The little Marchioness hesitated for a few seconds, and then she replied in a serious voice:
"My dear ... you must make ... you must make your husband a little present with it.... That will be only fair!"
The peasant was standing opposite the doctor, by the bedside of the dying old woman, and she, calmly resigned and quite lucid, looked at them and listened to their talking. She was going to die, and she did not rebel at it, for her time was over, as she was ninety-two.
The July sun streamed in at the window and the open door and cast its hot flames onto the uneven brown clay floor, which had been stamped down by four generations of clod-hoppers. The smell of the fields came in also, driven by the sharp wind, and parched by the noontide heat. The grasshoppers chirped themselves hoarse, and filled the country with their shrill noise, which was like that of the wooden crickets which are sold to children at fair time.
The doctor raised his voice and said: "Honoré, you cannot leave your mother in this state; she may die at any moment." And the peasant, in great distress replied: "But I must get in my wheat, for it has been lying on the ground a long time, and the weather is just right for it; what do you say about it, mother?" And the dying old woman, still tormented by her Norman avariciousness, replied _yes_ with her eyes and her forehead, and so urged her son to get in his wheat, and to leave her to die alone, but the doctor got angry, and stamping his foot, he said: "You are no better than a brute, do you hear, and I will not allow you to do it, do you understand? And if you must get in your wheat to-day, go and fetch Rapet's wife and make her look after your mother. I will have it, do you understand me? And if you do not obey me, I will let you die like a dog, when you are ill in your turn; do you hear me?"
The peasant, a tall, thin fellow with slow movements, who was tormented by indecision, by his fear of the doctor and his fierce love of saving, hesitated, calculated and stammered out: "How much does la Rapet charge for attending sick people?" "How should I know?" the doctor cried. "That depends upon how long she is wanted for. Settle it with her, by Jove! But I want her to be here within an hour, do you hear?"