BOOK I

ABBÉ MOURET’S TRANSGRESSION

By Émile Zola

Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

INTRODUCTION

‘LA FAUTE DE L’ABBÉ MOURET’ was, with respect to the date of

publication, the fourth volume of M. Zola’s ‘Rougon-Macquart’ series;

but in the amended and final scheme of that great literary undertaking,

it occupies the ninth place. It proceeds from the sixth volume of the

series, ‘The Conquest of Plassans;’ which is followed by the two works

that deal with the career of Octave Mouret, Abbé Serge Mouret’s elder

brother. In ‘The Conquest of Plassans,’ Serge and his half-witted

sister, Desirée, are seen in childhood at their home in Plassans, which

is wrecked by the doings of a certain Abbé Faujas and his relatives.

Serge Mouret grows up, is called by an instinctive vocation to the

priesthood, and becomes parish priest of Les Artaud, a well-nigh pagan

hamlet in one of those bare, burning stretches of country with which

Provence abounds. And here it is that ‘La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret’ opens

in the old ruinous church, perched upon a hillock in full view of the

squalid village, the arid fields, and the great belts of rock which shut

in the landscape all around.

There are two elements in this remarkable story, which, from the

standpoint of literary style, has never been excelled by anything that

M. Zola has since written; and one may glance at it therefore from two

points of view. Taking it under its sociological and religious aspect,

it will be found to be an indirect indictment of the celibacy of the

priesthood; that celibacy, contrary to Nature’s fundamental law, which

assuredly has largely influenced the destinies of the Roman Catholic

Church. To that celibacy, and to all the evils that have sprang from

it, may be ascribed much of the irreligion current in France to-day.

The periodical reports on criminality issued by the French Ministers of

Justice since the foundation of the Republic in 1871, supply materials

for a most formidable indictment of that vow of perpetual chastity which

Rome exacts from her clergy. Nowadays it is undoubtedly too late for

Rome to go back upon that vow and thereby transform the whole of her

sacerdotal organisation; but, perhaps, had she done so in past times,

before the spirit of inquiry and free examination came into being, she

might have assured herself many more centuries of supremacy than have

fallen to her lot. But she has ever sought to dissociate the law of the

Divinity from the law of Nature, as though indeed the latter were but

the invention of the Fiend.

Abbé Mouret, M. Zola’s hero, finds himself placed between the law of

the Divinity and the law of Nature: and the struggle waged within him by

those two forces is a terrible one. That which training has implanted

in his mind proves the stronger, and, so far as the canons of the Church

can warrant it, he saves his soul. But the problem is not quite frankly

put by M. Zola; for if Abbé Mouret transgresses he does so unwittingly,

at a time when he is unconscious of his priesthood and has no memory of

any vow. When the truth flashes upon him he is horrified with himself,

and forthwith returns to the Church. A further struggle between the

contending forces then certainly ensues, and ends in the final victory

of the Church. But it must at least be said that in the lapses which

occur in real life among the Roman priesthood, the circumstances are

altogether different from those which M. Zola has selected for his

story.

The truth is that in ‘La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret,’ betwixt lifelike

glimpses of French rural life, the author transports us to a realm of

poesy and imagination. This is, indeed, so true that he has introduced

into his work all the ideas on which he had based an early unfinished

poem called ‘Genesis.’ He carries us to an enchanted garden,

the Paradou--a name which one need hardly say is Provencal for

Paradise*--and there Serge Mouret, on recovering from brain fever,

becomes, as it were, a new Adam by the side of a new Eve, the fair and

winsome Albine. All this part of the book, then, is poetry in prose.

The author has remembered the ties which link Rousseau to the realistic

school of fiction, and, as in the pages of Jean-Jacques, trees, springs,

mountains, rocks, and flowers become animated beings and claim their

place in the world’s mechanism. One may indeed go back far beyond

Rousseau, even to Lucretius himself; for more than once we are

irresistibly reminded of Lucretian scenes, above which through M. Zola’s

pages there seems to hover the pronouncement of Sophocles:

No ordinance of man shall override

The settled laws of Nature and of God;

Not written these in pages of a book,

Nor were they framed to-day, nor yesterday;

We know not whence they are; but this we know,

That they from all eternity have been,

And shall to all eternity endure.

* There is a village called Paradou in Provence, between

Les Baux and Arles.

And if we pass to the young pair whose duo of love is sung amidst the

varied voices of creation, we are irresistibly reminded of the Paul

and Virginia of St. Pierre, and the Daphnis and Chloe of Longus. Beside

them, in their marvellous garden, lingers a memory too of Manon and

Des Grieux, with a suggestion of Lauzun and a glimpse of the art of

Fragonard. All combine, all contribute--from the great classics to the

eighteenth century _petits maitres_--to build up a story of love’s rise

in the human breast in answer to Nature’s promptings.

M. Zola wrote ‘La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret’ one summer under the trees of

his garden, mindful the while of gardens that he had known in childhood:

the flowery expanse which had stretched before his grandmother’s home

at Pont-au-Beraud and the wild estate of Galice, between Roquefavour and

Aix-en-Provence, through which he had roamed as a lad with friends then

boys like himself: Professor Baille and Cezanne, the painter. And into

his description of the wondrous Paradou he has put all his remembrance

of the gardens and woods of Provence, where many a plant and flower

thrive with a luxuriance unknown to England. True, in order to refresh

his memory and avoid mistakes, he consulted various horticultural

manuals whilst he was writing; of which circumstance captious critics

have readily laid hold, to proclaim that the description of the Paradou

is a mere florist’s catalogue.

But it is nothing of the kind. The florist who might dare to offer

such a catalogue to the public would be speedily assailed by all the

horticultural journalists of England and all the customers of villadom.

For M. Zola avails himself of a poet’s license to crowd marvel upon

marvel, to exaggerate nature’s forces, to transform the tiniest blooms

into giant examples of efflorescence, and to mingle even the seasons

one with the other. But all this was premeditated; there was a picture

before his mind’s eye, and that picture he sought to trace with his pen,

regardless of all possible objections. It is the poet’s privilege to

do this and even to be admired for it. It would be easy for some learned

botanist, some expert zoologist, to demolish Milton from the standpoint

of their respective sciences, but it would be absurd to do so. We ask of

the poet the flowers of his imagination, and the further he carries us

from the sordid realities, the limited possibilities of life, the more

are we grateful to him.

And M. Zola’s Paradou is a flight of fancy, even as its mistress, the

fair, loving, guileless Albine, whose smiles and whose tears alike go

to our hearts, is the daughter of imagination. She is a flower--the very

flower of life’s youth--in the midst of all the blossoms of her

garden. She unfolds to life and to love even as they unfold; she loves

rapturously even as they do under the sun and the azure; and she dies

with them when the sun’s caress is gone and the chill of winter has

fallen. At the thought of her, one instinctively remembers Malherbe’s

‘Ode A Du Perrier:’

She to this earth belonged, where beauty fast

To direst fate is borne:

A rose, she lasted, as the roses last,

Only for one brief morn.

French painters have made subjects of many episodes in M. Zola’s

works, but none has been more popular with them than Albine’s pathetic,

perfumed death amidst the flowers. I know several paintings of great

merit which that touching incident has inspired.

Albine, if more or less unreal, a phantasm, the spirit as it were of

Nature incarnate in womanhood, is none the less the most delightful of

M. Zola’s heroines. She smiles at us like the vision of perfect beauty

and perfect love which rises before us when our hearts are yet young and

full of illusions. She is the ideal, the very quintessence of woman.

In Serge Mouret, her lover, we find a man who, in more than one respect,

recalls M. Zola’s later hero, the Abbé Froment of ‘Lourdes’ and ‘Rome.’

He has the same loving, yearning nature; he is born--absolutely like

Abbé Froment--of an unbelieving father and a mother of mystical mind.

But unlike Froment he cannot shake off the shackles of his priesthood.

Reborn to life after his dangerous illness, he relapses into the

religion of death, the religion which regards life as impurity, which

denies Nature’s laws, and so often wrecks human existence, as if

indeed that had been the Divine purpose in setting man upon earth. His

struggles suggest various passages in ‘Lourdes’ and ‘Rome.’ In fact, in

writing those works, M. Zola must have had his earlier creation in

mind. There are passages in ‘La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret’ culled from the

writings of the Spanish Jesuit Fathers and the ‘Imitation’ of Thomas

à Kempis that recur almost word for word in the Trilogy of the Three

Cities. Some might regard this as evidence of the limitation of M.

Zola’s powers, but I think differently. I consider that he has in both

instances designedly taken the same type of priest in order to show how

he may live under varied circumstances; for in the earlier instance

he has led him to one goal, and in the later one to another. And the

passages of prayer, entreaty, and spiritual conflict simply recur

because they are germane, even necessary, to the subject in both cases.

Of the minor characters that figure in ‘La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret’ the

chief thing to be said is that they are lifelike. If Serge is almost

wholly spiritual, if Albine is the daughter of poesy, they, the others,

are of the earth earthy. As a result of their appearance on the scene,

there are some powerful contrasting passages in the book. Archangias,

the coarse and brutal Christian Brother who serves as a foil to Abbé

Mouret; La Teuse, the priest’s garrulous old housekeeper; Desirée, his

‘innocent’ sister, a grown woman with the mind of a child and an almost

crazy affection for every kind of bird and beast, are all admirably

portrayed. Old Bambousse, though one sees but little of him, stands

out as a genuine type of the hard-headed French peasant, who invariably

places pecuniary considerations before all others. And Fortune and

Rosalie, Vincent and Catherine, and their companions, are equally true

to nature. It need hardly be said that there is many a village in France

similar to Les Artaud. That hamlet’s shameless, purely animal life has

in no wise been over-pictured by M. Zola. Those who might doubt him need

not go as far as Provence to find such communities. Many Norman hamlets

are every whit as bad, and, in Normandy, conditions are aggravated by a

marked predilection for the bottle, which, as French social-scientists

have been pointing out for some years now, is fast hastening the

degenerescence of the peasantry, both morally and physically.

With reference to the English version of ‘La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret’

herewith presented, I may just say that I have subjected it to

considerable revision and have retranslated all the more important

passages myself.

MERTON, SURREY. E. A. V.

ABBÉ MOURET’S TRANSGRESSION

BOOK I

I

As La Teuse entered the church she rested her broom and feather-brush

against the altar. She was late, as she had that day began her

half-yearly wash. Limping more than ever in her haste and hustling the

benches, she went down the church to ring the _Angelus_. The bare, worn

bell-rope dangled from the ceiling near the confessional, and ended in a

big knot greasy from handling. Again and again, with regular jumps, she

hung herself upon it; and then let her whole bulky figure go with it,

whirling in her petticoats, her cap awry, and her blood rushing to her

broad face.

Having set her cap straight with a little pat, she came back breathless

to give a hasty sweep before the altar. Every day the dust persistently

settled between the disjoined boards of the platform. Her broom rummaged

among the corners with an angry rumble. Then she lifted the altar cover

and was sorely vexed to find that the large upper cloth, already darned

in a score of places, was again worn through in the very middle, so

as to show the under cloth, which in its turn was so worn and so

transparent that one could see the consecrated stone, embedded in the

painted wood of the altar. La Teuse dusted the linen, yellow from long

usage, and plied her feather-brush along the shelf against which she set

the liturgical altar-cards. Then, climbing upon a chair, she removed the

yellow cotton covers from the crucifix and two of the candlesticks. The

brass of the latter was tarnished.

‘Dear me!’ she muttered, ‘they really want a clean! I must give them a

polish up!’

Then hopping on one leg, swaying and stumping heavily enough to drive in

the flagstones, she hastened to the sacristy for the Missal, which

she placed unopened on the lectern on the Epistle side, with its edges

turned towards the middle of the altar. And afterwards she lighted the

two candles. As she went off with her broom, she gave a glance round

her to make sure that the abode of the Divinity had been put in proper

order. All was still, save that the bell-rope near the confessional

still swung between roof and floor with a sinuous sweep.

Abbé Mouret had just come down to the sacristy, a small and chilly

apartment, which a passage separated from his dining-room.

‘Good morning, Monsieur le Curé,’ said La Teuse, laying her broom aside.

‘Oh! you have been lazy this morning! Do you know it’s a quarter past

six?’ And without allowing the smiling young priest sufficient time to

reply, she added ‘I’ve a scolding to give you. There’s another hole in

the cloth again. There’s no sense in it. We have only one other, and

I’ve been ruining my eyes over it these three days in trying to mend it.

You will leave our poor Lord quite bare, if you go on like this.’

Abbé Mouret was still smiling. ‘Jesus does not need so much linen, my

good Teuse,’ he cheerfully replied. ‘He is always warm, always royally

received by those who love Him well.’

Then stepping towards a small tap, he asked: ‘Is my sister up yet? I

have not seen her.’

‘Oh, Mademoiselle Desirée has been down a long time,’ answered the

servant, who was kneeling before an old kitchen sideboard in which the

sacred vestments were kept. ‘She is already with her fowls and rabbits.

