In short, he found, according to the experience of all peasants bitten with the demon of proprietorship, that toil had increased and food decreased.
"Courtecuisse has done too much to the property," the people said, secretly envying his position.

"He ought to have waited till he had paid the money down and was master before he put up those fruit palings." With the help of his wife he had managed to manure and cultivate the three acres of land sold to him by Rigou, together with the garden adjoining the house, which was beginning to be productive; and he was in danger of being turned out of it all.

Clothed in rags like Fourchon, poor Courtecuisse, who lately wore the boots and gaiters of a huntsman, now thrust his feet into sabots and accused "the rich" of Les Aigues of having caused his destitution.

These wearing anxieties had given to the fat little man and his once smiling and rosy face a gloomy and dazed expression, as though he were ill from the effects of poison or with some chronic malady.
"What's the matter with you, Monsieur Courtecuisse; is your tongue tied ?" asked Tonsard, as the man continued silent after he had told him about the battle which had just taken place.
"No, no!" cried Madame Tonsard; "he needn't complain of the midwife who cut his string,--she made a good job of it." "It is enough to make a man dumb, thinking from morning till night of some way to escape Rigou," said the premature old man, gloomily.
"Bah!" said old Mother Tonsard, "you've got a pretty daughter, seventeen years old.

If she's a good girl you can easily manage matters with that old jail bird--" "We sent her to Auxerre two years ago to Madame Mariotte the elder, to keep her out of harm's way; I'd rather die than--" "What a fool you are!" said Tonsard, "look at my girls,--are they any the worse?
He who dares to say they are not as virtuous as marble images will have to do with my gun." "It'll be hard to have to come to that," said Courtecuisse, shaking his head.