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By Root 1757 0

to politics, thought it would be a great joke if they suddenly just dropped in on their comrades like this. As for Jeanlin, though he might have given the appearance of simply wanting to roam about the countryside, the forest had been his one goal since leaving the village. When Lydie, full of anxious remorse, started talking about returning to Le Voreux to gather dandelion leaves, Jeanlin was indignant and started threatening her. Were they to miss the meeting? He personally intended to hear what the grown-ups had to say. He chivvied Bébert to keep going and, as a way of entertaining the two of them over the short distance to the trees, he suggested letting Poland go and throwing stones at her as she tried to escape. His real intention was to kill her, for he now longed to take her down to his den at Réquillart and eat her. The rabbit ran off again, nose twitching, ears back; one stone grazed her back, another cut her tail; and despite the gathering darkness she would have died there and then if the youngsters had not spotted Étienne and Maheu standing in the middle of a clearing. They pounced on her frantically and put her back in the basket. Almost at the same moment Zacharie, Mouquet and the two other men, now on their final stroke, drove the cholette and saw it roll to within a few metres of the clearing. They had arrived bang in the middle of the meeting.

Since dusk, people throughout the region had been slowly making their way towards the purple thickets of the forest, silent shadows streaming across the empty plain along every highway and byway, some walking alone, others in groups. Every village was emptying, and even the women and children were leaving, as though setting off for a stroll beneath the clear open sky. By now the roads were sunk in darkness and the advancing throng could no longer be seen, but as it stole towards its common destination its presence could be felt, a myriad of steps with one single purpose. Along the hedgerows, between the bushes, all that could be heard was a quiet shuffling and a faint murmuring of voices in the night.

M. Hennebeau was riding home just then, and he listened to these far-away sounds. He had passed many couples this fine winter’s evening, a whole procession of them out for a stroll. Still more lovers off to take their pleasure behind some wall or other, mouth against mouth! Was not this what he usually encountered, girls flat on their backs in some ditch and good-for-nothing lads busy enjoying the only pleasure that didn’t cost money! And to think that these fools complained about life, when they could have love, the one and only happiness, and as much as they jolly well pleased! He would gladly starve like them if he could start life over again with a woman who would give herself to him on the bare ground, unreservedly, body and soul. In his own unhappiness he was not to be consoled, and he envied these poor wretched people. Head bowed, he rode slowly home, deep in despair at all these noises he could hear far away in the countryside and which for him could only be the sounds of love.

VII

The clearing was at Le Plan-des-Dames, where a vast open space had been created by some recent tree-felling. It sloped gently and was ringed by tall forest, magnificent beeches whose straight, regular trunks provided a colonnade of white pillars stained green with lichen. Some still lay like fallen giants among the grass, while over to the left a pile of sawn logs stood in a tidy cube. The cold had sharpened with the dusk, and the frozen moss crackled underfoot. At ground level it was pitch black, but the topmost branches of the trees were etched against the pale sky, where a full moon was rising on the horizon and beginning to snuff out the stars.

Almost three thousand miners had come to the meeting, a swarming mass of men, women and children that gradually filled the clearing and overflowed under the trees. As the latecomers continued to arrive, a sea of faces stretched away in the darkness into the further reaches of the forest. And amid the icy stillness a deep murmur