The Fortune of the Rougons | Page 5

cease until the authorities decided to have the bones
shot into a hole which had been dug for the purpose in the new
cemetery. All work, however, is usually carried out with discreet
dilatoriness in country towns, and so during an entire week the
inhabitants saw a solitary cart removing these human remains as if they
had been mere rubbish. The vehicle had to cross Plassans from end to
end, and owing to the bad condition of the roads fragments of bones
and handfuls of rich mould were scattered at every jolt. There was not
the briefest religious ceremony, nothing but slow and brutish cartage.
Never before had a town felt so disgusted.
For several years the old cemetery remained an object of terror.
Although it adjoined the main thoroughfare and was open to all comers,
it was left quite deserted, a prey to fresh vegetable growth. The local
authorities, who had doubtless counted on selling it and seeing houses
built upon it, were evidently unable to find a purchaser. The
recollection of the heaps of bones and the cart persistently jolting
through the streets may have made people recoil from the spot; or
perhaps the indifference that was shown was due to the indolence, the
repugnance to pulling down and setting up again, which is
characteristic of country people. At all events the authorities still
retained possession of the ground, and at last forgot their desire to
dispose of it. They did not even erect a fence round it, but left it open to
all comers. Then, as time rolled on, people gradually grew accustomed
to this barren spot; they would sit on the grass at the edges, walk about,
or gather in groups. When the grass had been worn away and the
trodden soil had become grey and hard, the old cemetery resembled a
badly-levelled public square. As if the more effectually to efface the
memory of all objectionable associations, the inhabitants slowly
changed the very appellation of the place, retaining but the name of the
saint, which was likewise applied to the blind alley dipping down at
one corner of the field. Thus there was the Aire Saint-Mittre and the
Impasse Saint-Mittre.
All this dates, however, from some considerable time back. For more

than thirty years now the Aire Saint-Mittre has presented a different
appearance. One day the townspeople, far too inert and indifferent to
derive any advantage from it, let it, for a trifling consideration, to some
suburban wheelwrights, who turned it into a wood-yard. At the present
day it is still littered with huge pieces of timber thirty or forty feet long,
lying here and there in piles, and looking like lofty overturned columns.
These piles of timber, disposed at intervals from one end of the yard to
the other, are a continual source of delight to the local urchins. In some
places the ground is covered with fallen wood, forming a kind of
uneven flooring over which it is impossible to walk, unless one balance
one's self with marvellous dexterity. Troops of children amuse
themselves with this exercise all day long. You will see them jumping
over the big beams, walking in Indian file along the narrow ends, or
else crawling astride them; various games which generally terminate in
blows and bellowings. Sometimes, too, a dozen of them will sit, closely
packed one against the other, on the thin end of a pole raised a few feet
from the ground, and will see-saw there for hours together. The Aire
Saint-Mittre thus serves as a recreation ground, where for more than a
quarter of a century all the little suburban ragamuffins have been in the
habit of wearing out the seats of their breeches.
The strangeness of the place is increased by the circumstance that
wandering gipsies, by a sort of traditional custom always select the
vacant portions of it for their encampments. Whenever any caravan
arrives at Plassans it takes up its quarters on the Aire Saint-Mittre. The
place is consequently never empty. There is always some strange band
there, some troop of wild men and withered women, among whom
groups of healthy-looking children roll about on the grass. These
people live in the open air, regardless of everybody, setting their pots
boiling, eating nameless things, freely displaying their tattered
garments, and sleeping, fighting, kissing, and reeking with mingled
filth and misery.
The field, formerly so still and deserted, save for the buzzing of hornets
around the rich blossoms in the heavy sunshine, has thus become a very
rowdy spot, resounding with the noisy quarrels of the gipsies and the
shrill cries of the urchins of the suburb. In one corner there is a

primitive saw-mill for cutting the timber, the noise from which serves
as a dull, continuous bass accompaniment to the sharp voices. The