THE MORIBUND

The warm autumn sun was beating down on the farmyard. Under the grass,
which had been cropped close by the cows, the earth soaked by recent
rains, was soft and sank in under the feet with a soggy noise, and the
apple trees, loaded with apples, were dropping their pale green fruit in
the dark green grass.

Four young heifers, tied in a line, were grazing and at times looking
toward the house and lowing. The fowls made a colored patch on the
dung-heap before the stable, scratching, moving about and cackling, while
two roosters crowed continually, digging worms for their hens, whom they
were calling with a loud clucking.

The wooden gate opened and a man entered. He might have been forty years
old, but he looked at least sixty, wrinkled, bent, walking slowly,
impeded by the weight of heavy wooden shoes full of straw. His long arms
hung down on both sides of his body. When he got near the farm a yellow
cur, tied at the foot of an enormous pear tree, beside a barrel which
served as his kennel, began at first to wag his tail and then to bark for
joy. The man cried:

"Down, Finot!"

The dog was quiet.

A peasant woman came out of the house. Her large, flat, bony body was
outlined under a long woollen jacket drawn in at the waist. A gray skirt,
too short, fell to the middle of her legs, which were encased in blue
stockings. She, too, wore wooden shoes, filled with straw. The white cap,