She was expecting some chicks to be hatched yesterday, and it didn’t

come off. So you can guess her excitement.’ Then the worthy woman broke

off to inquire: ‘The gold chasuble, eh?’

The priest, who had washed his hands and stood reverently murmuring a

prayer, nodded affirmatively. The parish possessed only three chasubles:

a violet one, a black one, and one in cloth-of-gold. The last had to be

used on the days when white, red, or green was prescribed by the ritual,

and it was therefore an all important garment. La Teuse lifted it

reverently from the shelf covered with blue paper, on which she laid

it after each service; and having placed it on the sideboard, she

cautiously removed the fine cloths which protected its embroidery. A

golden lamb slumbered on a golden cross, surrounded by broad rays of

gold. The gold tissue, frayed at the folds, broke out in little slender

tufts; the embossed ornaments were getting tarnished and worn. There was

perpetual anxiety, fluttering concern, at seeing it thus go off spangle

by spangle. The priest had to wear it almost every day. And how on earth

could it be replaced--how would they be able to buy the three chasubles

whose place it took, when the last gold threads should be worn out?

Upon the chasuble La Teuse next laid out the stole, the maniple, the

girdle, alb and amice. But her tongue still wagged while she crossed

the stole with the maniple, and wreathed the girdle so as to trace the

venerated initial of Mary’s holy name.

‘That girdle is not up to much now,’ she muttered; ‘you will have to

make up your mind to get another, your reverence. It wouldn’t be very

hard; I could plait you one myself if I only had some hemp.’

Abbé Mouret made no answer. He was dressing the chalice at a small

table. A large old silver-gilt chalice it was with a bronze base, which

he had just taken from the bottom of a deal cupboard, in which the

sacred vessels and linen, the Holy Oils, the Missals, candlesticks, and

crosses were kept. Across the cup he laid a clean purificator, and on

this set the silver-gilt paten, with the host in it, which he covered

with a small lawn pall. As he was hiding the chalice by gathering

together the folds in the veil of cloth of gold matching the chasuble,

La Teuse exclaimed:

‘Stop, there’s no corporal in the burse. Last night I took all the

dirty purificators, palls, and corporals to wash them--separately, of

course--not with the house-wash. By-the-bye, your reverence, I didn’t

tell you: I have just started the house-wash. A fine fat one it will be!

Better than the last.’

Then while the priest slipped a corporal into the burse and laid the

latter on the veil, she went on quickly:

‘By-the-bye, I forgot! that gadabout Vincent hasn’t come. Do you wish me

to serve your mass, your reverence?’

The young priest eyed her sternly.

‘Well, it isn’t a sin,’ she continued, with her genial smile. ‘I did

serve a mass once, in Monsieur Caffin’s time. I serve it better, too,

than ragamuffins who laugh like heathens at seeing a fly buzzing about

the church. True I may wear a cap, I may be sixty years old, and as

round as a tub, but I have more respect for our Lord than those imps of

boys whom I caught only the other day playing at leap-frog behind the

altar.’

The priest was still looking at her and shaking his head.

‘What a hole this village is!’ she grumbled. ‘Not a hundred and fifty

people in it! There are days, like to-day, when you wouldn’t find a

living soul in Les Artaud. Even the babies in swaddling clothes are

gone to the vineyards! And goodness knows what they do among such

vines--vines that grow under the pebbles and look as dry as thistles! A

perfect wilderness, three miles from any highway! Unless an angel comes

down to serve your mass, your reverence, you’ve only got me to help you,

on my honour! or one of Mademoiselle Desirée’s rabbits, no offence to

your reverence!’

Just at that moment, however, Vincent, the Brichets’ younger son, gently

opened the door of the sacristy. His shock of red hair and his little,

glistening, grey eyes exasperated La Teuse.

‘Oh! the wretch!’ she cried. ‘I’ll bet he’s just been up to some

mischief! Come on, you scamp, since his reverence is afraid I might

dirty our Lord!’

On seeing the lad, Abbé Mouret had taken up the amice. He kissed the

cross embroidered in the centre of it, and for a second laid the cloth

upon his head; then lowering it over the collar-band of his cassock, he

crossed it and fastened the tapes, the right one over the left. He next

donned the alb, the symbol of purity, beginning with the right sleeve.

Vincent stooped and turned around him, adjusting the alb, in order

that it should fall evenly all round him to a couple of inches from

the ground. Then he presented the girdle to the priest, who fastened

it tightly round his loins, as a reminder of the bonds wherewith the

Saviour was bound in His Passion.

La Teuse remained standing there, feeling jealous and hurt and

struggling to keep silence; but so great was the itching of her tongue,

that she soon broke out once more: ‘Brother Archangias has been here.

He won’t have a single child at school to-day. He went off again like a

whirlwind to pull the brats’ ears in the vineyards. You had better see

him. I believe he has got something to say to you.’

Abbé Mouret silenced her with a wave of the hand. Then he repeated the

usual prayers while he took the maniple--which he kissed before slipping

it over his left forearm, as a symbol of the practice of good works--and

while crossing on his breast the stole, the symbol of his dignity

and power. La Teuse had to help Vincent in the work of adjusting the

chasuble, which she fastened together with slender tapes, so that it

might not slip off behind.

‘Holy Virgin! I had forgotten the cruets!’ she stammered, rushing to the

cupboard. ‘Come, look sharp, lad!’

Thereupon Vincent filled the cruets, phials of coarse glass, while

she hastened to take a clean finger-cloth from a drawer. Abbé Mouret,

holding the chalice by its stem with his left hand, the fingers of his

right resting meanwhile on the burse, then bowed profoundly, but without

removing his biretta, to a black wooden crucifix, which hung over the

side-board. The lad bowed too, and, bearing the cruets covered with the

finger-cloth, led the way out of the sacristy, followed by the priest,

who walked on with downcast eyes, absorbed in deep and prayerful

meditation.

II

The empty church was quite white that May morning. The bell-rope near

the confessional hung motionless once more. The little bracket light,

with its stained glass shade, burned like a crimson splotch against the

wall on the right of the tabernacle. Vincent, having set the cruets on

the credence, came back and knelt just below the altar step on the left,

while the priest, after rendering homage to the Holy Sacrament by a

genuflexion, went up to the altar and there spread out the corporal,

on the centre of which he placed the chalice. Then, having opened the

Missal, he came down again. Another bend of the knee followed, and,

after crossing himself and uttering aloud the formula, ‘In the name of

the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,’ he raised his joined hands to

his breast, and entered on the great divine drama, with his countenance

blanched by faith and love.

‘_Introibo ad altare Dei_.’

‘_Ad Deum qui loetificat juventutem meam_,’ gabbled Vincent, who,

squatting on his heels, mumbled the responses of the antiphon and the

psalm, while watching La Teuse as she roved about the church.

The old servant was gazing at one of the candles with a troubled look.

Her anxiety seemed to increase while the priest, bowing down with hands

joined again, recited the _Confiteor_. She stood still, in her turn

struck her breast, her head bowed, but still keeping a watchful eye on

the taper. For another minute the priest’s grave voice and the server’s

stammers alternated:

‘_Dominus vobiscum_.’

‘_Et cum spiritu tuo_.’

Then the priest, spreading out his hands and afterwards again joining

them, said with devout compunction: ‘_Oremus_’ (Let us pray).

La Teuse could now stand it no longer, but stepped behind the altar,

reached the guttering candle, and trimmed it with the points of her

scissors. Two large blobs of wax had already been wasted. When she came

back again putting the benches straight on her way, and making sure that

there was holy-water in the fonts, the priest, whose hands were resting

on the edge of the altar-cloth, was praying in subdued tones. And at

last he kissed the altar.

Behind him, the little church still looked wan in the pale light of

early morn. The sun, as yet, was only level with the tiled roof. The

_Kyrie Eleisons_ rang quiveringly through that sort of whitewashed

stable with flat ceiling and bedaubed beams. On either side three lofty

windows of plain glass, most of them cracked or smashed, let in a raw

light of chalky crudeness.

The free air poured in as it listed, emphasising the naked poverty of

the God of that forlorn village. At the far end of the church, above

the big door which was never opened and the threshold of which was

green with weeds, a boarded gallery--reached by a common miller’s

ladder--stretched from wall to wall. Dire were its creakings on festival

days beneath the weight of wooden shoes. Near the ladder stood the

confessional, with warped panels, painted a lemon yellow. Facing it,

beside the little door, stood the font--a former holy-water stoup

resting on a stonework pedestal. To the right and to the left, halfway

down the church, two narrow altars stood against the wall, surrounded

by wooden balustrades. On the left-hand one, dedicated to the Blessed

Virgin, was a large gilded plaster statue of the Mother of God, wearing

a regal gold crown upon her chestnut hair; while on her left arm sat

the Divine Child, nude and smiling, whose little hand raised the

star-spangled orb of the universe. The Virgin’s feet were poised on

clouds, and beneath them peeped the heads of winged cherubs. Then the

right-hand altar, used for the masses for the dead, was surmounted by a

crucifix of painted papier-mache--a pendant, as it were, to the Virgin’s

effigy. The figure of Christ, as large as a child of ten years old,

showed Him in all the horror of His death-throes, with head thrown back,

ribs projecting, abdomen hollowed in, and limbs distorted and splashed

with blood. There was a pulpit, too--a square box reached by a five-step

block--near a clock with running weights, in a walnut case, whose thuds

shook the whole church like the beatings of some huge heart concealed,

it might be, under the stone flags. All along the nave the fourteen

Stations of the Cross, fourteen coarsely coloured prints in narrow black

frames, bespeckled the staring whiteness of the walls with the yellow,

blue, and scarlet of scenes from the Passion.

‘_Deo Gratias_,’ stuttered out Vincent at the end of the Epistle.

The mystery of love, the immolation of the Holy Victim, was about

to begin. The server took the Missal and bore it to the left, or

Gospel-side, of the altar, taking care not to touch the pages of the

book. Each time he passed before the tabernacle he made a genuflexion

slantwise, which threw him all askew. Returning to the right-hand side

once more, he stood upright with crossed arms during the reading of the

Gospel. The priest, after making the sign of the cross upon the Missal,

next crossed himself: first upon his forehead--to declare that he

would never blush for the divine word; then on his mouth--to show his

unchanging readiness to confess his faith; and finally on his heart--to

mark that it belonged to God alone.

‘_Dominus vobiscum_,’ said he, turning round and facing the cold white

church.

‘_Et cum spiritu tuo_,’ answered Vincent, who once more was on his

knees.

The Offertory having been recited, the priest uncovered the chalice. For

a moment he held before his breast the paten containing the host, which

he offered up to God, for himself, for those present, and for all the

faithful, living and dead. Then, slipping it on to the edge of the

corporal without touching it with his fingers, he took up the chalice

and carefully wiped it with the purificator. Vincent had in the

meanwhile fetched the cruets from the credence table, and now presented

them in turn, first the wine and then the water. The priest then offered

up on behalf of the whole world the half-filled chalice, which he next

replaced upon the corporal and covered with the pall. Then once again

he prayed, and returned to the side of the altar where the server let a

little water dribble over his thumbs and forefingers to purify him

from the slightest sinful stain. When he had dried his hands on

the finger-cloth, La Teuse--who stood there waiting--emptied the

cruet-salver into a zinc pail at the corner of the altar.

‘_Orate, fratres_,’ resumed the priest aloud as he faced the empty

benches, extending and reclasping his hands in a gesture of appeal to

all men of good-will. And turning again towards the altar, he continued

his prayer in a lower tone, while Vincent began to mutter a long Latin

sentence in which he eventually got lost. Now it was that the yellow

sunbeams began to dart through the windows; called, as it were, by the

priest, the sun itself had come to mass, throwing golden sheets of light

upon the left-hand wall, the confessional, the Virgin’s altar, and the

big clock.

A gentle creak came from the confessional; the Mother of God, in a halo,

in the dazzlement of her golden crown and mantle smiled tenderly with

tinted lips upon the infant Jesus; and the heated clock throbbed out

the time with quickening strokes. It seemed as if the sun peopled the

benches with the dusty motes that danced in his beams, as if the

little church, that whitened stable, were filled with a glowing throng.

Without, were heard the sounds that told of the happy waking of the

countryside, the blades of grass sighed out content, the damp leaves

dried themselves in the warmth, the birds pruned their feathers and took

a first flit round. And indeed the countryside itself seemed to enter

with the sun; for beside one of the windows a large rowan tree shot

up, thrusting some of its branches through the shattered panes and

stretching out leafy buds as if to take a peep within; while through

the fissures of the great door the weeds on the threshold threatened to

encroach upon the nave. Amid all this quickening life, the big Christ,

still in shadow, alone displayed signs of death, the sufferings of

ochre-daubed and lake-bespattered flesh. A sparrow raised himself up for

a moment at the edge of a hole, took a glance, then flew away; but

only to reappear almost immediately when with noiseless wing he

dropped between the benches before the Virgin’s altar. A second sparrow

followed; and soon from all the boughs of the rowan tree came others

that calmly hopped about the flags.

