. However, on
the appearance of the pie, the child displayed such strong symptoms
of indigestion that the bride had to go and put him to bed. Then
Jean and Françoise were brought side by side. She was very lively,
deeply flushed by the heat of the large fire on the hearth, and over-
excited, albeit tired to death. He was attentive, and wished to get up
and help her; but she broke away, having moreover to hold her own
against Buteau, who, being much given to teasing when in a
pleasant mood, had made a set at her from the beginning of the
feast. He pinched her whenever she went by, whereupon she
retorted with a furious slap; and then she would get up again on
some pretext or other, as if fascinated and anxious to be pinched
again and to slap him in return. She complained that her hips were
black and blue.
"Stop where you are, then!" repeated Jean.
"Oh, no!" cried she, "he mustn't think he's my master too, simply
because he's married Lise."
They had lighted six tallow candles as soon as it was dark, and the
meal had been in progress for three hours, when at length, towards
ten o'clock, an onslaught was made on the dessert. From that point,
coffee was drunk; not one or two cups, but large bowlfuls of it,
without stopping. The fun grew more pointed. Coffee gave one
vigour, it was said, and was excellent for the men who took too
much sleep. Every time a married guest swallowed a spoonful the
others split their sides laughing.
"You've very good cause to take some," said Fanny to Delhomme.
She was very merry, that evening, the feast having drawn her out of
her habitual reserve.
Her husband reddened, and to excuse himself roundly declared that
it was due to over-work; whereupon their son Nénesse laughed from
ear to ear, amid the burst of shouts and the thigh-slapping provoked
by this conjugal revelation. However, the lad had eaten so much that
he seemed to be bursting. Soon he vanished, and he was not seen
again till the party broke up, when he was found slumbering in
company with the two cows.
La Grande was the one who held out the longest. At midnight she
was hard at work on the tartlets, in mute despair at being unable to
finish them. The bowls of cream had been cleaned out, the crumbs
of the cake swept up; with the freedom of increasing tipsiness, with
bodices unhooked and trouser buttons undone, they split up into
little knots, and chatted round the table, which was greasy with
sauce, and stained with spilt wine. Songs had been started, but had
come to nothing; except that old Rose, with a maudlin expression of
countenance, went on humming some past century ribaldry, a
reminiscence of her young days, to which she kept time by nodding
her head. They were also too few to dance. Besides the men
preferred to tipple brandy and smoke their pipes, the ashes of which
they shook out over the table-cloth. In a corner, Fanny and
Delhomme, with Jean and Tron before them, were reckoning up,
within a halfpenny, the pecuniary position and expectations of the
bride and bridegroom. This went on interminably. Every square inch
was appraised. They knew every fortune in Rognes, even to the
value of the linen possessed by each household. At the other end of
the table, Jacqueline had buttonholed Monsieur Charles, whom she
was contemplating with a winning smile, her pretty, wicked eyes
aflame with curiosity. She questioned him.
"So Chartres is a queer place, eh? There's a gay life to be led there?"
He answered her by praising the town circuit: a line of promenades
planted with old trees, which encompass Chartres with shade. In the
lower part especially, along the banks of the Eure, the boulevards
were very cool in summer. Then there was the cathedral. He
expatiated on this edifice, being a well-informed man with great
respect for religion. Yes, it was one of the finest buildings; but it had
become too vast for the present times of weak Christianity, and was
almost always empty, in the midst of its deserted square, which the
devout alone crossed on week-days. He had realised the desolation
of the place one Sunday when he had gone in casually while the
vesper service was taking place. You shivered with the cold inside,
and you could hardly see on account of the stained glass; so that all
he could eventually descry were two little girls' schools, lost in the
space like a handful of ants, and singing under the vaulted roof in
shrill, fife-like voices. It was truly heartrending that the churches
should be thus abandoned for the drinking-shops.
