She pried into all the gloomy corners with an inquisitive glance, and

even stepped up to the confessional-box, as though she had expected

to surprise some one hiding there. Then she came back to Serge,

disappointed, and continued:

‘So you are quite alone? Have you been asleep? What amusement do you

find in shutting yourself up all alone in the dark? Come along; it is

time we went to dinner.’

The Abbé drew his feverish hands across his brow to wipe away the traces

of the thoughts which he feared were plain for all the world to read. He

fumbled mechanically at the buttons of his cassock, which seemed to him

all disarranged. Then he followed his sister with stern-set face and

never a sign of emotion, stiffened by that priestly energy which throws

the dignity of sacerdotalism like a veil over the agonies of the flesh.

Desirée did not even suspect that there was anything the matter with

him. She simply said as they entered the dining-room:

‘I have had such a good sleep; but you have been talking too much, and

have made yourself quite pale.’

In the evening, after dinner, Brother Archangias came in to have his

game of cards with La Teuse. He was in a very merry mood that night;

and, when the Brother was merry, it was his habit to prod La Teuse

in the sides with his big fists, an attention which she returned by

heartily boxing his ears. This skirmishing made them both laugh, with a

laughter that shook the very ceiling. The Brother, too, when he was in

these gay humours, would devise all kinds of pranks. He would try to

smash plates with his nose, and would offer to wager that he could break

through the dining-room door in battering-ram fashion. He would also

empty the snuff out of his box into the old servant’s coffee, or would

thrust a handful of pebbles down her neck. The merest trifle would give

rise to these noisy outbursts of gaiety in the very midst of his wonted

surliness. Some little incident, at which nobody else laughed, often

sufficed to throw him into a state of wild hilarity, make him stamp his

feet, twirl himself round like a top, and hold in his splitting sides.

‘What is it that makes you so gay to-night?’ La Teuse inquired.

He made no reply, bestriding a chair and galloping round the table on

it.

‘Well! well! go on making a baby of yourself!’ said the old woman; ‘and,

my gracious, what a big baby you are! If the Lord is looking at you, He

must be very well pleased with you!’

The Brother had just slipped off the chair and was lying on the floor,

with his legs in the air.

‘He does see me, and is pleased to see me as I am. It is His wish that I

should be gay. When He wishes me to be merry for a time, He rings a bell

in my body, and then I begin to roll about; and all Paradise smiles as

it watches me.’

He dragged himself on his back to the wall, and then, supporting himself

on the nape of his neck, he hoisted up his body as high as he could and

began drumming on the wall with his heels. His cassock slipped down and

exposed to view his black breeches, which were patched at the knees with

green cloth.

‘Look, Monsieur le Curé,’ he said, ‘you see how high I can reach with

my heels. I dare bet that you couldn’t do as much. Come! look amused and

laugh a little. It is better to drag oneself along on one’s back than to

think about a hussy as you are always doing. You know what I mean. For

my part, when I take to scratching myself I imagine myself to be God’s

dog, and that’s what makes me say that all Paradise looks out of the

windows to smile at me. You might just as well laugh too, Monsieur le

Curé. It’s all done for the saints and you. See! here’s a turn-over for

Saint Joseph; here’s another for Saint Michael, and another for Saint

John, and another for Saint Mark, and another for Saint Matthew----’

So he went on, enumerating a whole string of saints, and turning

somersaults all round the room.

Abbé Mouret, who had been sitting in perfect silence, with his hands

resting on the edge of the table, was at last constrained to smile. As

a rule, the Brother’s sportiveness only disquieted him. La Teuse, as

Archangias rolled within her reach, kicked at him with her foot.

‘Come!’ she said, ‘are we to have our game to-night?’

His only reply was a grunt. Then, upon all fours, he sprang towards La

Teuse as if he meant to bite her. But in lieu thereof he spat upon her

petticoats.

‘Let me alone! will you?’ she cried. ‘What are you up to now? I begin

to think you have gone crazy. What it is that amuses you so much I can’t

conceive.’

‘What makes me gay is my own affair,’ he replied, rising to his feet and

shaking himself. ‘It is not necessary to explain it to you, La Teuse.

However, as you want a game of cards, let us have it.’

Then the game began. It was a terrible struggle. The Brother hurled

his cards upon the table. Whenever he cried out the windows shook

sonorously. La Teuse at last seemed to be winning. She had secured three

aces for some time already, and was casting longing eyes at the fourth.

But Brother Archangias began to indulge in fresh outbursts of gaiety.

He pushed up the table, at the risk of breaking the lamp. He cheated

outrageously, and defended himself by means of the most abominable

lies, ‘Just for a joke,’ said he. Then he suddenly began to sing the

‘Vespers,’ beating time on the palm of his left hand with his cards.

When his gaiety reached a climax, and he could find no adequate means

of expressing it, he always took to chanting the ‘Vespers,’ which he

repeated for hours at a time. La Teuse, who well knew his habits, cried

out to him, amidst the bellowing with which he shook the room:

‘Make a little less noise, do! It is quite distracting. You are much too

lively to-night.’