‘_Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth_,’ said the priest in

a low tone, whilst slightly stooping.

Vincent rang the little bell thrice; and the sparrows, scared by the

sudden tinkling, flew off with such a mighty buzz of wings that La

Teuse, who had just gone back into the sacristy, came out again,

grumbling; ‘The little rascals! they will mess everything. I’ll bet that

Mademoiselle Desirée has been here again to scatter bread-crumbs for

them.’

The dread moment was at hand. The body and the blood of a God were about

to descend upon the altar. The priest kissed the altar-cloth, clasped

his hands, and multiplied signs of the cross over host and chalice.

The prayers of the canon of the mass now fell from his lips in a very

ecstasy of humility and gratitude. His attitude, his gestures, the

inflections of his voice, all expressed his consciousness of his

littleness, his emotion at being selected for so great a task. Vincent

came and knelt beside him, lightly lifted the chasuble with his left

hand, the bell ready in his right; and the priest, his elbows resting on

the edge of the altar, holding the host with the thumbs and forefingers

of both hands, pronounced over it the words of consecration: _Hoc est

enim corpus meum_. Then having bowed the knee before it, he raised it

slowly as high as his hands could reach, following it upwards with

his eyes, while the kneeling server rang the bell thrice. Then he

consecrated the wine--_Hic est enim calix_--leaning once more upon his

elbows, bowing, raising the cup aloft, his right hand round the stem,

his left holding its base, and his eyes following it aloft. Again the

server rang the bell three times. The great mystery of the Redemption

had once more been repeated, once more had the adorable Blood flowed

forth.

‘Just you wait a bit,’ growled La Teuse, as she tried to scare away the

sparrows with outstretched fist.

But the sparrows were now fearless. They had come back even while the

bell was ringing, and, unabashed, were fluttering about the benches. The

repeated tinklings even roused them into liveliness, and they answered

back with little chirps which crossed amid the Latin words of prayer,

like the rippling laughs of free urchins. The sun warmed their plumage,

the sweet poverty of the church captivated them. They felt at home

there, as in some barn whose shutters had been left open, and screeched,

fought, and squabbled over the crumbs they found upon the floor. One

flew to perch himself on the smiling Virgin’s golden veil; another,

whose daring put the old servant in a towering rage, made a hasty

reconnaissance of La Teuse’s skirts. And at the altar, the priest, with

every faculty absorbed, his eyes fixed upon the sacred host, his thumbs

and forefingers joined, did not even hear this invasion of the warm

May morning, this rising flood of sunlight, greenery and birds, which

overflowed even to the foot of the Calvary where doomed nature was

wrestling in the death-throes.

‘_Per omnia soecula soeculorum_,’ he said.

‘Amen,’ answered Vincent.

The _Pater_ ended, the priest, holding the host over the chalice,

broke it in the centre. Detaching a particle from one of the halves, he

dropped it into the precious blood, to symbolise the intimate union into

which he was about to enter with God. He said the _Agnus Dei_ aloud,

softly recited the three prescribed prayers, and made his act of

unworthiness, and then with his elbows resting on the altar, and with

the paten beneath his chin, he partook of both portions of the host

at once. After a fervent meditation, with his hands clasped before

his face, he took the paten and gathered from the corporal the sacred

particles of the host that had fallen, and dropped them into the

chalice. One particle which had adhered to his thumb he removed with his

forefinger. And, crossing himself, chalice in hand, with the paten once

again below his chin, he drank all the precious blood in three draughts,

never taking his lips from the cup’s rim, but imbibing the divine

Sacrifice to the last drop.

Vincent had risen to fetch the cruets from the credence table. But

suddenly the door of the passage leading to the parsonage flew open

and swung back against the wall, to admit a handsome child-like girl of

twenty-two, who carried something hidden in her apron.

‘Thirteen of them,’ she called out. ‘All the eggs were good.’ And she

opened out her apron and revealed a brood of little shivering chicks,

with sprouting down and beady black eyes. ‘Do just look,’ said she;

‘aren’t they sweet little pets, the darlings! Oh, look at the little

white one climbing on the others’ backs! and the spotted one already

flapping his tiny wings! The eggs were a splendid lot; not one of them

unfertile.’

La Teuse, who was helping to serve the mass in spite of all

prohibitions, and was at that very moment handing the cruets to Vincent

for the ablutions, thereupon turned round and loudly exclaimed: ‘Do be

quiet, Mademoiselle Desirée! Don’t you see we haven’t finished yet?’

Through the open doorway now came the strong smell of a farmyard,

blowing like some generative ferment into the church amidst the warm

sunlight that was creeping over the altar. Desirée stood there for a

moment delighted with the little ones she carried, watching Vincent

pour, and her brother drink, the purifying wine, in order that nought of

the sacred elements should be left within his mouth. And she stood there

still when he came back to the side of the altar, holding the chalice in

both hands, so that Vincent might pour over his forefingers and thumbs

the wine and water of ablution, which he likewise drank. But when the

mother hen ran up clucking with alarm to seek her little ones, and

threatened to force her way into the church, Desirée went off,

talking maternally to her chicks, while the priest, after pressing the

purificator to his lips, wiped first the rim and next the interior of

the chalice.

Then came the end, the act of thanksgiving to God. For the last time the

server removed the Missal, and brought it back to the right-hand side.

The priest replaced the purificator, paten, and pall upon the chalice;

once more pinched the two large folds of the veil together, and laid

upon it the burse containing the corporal. His whole being was now one

act of ardent thanksgiving. He besought from Heaven the forgiveness of

his sins, the grace of a holy life, and the reward of everlasting

life. He remained as if overwhelmed by this miracle of love, the

ever-recurring immolation, which sustained him day by day with the blood

and flesh of his Savior.

Having read the final prayers, he turned and said: ‘_Ite, missa est_.’

‘_Deo gratias_,’ answered Vincent.

And having turned back to kiss the altar, the priest faced round anew,

his left hand just below his breast, his right outstretched whilst

blessing the church, which the gladsome sunbeams and noisy sparrows

filled.

‘_Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus, Pater et Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus_.’

‘_Amen_,’ said the server, as he crossed himself.

The sun had risen higher, and the sparrows were growing bolder. While

the priest read from the left-hand altar-card the passage of the Gospel

of St. John, announcing the eternity of the Word, the sunrays set the

altar ablaze, whitened the panels of imitation marble, and dimmed the

flame of the two candles, whose short wicks were now merely two dull

spots. The victorious orb enveloped with his glory the crucifix, the

candlesticks, the chasuble, the veil of the chalice--all the gold work

that paled beneath his beams. And when at last the priest, after taking

the chalice in his hands and making a genuflexion, covered his head and

turned from the altar to follow the server, laden with the cruets and

finger-cloth, to the sacristy, the planet remained sole master of the

church. Its rays in turn now rested on the altar-cloth, irradiating the

tabernacle-door with splendour, and celebrating the fertile powers

of May. Warmth rose from the stone flags. The daubed walls, the tall

Virgin, the huge Christ, too, all seemed to quiver as with shooting sap,

as if death had been conquered by the earth’s eternal youth.

III

Le Teuse hastily put out the candles, but lingered to make one last

attempt to drive away the sparrows, and so when she returned to the

sacristy with the Missal she no longer found Abbé Mouret there. Having

washed his hands and put away the sacred vessels and vestments, he was

now standing in the dining room, breakfasting off a cup of milk.

‘You really ought to prevent your sister from scattering bread in the

church,’ said La Teuse on coming in. ‘It was last winter she hit upon

that pretty prank. She said the sparrows were cold, and that God might

well give them some food. You see, she’ll end by making us sleep with

all her fowls and rabbits.’

‘We should be all the warmer,’ pleasantly replied the young priest. ‘You

are always grumbling, La Teuse. Do let our poor Desirée pet her animals.

She has no other pleasure, poor innocent!’

The servant took her stand in the centre of the room.

‘I do believe you yourself wouldn’t mind a bit if the magpies actually

built their nests in the church. You never can see anything, everything

seems just what it ought to be to you. Your sister is precious lucky

in having had you to take charge of her when you left the seminary. No

father, no mother. I should like to know who would let her mess about as

she does in a farmyard.’

Then softening, she added in a gentler tone: ‘To be sure, it would be

a pity to cross her. She hasn’t a touch of malice in her. She’s like

a child of ten, although she’s one of the finest grown girls in the

neighbourhood. And I have to put her to bed, as you know, every night,

and send her to sleep with stories, just like a little child.’

Abbé Mouret had remained standing, finishing the cup of milk he

held between his fingers, which were slightly reddened by the chill

atmosphere of the dining-room--a large room with painted grey walls, a

floor of square tiles, and having no furniture beyond a table and a few

chairs. La Teuse picked up a napkin which she had laid at a corner of

the table in readiness for breakfast.

‘It isn’t much linen you dirty,’ she muttered. ‘One would think you

could never sit down, that you are always just about to start off. Ah!

if you had known Monsieur Caffin, the poor dead priest whose place

you have taken! What a man he was for comfort! Why, he couldn’t have

digested his food, if he had eaten standing. A Norman he was, from

Canteleu, like myself. I don’t thank him, I tell you, for having brought

me to such a wild-beast country as this. When first we came, O, Lord!

how bored we were! But the poor priest had had some uncomfortable tales

going about him at home.... Why, sir, didn’t you sweeten your milk,

then? Aren’t those the two lumps of sugar?’

The priest put down his cup.

‘Yes, I must have forgotten, I believe,’ he said.

La Teuse stared at him and shrugged her shoulders. She folded up inside

the napkin a slice of stale home-made bread which had also been left

untouched on the table. Then just as the priest was about to go out,

she ran after him and knelt down at his feet, exclaiming: ‘Stop, your

shoe-laces are not even fastened. I cannot imagine how your feet can

stand those peasant shoes, you’re such a little, tender man and look as

if you had been preciously spoilt! Ah, the bishop must have known a deal

about you, to go and give you the poorest living in the department.’

‘But it was I who chose Les Artaud,’ said the priest, breaking into

another smile. ‘You are very bad-tempered this morning, La Teuse. Are we

not happy here? We have got all we want, and our life is as peaceful as

if in paradise.’

She then restrained herself and laughed in her turn, saying: ‘You are a

holy man, Monsieur le Curé. But come and see what a splendid wash I have

got. That will be better than squabbling with one another.’

The priest was obliged to follow, for she might prevent him going out

at all if he did not compliment her on her washing. As he left the

dining-room he stumbled over a heap of rubbish in the passage.

‘What is this?’ he asked.

Oh, nothing,’ said La Teuse in her grimest tone. ‘It’s only the

parsonage coming down. However, you are quite content, you’ve got all

you want. Good heavens! there are holes and to spare. Just look at that

ceiling, now. Isn’t it cracked all over? If we don’t get buried alive

one of these days, we shall owe a precious big taper to our guardian

angel. However, if it suits you--It’s like the church. Those broken

panes ought to have been replaced these two years. In winter our Lord

gets frozen with the cold. Besides, it would keep out those rascally

sparrows. I shall paste paper over the holes. You see if I don’t.’

‘A capital idea,’ murmured the priest, ‘they might very well be pasted

over. As to the walls, they are stouter than we think. In my room, the

floor has only given way slightly in front of the window. The house will

see us all buried.’

On reaching the little open shed near the kitchen, in order to please

La Teuse he went into ecstasies over the washing; he even had to dip

his fingers into it and feel it. This so pleased the old woman that

her attentions became quite motherly. She no longer scolded, but ran

to fetch a clothes-brush, saying: ‘You surely are not going out with

yesterday’s mud on your cassock! If you had left it out on the banister,

it would be clean now--it’s still a good one. But do lift it up well

when you cross any field. The thistles tear everything.’

While speaking she kept turning him round like a child, shaking him from

head to foot with her energetic brushing.

‘There, there, that will do,’ he said, escaping from her at last. ‘Take

care of Desirée, won’t you? I will tell her I am going out.’

But at this minute a fresh clear voice called to him: ‘Serge! Serge!’

Desirée came flying up, her cheeks ruddy with glee, her head bare,

her black locks twisted tightly upon her neck, and her hands and arms

smothered up to the elbows with manure. She had been cleaning out her

poultry house. When she caught sight of her brother just about to go out

with his breviary under his arm, she laughed aloud, and kissed him on

his mouth, with her arms thrown back behind her to avoid soiling him.

‘No, no,’ she hurriedly exclaimed, ‘I should dirty you. Oh! I am having

such fun! You must see the animals when you come back.’

Thereupon she fled away again. Abbé Mouret then said that he would be

back about eleven for luncheon, and as he started, La Teuse, who had

followed him to the doorstep, shouted after him her last injunctions.

‘Don’t forget to see Brother Archangias. And look in also at the

Brichets’; the wife came again yesterday about that wedding. Just

listen, Monsieur le Curé! I met their Rosalie. She’d ask nothing better

than to marry big Fortune. Have a talk with old Bambousse; perhaps he

will listen to you now. And don’t come back at twelve o’clock, like the

other day. Come, say you’ll be back at eleven, won’t you?’

