If you ask me: "Eusebe, which shall it be, a wench
for your bed or wine for your stomach?" I will answer:
Give me the comfort of wine, and let me lie down by
a fruitful vineyard — it pays better and costs less than
a fruitful woman!5
Marie would order her sons off to bed, and Anfos
must go at the same time as Loup whose sleep was
disturbed if he followed later. And presently she also
would seek her room, leaving Jouse before a fresh
bottle of wine, his eyes clouded, his chin sunk onto his
breast — he who had used to berate Eusebe for an
impudent, dirty, drunken old sot who disgraced not
only himself but his neighbours!
Poor Marie would open her Prayer-Book at random
and would read many prayers to the blessed Virgin, or
perhaps to the Sacred Heart of our Lord, or perhaps
to Saint Joseph, Jouse's patron; for her peasant mind
would feel dull with grief, so that she must seek among
printed words for what she herself lacked of inspiration.
But alone in his attic her elder son would be staring
miserably into the darkness, for such nights would
bring with them neither visions nor prayer, but only
a new and devastating doubt — the doubt of a merci-
ful God's existence.
Christophe would be thinking: 'My father had
courage, yet his courage it is that has turned against
him. Can courage sometimes be too heavy for us?
Because of his courage my father is breaking/ And
this would seem monstrously unjust to the boy, as he
lay staring miserably into the darkness.
One morning he must leave the house very early
in order to seek out Monsieur le Cure, for he felt an
intolerable emptiness, as one who had suffered some
deep bereavement: 'Is it a part of myself that has
gone, or is it . . .' But he could not complete this
thought; when he tried to do so the thought would
elude him*
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