and then he could make nearly all those things you
required for your house; chairs and tables that you
might bequeath to your children, strong cupboards
and chests, and fine massive beds; beds worthy to
share the secrets of mating and the strange, un-
fathomable mystery of birth, aye, and the infinite
mystery of death, for a steadfast and trusted and
honourable bed can be as a friend when it comes to
dying.
Jouse had once been as far north as Lisieux, and
there he had seen the old timbered houses decaying
in their narrow forgotten byways. And something
had smitten him as he gazed: clt was as though a
hand were squeezing niy bowels!5 That was how he
had afterwards described it to Marie. For the past
which is always waiting to pounce and drag us down
into the deep reservoir that is timeless, the bottomless
well of existence, the past had laid hold on this man's
slow mind, so that he, who was unimaginative in all
else, had been fired by the beauty of his craft as set
forth in the toil of those long-dead craftsmen. This
had happened a good many years ago, since when
Jouse had regretfully been forced to admit that a
man must try to conform to his age, and moreover
that the timbered dwellings of the north were unsuit-
able to the southern climate. All the same this
experience had influenced his work, so that he
laboured with meticulous care and inclined to an
honest solidity in the things that he made, as though
indeed he were fashioning them for a future gener-
ation.
The collection of odds and ends of old carving
which had had to give place to Anfos in the attic,
was now stored away in a corner of the workshop, and
quite often Jouse would show it to the youth, and
would try to expound why the chaste designs seemed
to him to attain to all dignity and beauty.
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