But the priest turned round no more. So she went in again, growling

between her teeth:

‘When does he ever listen to me? Barely twenty-six years old and does

just as he likes. To be sure, he’s an old man of sixty for holiness; but

then he has never known life; he knows nothing, it’s no trouble to him

to be as good as a cherub!’

IV

When Abbé Mouret had got beyond all hearing of La Teuse he stopped,

thankful to be alone at last. The church was built on a hillock, which

sloped down gently to the village. With its large gaping windows and

bright red tiles, it stretched out like a deserted sheep-cote. The

priest turned round and glanced at the parsonage, a greyish building

springing from the very side of the church; but as if fearful that

he might again be overtaken by the interminable chatter that had been

buzzing in his ears ever since morning, he turned up to the right again,

and only felt safe when he at last stood before the great doorway, where

he could not be seen from the parsonage. The front of the church, quite

bare and worn by the sunshine and rain of years, was crowned by a narrow

open stone belfry, in which a small bell showed its black silhouette,

whilst its rope disappeared through the tiles. Six broken steps, on

one side half buried in the earth, led up to the lofty arched door, now

cracked, smothered with dust and rust and cobwebs, and so frailly hung

upon its outwrenched hinges that it seemed as if the first slight puff

would secure free entrance to the winds of heaven. Abbé Mouret, who had

an affection for this dilapidated door, leaned against one of its leaves

as he stood upon the steps. Thence he could survey the whole country

round at a glance. And shading his eyes with his hands he scanned the

horizon.

In the month of May exuberant vegetation burst forth from that stony

soil. Gigantic lavenders, juniper bushes, patches of rank herbage

swarmed over the church threshold, and scattered clumps of dark greenery

even to the very tiles. It seemed as if the first throb of shooting sap

in the tough matted underwood might well topple the church over. At that

early hour, amid all the travail of nature’s growth, there was a hum of

vivifying warmth, and the very rocks quivered as with a long and silent

effort. But the Abbé failed to comprehend the ardour of nature’s painful

labour; he simply thought that the steps were tottering, and thereupon

leant against the other side of the door.

The countryside stretched away for a distance of six miles, bounded by

a wall of tawny hills speckled with black pine-woods. It was a fearful

landscape of arid wastes and rocky spurs rending the soil. The few

patches of arable ground were like scattered pools of blood, red fields

with rows of lean almond trees, grey-topped olive trees and long lines

of vines, streaking the soil with their brown stems. It was as if some

huge conflagration had swept by there, scattering the ashes of forests

over the hill-tops, consuming all the grass of the meadow lands, and

leaving its glare and furnace-like heat behind in the hollows. Only here

and there was the softer note of a pale green patch of growing corn. The

landscape generally was wild, lacking even a threadlet of water, dying

of thirst, and flying away in clouds of dust at the least breath of

wind. But at the farthest point where the crumbling hills on the horizon

had left a breach one espied some distant fresh moist greenery, a

stretch of the neighbouring valley fertilised by the Viorne, a river

flowing down from the gorges of the Seille.

The priest lowered his dazzled glance upon the village, whose few

scattered houses straggled away below the church--wretched hovels they

were of rubble and boards strewn along a narrow path without sign of

streets. There were about thirty of them altogether, some squatting

amidst muck-heaps, and black with woeful want; others roomier and more

cheerful-looking with their roofs of pinkish tiles. Strips of garden,

victoriously planted amidst stony soil, displayed plots of vegetables

enclosed by quickset hedges. At this hour Les Artaud was empty, not a

woman was at the windows, not a child was wallowing in the dust; parties

of fowls alone went to and fro, ferreting among the straw, seeking food

up to the very thresholds of the houses, whose open doors gaped in the

sunlight. A big black dog seated on his haunches at the entrance to the

village seemed to be mounting guard over it.

Languor slowly stole over Abbé Mouret. The rising sun steeped him in

such warmth that he leant back against the church door pervaded by a

feeling of happy restfulness. His thoughts were dwelling on that hamlet

of Les Artaud, which had sprung up there among the stones like one of

the knotty growths of the valley. All its inhabitants were related,

all bore the same name, so that from their very cradle they were

distinguished among themselves by nicknames. An Artaud, their ancestor,

had come hither and settled like a pariah in this waste. His family had

grown with all the wild vitality of the herbage that sucked life from

the rocky boulders. It had at last become a tribe, a rural community,

in which cousin-ships were lost in the mists of centuries. They

intermarried with shameless promiscuity. Not an instance could be cited

of any Artaud taking himself a wife from any neighbouring village; only

some of the girls occasionally went elsewhere. The others were born and

died fixed to that spot, leisurely increasing and multiplying on their

dunghills with the irreflectiveness of trees, and with no definite

notion of the world that lay beyond the tawny rocks, in whose midst they

vegetated. And yet there were already rich and poor among them; fowls

having at times disappeared, the fowl-houses were now closed at night

with stout padlocks; moreover one Artaud had killed another Artaud one

evening behind the mill. These folk, begirt by that belt of desolate

hills, were truly a people apart--a race sprung from the soil, a

miniature replica of mankind, three hundred souls all told, beginning

the centuries yet once again.

Over the priest the sombre shadows of seminary life still hovered. For

years he had never seen the sun. He perceived it not even now, his

eyes closed and gazing inwards on his soul, and with no feeling for

perishable nature, fated to damnation, save contempt. For a long time

in his hours of devout thought he had dreamt of some hermit’s desert,

of some mountain hole, where no living thing--neither being, plant,

nor water--should distract him from the contemplation of God. It was an

impulse springing from the purest love, from a loathing of all physical

sensation. There, dying to self, and with his back turned to the light

of day, he would have waited till he should cease to be, till nothing

should remain of him but the sovereign whiteness of the soul. To him

heaven seemed all white, with a luminous whiteness as if lilies there

snowed down upon one, as if every form of purity, innocence, and

chastity there blazed. But his confessor reproved him whenever he

related his longings for solitude, his cravings for an existence of

Godlike purity; and recalled him to the struggles of the Church, the

necessary duties of the priesthood. Later on, after his ordination, the

young priest had come to Les Artaud at his own request, there hoping to

realise his dream of human annihilation. In that desolate spot, on that

barren soil, he might shut his ears to all worldly sounds, and live the

dreamy life of a saint. For some months past, in truth, his existence

had been wholly undisturbed, rarely had any thrill of the village-life

disturbed him; and even the sun’s heat scarcely brought him any glow

of feeling as he walked the paths, his whole being wrapped in heaven,

heedless of the unceasing travail of life amidst which he moved.

The big black dog watching over Les Artaud had determined to come up to

Abbé Mouret, and now sat upon its haunches at the priest’s feet; but the

unconscious man remained absorbed amidst the sweetness of the morning.

On the previous evening he had begun the exercises of the Rosary, and

to the intercession of the Virgin with her Divine Son he attributed the

great joy which filled his soul. How despicable appeared all the good

things of the earth! How thankfully he recognised his poverty! When he

entered into holy orders, after losing on the same day both his father

and his mother through a tragedy the fearful details of which were even

now unknown to him,* he had relinquished all his share of their property

to an elder brother. His only remaining link with the world was

his sister; he had undertaken the care of her, stirred by a kind of

religious affection for her feeble intelligence. The dear innocent was

so childish, such a very little girl, that she recalled to him the poor

in spirit to whom the Gospel promises the kingdom of heaven. Of late,

however, she had somewhat disturbed him; she was growing too lusty, too

full of health and life. But his discomfort was yet of the slightest.

His days were spent in that inner life he had created for himself, for

which he had relinquished all else. He closed the portals of his senses,

and sought to free himself from all bodily needs, so that he might be

but a soul enrapt in contemplation. To him nature offered only snares

and abominations; he gloried in maltreating her, in despising her, in

releasing himself from his human slime. And as the just man must be

a fool according to the world, he considered himself an exile on this

earth; his thoughts were solely fixed upon the favours of Heaven,

incapable as he was of understanding how an eternity of bliss could be

weighed against a few hours of perishable enjoyment. His reason

duped him and his senses lied; and if he advanced in virtue it was

particularly by humility and obedience. His wish was to be the last of

all, one subject to all, in order that the divine dew might fall upon

his heart as upon arid sand; he considered himself overwhelmed with

reproach and with confusion, unworthy of ever being saved from sin. He

no longer belonged to himself--blind, deaf, dead to the world as he was.

He was God’s thing. And from the depth of the abjectness to which he

sought to plunge, Hosannahs suddenly bore him aloft, above the happy and

the mighty into the splendour of never-ending bliss.

* This forms the subject of M. Zola’s novel, _The Conquest of

Plassans_. ED.

Thus, at Les Artaud, Abbé Mouret had once more experienced, each time he

read the ‘Imitation,’ the raptures of the cloistered life which he had

longed for at one time so ardently. As yet he had not had to fight

any battle. From the moment that he knelt down, he became perfect,

absolutely oblivious of the flesh, unresisting, undisturbed, as if

overpowered by the Divine grace. Such ecstasy at God’s approach is well

known to some young priests: it is a blissful moment when all is hushed,

and the only desire is but a boundless craving for purity. From no human

creature had he sought his consolations. He who believes a certain thing

to be all in all cannot be troubled: and he did believe that God was all

in all, and that humility, obedience, and chastity were everything.

He could remember having heard temptation spoken of as an abominable

torture that tries the holiest. But he would only smile: God had

never left him. He bore his faith about him thus like a breast-plate

protecting him from the slightest breath of evil. He could recall how

he had hidden himself and wept for very love; he knew not whom he loved,

but he wept for love, for love of some one afar off. The recollection

never failed to move him. Later on he had decided on becoming a priest

in order to satisfy that craving for a superhuman affection which was

his sole torment. He could not see where greater love could be. In that

state of life he satisfied his being, his inherited predisposition, his

youthful dreams, his first virile desires. If temptation must come, he

awaited it with the calmness of the seminarist ignorant of the world. He

felt that his manhood had been killed in him: it gladdened him to feel

himself a creature set apart, unsexed, turned from the usual paths of

life, and, as became a lamb of the Lord, marked with the tonsure.

V

While the priest pondered the sun was heating the big church-door.

Gilded flies buzzed round a large flower that was blooming between two

of the church-door steps. Abbé Mouret, feeling slightly dazed, was

at last about to move away, when the big black dog sprang, barking

violently, towards the iron gate of the little graveyard on the left of

the church. At the same time a harsh voice called out: ‘Ah! you young

rascal! So you stop away from school, and I find you in the graveyard!

Oh, don’t say no: I have been watching you this quarter of an hour.’

As the priest stepped forward he saw Vincent, whom a Brother of

the Christian Schools was clutching tightly by the ear. The lad was

suspended, as it were, over a ravine skirting the graveyard, at the

bottom of which flowed the Mascle, a mountain torrent whose crystal

waters plunged into the Viorne, six miles away.

‘Brother Archangias!’ softly called the priest, as if to appease the

fearful man.

The Brother, however, did not release the boy’s ear.

‘Oh, it’s you, Monsieur le Curé?’ he growled. ‘Just fancy, this rascal

is always poking his nose into the graveyard. I don’t know what he can

be up to here. I ought to let go of him and let him smash his skull down

there. It would be what he deserves.’

The lad remained dumb, with his cunning eyes tight shut as he clung to

the bushes.

‘Take care, Brother Archangias,’ continued the priest, ‘he might slip.’

And he himself helped Vincent to scramble up again.

‘Come, my young friend, what were you doing there?’ he asked. ‘You must

not go playing in graveyards.’

The lad had opened his eyes, and crept away, fearfully, from the

Brother, to place himself under the priest’s protection.

‘I’ll tell you,’ he said in a low voice, as he raised his bushy head.

‘There is a tomtit’s nest in the brambles there, under that rock.

For over ten days I’ve been watching it, and now the little ones are

hatched, so I came this morning after serving your mass.’

‘A tomtit’s nest!’ exclaimed Brother Archangias. ‘Wait a bit! wait a

bit!’

Thereupon he stepped aside, picked a clod of earth off a grave and flung

it into the brambles. But he missed the nest. Another clod, however,

more skilfully thrown upset the frail cradle, and precipitated the

fledglings into the torrent below.

‘Now, perhaps,’ he continued, clapping his hands to shake off the earth

that soiled them, ‘you won’t come roaming here any more, like a heathen;

the dead will pull your feet at night if you go walking over them

again.’

Vincent, who had laughed at seeing the nest dive into the stream, looked

round him and shrugged his shoulders like one of strong mind.

‘Oh, I’m not afraid,’ he said. ‘Dead folk don’t stir.’

The graveyard, in truth, was not a place to inspire fear. It was a

barren piece of ground whose narrow paths were smothered by rank weeds.

