The Devils Pool | Page 6

of his
duties and affections. He had related them to me clearly and
ingenuously, and I had listened with interest. After some time spent in
watching him plow, it occurred to me that I might write his story,
though that story were as simple, as straightforward, and unadorned as
the furrow he was tracing.
Next year that furrow will be filled and covered by a fresh one. Thus
disappear most of the footprints made by man in the field of human life.
A little earth obliterates them, and the furrows we have dug succeed
one another like graves in a cemetery. Is not the furrow of the laborer
of as much value as that of the idler, even if that idler, by some absurd
chance, have made a little noise in the world, and left behind him an
abiding name?
I mean, if possible, to save from oblivion the furrow of Germain, the
skilled husbandman. He will never know nor care, but I shall take

pleasure in my talk.

II -- Father Maurice
"GERMAIN," said his father-in-law one day, "you must decide about
marrying again. It is almost two years now since you lost my daughter,
and your eldest boy is seven years old! You are almost thirty, my boy,
and you know that in our country a man is considered too old to go to
housekeeping again after that age; you have three nice children, and
thus far they have not proved a burden to us at all. My wife and my
daughter-in-law have looked after them as well as they could, and
loved them as they ought. Here is Petit-Pierre almost grown up. He
goads the oxen very well; he knows how to look after the cattle; and he
is strong enough to drive the horses to the trough. So it is not he that
worries us. But the other two, love them though we do, God knows the
poor little innocents give us trouble enough this year; my
daughter-in-law is about to lie in, and she has yet another baby to
attend to. When the child we are expecting comes, she will not be able
to look after your little Solange, and above all your Sylvain, who is not
four years old, and who is never quiet day or night. He has a restless
disposition like yours; that will make a good workman of him, but it
makes a dreadful child, and my old wife cannot run fast enough to save
him when he almost tumbles into the ditch, or when he throws himself
in front of the tramping cattle. And then with this other that my
daughter-in-law is going to bring into the world, for a month at least
her next older child will fall on my wife's hands. Besides, your children
worry us, and give us too much to do; we hate to see children badly
looked after, and when we think of the accidents that may befall them,
for want of care, we cannot rest. So you need another wife, and I
another daughter-in-law. Think this over, my son. I have called it to
your mind before. Time flies, and the years will not wait a moment for
you. It is your duty to your children and to the rest of us, who wish all
well at home, to marry as soon as you can." "Very well, father,"
answered the son-in-law, "if you really wish it, I must do as you say.
But I do not wish to hide it from you that it will make me very sad, and
that I hardly wish tor anything but to drown myself. We know who it is

we lose, we never know whom we find. I had a good wife, a pretty wife,
sweet, brave, good to her father and mother, good to her husband, good
to her children, good to toil in the fields and in the house, well fitted to
work,--in short, good for everything; and when you had given her to me,
and I took her, we did not place it among our promises that I should go
and forget about her if I had the misfortune to lose her."
"What you say shows your good heart, Germain," answered Father
Maurice. "I know that you loved my daughter and that you made her
happy, and that had you been able to satisfy Death by going in her
place, Catherine would be alive today, and you would be in the
graveyard. She deserved all your love, and if you are not consoled,
neither are we. But I do not speak to you of forgetting her: God wished
her to leave us, and we do not let a day go by without telling him in our
prayers and thoughts, and words and actions, that we keep