But he set to work on the ‘Complines.’ Abbé Mouret had now seated

himself by the window. He appeared to pay no attention to what went on

around him, apparently neither hearing nor seeing anything of it. At

dinner he had eaten with his ordinary appetite and had even managed to

reply to Desirée’s everlasting rattle of questions. But now he had given

up the struggle, his strength at an end, racked, exhausted as he was

by the internal tempest that still raged within him. He even lacked the

courage to rise from his seat and go upstairs to his own room. Moreover,

he was afraid that if he turned his face towards the lamplight, the

tears, which he could no longer keep from his eyes, would be noticed. So

he pressed his face close to the window and gazed out into the darkness,

growing gradually more drowsy, sinking into a kind of nightmare stupor.

Brother Archangias, still busy at his psalm-singing, winked and nodded

in the direction of the dozing priest.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked La Teuse.

The Brother replied by a yet more significant wink.

‘Well, what do you mean? Can’t you speak? Ah! there’s a king. That’s

capital!--so I take your queen.’

The Brother laid down his cards, bent over the table, and whispered

close to La Teuse’s face: ‘That hussy has been here.’

‘I know that well enough,’ answered La Teuse. ‘I saw her go with

mademoiselle into the poultry-yard.’

At this he gave her a terrible look, and shook his fist in her face.

‘You saw her, and you let her come in! You ought to have called me, and

we would have hung her up by the feet to a nail in your kitchen.’

But at this the old woman lost her temper, and, lowering her voice

solely in order that she might not awaken Abbé Mouret, she replied:

‘Don’t you go talking about hanging people up in my kitchen! I certainly

saw her, and I even kept my back turned when she went to join his

reverence in the church when the catechising was over. But all that

was no business of mine. I had my cooking to attend to! As for the girl

herself, I detest her. But if his reverence wishes to see her--why, she

is welcome to come whenever she pleases. I’d let her in myself!’

‘If you were to do that, La Teuse,’ retorted the Brother ragefully, ‘I

would strangle you, that I would.’

But she laughed at him.

‘Don’t talk any of your nonsense to me, my man! Don’t you know that it

is forbidden you to lay your hands upon a woman, just as it’s forbidden

for a donkey to have anything to do with the _Pater Noster_? Just you

try to strangle me and you’ll see what I’ll do! But do be quiet now, and

let us finish the game. See, here’s another king.’

But the Brother, holding up a card, went on growling:

‘She must have come by some road that the devil alone knows for me to

have missed her to-day. Every afternoon I go and keep guard up yonder

by the Paradou. If ever I find them together again, I will acquaint

the hussy with a stout dogwood stick which I have cut expressly for her

benefit. And I shall keep a watch in the church as well now.’

He played his card, which La Teuse took with a knave. Then he threw

himself back in his chair and again burst into one of his loud laughs.

He did not seem to be able to work himself up into a genuine rage that

evening.

‘Well, well,’ he grumbled, ‘never mind, even if she did see him, she had

a smacking fall on her nose. I’ll tell you all about it, La Teuse. It

was raining, you know. I was standing by the school-door when I caught

sight of her coming down from the church. She was walking along quite

straight and upright, in her stuck-up fashion, in spite of the pouring

rain. But when she got into the road, she tumbled down full length, no

doubt because the ground was so slippery. Oh! how I did laugh! How I did

laugh! I clapped my hands, too. When she picked herself up again, I saw

she was bleeding at the wrist. I shall feel happy over it for a week.

I cannot think of her lying there on the ground without feeling the

greatest delight.’

Then, turning his attention to the game, he puffed out his cheeks and

began to chant the _De profundis_. When he had got to the end of it, he

began it all over again. The game came to a conclusion in the midst of

this dirge. It was he who was beaten, but his defeat did not seem to vex

him in the least.

When La Teuse had locked the door behind him, after first awakening Abbé

Mouret, his voice could still be heard, as he went his way through

the black night, singing the last verse of the psalm, _Et ipse redimet

Israel ex omnibus iniquitatibus ejus_, with extraordinary jubilation.

XI

That night Abbé Mouret slept very heavily. When he opened his eyes in

the morning, later than usual, his face and hands were wet with tears.

He had been weeping all through the night while he slept. He did not say

his mass that day. In spite of his long rest, he had not recovered from

his excessive weariness of the previous evening, and he remained in

his bedroom till noon, sitting in a chair at the foot of his bed. The

condition of stupor into which he more and more deeply sank, took all

sensation of suffering away from him. He was conscious only of a great

void and blank as he sat there overpowered and benumbed. Even to

read his breviary cost him a great effort. Its Latin seemed to him a

barbarous language, which he would never again be able to pronounce.

Having tossed the book upon his bed he gazed for hours through his open

window at the surrounding country. In the far distance he saw the long

wall of the Paradou, creeping like a thin white line amongst the gloomy

patches of the pine plantations to the crest of the hills. On the left,

hidden by one of those plantations, was the breach. He could not see it,

but he knew it was there. He remembered every bit of bramble scattered

among the stones. On the previous night he would not have thus dared to

gaze upon that dreaded scene. But now with impunity he allowed himself

to trace the whole line of the wall, as it emerged again and again

from the clumps of verdure which here and there concealed it. His

blood pulsed none the faster for this scrutiny. Temptation, as though

disdaining his present weakness, left him free from attack. Forsaken by

the Divine grace, he was incapable of entering upon any struggle, the

thought of sin could no longer even impassion him; it was sheer stupor

alone that now rendered him willing to accept that which he had the day

before so strenuously refused.