Jacqueline, who was astonished to hear him say all this, continued
to stare at him steadily, with the same smile. At last to attain her
object, she had to murmur:
"But tell me now, the Chartres women——"
He understood, and grew very grave, but he unbosomed himself,
under the expansive influence of the general intoxication. She,
flushed and tittering, rubbed up against him as if to penetrate that
mystery of a rush of men, night after night. But it was not what she
imagined. He told her about the hard work of it, for, in his cups, he
was wont to be melancholy and paternal. Then he grew more
animated, when she told him that she had amused herself one day
by taking a look at the front of the Châteaudun night-house, at the
corner of the Rue Dairgnon and the Rue Loiseau: a little dilapidated
house it was, with its shutters closed and rotting. Behind, in a
neglected garden, there was a large silvered globe of glass reflecting
the house; while, in front of the dormer-window of the topmost floor,
turned into a pigeon-house, some pigeons were flying and cooing in
the sunshine. On that day, too, some children were playing on the
door-step, and she had heard the words of command resounding
over the wall of the adjacent cavalry barracks. He, interrupting her,
grew angry. Yes, yes! He knew the place: two disgusting used-up
women, and not even any mirrors downstairs. It was these dens that
brought disgrace on the profession.
"But what can you expect in a sub-prefecture?" he added at length,
calming down, with the philosophical tolerance of a superior person.
It was now one in the morning, and it was suggested that they
should go to bed. When people had had a baby, there wasn't much
use (was there?) in making a fuss about getting under the blankets
together. It was the same with the old practical jokes—unpinning the
bedstead, and popping scratching hair, or toys that squeaked when
they were squeezed, between the sheets, and so on. All that, in this
case, would have come the day after the fair. The best thing to do
was to drink a parting cup, and then say good-night.
At that moment, however, Lise and Fanny shrieked. Through the
open window a liberal shower of cow's dung had just been thrown,
and both women's dresses were splashed from top to bottom, and
ruined. What swine had done that? They ran out and looked over
the square, along the road, and behind the hedge. Nobody.
However, they all agreed that this was Hyacinthe's revenge for not
having been invited.
The Fouans and Delhomme set out, and Monsieur Charles too. La
Grande made a tour of the table, to see whether there was anything
left; and finally made up her mind to go, after observing to Jean that
the Buteaus would die in a ditch. Her firm, sharp step, and the
measured tap of her stick, were heard down the road in the
distance; while the others, all very tipsy, went staggering over the
stones.
As Tron was putting the horse to the gig for Madame Jacqueline,
she, already with one foot on the step, turned round and asked:
"You're not going back with us, are you, Jean?"
The young fellow, who was preparing to get in, changed his mind,
glad enough to leave her to Tron, since she seemed to wish it. He
watched her cuddling up against the tall figure of her new gallant,
and could not help laughing when the vehicle was out of sight. He
would walk back, he thought. But first, pending the departure of the
others, he went and sat down for an instant on the stone bench in
the yard, near Françoise, who had installed herself there, being
overcome with both the heat and fatigue. The Buteaus were already
in their room, and she had promised to fasten everything up before
going to bed herself.
"Ah! it's pleasant here," she sighed, after five long minutes of
silence.
Then quietude fell again, calm and majestic. The cool, delicious
night was spangled with stars. The scent of the hay was borne so
strong from the meadows of the Aigre that its balmy fragrance
seemed like the perfume of flowers.
"Ah, yes! it's pleasant," repeated Jean, at length. "It does the heart
good."
She made no reply, however, and he saw that she was asleep. She
slid down, resting upon his shoulder, and then he stopped there an
hour longer, meditating in a confused manner. Evil thoughts came to
him, but died away. She was too young. It seemed to him that, by
waiting, she alone would become older and get to be nearer his age.
"I say, Françoise, we'd better go to bed!" he exclaimed at last. "We
might catch something out here."
She started out of her sleep.
"Dear, yes! we shall be better abed. Till we meet again, Jean!"
"Till we meet again, Françoise!"

PART III.

CHAPTER I.

