'You won't shut up? won't you? Just wait a minute then, you jade!'
continued old Bambousse. And thereupon he picked up a clod of earth and
flung it at her. It burst upon her knot of hair, crumbling down her neck
and smothering her in dust. Dizzy from the blow, she bounded to her feet
and fled, sheltering her head between her hands. But Bambousse had time
to fling two more clods at her, and if the first only grazed her left
shoulder, the next caught her full on the base of the spine, with such
force that she fell upon her knees.

'Bambousse!' cried the priest, as he wrenched from the peasant's hand a
number of stones which he had just picked up.

'Let be, Monsieur le Cure,' said the other. 'It was only soft earth. I
ought to have thrown these stones at her. It's easy to see that you
don't know girls. Hard as nails, all of them. I might duck that one in
the well, I might break all her bones with a cudgel, and she'd still be
just the same. But I've got my eye on her, and if I catch her! . . . Ah!
well, they are all like that.'

He was already comforted. He took a good pull at a big flat bottle of
wine, encased in wicker-work, which lay warming on the hot ground. And
breaking once more into a laugh, he said: 'If I only had a glass,
Monsieur le Cure, I would offer you some with pleasure.'

'So then,' again asked the priest, 'this marriage?'

'No, it can't be; I should get laughed at. Rosalie is a stout wench.
She's worth a man to me. I shall have to hire a lad the day she goes
off. . . . We can have another talk about it after the vintage. Besides,
I don't want to be robbed. Give and take, say I. That's fair. What do