At one moment he caught himself talking aloud and saying that, since

the breach in the wall was still open, he would go and join Albine at

sunset. This decision brought him a slight feeling of worry, but he did

not think that he could do otherwise. She was expecting him to go,

and she was his wife. When he tried to picture her face, he could only

imagine her as very pale and a long way off. Then he felt a little

uneasy as to their future manner of life together. It would be difficult

for them to remain in the neighbourhood; they would have to go away

somewhere, without any one knowing anything about it. And then, when

they had managed to conceal themselves, they would need a deal of money

in order to live happily and comfortably. He tried a score of times to

hit upon some scheme by which they could get away and live together like

happy lovers, but he could devise nothing satisfactory. Now that he was

no longer wild with passion, the practical side of the situation

alarmed him. He found himself, in all his weakness, face to face with a

complicated problem with which he was incompetent to grapple.

Where could they get horses for their escape? And if they went away

on foot, would they not be stopped and detained as vagabonds? Was he

capable of securing any employment by which he could earn bread for his

wife? He had never been taught any kind of trade. He was quite ignorant

of actual life. He ransacked his memory, and he could remember nothing

but strings of prayers, details of ceremonies, and pages of Bouvier’s

‘Instruction Theologique,’ which he had learned by heart at the

seminary. He worried too over matters of no real concern. He asked

himself whether he would dare to give his arm to his wife in the street.

He certainly could not walk with a woman clinging to his arm. He would

surely appear so strange and awkward that every one would turn round

to stare at him. They would guess that he was a priest and would insult

Albine. It would be vain for him to try to obliterate the traces of

his priesthood. He would always wear that mournful pallor and carry the

odour of incense about with him. And what if he should have children

some day? As this thought suddenly occurred to him, he quite started. He

felt a strange repugnance at the very idea. He felt sure that he should

not care for any children that might be born to him. Suppose there were

two of them, a little boy and a little girl. He could never let them get

on his knees; it would distress him to feel their hands clutching at his

clothes. The thought of the little girl troubled him the most; he

could already see womanly tenderness shining in the depths of her big,

childish eyes. No! no! he would have no children.

Nevertheless he resolved that he would flee with Albine that evening.

But when the evening came, he felt too weary. So he deferred his flight

till the next morning. And the next morning he made a fresh pretext

for delay. He could not leave his sister alone with La Teuse. He would

prepare a letter, directing that she should be taken to her uncle

Pascal’s. For three days he was ever on the point of writing that

letter, and the paper and pen and ink were lying ready on the table

in his room. Then, on the third day, he went off, leaving the letter

unwritten. He took up his hat quite suddenly and set off for the

Paradou in a state of mingled stupor and resignation, as though he were

unwillingly performing some compulsory task which he saw no means of

avoiding. Albine’s image was now effaced from his memory; he no longer

beheld her, but he was driven on by old resolves whose lingering

influence, though they themselves were dead, still worked upon him in

his silence and loneliness.

He took no pains to escape notice when he set foot out of doors. He

stopped at the end of the village to talk for a moment to Rosalie. She

told him that her baby was suffering from convulsions; but she laughed,

as she spoke, with the laugh that was natural to her. Then he struck

out through the rocks, and walked straight on towards the breach in the

wall. By force of habit he had brought his breviary with him. Finding

the way long, he opened the book and read the regulation prayers. When

he put it back again under his arm, he had forgotten the Paradou. He

went on walking steadily, thinking about a new chasuble that he wished

to purchase to replace the old gold-broidered one, which was certainly

falling into shreds. For some time past he had been saving up

twenty-sous pieces, and he calculated that by the end of seven months

he would have got the necessary amount of money together. He had reached

the hills when the song of a peasant in the distance reminded him of

a canticle which had been familiar to him at the seminary. He tried to

recall the first lines of it, but his recollection failed him. It vexed

him to find that his memory was so poor. And when, at last, he succeeded

in remembering the words, he found a soothing pleasure in humming the

verses, which came back to his mind one by one. It was a hymn of homage

to Mary. He smiled as though some soft breath from the days of his

childhood were playing upon his face. Ah! how happy he had then been!

Why shouldn’t he be as happy again? He had not grown any bigger, he

wanted nothing more than the same old happiness, unruffled peace, a nook

in the chapel, where his knees marked his place, a life of seclusion,

enlivened by the delightful puerilities of childhood. Little by little

he raised his voice, singing the canticle in flutelike tones, when he

suddenly became aware of the breach immediately in front of him.

For a moment he seemed surprised. Then, the smile dying from his face,

he murmured quietly:

‘Albine must be expecting me. The sun is already setting.’

But just as he was about to push some stones aside to make himself a

passage, he was startled by a snore. He sprang down again: he had only

just missed setting his foot upon the very face of Brother Archangias,

who was lying on the ground there sleeping soundly. Slumber had

overtaken him while he kept guard over the entrance to the Paradou. He

barred the approach to it, lying at full length before its threshold,

with arms and legs spread out. His right hand, thrown back behind his

head, still clutched his dogwood staff, which he seemed to brandish like

a fiery sword. And he snored loudly in the midst of the brambles, his

face exposed to the sun, without a quiver on his tanned skin. A swarm of

big flies was hovering over his open mouth.

Abbé Mouret looked at him for a moment. He envied the slumber of that

dust-wallowing saint. He wished to drive the flies away, but they

persistently returned, and clung around the purple lips of the Brother,

who was quite unconscious of their presence. Then the Abbé strode over

his big body and entered the Paradou.

XII

Albine was seated on a patch of grass a few paces away from the wall.