So at last Buteau had got his share, that land he had so ardently
coveted, and yet refused during more than two years and a half, in a
fury compounded of longing, rancour, and obstinacy. He himself did
not know why he had been so stubborn, yearning at heart to sign
the deed, fearing he might be tricked, and unable to console himself
for not having secured the whole inheritance, the nineteen acres
now mutilated and scattered. Since his acceptance, however, a great
passion had been satisfied, the brutal joy of possession; and that joy
was doubled by the thought that his sister and brother were now the
swindled parties, that his holding was worth more since the new
road ran by his field. He never met them without a sly chuckle, and
winks that said:
"All the same, I've taken them in!"
And that was not all. He triumphed also by his long-deferred
marriage, by the five acres adjoining his own field which Lise had
brought him. The thought that the sisters' property must be divided
did not occur to him; or, if it did, he looked upon it as something so
far distant that he hoped in the interval to hit upon some scheme of
evasion. Counting Françoise's share, he had eight acres of plough
land, eight of meadow, and about five of vineyard, and he would
stick to them. He would part with his skin first. Above all, he would
never let any one cut up the piece of ground which bordered the
road, and that now comprised nearly six acres. Neither his sister nor
his brother had a field like it. He talked of it in inflated terms,
bursting with pride. A year passed by, and this first year of
possession was bliss to Buteau. Never when he had hired himself out
to others had he ploughed so deeply into the bowels of the earth. It
was his; he wanted to penetrate and fructify its inmost parts. At
night he used to come in exhausted, with his plough-share gleaming
like silver. In March he harrowed his wheat; in April his oats; taking
minute care, and throwing himself heart and soul into the task.
When all the work in the fields was done, he returned to them just
the same; lover-like, to gaze at them. He walked round, stooping
and picking up handfuls of soil with his old gesture; delighting to
crush the rich clods, and let them filter through his fingers; and
feeling supremely happy if he found them neither too dry nor too
damp, with a fine smell suggestive of growing bread.
Thus La Beauce spread her verdure before him, from November to
July, from the moment when the green tips first emerged to that
when the lofty stalks turned yellow. Wishing to have the country
under his eye without leaving the house, he unbarred the kitchen
window—the rear one, that looked out on the plain—and there he
used to station himself and survey ten leagues of country: an
immense broad bare expanse, stretching under the vaulted skies.
Not a single tree; nothing but the telegraph posts of the Châteaudun
and Orleans road, running on unswervingly till they were lost to
sight. At first there was a greenish, scarcely perceptible shade,
peeping just above the soil of the large squares of brown earth.
Then this soft green strengthened into velvet stretches, almost
uniform in tint. Then, as the stems grew taller and thicker, each
plant developed its own tinge of colour. He distinguished from afar
the yellowish green of the wheat, the bluish green of the oats, the
greyish green of the barley; infinite expanses of ground spread out
in all directions, amid glowing patches of crimson trifolium. It was
the time when La Beauce is fair and young, thus clothed about with
spring, and smooth and cool to the eye in her monotony. The stalks
grew taller; and there was then one deep, rolling, boundless sea of
cereals. At morn, in the fine weather, a pink mist used to rise. As the
sun climbed in the limpid atmosphere a breeze would blow in large
regular puffs, furrowing the fields with a swell that started on the
horizon, and rolled along till it died away in the opposite direction.
As the plants swayed, their colour became paler; a moiré-like effect
—waterings of the shade of old gold—rippled over the wheat; the
oats took a bluish hue; while the barley quivered with violet lights.
Undulation continually succeeded undulation; a ceaseless ebb would
set in under the winds from the offing. When evening fell, the fronts
of distant buildings, brightly lit, showed like white sails; steeples
looked like masts, uprising behind folds in the surface of the plain. It
grew cold; the gloom enhanced the damp and the murmuring
character of the ocean-like prospect; a distant plantation became
indistinct, and looked like the dim coast-line of some continent.