Here and there the soil was bossy with mounds. A single tombstone, that

of Abbé Caffin, brand-new and upright, could be perceived in the centre

of the ground. Save this, all around there were only broken fragments

of crosses, withered tufts of box, and old slabs split and moss-eaten.

There were not two burials a year. Death seemed to make no dwelling in

that waste spot, whither La Teuse came every evening to fill her apron

with grass for Desirée’s rabbits. A gigantic cypress tree, standing

near the gate, alone cast shadow upon the desert field. This cypress,

a landmark visible for nine miles around, was known to the whole

countryside as the Solitaire.

‘It’s full of lizards,’ added Vincent, looking at the cracks of the

church-wall. ‘One could have a fine lark--’

But he sprang out with a bound on seeing the Brother lift his foot. The

latter proceeded to call the priest’s attention to the dilapidated state

of the gate, which was not only eaten up with rust, but had one hinge

off, and the lock broken.

‘It ought to be repaired,’ said he.

Abbé Mouret smiled, but made no reply. Addressing Vincent, who was

romping with the dog: ‘I say, my boy,’ he asked, ‘do you know where old

Bambousse is at work this morning?’

The lad glanced towards the horizon. ‘He must be at his Olivettes field

now,’ he answered, pointing towards the left. ‘But Voriau will show

your reverence the way. He’s sure to know where his master is.’ And he

clapped his hands and called: ‘Hie! Voriau! hie!’

The big black dog paused a moment, wagging his tail, and seeking to read

the urchin’s eyes. Then, barking joyfully, he set off down the slope to

the village. Abbé Mouret and Brother Archangias followed him, chatting.

A hundred yards further Vincent surreptitiously bolted, and again glided

up towards the church, keeping a watchful eye upon them, and ready

to dart behind a bush if they should look round. With adder-like

suppleness, he once more glided into the graveyard, that paradise full

of lizards, nests, and flowers.

Meantime, while Voriau led the way before them along the dusty road,

Brother Archangias was angrily saying to the priest: ‘Let be! Monsieur

le Curé, they’re spawn of damnation, those toads are! They ought to

have their backs broken, to make them pleasing to God. They grow up in

irreligion, like their fathers. Fifteen years have I been here, and

not one Christian have I been able to turn out. The minute they quit

my hands, good-bye! They think of nothing but their land, their vines,

their olive-trees. Not one ever sets foot in church. Brute beasts they

are, struggling with their stony fields! Guide them with the stick,

Monsieur le Curé, yes, the stick!’

Then, after drawing breath, he added with a terrific wave of his hands:

‘Those Artauds, look you, are like the brambles over-running these

rocks. One stem has been enough to poison the whole district. They cling

on, they multiply, they live in spite of everything. Nothing short of

fire from heaven, as at Gomorrha, will clear it all away.’

‘We should never despair of sinners,’ said Abbé Mouret, all inward

peacefulness, as he leisurely walked on.

‘But these are the devil’s own,’ broke in the Brother still more

violently. ‘I’ve been a peasant, too. Up to eighteen I dug the earth;

and later on, when I was at the Training College, I had to sweep, pare

vegetables, do all the heavy work. It’s not their toilsome labour I find

fault with. On the contrary, for God prefers the lowly. But the Artauds

live like beasts! They are like their dogs, they never attend mass, and

make a mock of the commandments of God and of the Church. They think of

nothing but their plots of lands, so sweet they are on them!’

Voriau, his tail wagging, kept stopping and moving on again as soon as

he saw that they still followed him.

‘There certainly are some grievous things going on,’ said Abbé Mouret.

‘My predecessor, Abbé Caffin--’

‘A poor specimen,’ interrupted the Brother. ‘He came here to us from

Normandy owing to some disreputable affair. Once here, his sole thought

was good living; he let everything go to rack and ruin.’

‘Oh, no, Abbé Caffin certainly did what he could; but I must own

that his efforts were all but barren in results. My own are mostly

fruitless.’

Brother Archangias shrugged his shoulders. He walked on for a minute

in silence, swaying his tall bony frame, which looked as if it had

been roughly fashioned with a hatchet. The sun beat down upon his neck,

shadowing his hard, sword-edged peasant’s face.

‘Listen to me, Monsieur le Curé,’ he said at last. ‘I am too much

beneath you to lecture you; but still, I am almost double your age, I

know this part, and therefore I feel justified in telling you that you

will gain nothing by gentleness. The catechism, understand, is enough.

God has no mercy on the wicked. He burns them. Stick to that.’

Then, as Abbé Mouret, whose head remained bowed, did not open his mouth,

he went on: ‘Religion is leaving the country districts because it

is made over indulgent. It was respected when it spoke out like an

unforgiving mistress. I really don’t know what they can teach you now

in the seminaries. The new priests weep like children with their

parishioners. God no longer seems the same. I dare say, Monsieur le

Curé, that you don’t even know your catechism by heart now?’

But the priest, wounded by the imperiousness with which the Brother so

roughly sought to dominate him, looked up and dryly rejoined:

‘That will do, your zeal is very praiseworthy. But haven’t you something

to tell me? You came to the parsonage this morning, did you not?’

Thereupon Brother Archangias plumply answered: ‘I had to tell you just

what I have told you. The Artauds live like pigs. Only yesterday I

learned that Rosalie, old Bambousse’s eldest daughter, is in the family

way. It happens with all of them before they get married. And they

simply laugh at reproaches, as you know.’

‘Yes,’ murmured Abbé Mouret, ‘it is a great scandal. I am just on my way

to see old Bambousse to speak to him about it; it is desirable that they

should be married as soon as possible. The child’s father, it seems, is

Fortune, the Brichets’ eldest son. Unfortunately the Brichets are poor.’

‘That Rosalie, now,’ continued the Brother, ‘is just eighteen. Not four

years since I still had her under me at school, and she was already a

gadabout. I have now got her sister Catherine, a chit of eleven, who

seems likely to become even worse than her elder. One comes across her

in every corner with that little scamp, Vincent. It’s no good, you may

pull their ears till they bleed, the woman always crops up in them.

They carry perdition about with them and are only fit to be thrown on a

muck-heap. What a splendid riddance if all girls were strangled at their

birth!’

His loathing, his hatred of woman made him swear like a carter. Abbé

Mouret, who had been listening to him with unmoved countenance, smiled

at last at his rabid utterances. He called Voriau, who had strayed into

a field close by.

‘There, look there!’ cried Brother Archangias, pointing to a group of

children playing at the bottom of a ravine, ‘there are my young devils,

who play the truant under pretence of going to help their parents among

the vines! You may be certain that jade of a Catherine is among them....

There, didn’t I tell you! Till to-night, Monsieur le Curé. Oh, just you

wait, you rascals!’

Off he went at a run, his dirty neckband flying over his shoulder, and

his big greasy cassock tearing up the thistles. Abbé Mouret watched him

swoop down into the midst of the children, who scattered like frightened

sparrows. But he succeeded in seizing Catherine and one boy by the ears

and led them back towards the village, clutching them tightly with his

big hairy fingers, and overwhelming them with abuse.

The priest walked on again. Brother Archangias sometimes aroused strange

scruples in his mind. With his vulgarity and coarseness the Brother

seemed to him the true man of God, free from earthly ties, submissive in

all to Heaven’s will, humble, blunt, ready to shower abuse upon sin. He,

the priest, would then feel despair at his inability to rid himself

more completely of his body; he regretted that he was not ugly, unclean,

covered with vermin like some of the saints. Whenever the Brother had

wounded him by some words of excessive coarseness, or by some over-hasty

churlishness, he would blame himself for his refinement, his innate

shrinking, as if these were really faults. Ought he not to be dead to

all the weaknesses of this world? And this time also he smiled sadly as

he thought how near he had been to losing his temper at the Brother’s

roughly put lesson. It was pride, it seemed to him, seeking to work his

perdition by making him despise the lowly. However, in spite of himself,

he felt relieved at being alone again, at being able to walk on gently,

reading his breviary, free at last from the grating voice that had

disturbed his dream of heavenly love.

VI

The road wound on between fallen rocks, among which the peasants had

succeeded here and there in reclaiming six or seven yards of chalky

soil, planted with old olive trees. Under the priest’s feet the dust in

the deep ruts crackled lightly like snow. At times, as he felt a warmer

puff upon his face, he would raise his eyes from his book, as if to seek

whence came this soft caress; but his gaze was vacant, straying without

perception over the glowing horizon, over the twisted outlines of that

passion-breathing landscape as it stretched out in the sun before him,

dry, barren, despairing of the fertilisation for which it longed. And

he would lower his hat over his forehead to protect himself against

the warm breeze and tranquilly resume his reading, his cassock raising

behind him a cloudlet of dust which rolled along the surface of the

road.

‘Good morning, Monsieur le Curé,’ a passing peasant said to him.

Sounds of digging alongside the cultivated strips of ground again

roused him from his abstraction. He turned his head and perceived big

knotty-limbed old men greeting him from among the vines. The Artauds

were eagerly satisfying their passion for the soil, in the sun’s full

blaze. Sweating brows appeared from behind the bushes, heaving chests

were slowly raised, the whole scene was one of ardent fructification,

through which he moved with the calm step born of ignorance. No

discomfort came to him from the great travail of love that permeated

that splendid morning.

‘Steady! Voriau, you mustn’t eat people!’ some one gaily shouted in a

powerful voice by way of silencing the dog’s loud barks.

Abbé Mouret looked up.

‘Oh! it’s you. Fortune?’ he said, approaching the edge of the field in

which the young peasant was at work. ‘I was just on my way to speak to

you.’

Fortune was of the same age as the priest: a bigly built, bold-looking

young fellow, with skin already hardened. He was clearing a small plot

of stony heath.

‘What about, Monsieur le Curé?’ he asked.

‘About Rosalie and you,’ replied the priest.

Fortune began to laugh. Perhaps he thought it droll that a priest should

interest himself in such a matter.

‘Well,’ he muttered, ‘I’m not to blame in it nor she either. So much the

worse if old Bambousse refuses to let me have her. You saw yourself how

his dog was trying to bite me just now; he sets him on me.’

Then, as Abbé Mouret was about to continue, old Artaud, called Brichet,

whom he had not previously perceived, emerged from the shadow of a bush

behind which he and his wife were eating. He was a little man, withered

by age, with a cringing face.

‘Your reverence must have been told a pack of lies,’ he exclaimed.

‘The youngster is quite ready to marry Rosalie. What’s happened isn’t

anybody’s fault. It has happened to others who got on all right just the

same. The matter doesn’t rest with us. You ought to speak to Bambousse.

He’s the one who looks down on us because he’s got money.’

‘Yes, we are very poor,’ whined his wife, a tall lachrymose woman, who

also rose to her feet. ‘We’ve only this scrap of ground where the very

devil seems to have been hailing stones. Not a bite of bread from it,

even. Without you, your reverence, life would be impossible.’

Brichet’s wife was the one solitary devotee of the village. Whenever she

had been to communion, she would hang about the parsonage, well knowing

that La Teuse always kept a couple of loaves for her from her last

baking. At times she was even able to carry off a rabbit or a fowl given

her by Desirée.

‘There’s no end to the scandals,’ continued the priest. ‘The marriage

must take place without delay.’

‘Oh! at once! as soon as the others are agreeable,’ said the old woman,

alarmed about her periodical presents. ‘What do you say, Brichet? we are

not such bad Christians as to go against his reverence?’

Fortune sniggered.

‘Oh, I’m quite ready,’ he said, ‘and so is Rosalie. I saw her yesterday

at the back of the mill. We haven’t quarrelled. We stopped there to have

a bit of a laugh.’

But Abbé Mouret interrupted him: ‘Very well, I am now going to speak to

Bambousse. He is over there, at Les Olivettes, I believe.’

The priest was going off when the mother asked him what had become of

her younger son Vincent, who had left in the early morning to serve

mass. There was a lad now who badly needed his reverence’s admonitions.

And she walked by the priest’s side for another hundred yards, bemoaning

her poverty, the failure of the potato crop, the frost which had nipped

the olive trees, the hot weather which threatened to scorch up the

scanty corn. Then, as she left him, she solemnly declared that her son

Fortune always said his prayers, both morning and evening.

Voriau now ran on in front, and suddenly, at a turn in the road, he

bolted across the fields. The priest then struck into a small path

leading up a low hill. He was now at Les Olivettes, the most fertile

spot in the neighbourhood, where the mayor of the commune, Artaud,

otherwise Bambousse, owned several fields of corn, olive plantations,

and vines. The dog was now romping round the skirts of a tall brunette,

who burst into a loud laugh as she caught sight of the priest.

‘Is your father here, Rosalie?’ the latter asked.

‘Yes, just across there,’ she said, pointing with her hand and still

smiling.

Leaving the part of the field she had been weeding, she walked on before

him with the vigorous springiness of a hard-working woman, her head

unshielded from the sun, her neck all sunburnt, her hair black and

coarse like a horse’s mane. Her green-stained hands exhaled the odour of

the weeds she had been pulling up.