She sprang up as she caught sight of Serge.

‘Ah! you have come!’ she cried, trembling from head to foot.

‘Yes,’ he answered calmly, ‘I have come.’

She flung herself upon his neck, but she did not kiss him. To her bare

arms the beads of his neckband seemed very cold. She scrutinised him,

already feeling uneasy, and resuming:

‘What is the matter with you? Why don’t you kiss my cheeks as you used

to do? Oh! if you are ill, I will cure you once again. Now that you

are here, all our old happiness will return. There will be no more

wretchedness.... See! I am smiling. You must smile, too, Serge.’

But his face remained grave.

‘I have been troubled, too,’ she went on. ‘I am still quite pale, am I

not? For a whole week I have been living on that patch of grass, where

you found me. I wanted one thing only, to see you coming back through

the breach in the wall. At every sound I sprang up and rushed to meet

you. But, alas! it was not you I heard. It was only the leaves rustling

in the wind. But I was sure that you would come. I should have waited

for you for years.’

Then she asked him:

‘Do you still love me?’

‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘I love you still.’

They stood looking at each other, feeling rather ill at ease. And deep

silence fell between them. Serge, who evinced perfect calmness, did not

attempt to break it. Albine twice opened her mouth to speak, but closed

it immediately, surprised at the words that rose to her lips. She could

summon up nothing but expressions tinged with bitterness. She felt tears

welling into her eyes. What could be the matter with her that she did

not feel happy now that her love had come back?

‘Listen to me,’ she said at last. ‘We must not stay here. It is that

hole that freezes us! Let us go back to our old home. Give me your

hand.’

They plunged into the depths of the Paradou. Autumn was fast

approaching, and the trees seemed anxious as they stood there with their

yellowing crests from which the leaves were falling one by one. The

paths were already littered with dead foliage soaked with moisture,

which gave out a sound as of sighing beneath one’s tread. And away

beyond the lawns misty vapour ascended, throwing a mourning veil over

the blue distance. And the whole garden was wrapped in silence, broken

only by some sorrowful moans that sounded quiveringly.

Serge began to shiver beneath the avenue of tall trees, along which they

were walking.

‘How cold it is here!’ said he in an undertone.

‘You are cold indeed,’ murmured Albine, sadly. ‘My hand is no longer

able to warm you. Shall I wrap you round with part of my dress? Come,

all our love will now be born afresh.’

She led him to the parterre, the flower-garden. The great thicket-like

rosary was still fragrant with perfume, but there was a tinge of

bitterness in the scent of the surviving blossoms, and their foliage,

which had expanded in wild profusion, lay strewn upon the ground. Serge

displayed such unwillingness to enter the tangled jungle, that they

lingered on its borders, trying to detect in the distance the paths

along which they had passed in the spring-time. Albine recollected

every little nook. She pointed to the grotto where the marble woman lay

sleeping; to the hanging screens of honeysuckle and clematis; the fields

of violets; the fountain that spurted out crimson carnations; the steps

down which flowed golden gilliflowers; the ruined colonnade, in the

midst of which the lilies were rearing a snowy pavilion. It was

there that they had been born again beneath the sunlight. And she

recapitulated every detail of that first day together, how they had

walked, and how fragrant had been the air beneath the cool shade. Serge

seemed to be listening, but he suddenly asked a question which showed

that he had not understood her. The slight shiver which made his face

turn pale never left him.

Then she led him towards the orchard, but they could not reach it. The

stream was too much swollen. Serge no longer thought of taking Albine

upon his back and lightly bounding across with her to the other side.

Yet there the apple-trees and the pear-trees were still laden with

fruit, and the vines, now with scantier foliage, bent beneath the weight

of their gleaming clusters, each grape freckled by the sun’s caress.

Ah! how they had gambolled beneath the appetising shade of those ancient

trees! What merry children had they then been! Albine smiled as she

thought of how she had clambered up into the cherry-tree that had broken

down beneath her. He, Serge, must at least remember what a quantity of

plums they had eaten. He only answered by a nod. He already seemed quite

weary. The orchard, with its green depths and chaos of mossy trunks,

disquieted him and suggested to his mind some dark, dank spot, teeming

with snakes and nettles.

Then she led him to the meadow-lands, where he had to take a few steps

amongst the grass. It reached to his shoulders now, and seemed to him

like a swarm of clinging arms that tried to bind his limbs and pull him

down and drown him beneath an endless sea of greenery. He begged Albine

to go no further. She was walking on in front, and at first she did not

stop; but when she saw how distressed he appeared, she halted and

came back and stood beside him. She also was growing gradually more

low-spirited, and at last she shuddered like himself. Still she went on

talking. With a sweeping gesture she pointed out to him the streams,

the rows of willows, the grassy expanse stretching far away towards

the horizon. All that had formerly been theirs. For whole days they had

lived there. Over yonder, between those three willows by the water’s

edge, they had played at being lovers. And they would then have been

delighted if the grass had been taller than themselves so that they

might have lost themselves in its depths, and have been the more

secluded, like larks nesting at the bottom of a field of corn. Why,

then, did he tremble so to-day, when the tip of his foot just sank into

the grass?