In the bad weather, also, Buteau gazed out over La Beauce, thus
spread out at his feet, just as the fisher gazes from his cliff over the
raging sea, when the tempest is robbing him of his livelihood. He
saw a violent storm; a dark cloud shedding a livid, leaden light, and
red flashes glowing over the grass-tips amid claps of thunder. He
saw a waterspout come from more than six leagues away; at first a
thin, tawny cloud twisted like a rope, then a howling mass galloping
on like a monster; then, as it passed away, the crops could be seen
torn up, and everything trampled upon, broken, and razed along a
track two miles wide. His own fields had escaped, and he pitied the
disasters of others with inward chuckles of delight. As the wheat
grew, his enjoyment increased. A grey islet formed by a village had
disappeared on the horizon behind the rising level of verdure. There
only remained the roofs of La Borderie which, in their turn, were
submerged. A mill, with its sails, remained alone like a waif. On all
sides there was corn—an encroaching, overflowing sea of corn,
covering the earth with its immensity of verdure.
"God a' mercy!" said he, every evening, as he sat down to table; "if
the summer's not too dry, we shall never be at a loss for bread."
The Buteaus had established themselves in their new home. The
married pair had taken the large room downstairs, and Françoise,
above them, put up with a little room, formerly occupied by old
Mouche, which had been scoured and furnished with a fold-up
bedstead, an old chest of drawers, a table and two chairs. She still
busied herself with her cows, and led much the same life as of old.
However, although all was outwardly calm, there was a dormant
source of disagreement: that question of dividing the property
between the two sisters, which had remained in abeyance. On the
day after the marriage of the elder girl, old Fouan, as guardian of
the younger one, had pressed for the division of the property, so as
to avoid all unpleasantness in the future. But Buteau had protested.
What was the good? Françoise was too young; she didn't want her
land. Wasn't everything just as before? She lived with her sister still,
she was boarded and clothed. In short, she certainly could have no
cause of complaint. At all these reasons the old man shook his head.
No one knew what might happen, the best thing to do was to settle
everything in due form; and the girl herself was anxious to know
what her share would consist of, though that point being settled she
was ready to leave it in charge of her brother-in-law. The latter,
however, had his own way, by means of his genial, obstinate,
humbugging bluffness. Nothing further was said, and he proclaimed
everywhere what a happy, charming, domestic mode of life theirs
was.
"There's nothing like having a good understanding with one
another!" said he.
In point of fact there had not been any quarrel between the two
sisters, nor any domestic disagreement during the first ten months;
but then matters gradually became unpleasant. It started with
displays of bad temper. There were fits of sulking, and at last loud
words were exchanged; and, beneath it all, the fermenting question
of "mine" and "thine" was at its ravaging work, gradually destroying
affection.
Certainly Lise and Françoise no longer loved one another as tenderly
as of old. No one now met them with their arms round each other's
waists, walking out in the gloaming wrapped in the same shawl. A
separation had come between them; a coolness was growing up.
Since there had been a man in the house, it seemed to Françoise
that her sister had been taken from her. She who once had shared
everything with Lise, had no share in this man; and he had thus
become a something foreign, an obstacle shutting her out from the
heart in which she had lived alone. All this, moreover, had a material
side. She used to leave without kissing her elder sister when Buteau
did so, feeling as shocked as if some one had drunk out of her glass.
In matters of ownership, she kept to her childish notions with
passionate earnestness. "This is mine, that is yours;" and, as her
sister belonged thenceforward to another, she let her go. But she
wanted what was her own, one-half of the land and of the house.
This wrath of hers was also caused by another matter which she
herself could not have explained. There had, so far, been nothing to
disturb her in the house, where love scenes had been unknown, a
chill having fallen upon the place when old Mouche became a
widower. But now it was inhabited by a brutal man with the instincts
of his sex, who had always been in the habit of running after the
girls in the fields, and whose unrestrained dalliance with her sister,
which she was obliged to be cognisant of, made her feel alike
disgusted and exasperated. During the daytime she preferred to go
out, and let them indulge in their dirty tricks unrestrained. In the
evening, if they began laughing on getting up from table, she called
to them to wait till she had finished washing up the dishes. And then
she rushed madly to her room, slamming the doors and muttering
insults: "The beasts! The beasts!" between her clenched teeth. In
spite of all, she still fancied that she could hear what was going on
below her, downstairs. With her head buried in the pillow, and with
the sheets drawn up to her eyes, she grew hot and feverish; her
hearing and her sight were haunted by hallucinations, and her
revolting puberty made her suffer.
