He hitched his horse up to the gatepost and went in. He owned some land adjoining that of the old woman's, which he had been coveting for a long while, and had tried in vain to buy a score of times, but she had always obstinately refused to part with it.
"I was born here, and here I mean to die," was all she said.
He found her peeling potatoes outside the farmhouse door. She was a woman of about seventy-two, very thin, shriveled and wrinkled, almost dried up in fact, and much bent, but as active and untiring as a girl. Chicot patted her on the back in a very friendly fashion, and then sat down by her on a stool.
"Well, Mother, you are always pretty well and hearty, I am glad to see."
"Nothing to complain of, considering, thank you. And how are you, Mons. Chicot?"
"Oh! pretty well, thank you, except a few rheumatic pains occasionally; otherwise, I should have nothing to complain of."
And she said no more, while Chicot watched her going on with her work. Her crooked, knotty fingers, hard as a lobster's claws, seized the tubers, which were lying in a pail, as if they had been a pair of pincers, and she peeled them rapidly, cutting off long strips of skin with an old knife which she held in the other hand, throwing the potatoes into the water as they were done. Three daring fowls jumped one after the other into her lap, seized a bit of peel, and then ran away as fast as their legs would carry them with it in their beak.
Chicot seemed embarrassed, anxious, with something on the tip of his tongue which he could not get out. At last he said hurriedly:
"You are quite sure that you do not want to sell your farm?"
"Certainly not; you may make up your mind to that. What I have said, I have said, so don't refer to it again."
"Very well; only I fancy I have thought of an arrangement that might suit us both very well."
"Here you are. You shall sell it to me, and keep it all the same. You don't understand? Very well, so just follow me in what I am going to say."
The old woman left off peeling her potatoes, and looked at the innkeeper attentively from under her bushy eyebrows, and he went on:
"Let me explain myself. Every month I will give you one hundred and fifty francs. You understand me, I suppose? Every month I will come and bring you thirty crowns[13] and it will not make the slightest difference in your life--not the very slightest. You will have your own home just as you have now, will not trouble yourself about me, and will owe me nothing; all you will have to do will be to take my money. Will that arrangement suit you?"