Then she led him to the forest. But the huge trees seemed to inspire

Serge with still greater dread. He did not know them again, so sternly

solemn seemed their bare black trunks. Here, more than anywhere else,

amidst those austere columns, through which the light now freely

streamed, the past seemed quite dead. The first rains had washed the

traces of their footsteps from the sandy paths, the winds had swept

every other lingering memorial into the underbrush. But Albine, with

grief at her throat, shot out a protesting glance. She could still

plainly see their lightest footprints on the sandy gravel, and, as they

passed each bush, the warmth with which they had once brushed against it

surged to her cheeks. With eyes full of soft entreaty, she still strove

to awaken Serge’s memory. It was along that path that they had walked

in silence, full of emotion, but as yet not daring to confess that they

loved one another. It was in that clearing that they had lingered one

evening till very late watching the stars, which had rained upon

them like golden drops of warmth. Farther, beneath that oak they had

exchanged their first kiss. Its fragrance still clung to the tree, and

the very moss still remembered it. It was false to say that the forest

had become voiceless and bare.

Serge, however, turned away his head, that he might escape the gaze of

Albine’s eyes, which oppressed him.

Then she led him to the great rocks. There, perhaps, he would no longer

shudder with that appearance of debility which so distressed her. At

that hour the rocks were still warm with the red glow of the setting

sun. They still wore an aspect of tragic passion, with their hot ledges

of stone whereon the fleshy plants writhed monstrously. Without speaking

a word, without even turning her head, Albine led Serge up the rough

ascent, wishing to take him ever higher and higher, far up beyond the

springs, till they should emerge into the full light on the summit. They

would there see the cedar, beneath whose shade they had first felt

the thrill of desire, and there amidst the glowing stones they would

assuredly find passion once more. But Serge soon began to stumble

pitiably. He could walk no further. He fell a first time on his knees.

Albine, by a mighty effort, raised him and for a moment carried him

along, but afterwards he fell again, and remained, quite overcome, on

the ground. In front of him, beneath him, spread the vast Paradou.

‘You have lied!’ cried Albine. ‘You love me no longer!’

She burst into tears as she stood there by his side, feeling that she

could not carry him any higher. There was no sign of anger in her

now. She was simply weeping over their dying love. Serge lay dazed and

stupefied.

‘The garden is all dead. I feel so very cold,’ he murmured. But she took

his head between her hands, and showed him the Paradou.

‘Look at it! Ah! it is your eyes that are dead; your ears and your limbs

and your whole body. You have passed by all the scenes of our happiness

without seeing them or hearing them or feeling their presence. You have

done nothing but slip and stumble, and now you have fallen down here in

sheer weariness and boredom.... You love me no more.’

He protested, but in a gentle, quiet fashion. Then, for the first time,

she spoke out passionately.

‘Be quiet! As if the garden could ever die! It will sleep for the

winter, but it will wake up again in May, and will restore to us all

the love we have entrusted to its keeping. Our kisses will blossom again

amongst the flower-beds, and our vows will bud again with the trees and

plants. If you could only see it and understand it, you would know that

it throbs with even deeper passion, and loves even more absorbingly at

this autumn-time, when it falls asleep in its fruitfulness.... But you

love me no more, and so you can no longer understand.’

He raised his eyes to her as if begging her not to be angry. His face

was pinched and pale with an expression of childish fear. The sound of

her voice made him tremble. He ended by persuading her to rest a little

while by his side. They could talk quietly and discuss matters. Then,

with the Paradou spreading out in front of them, they began to speak of

their love, but without even touching one another’s fingers.

‘I love you; indeed I love you,’ said Serge, in his calm, quiet voice.

‘If I did not love you, I should not be here: I should not have come.

I am very weary, it is true. I don’t know why. I thought I should find

that pleasant warmth again, of which the mere memory was so delightful.

But I am cold, the garden seems quite black. I cannot see anything of

what I left here. But it is not my fault. I am trying hard to be as you

would wish me and to please you.’

‘You love me no longer!’ Albine repeated once more.

‘Yes, I do love you. I suffered grievously the other day after I had

driven you away.... Oh! I loved you with such passion that, had you come

back and thrown yourself in my arms, I should almost have crushed you

to death.... And for hours your image remained present before me. When

I shut my eyes, you gleamed out with all the brightness of the sun and

threw a flame around me.... Then I trampled down every obstacle, and

came here.’

He remained silent for a moment, as if in thought. Then he spoke again:

‘And now my arms feel as though they were broken. If I tried to clasp

you, I could not hold you; I should let you fall.... Wait till this

shudder has passed away. Give me your hands, and let me kiss them again.

Be gentle and do not look at me with such angry eyes. Help me to find my

heart again.’

He spoke with such genuine sadness, such evident longing to begin

the past anew, that Albine was touched. For a moment all her wonted

gentleness returned to her, and she questioned him anxiously:

‘What is the matter with you? What makes you so ill?’

‘I do not know. It is as though all my blood had left my veins. Just

now, as I was coming here, I felt as if some one had flung a robe of ice

around my shoulders, which turned me into stone from head to foot.... I

have felt it before, but where I don’t remember.’

She interrupted him with a kindly laugh.

‘You are a child. You have caught cold, that’s all. At any rate, it is

not I that you are afraid of, is it? We won’t stop in the garden during

the winter, like a couple of wild things. We will go wherever you like,

to some big town. We can love each other there, amongst all the people,

as quietly as amongst the trees. You will see that I can be something

else than a wilding, for ever bird’s-nesting and tramping about for

hours. When I was a little girl, I used to wear embroidered skirts and

fine stockings and laces and all kinds of finery. I dare say you never

heard of that.’

