In and out of the shops she went calmly enough,
even managing to smile as she gave her small orders:
*But yes, perfect weather, not yet grown too hot , . .
I think I must have some potatoes this morning/
'Loup seems better, I thank you. When will Chris-
tophe leave school? Next month. Yes, please, half
a kilo of sugar/

But once back in her home she could no longer
smile. Perhaps it was the sight of her husband
sitting idle with his hands hanging limply between
his knees, perhaps it was those scared, anxious eyes
of Anfos, or perhaps it was the gasping of le tout
petit Loup who, knowing quite well that he ought not
to run, had yet felt the urge of youth in his bones and
had raced home from school far ahead of Christophe.
Be this as it may, she must now start to tell them
about Guillaume Simon's open desertion; and then
she must cover her face and weep with a kind of
childish, disconsolate weeping:

cHe called you papa Jouse,5 she wept; cit is... that
he ... called you . . . papa Jouse . . .'

Jouse jerked clumsily out of his chair: 'Stop, stop,
Marioun; I cannot support it!5 and his voice sounded
unfamiliar and strained: 'Stop crying, Marioun
, . . stop crying, I tell you! Will you stop it, Marie!'
and he stamped his foot, 'I have told you that I can-
not support it.5

But she could not stop crying. Her tears once
released flowed forth like a stream that had long
been ice-bound, dripping down through her fingers
onto her lap as she woefully rocked herself backwards
and forwards: 'And he called you papa Jouse . . /
she repeated over and over and over again with a
desperate, unreasoning monotony: 'ai, ai, and he
called you papa Jouse.5

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