‘Father,’ she called out, ‘here’s Monsieur le Curé asking for you.’

And there she remained, bold, unblushing, with a sly smile still

hovering over her features. Bambousse, a stout, sweating, round-faced

man, left his work and gaily came towards the priest.

‘I’d take my oath you are going to speak to me about the repairs of

the church,’ he exclaimed, as he clapped his earthy hands. ‘Well, then,

Monsieur le Curé, I can only say no, it’s impossible. The commune hasn’t

got the coin. If the Lord provides plaster and tiles, we’ll provide the

workmen.’

At this jest of his the unbelieving peasant burst into a loud guffaw,

slapped his thighs, coughed, and almost choked himself.

‘It was not for the church I came,’ replied the Abbé Mouret. ‘I wanted

to speak to you about your daughter Rosalie.’

‘Rosalie? What has she done to you, then?’ inquired Bambousse, his eyes

blinking.

The girl was boldly staring at the young priest, scrutinising his white

hands and slender, feminine neck, as if trying to make him redden.

He, however, bluntly and with unruffled countenance, as if speaking of

something quite indifferent, continued:

‘You know what I mean, Bambousse. She must get married.’

‘Oh, that’s it, is it?’ muttered the old man, with a bantering look.

‘Many thanks for the message. The Brichets sent you, didn’t they? Mother

Brichet goes to mass, and so you give her a helping hand to marry her

son--it’s all very fine. But, I’ve got nothing to do with that. It

doesn’t suit me. That’s all.’

Thereupon the astonished priest represented to him that the scandal

must be stopped, and that he ought to forgive Fortune, as the latter was

willing to make reparation for his transgression, and that, lastly, his

daughter’s reputation demanded a speedy marriage.

‘Ta, ta, ta,’ replied Bambousse, what a lot of words! I shall keep my

daughter, please understand it. All that’s got nothing to do with me.

That Fortune is a beggarly pauper, without a brass farthing. What an

easy job, if one could marry a girl like that! At that rate we should

have all the young things marrying off morning and night. Thank Heaven!

I’m not worried about Rosalie: everybody knows what has happened; but

it makes no difference. She can marry any one she chooses in the

neighbourhood.’

‘But the child?’ interrupted the priest.

‘The child indeed! There’ll be time enough to think of that when it’s

born.’

Rosalie, perceiving the turn the priest’s application was taking, now

thought it proper to ram her fists into her eyes and whimper. And she

even let herself fall upon the ground.

‘Shut up, will you, you hussy!’ howled her father in a rage. And he

proceeded to revile her in the coarsest terms, which made her laugh

silently behind her clenched fists.

‘You won’t shut up? won’t you? Just wait a minute then, you jade!’

continued old Bambousse. And thereupon he picked up a clod of earth and

flung it at her. It burst upon her knot of hair, crumbling down her neck

and smothering her in dust. Dizzy from the blow, she bounded to her feet

and fled, sheltering her head between her hands. But Bambousse had time

to fling two more clods at her, and if the first only grazed her left

shoulder, the next caught her full on the base of the spine, with such

force that she fell upon her knees.

‘Bambousse!’ cried the priest, as he wrenched from the peasant’s hand a

number of stones which he had just picked up.

‘Let be, Monsieur le Curé,’ said the other. ‘It was only soft earth.

I ought to have thrown these stones at her. It’s easy to see that you

don’t know girls. Hard as nails, all of them. I might duck that one in

the well, I might break all her bones with a cudgel, and she’d still be

just the same. But I’ve got my eye on her, and if I catch her!... Ah!

well, they are all like that.’

He was already comforted. He took a good pull at a big flat bottle of

wine, encased in wicker-work, which lay warming on the hot ground.

And breaking once more into a laugh, he said: ‘If I only had a glass,

Monsieur le Curé, I would offer you some with pleasure.’

‘So then,’ again asked the priest, ‘this marriage?’

‘No, it can’t be; I should get laughed at. Rosalie is a stout wench.

She’s worth a man to me. I shall have to hire a lad the day she goes

off.... We can have another talk about it after the vintage. Besides, I

don’t want to be robbed. Give and take, say I. That’s fair. What do you

think?’

Nevertheless for another long half-hour did the priest remain there

preaching to Bambousse, speaking to him of God, and plying him with all

the reasons suited to the circumstances. But the old man had resumed

his work; he shrugged his shoulders, jested, and grew more and more

obstinate. At last, he broke out: ‘But if you asked me for a sack of

corn, you would give me money, wouldn’t you? So why do you want me to

let my daughter go for nothing?’

Much discomfited, Abbé Mouret left him. As he went down the path he saw

Rosalie rolling about under an olive tree with Voriau, who was licking

her face. With her arms whirling, she kept on repeating: ‘You tickle me,

you big stupid. Leave off!’

When she perceived the priest, she made an attempt at a blush, settled

her clothes, and once more raised her fists to her eyes. He, on his

part, sought to console her by promising to attempt some fresh efforts

with her father, adding that, in the meantime, she should do nothing

to aggravate her sin. And then, as she impudently smiled at him, he

pictured hell, where wicked women burn in torment. And afterwards he

left her, his duty done, his soul once more full of the serenity which

enabled him to pass undisturbed athwart the corruptions of the world.

VII

The morning was becoming terribly hot. In that huge rocky amphitheatre

the sun kindled a furnace-like glare from the moment when the first

fine weather began. By the planet’s height in the sky Abbé Mouret now

perceived that he had only just time to return home if he wished to

get there by eleven o’clock and escape a scolding from La Teuse. Having

finished reading his breviary and made his application to Bambousse, he

swiftly retraced his steps, gazing as he went at his church, now a grey

spot in the distance, and at the black rigid silhouette which the

big cypress-tree, the Solitaire, set against the blue sky. Amidst the

drowsiness fostered by the heat, he thought of how richly that evening

he might decorate the Lady chapel for the devotions of the month of

Mary. Before him the road offered a carpet of dust, soft to the tread

and of dazzling whiteness.

At the Croix-Verte, as the Abbé was about to cross the highway leading

from Plassans to La Palud, a gig coming down the hill compelled him

to step behind a heap of stones. Then, as he crossed the open space, a

voice called to him: ‘Hallo, Serge, my boy!’

The gig had pulled up and from it a man leant over. The priest

recognised him--he was an uncle of his, Doctor Pascal Rougon, or

Monsieur Pascal, as the poor folk of Plassans, whom he attended for

nothing, briefly styled him. Although barely over fifty, he was already

snowy white, with a big beard and abundant hair, amidst which his

handsome regular features took an expression of shrewdness and

benevolence.*

* See M. Zola’s novels, _Dr. Pascal_ and _The Fortune of the

Rougons_.--ED.

‘So you potter about in the dust at this hour of the day?’ he said

gaily, as he stooped to grasp the Abbé’s hands. ‘You’re not afraid of

sunstroke?’

‘No more than you are, uncle,’ answered the priest, laughing.

‘Oh, I have the hood of my trap to shield me. Besides, sick folks won’t

wait. People die at all times, my boy.’ And he went on to relate that

he was now on his way to old Jeanbernat, the steward of the Paradou, who

had had an apoplectic stroke the night before. A neighbour, a peasant on

his way to Plassans market, had summoned him.

‘He must be dead by this time,’ the doctor continued. ‘However, we must

make sure.... Those old demons are jolly tough, you know.’

He was already raising his whip, when Abbé Mouret stopped him.

‘Stay! what o’clock do you make it, uncle?’

‘A quarter to eleven.’

The Abbé hesitated; he already seemed to hear La Teuse’s terrible voice

bawling in his ears that his luncheon was getting cold. But he plucked

up courage and added swiftly: ‘I’ll go with you, uncle. The unhappy man

may wish to reconcile himself to God in his last hour.’

Doctor Pascal could not restrain a laugh.

‘What, Jeanbernat!’ he said; ‘ah, well! if ever you convert him! Never

mind, come all the same. The sight of you is enough to cure him.’

The priest got in. The doctor, apparently regretting his jest, displayed

an affectionate warmth of manner, whilst from time to time clucking his

tongue by way of encouraging his horse. And out of the corner of his eye

he inquisitively observed his nephew with the keenness of a scientist

bent on taking notes. In short kindly sentences he inquired about his

life, his habits, and the peaceful happiness he enjoyed at Les Artaud.

And at each satisfactory reply he murmured, as if to himself in a tone

of reassurance: ‘Come, so much the better; that’s just as it should be!’

He displayed peculiar anxiety about the young priest’s state of health.

And Serge, greatly surprised, assured him that he was in splendid

trim, and had neither fits of giddiness or of nausea, nor headaches

whatsoever.

‘Capital, capital,’ reiterated his uncle Pascal. ‘In spring, you see,

the blood is active. But you are sound enough. By-the-bye, I saw your

brother Octave at Marseilles last month. He is off to Paris, where he

will get a fine berth in a high-class business. The young beggar, a nice

life he leads.’

‘What life?’ innocently inquired the priest.

To avoid replying the doctor chirruped to his horse, and then went on:

‘Briefly, everybody is well--your aunt Felicite, your uncle Rougon, and

the others. Still, that does not hinder our needing your prayers. You

are the saint of the family, my lad; I rely upon you to save the whole

lot.’

He laughed, but in such a friendly, good-humoured way that Serge himself

began to indulge in jocularity.

‘You see,’ continued Pascal, ‘there are some among the lot whom it won’t

be easy to lead to Paradise. Some nice confessions you’d hear if all

came in turn. For my part, I can do without their confessions; I

watch them from a distance; I have got their records at home among my

botanical specimens and medical notes. Some day I shall be able to draw

up a wondrously interesting diagram. We shall see; we shall see!’

He was forgetting himself, carried away by his enthusiasm for science. A

glance at his nephew’s cassock pulled him up short.

‘As for you, you’re a parson,’ he muttered; ‘you did well; a parson’s a

very happy man. The calling absorbs you, eh? And so you’ve taken to the

good path. Well! you would never have been satisfied otherwise. Your

relatives, starting like you, have done a deal of evil, and still they

are unsatisfied. It’s all logically perfect, my lad. A priest completes

the family. Besides, it was inevitable. Our blood was bound to run

to that. So much the better for you; you have had the most luck.’

Correcting himself, however, with a strange smile, he added: ‘No, it’s

your sister Desirée who has had the best luck of all.’

He whistled, whipped up his horse, and changed the conversation. The

gig, after climbing a somewhat steep slope, was threading its way

through desolate ravines; at last it reached a tableland, where the

hollow road skirted an interminable and lofty wall. Les Artaud had

disappeared; they found themselves in the heart of a desert.

‘We are getting near, are we not?’ asked the priest.

‘This is the Paradou,’ replied the doctor, pointing to the wall.

‘Haven’t you been this way before, then? We are not three miles from Les

Artaud. A splendid property it must have been, this Paradou. The park

wall this side alone is quite a mile and a half long. But for over a

hundred years it’s all been running wild.’

‘There are some fine trees,’ observed the Abbé, as he looked up in

astonishment at the luxuriant mass of foliage which jutted over.

‘Yes, that part is very fertile. In fact, the park is a regular forest

amidst the bare rocks which surround it. The Mascle, too, rises there; I

have heard four or five springs mentioned, I fancy.’

In short sentences, interspersed with irrelevant digressions, he then

related the story of the Paradou, according to the current legend of

the countryside. In the time of Louis XV., a great lord had erected

a magnificent palace there, with vast gardens, fountains, trickling

streams, and statues--a miniature Versailles hidden away among the

stones, under the full blaze of the southern sun. But he had there spent

but one season with a lady of bewitching beauty, who doubtless died

there, as none had ever seen her leave. Next year the mansion was

destroyed by fire, the park doors were nailed up, the very loopholes of

the walls were filled with mould; and thus, since that remote time, not

a glance had penetrated that vast enclosure which covered the whole of

one of the plateaux of the Garrigue hills.

‘There can be no lack of nettles there,’ laughingly said Abbé Mouret.

‘Don’t you find that the whole wall reeks of damp, uncle?’

A pause followed, and he asked:

‘And whom does the Paradou belong to now?’

‘Why, nobody knows,’ the doctor answered. ‘The owner did come here once,

some twenty years ago. But he was so scared by the sight of this

adders’ nest that he has never turned up since. The real master is the

caretaker, that old oddity, Jeanbernat, who has managed to find quarters

in a lodge where the stones still hang together. There it is, see--that

grey building yonder, with its windows all smothered in ivy.’

The gig passed by a lordly iron gate, ruddy with rust, and lined inside

with a layer of boards. The wide dry throats were black with brambles. A

hundred yards further on was the lodge inhabited by Jeanbernat. It stood

within the park, which it overlooked. But the old keeper had apparently

blocked up that side of his dwelling, and had cleared a little garden

by the road. And there he lived, facing southwards, with his back

turned upon the Paradou, as if unaware of the immensity of verdure that

stretched away behind him.

The young priest jumped down, looking inquisitively around him and

questioning the doctor, who was hurriedly fastening the horse to a ring

fixed in the wall.