The worst of it was that Buteau, seeing so much of her attention
given to these matters, used to chaff her about them by way of a
joke. Goodness gracious! what next? What would she say when she
had to go through the same thing herself? Lise, too, used to laugh,
seeing nothing whatever wrong about it; and then Buteau would
explain his ideas on the subject. The pleasure cost nothing, and it
was perfectly lawful to indulge in it. But no children; no, no! No
more of them! There was always too much of that sort of thing
before marriage; people were so stupid. Thus little Jules had made
his appearance, for instance; a confounded nuisance, which had to
be put up with all the same. But when folks were married, they
sobered down. He'd rather be a capon than have any more children.
A likely thing! Bringing another mouth into a house where there
wasn't too much to eat as it was! And so he kept constantly on the
alert with regard to his wife, who was so plump, the hussy! that
she'd get in the family-way in a trice if he'd only let her. He'd be glad
to reap as much corn as the full womb of the earth could be made
to yield; but no babies! They had done with children for ever!
Amidst these constant details, this copulation that rustled audibly
near her, as it were, Françoise's agitation kept increasing. Folks
asserted that her temper was changing; and she did yield to
inexplicable moods which abruptly changed: first merry, then sad,
and then surly and spiteful. In the morning she watched Buteau with
a black look, whenever he unceremoniously crossed the kitchen, half
undressed. Quarrels, too, broke out between herself and her sister
about the most trivial matters—a cup that she had just broken, for
instance. Wasn't the cup hers as well, half of it at all events?
Couldn't she break half of everything, if she liked? On these
questions of ownership their disputes always became most bitter,
entailing grudges that lasted days and days.
The worst of it was that Buteau himself became subject to odious
fits of temper. The land was suffering from a terrible drought, not a
drop of rain having fallen for six weeks; and he would come in with
his fists clenched, made ill by the sight of the spoilt crops—the
stunted barley, the shrivelled oats, and the wheat, which was
already scorched up before coming into ear. He actually suffered as
if he had been part of the crops themselves; his stomach shrank, his
limbs were racked with cramps, he dwindled and pined away with
anxiety and anger. In this state he, one morning, came to
loggerheads with Françoise for the first time. It was hot, and after
washing at the well, he had left part of his shirt hanging out behind.
As he was sitting down to eat his soup, Françoise, on coming
forward to help him, observed it. Then she burst out, reddening all
over:
"Tuck your shirt in, do! It's disgusting!"
He was in a bad humour already, and now flew into a passion.
"God's truth! Haven't you done picking me to pieces yet? Don't look,
if it offends you. One would think you had some lewd fancy in your
head from the way you jaw about it!"
She reddened still more, and began to stammer; while Lise
injudiciously added:
"He's right. You end by plaguing one. Go elsewhere if one can't be at
home in one's own house."
"Quite so; I will go elsewhere," said Françoise savagely, banging the
door after her as she went out.
But on the following day Buteau was once more pleasant,
conciliatory, and jocular. During the night the sky had clouded over,
and for twelve hours a fine, warm, penetrating rain had fallen; one
of those summer rains that freshen up the country. He had opened
the window, which looked on to the plain, and since daybreak he
had stood at it with his hands in his pockets, radiant, and watching
the stream pour down, while he repeated:
"Now we're gentlefolks, since the blessed God is doing our work for
us. Ah! thunder and blazes! The days spent like this, idling about,
are a lot better than those when one wears oneself out for no
return."
The rain still came streaming down slowly, softly, and endlessly. He
could hear thirsting, riverless, and springless La Beauce drinking this
water. 'Twas one vast murmur, a universal gurgling, full of comfort.
Everything absorbed the moisture, everything bloomed anew under
the shower. The wheat was regaining its youthful healthfulness; it
was sturdy and upright now, bearing on high the ears which would
swell mightily and burst with meal. Buteau, like the soil, like the
wheat, drank in at every pore, feeling cheerful, refreshed, and
restored to health, ever returning to his post at the window, and
shouting:
"Go on, go on! It's like five-franc pieces falling."