He was not listening to her. He suddenly gave vent to a little cry, and

said: ‘Ah! now I recollect!’

She asked him what he meant, but he would not answer her. He had just

remembered the feeling he had long ago experienced in the chapel of the

seminary. That was the icy robe enwrapping his shoulders and turning him

to stone. And then his life as a priest took complete possession of his

thoughts. The vague recollections which had haunted him as he walked

from Les Artaud to the Paradou became more and more distinct and assumed

complete mastery over him. While Albine talked on of the happy life that

they would lead together, he heard the tinkling of the sanctuary bell

that signalled the elevation of the Host, and he saw the monstrance

trace gleaming crosses over the heads of kneeling multitudes.

‘And for your sake,’ Albine was saying, ‘I will put on my broidered

skirts again.... I want you to be bright and gay. We will try to find

something to make you lively. Perhaps you will love me better when you

see me looking beautiful and prettily dressed, like a fine lady. I will

wear my comb properly and won’t let my hair fall wildly about my neck

any more. And I won’t roll my sleeves up over my elbows; I will fasten

my dress so as to hide my shoulders. I still know how to bow and how to

walk along quite properly. Yes, I will make you a nice little wife, as I

walk through the streets leaning on your arm.’

‘Did you ever go to church when you were a little girl?’ he asked her in

an undertone, as if, in spite of himself, he were continuing aloud the

reverie which prevented him from hearing her. ‘I could never pass a

church without entering it. As soon as the door closed silently

behind me, I felt as though I were in Paradise itself, with the angels

whispering stories of love in my ears and the saints caressing me with

their breath. Ah! I would have liked to live there for ever, in that

absorbing beatitude.’

She looked at him with steady eyes, a passing blaze kindling in her

loving glance. Nevertheless, submissive still, she answered:

‘I will do as you may fancy. I learned music once. I was quite a clever

young lady and was taught all the accomplishments. I will go back to

school and start music again. If there is any tune you would like to

hear me play, you will only have to tell me, and I will practise it for

months and months, so as to play it to you some evening in our own home

when we are by ourselves in some snug little room, with the curtains

closely drawn. And you will pay me with just one kiss, won’t you? A kiss

right on the lips, which will awaken all your love again!’

‘Yes, yes,’ he murmured, answering his own thoughts only; ‘my great

pleasure at first was to light the candles, prepare the cruets, and

carry the missal. Then, afterwards, I was filled with bliss at the

approach of God, and felt as though I could die of sheer love. Those are

my only recollections. I know of nothing else. When I raise my hand, it

is to give a benediction. When my lips protrude it is to kiss the altar.

If I look for my heart, I can no longer find it. I have offered it to

God, and He has taken it.’

Albine grew very pale and her eyes gleamed like fire. In a quivering

voice she resumed:

‘I should not like my little girl to leave me. You can send the boy to

college, if you wish, but the little girl must always keep with me. I

myself will teach her to read. Oh! I shall remember everything, and

if indeed there be anything that I find I have forgotten, I will have

masters to teach me.... Yes, we will keep our dear little ones always

about our knees. You will be happy so, won’t you? Speak to me; tell me

that you will then feel warm again, and will smile, and feel no regrets

for anything you have left behind.’

But Serge continued:

‘I have often thought of the stone-saints that have been censed in their

niches for centuries past. They must have become quite saturated with

incense; and I am like one of them. I have the fragrance of incense

in the inmost parts of my being. It is that embalmment that gives me

serenity, deathlike tranquillity of body, and the peace which I enjoy in

no longer living.... Ah! may nothing ever disturb my quiescence! May I

ever remain cold and rigid, with a ceaseless smile on my granite lips,

incapable of descending among men! That is my one, my only desire!’

At this Albine sprang to her feet, exasperated, threatening. She shook

Serge and cried:

‘What are you saying? What is it you are dreaming aloud? Am I not your

wife? Haven’t you come here to be my husband?’

He recoiled, trembling yet more violently.

‘No! Leave me! I am afraid!’ he faltered.

‘But our life together, our happiness, the children we shall have?’

‘No, no; I am afraid.’ And he broke out into a supreme cry: ‘I cannot! I

cannot!’

For a moment Albine remained silent, gazing at the unhappy man who lay

shivering at her feet. Her face flared. She opened her arms as if to

seize him and strain him to her breast with wild angry passion. But

another idea came to her, and she merely took him by the hand and raised

him to his feet.

‘Come!’ said she.

She led him away to that giant tree, to the very spot where their love

had reigned supreme. There was the same bliss-inspiring shade, there was

the same trunk as of yore, the same branches spreading far around, like

sheltering and protecting arms. The tree still towered aloft, kindly,

robust, powerful, and fertile. As on the day of their nuptials,

languorous warmth, the glimmer of a summer’s night fading on the bare

shoulder of some fair girl, a sob of love dying away into passionate

silence, lingered about the clearing as it lay there bathed in dim green

light. And, in the distance, the Paradou, in spite of the first

chills of autumn, sighed once more with passion, again becoming love’s

accomplice. From the parterre, from the orchard, from the meadow-lands,

from the forest, from the great rocks, from the spreading heavens,

came back a ripple of voluptuous joy. Never had the garden, even on the

warmest evenings of spring-time, shown such deep tenderness as now, on

this fair autumn evening, when the plants and trees seemed to be bidding

one another goodnight ere they sank to sleep. And the scent of ripened

germs wafted the intoxication of desire athwart the scanty leaves.