‘And the old man lives all alone in this out-of-the-way hole?’ he asked.

‘Yes, quite alone,’ replied his uncle, adding, however, the next minute:

‘Well, he has with him a niece whom he had to take in, a queer girl,

a regular savage. But we must make haste. The whole place looks

death-like.’

VIII

The house with its shutters closed seemed wrapped in slumber as it stood

there in the midday sun, amidst the hum of the big flies that swarmed

all up the ivy to the roof tiles. The sunlit ruin was steeped in happy

quietude. When the doctor had opened the gate of the narrow garden,

which was enclosed by a lofty quickset hedge, there, in the shadow cast

by a wall, they found Jeanbernat, tall and erect, and calmly smoking his

pipe, as in the deep silence he watched his vegetables grow.

‘What, are you up then, you humbug?’ exclaimed the astonished doctor.

‘So you were coming to bury me, were you?’ growled the old man harshly.

‘I don’t want anybody. I bled myself.’

He stopped short as he caught sight of the priest, and assumed so

threatening an expression that the doctor hastened to intervene.

‘This is my nephew,’ he said; ‘the new Curé of Les Artaud--a good

fellow, too. Devil take it, we haven’t been bowling over the roads at

this hour of the day to eat you, Jeanbernat.’

The old man calmed down a little.

‘I don’t want any shavelings here,’ he grumbled. ‘They’re enough to make

one croak. Mind, doctor, no priests, and no physics when I go off, or we

shall quarrel. Let him come in, however, as he is your nephew.’

Abbé Mouret, struck dumb with amazement, could not speak a word. He

stood there in the middle of the path scanning that strange solitaire,

with scorched, brick-tinted face, and limbs all withered and twisted

like a bundle of ropes, who seemed to bear the burden of his eighty

years with a scornful contempt for life. When the doctor attempted to

feel his pulse, his ill-humour broke out afresh.

‘Do leave me in peace! I bled myself with my knife, I tell you. It’s all

over, now. Who was the fool of a peasant who disturbed you? The doctor

here, and the priest as well, why not the mutes too! Well, it can’t be

helped, people will be fools. It won’t prevent us from having a drink,

eh?’

He fetched a bottle and three glasses, and stood them on an old table

which he brought out into the shade. Then, having filled the glasses

to the brim, he insisted on clinking them. His anger had given place to

jeering cheerfulness.

‘It won’t poison you, Monsieur le Curé,’ he said. ‘A glass of good

wine isn’t a sin. Upon my word, however, this is the first time I ever

clinked a glass with a cassock, but no offence to you. That poor Abbé

Caffin, your predecessor, refused to argue with me. He was afraid.’

Jeanbernat gave vent to a hearty laugh, and then went on: ‘Just fancy,

he had pledged himself that he would prove to me that God exists.

So, whenever I met him, I defied him to do it; and he sloped off

crestfallen, I can tell you.’

‘What, God does not exist!’ cried Abbé Mouret, roused from his silence.

‘Oh! just as you please,’ mockingly replied Jeanbernat. ‘We’ll begin

together all over again, if it’s any pleasure to you. But I warn you

that I’m a tough hand at it. There are some thousands of books in one of

the rooms upstairs, which were rescued from the fire at the Paradou: all

the philosophers of the eighteenth century, a whole heap of old books

on religion. I’ve learned some fine things from them. I’ve been reading

them these twenty years. Marry! you’ll find you’ve got some one who can

talk, Monsieur le Curé.’

He had risen, slowly waving his hand towards the surrounding horizon,

to the earth and to the sky, and repeating solemnly: ‘There’s nothing,

nothing, nothing. When the sun is snuffed out, all will be at an end.’

Doctor Pascal nudged Abbé Mouret with his elbow. With blinking eyes he

was curiously observing the old man and nodding approvingly in order to

induce him to talk. ‘So you are a materialist, Jeanbernat?’ he said.

‘Oh, I am only a poor man,’ replied the old fellow, relighting his pipe.

‘When Count de Corbiere, whose foster-brother I was, died from a fall

from his horse, his children sent me here to look after this park of the

Sleeping Beauty, in order to get rid of me. I was sixty years old then,

and I thought I was about done. But death forgot me; and I had to make

myself a burrow. If one lives all alone, look you, one gets to see

things in rather a queer fashion. The trees are no longer trees, the

earth puts on the ways of a living being, the stones seem to tell you

tales. A parcel of rubbish, eh? But I know some secrets that would

fairly stagger you. Besides, what do you think there is to do in

this devilish desert? I read the old books; it was more amusing than

shooting. The Count, who used to curse like a heathen, was always saying

to me: “Jeanbernat, my boy, I fully expect to meet you again in the hot

place, so that you will be able to serve me there as you have up here.”’

Once more he waved his hand to the horizon and added: ‘You hear,

nothing; there’s nothing. It’s all foolery.’

Dr. Pascal began to laugh.

‘A pleasant piece of foolery, at any rate,’ he said. ‘Jeanbernat, you

are a deceiver. I suspect you are in love, in spite of your affectation

of being _blasé_. You were speaking very tenderly of the trees and

stones just now.’

‘Oh, no, I assure you,’ murmured the old man, ‘I have done with that.

At one time, it’s true, when I first knew you and used to go herborising

with you, I was stupid enough to love all sorts of things I came across

in that huge liar, the country. Fortunately, the old volumes have killed

all that. I only wish my garden was smaller; I don’t go out into the

road twice a year. You see that bench? That’s where I spend all my time,

just watching my lettuces grow.’

‘And what about your rounds in the park?’ broke in the doctor.

‘In the park!’ repeated Jeanbernat, with a look of profound surprise.

‘Why, it’s more than twelve years since I set foot in it! What do you

suppose I could do inside that cemetery? It’s too big. It’s stupid, what

with those endless trees and moss everywhere and broken statues, and

holes in which one might break one’s neck at every step. The last time I

went in there, it was so dark under the trees, there was such a stink of

wild flowers, and such queer breezes blew along the paths, that I felt

almost afraid. So I have shut myself up to prevent the park coming in

here. A patch of sunlight, three feet of lettuce before me, and a

big hedge shutting out all the view, why, that’s more than enough for

happiness. Nothing, that’s what I’d like, nothing at all, something so

tiny that nothing from outside could come to disturb me. Seven feet of

earth, if you like, just to be able to croak on my back.’

He struck the table with his fist, and suddenly raised his voice to call

out to Abbé Mouret: ‘Come, just another glass, your reverence. The old

gentleman isn’t at the bottom of the bottle, you know.’

The priest felt ill at ease. To lead back to God that singular old man,

whose reason seemed to him to be strangely disordered, appeared a task

beyond his powers. He now remembered certain bits of gossip he had

heard from La Teuse about the Philosopher, as the peasants of Les Artaud

dubbed Jeanbernat. Scraps of scandalous stories vaguely floated in his

memory. He rose, making a sign to the doctor that he wished to leave

this house, where he seemed to inhale an odour of damnation. But, in

spite of his covert fears, a strange feeling of curiosity made him

linger. He simply walked to the end of the garden, throwing a searching

glance into the vestibule, as if to see beyond it, behind the walls. All

he could perceive, however, through the gaping doorway, was the black

staircase. So he came back again, and sought for some hole, some glimpse

of that sea of foliage which he knew was near by the mighty murmur that

broke upon the house, like the sound of waves.

‘And is the little one well?’ asked the doctor, taking up his hat.

‘Pretty well,’ answered Jeanbernat. ‘She’s never here. She often

disappears all day long--still, she may be in the upstair rooms.’

He raised his head and called: ‘Albine! Albine!’ Then with a shrug of

his shoulders, he added: ‘Yes, my word, she is a nice hussy.... Well,

till next time, Monsieur le Curé. I’m always at your disposal.’

Abbé Mouret, however, had no time to accept the Philosopher’s challenge.

A door suddenly opened at the end of the vestibule; a dazzling breach

was made in the black darkness of the wall, and through the breach came

a vision of a virgin forest, a great depth of woodland, beneath a

flood of sunbeams. In that sudden blaze of light the priest distinctly

perceived certain far-away things: a large yellow flower in the middle

of a lawn, a sheet of water falling from a lofty rock, a colossal tree

filled with a swarm of birds; and all this steeped, lost, blazing in

such a tangle of greenery, such riotous luxuriance of vegetation, that

the whole horizon seemed one great burst of shooting foliage. The door

banged to, and everything vanished.

‘Ah! the jade!’ cried Jeanbernat, ‘she was in the Paradou again!’

Albine was now laughing on the threshold of the vestibule. She wore

an orange-coloured skirt, with a large red kerchief fastened round her

waist, thus looking like some gipsy in holiday garb. And she went on

laughing, her head thrown back, her bosom swelling with mirth, delighted

with her flowers, wild flowers which she had plaited into her fair hair,

fastened to her neck, her bodice, and her bare slender golden arms. She

seemed like a huge nosegay, exhaling a powerful perfume.

‘Ay, you are a beauty!’ growled the old man. ‘You smell of weeds enough

to poison one--would any one think she was sixteen, that doll?’

Albine remained unabashed, however, and laughed still more heartily.

Doctor Pascal, who was her great friend, let her kiss him.

‘So you are not frightened in the Paradou?’ he asked.

‘Frightened? What of?’ she said, her eyes wide open with astonishment.

‘The walls are too high, no one can get in. There’s only myself. It is

my garden, all my very own. A fine big one, too. I haven’t found out

where it ends yet.’

‘And the animals?’ interrupted the doctor.

‘The animals? Oh! they don’t hurt; they all know me well.’

‘But it is very dark under the trees?’

‘Course! there’s shade: if there were none, the sun would burn my face

up. It is very pleasant in the shade among the leaves.’

She flitted about, filling the little garden with the rustling sweep of

her skirts, and scattering round the pungent odour of wild flowers which

clung to her. She had smiled at Abbé Mouret without trace of shyness,

without heed of the astonished look with which he observed her. The

priest had stepped aside. That fair-haired maid, with long oval face,

glowing with life, seemed to him to be the weird mysterious offspring of

the forest of which he had caught a glimpse in a sheet of sunlight.

‘I say, I have got some blackbird nestlings; would you like them?’

Albine asked the doctor.

‘No, thanks,’ he answered, laughing. ‘You should give them to the Curé’s

sister; she is very fond of pets. Good day, Jeanbernat.’

Albine, however, had fastened on the priest.

‘You are the vicar of Les Artaud, aren’t you? You have a sister? I’ll go

and see her. Only you must not speak to me about God. My uncle will not

have it.’

‘You bother us, be off,’ exclaimed Jeanbernat, shrugging his shoulders.

Then bounding away like a goat, dropping a shower of flowers behind her,

she disappeared. The slam of a door was heard, and from behind the

house came bursts of laughter, which died away in the distance like the

scampering rush of some mad animal let loose among the grass.

‘You’ll see, she will end by sleeping in the Paradou,’ muttered the old

man with indifference.

And as he saw his visitors off, he added: ‘If you should find me dead

one of these fine days, doctor, just do me the favour of pitching me

into the muck-pit there, behind my lettuces. Good evening, gentlemen.’

He let the wooden gate which closed the hedge fall to again, and the

house assumed once more its aspect of happy peacefulness in the noonday

sunlight, amidst the buzzing of the big flies that swarmed all up the

ivy even to the roof tiles.

IX

The gig once more rolled along the road skirting the Paradou’s

interminable wall. Abbé Mouret, still silent, scanned with upturned eyes

the huge boughs which stretched over that wall, like the arms of giants

hidden there. All sorts of sounds came from the park: rustling of wings,

quivering of leaves, furtive bounds at which branches snapped, mighty

sighs that bowed the young shoots--a vast breath of life sweeping over

the crests of a nation of trees. At times, as he heard a birdlike note

that seemed like a human laugh, the priest turned his head, as if he

felt uneasy.

‘A queer girl!’ said his uncle as he eased the reins a little. ‘She was

nine years old when she took up her quarters with that old heathen. Some

brother of his had ruined himself, though in what I can’t remember. The

little one was at school somewhere when her father killed himself. She

was even quite a little lady, up to reading, embroidery, chattering, and

strumming on the piano. And such a coquette too! I saw her arrive with

open-worked stockings, embroidered skirts, frills, cuffs, a heap of

finery. Ah, well! the finery didn’t last long!’

He laughed. A big stone nearly upset the gig.

‘It will be lucky if I don’t leave a wheel in this cursed road!’ he

muttered. ‘Hold on, my boy.’

The wall still stretched beside them: the priest still listened.

‘As you may well imagine,’ continued the doctor, ‘the Paradou, what with

its sun, its stones, and its thistles, would wreck a whole outfit every

day. Three or four mouthfuls, that’s all it made of all the little one’s

beautiful dresses. She used to come back naked. Now she dresses like

a savage. To-day she was rather presentable; but sometimes she has

scarcely anything on beyond her shoes and chemise. Did you hear her? The

Paradou is hers. The very day after she came she took possession of it.