Suddenly he heard some one open the door, and on turning round
he was surprised to recognise old Fouan.
"Why, father! You've been frog hunting, then?"
The old man, after a struggle with a large blue umbrella, came in,
leaving his wooden shoes on the threshold.
"Something like a watering!" said he, simply. "We wanted it."
During the year that had elapsed since the partition had been finally
concluded, signed, and registered, he had had but one occupation:
that of visiting his old fields. He was always to be met prowling
round them with a deal of interest, grave or gay, according to the
state of the crops; yelling at his children if things went wrong, and
declaring that it was their fault if matters were at a standstill. This
rain had enlivened him also.
"And so," resumed Buteau, "you've looked in to see us as you were
passing by."
Françoise, hitherto silent, now came forward and said distinctly:
"No: it was I who begged uncle to come."
Lise, who was standing by the table shelling peas, left off and waited
motionless, a harsh expression suddenly coming over her face.
Buteau, who had at first clenched his fists, resumed his genial air,
having determined not to lose his temper.
"Yes," explained the old man, slowly, "the child spoke to me
yesterday. You see now how right I was when I wanted to have
matters settled at the outset. To each his own. There's nothing in
that for any one to get angry about; on the contrary, it prevents
quarrels. It's now high time to make an end of it. She has a right,
hasn't she? to know exactly how she stands. Otherwise I should be
to blame. So we'll fix a day, and go together to Monsieur
Baillehache's."
Lise could hold out no longer.
"Why don't she send for the gendarmes? Good Heavens! one would
suppose she was being robbed. What if I were to go about and tell
everybody what a filthy beast she is, and that there's no knowing
where to take hold of her?"
Françoise was about to reply in the same strain, when Buteau, who
had playfully caught her up from behind, cried out:
"A pack of nonsense! People may badger each other, but they love
each other all the same, eh? A nice thing it would be if sisters fell
out!"
The girl had shaken herself free, and the quarrel was about to
continue, when Buteau raised a joyous shout on seeing the door
again open:
"Jean! Sopping wet! Why, he's a regular poodle!"
Jean, who had run over from the farm, as he often did, had merely
thrown a sack over his shoulders for protection; and he was wet
through—dripping, steaming, and laughing good-humouredly
through it all. While he was shaking himself, Buteau, returning to his
window, grew more and more expansive at the sight of the steady,
endless downpour.
"Oh, how it's coming down! What a blessing! My! it's quite a game
to see it come down like that!"
Then, turning back, he said to Jean:
"You come pat. These two were tearing each other's eyes out.
Françoise wants the property divided, so that she may leave us."
"What? That child!" cried Jean, amazed.
His desire had become a violent hidden passion, and the only
satisfaction he had was to see her in this house, where he was
received as a friend. He would have proposed for her half a score of
times already, if he had not so keenly felt the disparity in their ages.
It was in vain that he had waited; the fifteen years' difference had
not been spanned. In the country, a great difference of age is
reckoned such an obstacle, that nobody—not she herself, nor her
sister, nor even her brother-in-law—seemed to imagine he could ever
fix his thoughts on her. And this was why Buteau received him so
cordially, without any fear of the consequences.
"You may well say child!" said he, paternally shrugging his
shoulders.
But Françoise, standing rigidly erect, with her eyes on the ground,
proved obstinate.
"I want my share."
"It would be the wisest thing," murmured old Fouan.
Then Jean gently took hold of her wrists, and drew her towards him.
Holding her thus, his hands quivering at the contact of her flesh, he
addressed her in his kind voice, which faltered as he besought her to
remain. Where could she go? Into service with some strangers at
Cloyes or Châteaudun? Was she not better off in the house where
she had grown up, amid people who loved her? She listened to him,
and she also softened; for although she scarcely thought of him as a
lover, she was wont to obey him readily, chiefly out of regard for him
and a little from fear, thinking him a very serious person.
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