‘Do you hear? Do you hear?’ faltered Albine in Serge’s ear, when she had

let him slip upon the grass at the foot of the tree.

Serge was weeping.

‘You see that the Paradou is not dead,’ she added. ‘It is crying out

to us to love each other. It still desires our union. Oh, do remember!

Clasp me to your heart!’

Serge still wept.

Albine said nothing more. She flung her arms around him; she pressed her

warm lips to his corpse-like face; but tears were still his only answer.

Then, after a long silence, Albine spoke. She stood erect, full of

contempt and determination.

‘Away with you! Go!’ she said, in a low voice.

Serge rose with difficulty. He picked up his breviary, which had fallen

upon the grass. And he walked away.

‘Away with you! Go!’ repeated Albine, in louder tones, as she followed

and drove him before her.

Thus she urged him on from bush to bush till she had driven him back

to the breach in the wall, in the midst of the stern-looking trees.

And there, as she saw Serge hesitate, with lowered head she cried out

violently:

‘Away with you Go!’

And slowly she herself went back into the Paradou, without even turning

her head. Night was fast falling, and the garden was but a huge bier of

shadows.

XIII

Brother Archangias, aroused from his slumber, stood erect in the breach,

striking the stones with his stick and swearing abominably.

‘May the devil break their legs for them! May he drag them to hell by

their feet, with their noses trailing in their abomination!’

But when he saw Albine driving away the priest, he stopped for a moment

in surprise. Then he struck the stones yet more vigorously, and burst

into a roar of laughter.

‘Good-bye, you hussy! A pleasant journey to you! Go back to your mates

the wolves! A priest is no fit companion for such as you.’

Then, looking at Abbé Mouret, he growled:

‘I knew you were in there. I saw that the stones had been disturbed....

Listen to me, Monsieur le Curé. Your sin has made me your superior, and

God tells you, through my mouth, that hell has no torments severe enough

for a priest who lets himself succumb to the lusts of the flesh. If He

were to pardon you now, He would be too indulgent, it would be contrary

to His own justice.’

They slowly walked down the hill towards Les Artaud. The priest had

not opened his lips; but gradually he raised his head erect: he was no

longer trembling. As in the distance he caught sight of the Solitaire

looming blackly against the purplish sky, and the ruddy glow of the

tiles on the church, a faint smile came to his lips, while to his calm

eyes there rose an expression of perfect serenity.

Meantime the Brother was every now and then giving a vicious kick at the

stones that came in his way. Presently he turned to his companion:

‘Is it all over this time?’ he asked. ‘When I was your age I was

possessed too. A demon was ever gnawing at me. But, after a time, he

grew weary of it, and took himself off. Now that he has gone I live

quietly enough.... Oh! I knew very well that you would go. For three

weeks past I have been keeping watch upon you. I used to look into the

garden through the breach in the wall. I should have liked to cut the

trees down. I have often hurled stones at them; it was delightful to

break the branches. Tell me, now, is it so very nice to be there?’

He made Abbé Mouret stop in the middle of the road, and glared at him

with a terrible expression of jealousy. The thought of the priest’s

life in the Paradou tortured him. But the Abbé kept perfect silence, so

Archangias set off again, jeering as he went. Then, in a louder voice,

he said:

‘You see, when a priest behaves as you have done, he scandalises every

other priest. I myself felt sullied by your conduct. However, you

are now behaving more sensibly. There is no need for you to make any

confession. I know what has happened well enough. Heaven has broken your

back for you, as it has done for so many others. So much the better! So

much the better!’

He clapped his hands triumphantly. But Abbé Mouret, immersed in deep

reverie, with a smile spreading over his whole face, did not even hear

him. When the Brother quitted him at the parsonage door, he went round

and entered the church. It was grey and gloomy, as on that terrible

rainy evening when temptation had racked him so violently. And it still

remained poverty-stricken and meditative, bare of all that gleaming

gold and sighing passion that had seemed to him to sweep in from the

countryside. It preserved solemn silence. But a breath of mercy seemed

to fill it.

Kneeling before the great Christ and bursting into tears, which he let

flow down his cheeks as though they were so many blessings, the priest

murmured:

‘O God, it is not true that Thou art pitiless. I know it, I feel it:

Thou hast already pardoned me. I feel it in the outpouring of Thy grace,

which, for hours now, has been flowing through me in a sweet stream,

bringing me back, slowly but surely, perfect peace and spiritual health.

O God, it was at the very moment when I was about to forsake Thee that

Thou didst protect me most effectually. Thou didst hide Thyself from me,

the better to rescue me from evil. Thou didst allow my flesh to run its

course, that I might be convinced of its nothingness. And now, O God,

I see that Thou hast for ever marked me with Thy seal, that awful seal,

pregnant with blessings, which sets a man apart from other men, and

whose mark is so ineffaceable that, sooner or later, it makes itself

manifest even upon those who sin. Thou hast broken me with sin and

temptation. Thou hast ravaged me with Thy flames. Thou hast willed

that there should be nought left of me save ruins wherein Thou mightest

safely descend. I am an empty tabernacle wherein Thou may’st dwell.

Blessed art Thou, O God!’

