George Sand - George Sand - The Collected Works (The Greatest Novelists of All Time – Book 11)

And she picked up her basket to go and stretch her linen on the bushes.

Germain acted like children who make up their minds when they see that you have ceased to pay any attention to them. He followed his mother-in-law, and at last gave her the name in fear and trembling— La Guillette's little Marie .

Great was Mère Maurice's surprise: she was the last one of whom she would have thought. But she had the delicacy not to cry out at it, and to make her comments mentally. Then, seeing that her silence was oppressive to Germain, she held out her basket to him, saying: "Well, is that any reason why you shouldn't help me in my work? Carry this load, and come and talk with me. Have you reflected, Germain? have you made up your mind?"

"Alas! my dear mother, that's not the way you must talk: my mind would be made up if I could succeed; but as I shouldn't be listened to, I have made up my mind simply to cure myself if I can."

"And if you can't?"

"Everything in its time, Mère Maurice: when the horse is overloaded, he falls; and when the ox has nothing to eat, he dies."

"That is to say that you will die if you don't succeed, eh? God forbid, Germain! I don't like to hear a man like you say such things as that, because when he says them he thinks them. You're a very brave man, and weakness is a dangerous thing in strong men. Come, take hope. I can't imagine how a poor girl, who is much honored by having you want her, can refuse you."

"It's the truth, though, she does refuse me."

"What reasons does she give you?"

"That you have always been kind to her, that her family owes a great deal to yours, and that she doesn't want to displease you by turning me away from a wealthy marriage."

"If she says that, she shows good feeling, and it's very honest on her part. But when she tells you that, Germain, she doesn't cure you, for she tells you she loves you, I don't doubt, and that she'd marry you if we were willing."

"That's the worst of it! she says that her heart isn't drawn toward me."

"If she says what she doesn't mean, the better to keep you away from her, she's a child who deserves to have us love her and to have us overlook her youth because of her great common-sense."

"Yes," said Germain, struck with a hope he had not before conceived; "it would be very good and very comme il faut on her part! but if she's so sensible, I am very much afraid it's because she doesn't like me."

"Germain," said Mère Maurice, "you must promise to keep quiet the whole week and not worry, but eat and sleep, and be gay as you used to be. I'll speak to my old man, and if I bring him round, then you can find out the girl's real feeling with regard to you."

Germain promised, and the week passed without Père Maurice saying a word to him in private or giving any sign that he suspected anything. The ploughman tried hard to seem tranquil, but he was paler and more perturbed than ever.

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At last, on Sunday morning as they came out from Mass, his mother-in-law asked him what he had obtained from his sweetheart since their interview in the orchard.

"Why, nothing at all," he replied. "I haven't spoken to her."

"How do you expect to persuade her, pray, if you don't speak to her?"

"I have never spoken to her but once," said Germain. "That was when we went to Fourche together; and since then I haven't said a single word to her. Her refusal hurt me so, that I prefer not to hear her tell me again that she doesn't love me."

"Well, my son, you must speak to her now; your father-in-law authorizes you to do it. Come, make up your mind! I tell you to do it, and, if necessary, I insist on it; for you can't remain in this state of doubt."

Germain obeyed. He went to Mère Guillette's, with downcast eyes and an air of profound depression. Little Marie was alone in the chimney-corner, musing so deeply that she did not hear Germain come in. When she saw him before her, she leaped from her chair in surprise and her face flushed.

"Little Marie," he said, sitting beside her, "I have pained you and wearied you, I know; but the man and the woman at our house "—so designating the heads of the family in accordance with custom—"want me to speak to you and ask you to marry me. You won't be willing to do it, I expect that."

"Germain," replied little Marie, "have you made up your mind that you love me?"

"That offends you, I know, but it isn't my fault; if you could change your mind, I should be too happy, and I suppose I don't deserve to have it so. Come, look at me, Marie, am I so very frightful?"

"No, Germain," she replied, with a smile, "you're better looking than I am."

"Don't laugh at me; look at me indulgently; I haven't lost a hair or a tooth yet. My eyes tell you that I love you. Look into my eyes, it's written there, and every girl knows how to read that writing."

Marie looked into Germain's eyes with an air of playful assurance; then she suddenly turned her head away and began to tremble.

"Ah! mon Dieu! I frighten you," said Germain; "you look at me as if I were the farmer of Ormeaux. Don't be afraid of me, I beg of you, that hurts me too much. I won't say bad words to you, I won't kiss you against your will, and when you want me to go away, you have only to show me the door. Tell me, must I go out so that you can stop trembling?"

Marie held out her hand to the ploughman, but without turning her head, which was bent toward the fire-place, and without speaking.

"I understand," said Germain; "you pity me, for you are kind-hearted; you are sorry to make me unhappy; but still you can't love me, can you?"

"Why do you say such things to me, Germain?" little Marie replied at last, "do you want to make me cry?"

"Poor little girl, you have a kind heart, I know; but you don't love me, and you hide your face from me because you're afraid to let me see your displeasure and your repugnance. And for my part, I don't dare do so much as press your hand! In the woods, when my son was asleep, and you were asleep too, I came near kissing you softly. But I should have died of shame rather than ask you for a kiss, and I suffered as much that night as a man roasting over a slow fire. Since then, I've dreamed of you every night. Ah! how I have kissed you, Marie! But you slept without dreaming all the time. And now do you know what I think? that if you should turn and look at me with such eyes as I have for you, and if you should put your face to mine, I believe I should fall dead with joy. And as for you, you are thinking that if such a thing should happen to you, you would die of anger and shame!"

Germain talked as if he were dreaming, and did not know what he said. Little Marie was still trembling; but as he was trembling even more than she, he did not notice it. Suddenly she turned; she was all in tears, and looked at him with a reproachful expression.

The poor ploughman thought that that was the last stroke, and rose to go, without awaiting his sentence, but the girl detained him by throwing her arms about him, and hid her face against his breast.

"Ah! Germain," she said, sobbing, "haven't you guessed that I love you?"

Germain would have gone mad, had not his son, who was looking for him and who entered the cottage galloping on a stick, with his little sister en croupe , lashing the imaginary steed with a willow switch, recalled him to himself. He lifted him up, and said, as he put him in his fiancée's arms:

"You have made more than one person happy by loving me!"

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Here ends the story of Germain's courtship, as he told it to me himself, cunning ploughman that he is! I ask your pardon, dear reader, for having been unable to translate it better; for the old-fashioned, artless language of the peasants of the district that I sing —as they used to say—really has to be translated. Those people speak too much French for us, and the development of the language since Rabelais and Montaigne has deprived us of much of the old wealth. It is so with all progress, and we must make up our minds to it. But it is pleasant still to hear those picturesque idioms in general use on the old soil of the centre of France; especially as they are the genuine expressions of the mockingly tranquil and pleasantly loquacious character of the people who use them. Touraine has preserved a considerable number of precious patriarchal locutions. But Touraine has progressed rapidly in civilization during and since the Renaissance. It is covered with châteaux, roads, activity, and foreigners. Berry has remained stationary, and I think that, next to Bretagne and some provinces in the extreme south of France, it is the most conservative province to be found at the present moment. Certain customs are so strange, so curious, that I hope to be able to entertain you a moment longer, dear reader, if you will permit me to describe in detail a country wedding, Germain's for instance, which I had the pleasure of attending a few years ago.