She lives in it; jumps out of the window when Jeanbernat locks the door,

bolts off in spite of all, goes nobody knows whither, buries herself in

some invisible burrows known only to herself. She must have a fine time

in that wilderness.’

‘Hark, uncle!’ interrupted Abbé Mouret. ‘Isn’t that some animal running

behind the wall?’

Uncle Pascal listened.

‘No,’ he said after a minute’s silence, ‘it is the rattle of the trap on

the stones. No, the child doesn’t play the piano now. I believe she has

even forgotten how to read. Just picture to yourself a young lady gone

back to a state of primevalness, turned out to play on a desert island.

My word, if ever you get to know of a girl who needs proper bringing up,

I advise you not to entrust her to Jeanbernat. He has a most primitive

way of letting nature alone. When I ventured to speak to him about

Albine he answered me that he must not prevent trees from growing

as they pleased. He says he is for the normal development of

temperaments.... All the same, they are very interesting, both of them.

I never come this way without paying them a visit.’

The gig was now emerging from the hollowed road. At this point the wall

of the Paradou turned and wound along the crest of the hills as far

as one could see. As Abbé Mouret turned to take a last look at that

grey-hued barrier, whose impenetrable austerity had at last begun to

annoy him, a rustling of shaken boughs was heard and a clump of young

birch trees seemed to bow in greeting from above the wall.

‘I knew some animal was running behind,’ said the priest.

But, although nobody could be seen, though nothing was visible in the

air above save the birches rocking more and more violently, they heard a

clear, laughing voice call out: ‘Good-bye, doctor! good-bye, Monsieur le

Curé! I am kissing the tree, and the tree is sending you my kisses.’

‘Why! it is Albine,’ exclaimed Doctor Pascal. ‘She must have followed

the trap at a run. Jumping over bushes is mere play to her, the little

elf!’

And he in his turn shouted out:

‘Good-bye, my pet! How tall you must be to bow like that.’

The laughter grew louder, the birches bowed still lower, scattering

their leaves around even on the hood of the gig.

‘I am as tall as the trees; all the leaves that fall are kisses,’

replied the voice now mellowed by distance, so musical, so merged into

the rippling whispers of the park, that the young priest was thrilled.

The road grew better. On coming down the slope Les Artaud reappeared in

the midst of the scorched plain. When the gig reached the turning to

the village, Abbé Mouret would not let his uncle drive him back to the

vicarage. He jumped down, saying:

‘No, thanks, I prefer to walk: it will do me good.’

‘Well, just as you like,’ at last answered the doctor. And with a clasp

of the hand, he added: ‘Well, if you only had such parishioners as that

old brute Jeanbernat, you wouldn’t often be disturbed. However, you

yourself wanted to come. And mind you keep well. At the slightest ache,

night or day, send for me. You know I attend all the family gratis....

There, good-bye, my boy.’

X

Abbé Mouret felt more at ease when he found himself again alone, walking

along the dusty road. The stony fields brought him back to his dream of

austerity, of an inner life spent in a desert. From the trees all along

the sunken road disturbing moisture had fallen on his neck, which now

the burning sun was drying. The sight of the lean almond trees, the

scanty corn crops, the weak vines, on either side of the way, soothed

him, delivered him from the perturbation into which the lusty atmosphere

of the Paradou had thrown him. Amid the blinding glare that flowed from

heaven over the bare land, Jeanbernat’s blasphemies no longer cast even

a shadow. A thrill of pleasure ran through the priest as he raised his

head and caught sight of the solitaire’s motionless bar-like silhouette

and the pink patch of tiles on the church.

But, as he walked on, fresh anxiety beset the Abbé. La Teuse would give

him a fine reception; for his luncheon must have been waiting nearly two

hours for him. He pictured her terrible face, the flood of words with

which she would greet him, the angry clatter of kitchen ware which he

would hear the whole afternoon. When he had got through Les Artaud,

his fear became so lively that he hesitated, full of trepidation, and

wondered if it would not be better to go round and reach the parsonage

by way of the church. But, while he deliberated, La Teuse herself

appeared on the doorstep of the parsonage, her cap all awry, and her

hands on her hips. With drooping head he had perforce to climb the

slope under her storm-laden gaze, which he could feel weighing upon his

shoulders.

‘I believe I am rather late, my good Teuse,’ he stammered, as he turned

the path’s last bend.

La Teuse waited till he stood quite close before her. She then gave him

a furious glance, and, without a word, turned and stalked before him

into the dining-room, banging her big heels upon the floor-tiles and so

rigid with ire that she hardly limped at all.

‘I have had so many things to do,’ began the priest, scared by this dumb

reception. ‘I have been running about all the morning.’

But she cut him short with another look, so fixed, so full of anger,

that he felt his legs give way under him. He sat down, and began to eat.

She waited on him in the sharp, mechanical manner of an automaton, all

but breaking the plates with the violence with which she set them down.

The silence became so awful that, choking with emotion, he was unable to

swallow his third mouthful.

‘My sister has had her luncheon?’ he asked. ‘Quite right of her.

Luncheon should always be served whenever I am kept out.’

No answer came. La Teuse stood there waiting to remove his plate as

soon as he should have emptied it. Thereupon, feeling that he could

not possibly eat with those implacable eyes crushing him, he pushed his

plate away. This angry gesture acted on La Teuse like a whip stroke,

rousing her from her obstinate stiffness. She fairly jumped.

‘Ah! that’s how it is!’ she exclaimed. ‘There you are again, losing your

temper! Very well, I am off; you can pay my fare, so that I may go back

home. I have had enough of Les Artaud, and your church, and everything

else!’

She took off her apron with trembling hands.

‘You must have seen that I didn’t wish to say anything to you. A nice

life, indeed! Only mountebanks do such things, Monsieur le Curé! This

is eleven o’clock, ain’t it! Aren’t you ashamed of sitting at table when

it’s almost two o’clock? It’s not like a Christian, no, it is not like a

Christian!’

And, taking her stand before him, she went on: ‘Well, where do you come

from? whom have you seen? what business can have kept you? If only you

were a child you would have the whip. It isn’t the place for a priest to

be, on the roads in the blazing sun like a tramp without a roof to put

over his head. A fine state you are in, with your shoes all white and

your cassock smothered in dust! Who will brush your cassock for you?

Who will buy you another one? Speak out, will you; tell me what you have

been doing! My word! if everybody didn’t know you, they would end by

thinking queer things about you. And shall I tell you? Why, I won’t say

but what you may have been up to something wrong. When folks lunch at

such hours they are capable of anything!’

Abbé Mouret let the storm blow over him. At the old servant’s wrathful

words he experienced a kind of relief.

‘Come, my good Teuse,’ he said, ‘you will first put your apron on

again.’

‘No, no,’ she cried, ‘it’s all over, I am going.’

But he got up and, laughing, tied her apron round her waist. She

struggled against him and stuttered: ‘I tell you no! You are a wheedler.

I can see through your game, I see you want to come it over me with your

honeyed words. Where did you go? We’ll see afterwards.’

He gaily sat down to table again like a man who has gained a victory.

‘First, I must be allowed to eat. I am dying with hunger,’ said he.

‘No doubt,’ she murmured, her pity moved. ‘Is there any common sense

in it? Would you like me to fry you a couple of eggs? It would not take

long. Well, if you have enough. But everything is cold! And I had taken

such pains with your aubergines! Nice they are now! They look like old

shoe-leather. Luckily you haven’t got a tender tooth like poor Monsieur

Caffin. Yes, you have some good points, I don’t deny it.’

Thus chattering, she waited on him with all a mother’s care. After he

had finished she ran to the kitchen to see if the coffee was still warm.

She frisked about and limped most outrageously in her delight at having

made things up with him. As a rule Abbé Mouret fought shy of coffee,

which always upset his nervous system; but on this occasion, to ratify

the conclusion of peace, he took the cup she brought him. And as he

lingered at table she sat down opposite him and repeated gently, like a

woman tortured by curiosity:

‘Where have you been, Monsieur le Curé?’

‘Well,’ he answered with a smile, ‘I have seen the Brichets, I have

spoken to Bambousse.’

Thereupon he had to relate to her what the Brichets had said, what

Bambousse had decided, and how they looked, and where they were at work.

When he repeated to her the answer of Rosalie’s father, ‘Of course!’ she

exclaimed, ‘if the child should die her mishap would go for nothing.’

And clasping her hands with a look of envious admiration she added, ‘How

you must have chattered, your reverence! More than half the day spent

to obtain such a fine result! You took it easy coming home? It must have

been very hot on the road?’

The Abbé, who by this time had risen, made no answer. He had been on

the point of speaking about the Paradou, and asking for some information

concerning it. But a fear of being flooded with eager questions, and a

kind of vague unavowed shame, made him keep silence respecting his visit

to Jeanbernat. He cut all further questions short by asking:

‘Where is my sister? I don’t hear her.’

‘Come along, sir,’ said La Teuse, beginning to laugh, and raising her

finger to her lips.

They went into the next room, a country drawing-room, hung with faded

wall-paper showing large grey flowers, and furnished with four armchairs

and a sofa, covered with horse-hair. On the sofa now slept Desirée,

stretched out at full length, with her head resting on her clenched

hands. The pronounced curve of her bosom was raised somewhat by her

upstretched arms, bare to the elbows. She was breathing somewhat

heavily, her red lips parted, and thus showing her teeth.

‘Lord! isn’t she sleeping sound!’ whispered La Teuse. ‘She didn’t even

hear you pitching into me just now. Well, she must be precious tired.

Just fancy, she was cleaning up her yard till nearly noon. And when she

had eaten something, she came and dropped down there like a shot. She

has not stirred since.’

For a moment the priest gazed lovingly at her. ‘We must let her have as

much rest as she wants,’ he said.

‘Of course. Isn’t it a pity she’s such an innocent? Just look at those

big arms! Whenever I dress her I always think what a fine woman she

would have made. Ay, she would have brought you some splendid

nephews, sir. Don’t you think she is like that stone lady in Plassans

corn-market?’

She spoke thus of a Cybele stretched upon sheaves of wheat, the work

of one of Puget’s pupils, which was carved on the frontal of the market

building. Without replying, however, Abbé Mouret gently pushed her out

of the room, and begged her to make as little noise as possible. Till

evening, therefore, perfect silence settled on the parsonage. La Teuse

finished her washing in the shed. The priest, seated at the bottom of

the little garden, his breviary fallen on his lap, remained absorbed

in pious thoughts, while all around him rosy petals rained from the

blossoming peach-trees.

XI

About six o’clock there came a sudden wakening. A noise of doors opening

and closing, accompanied by bursts of laughter, shook the whole house.

Desirée appeared, her hair all down and her arms still half bare.

‘Serge! Serge!’ she called.

And catching sight of her brother in the garden, she ran up to him and

sat down for a minute on the ground at his feet, begging him to follow

her:

‘Do come and see the animals! You haven’t seen the animals yet, have

you? If you only knew how beautiful they are now!’

She had to beg very hard, for the yard rather scared him. But when he

saw tears in Desirée’s eyes, he yielded. She threw herself on his neck

in a sudden puppy-like burst of glee, laughing more than ever, without

attempting to dry her cheeks.

‘Oh! how nice you are!’ she stammered, as she dragged him off. ‘You

shall see the hens, the rabbits, the pigeons, and my ducks which have

got fresh water, and my goat, whose room is as clean as mine now. I have

three geese and two turkeys, you know. Come quick. You shall see all.’

Desirée was then twenty-two years old. Reared in the country by her

nurse, a peasant woman of Saint-Eutrope, she had grown up anyhow. Her

brain void of all serious thoughts, she had thriven on the fat soil

and open air of the country, developing physically but never mentally,

growing into a lovely animal--white, with rosy blood and firm skin. She

was not unlike a high-bred donkey endowed with the power of laughter.

Although she dabbled about from morning till night, her delicate hands

and feet, the supple outlines of her hips, the bourgeois refinement of

her maiden form remained unimpaired; so that she was in truth a creature

apart--neither lady nor peasant--but a girl nourished by the soil, with

the broad shoulders and narrow brow of a youthful goddess.

Doubtless it was by reason of her weak intellect that she was drawn

towards animals. She was never happy save with them; she understood

their language far better than that of mankind, and looked after them

with motherly affection. Her reasoning powers were deficient, but

in lieu thereof she had an instinct which put her on a footing of

intelligence with them. At their very first cry of pain she knew what

ailed them; she would choose dainties upon which they would pounce

greedily. A single gesture from her quelled their squabbles. She seemed

to know their good or their evil character at a glance; and related

such long tales about the tiniest chick, with such an abundance and

minuteness of detail, as to astound those to whom one chicken was

exactly like any other. Her farmyard had thus become a country, as it

were, over which she reigned; a country complex in its organisation,

disturbed by rebellions, peopled by the most diverse creatures whose

records were known to her alone. So accurate was her instinct that she

detected the unfertile eggs in a sitting, and foretold the number of a

litter of rabbits.