Sunday came as a day of great heat, sultry and oppressive. There was thunder in the air, and Beaucourt did not go out to work in the fields, but remained at home sitting in the shade, or lazily busy in its gardens. At noon there was hardly a soul to be seen in the streets, and for an hour no one passed down the Rue de Bonnière save old Prosper Cordonnier, loping long-legged and guiltily to Bibi’s buvette. The hut among the apple trees above the factory was the one live, noisy spot in Beaucourt. The hut itself was like a baker’s oven, and the men lay about on the grass under the orchard trees and under an awning that Bibi had put up. Barbe was kept busy serving them with drink, for it was a thirsty and quarrelsome day, a day when men’s tempers feel the great heat.
As Anatole Durand said, a