He prostrated himself and continued stammering in the dust. The church

triumphed. It remained firm and unshaken over the priest’s head, with

its altars and its confessional, its pulpit, its crosses, and its holy

images. The world had ceased to exist. Temptation was extinguished like

a fire that was henceforth unnecessary for the Abbé’s purification. He

was entering into supernatural peace. And he raised this supreme cry:

‘To the exclusion of life and its creatures and of everything that be in

it, I belong to Thee, O God; to Thee, Thee alone, through all eternity!’

XIV

At that moment Albine was still wandering about the Paradou with all

the mute agony of a wounded animal. She had ceased to weep. Her face was

very white and a deep crease showed upon her brow. Why did she have to

suffer that deathlike agony? Of what fault had she been guilty, that

the garden no longer kept the promises it had held out to her since

her childhood’s days? She questioned herself as she walked along, never

heeding the avenues through which the gloom was slowly stealing. She

had always obeyed the voices of the trees. She could not remember having

injured a single flower. She had ever been the beloved daughter of the

greenery, hearkening to it submissively, yielding to it with full belief

in the happiness which it promised to her. And when, on that supreme

day, the Paradou had cried to her to cast herself beneath the

giant-tree, she had done so in compliance with its voice. If she then

had nothing to reproach herself with, it must be the garden which had

betrayed her; the garden which was torturing her for the mere sake of

seeing her suffer.

She halted and looked around her. The great gloomy masses of foliage

preserved deep silence. The paths were blocked with black walls of

darkness. The distant lawns were lulling to sleep the breezes that

kissed them. And she thrust out her hands with a gesture of hopelessness

and raised a cry of protest. It could not all end thus. But her voice

choked beneath the silent trees. Thrice did she implore the Paradou to

answer her, but never an explanation fell from its lofty branches, not

a leaf seemed to be moved with pity for her. Then she resumed her weary

wandering, and felt that she was entering into the fatal sternness of

winter. Now that she had ceased to rebelliously question the earth, she

caught sound of a gentle murmur speeding along the ground. It was the

farewell of the plants, wishing one another a happy death. To have drunk

in the sunshine for a whole season, to have lived ever blossoming,

to have breathed continual perfume, and then, at the first blast, to

depart, with the hope of springing up again elsewhere, was not that

sufficiently long and full a life which obstinate craving for further

existence would mar? Ah! how sweet death must be; how sweet to have an

endless night before one, wherein to dream of the short days of life and

to recall eternally its fugitive joys!

She stayed her steps once more; but she no longer protested as she stood

there amidst the deep stillness of the Paradou. She now believed that

she understood everything. The garden doubtless had death in store for

her as a supreme culminating happiness. It was to death that it had all

along been leading her in its tender fashion. After love, there could be

nought but death. And never had the garden loved her so much as it did

now; she had shown herself ungrateful in accusing it, for all the time

she had remained its best beloved child. The motionless boughs, the

paths blocked up with darkness, the lawns where the breezes fell asleep,

had only become mute in order that they might lure her on to taste the

joys of long silence. They wished her to be with them in their winter

rest, they dreamt of carrying her off, swathed in their dry leaves with

her eyes frozen like the waters of the springs, her limbs stiffened like

the bare branches, and her blood sleeping the sleep of the sap. And,

yes, she would live their life to the very end, and die their death.

Perhaps they had already willed that she should spring up next summer as

a rose in the flower-garden, or a pale willow in the meadow-lands, or a

tender birch in the forest. Yes, it was the great law of life; she was

about to die.

Then, for the last time, she resumed her walk through the Paradou in

quest of death. What fragrant plant might need her sweet-scented tresses

to increase the perfume of its leaves? What flower might wish the gift

of her satinlike skin, the snowy whiteness of her arms, the tender pink

of her bosom? To what weakly tree should she offer her young blood? She

would have liked to be of service to the weeds vegetating beside the

paths, to slay herself there so that from her flesh some huge greenery

might spring, lofty and sapful, laden with birds at May-time, and

passionately caressed by the sun. But for a long while the Paradou still

maintained silence as if it had not yet made up its mind to confide to

her in what last kiss it would spirit away her life. She had to wander

all over it again, seeking, pilgrim-like, for her favourite spots. Night

was now more swiftly approaching, and it seemed to her as if she were

being gradually sucked into the earth. She climbed to the great rocks

and questioned them, asking whether it was upon their stony beds that

she must breathe her last breath. She crossed the forest with lingering

steps, hoping that some oak would topple down and bury her beneath the

majesty of its fall. She skirted the streams that flowed through the

meadows, bending down at almost every step she took so as to peep into

the depths and see whether a couch had not been prepared for her amongst

the water lilies. But nowhere did Death call her; nowhere did he offer

her his cold hands. Yet, she was not mistaken. It was, indeed, the

Paradou that was about to teach her to die, as, indeed, it had taught

her to love. She again began to scour the bushes, more eagerly even than

on those warm mornings of the past when she had gone searching for love.

And, suddenly, just as she was reaching the parterre, she came upon

death, amidst all the evening fragrance. She ran forward, breaking out

into a rapturous laugh. She was to die amongst the flowers.

First she hastened to the thicket-like rosary. There, in the last

flickering of the gloaming, she searched the beds and gathered all the

roses that hung languishing at the approach of winter. She plucked them

from down below, quite heedless of their thorns; she plucked them in

front of her, with both hands; she plucked them from above, rising upon

tip-toes and pulling down the boughs. So eager was she, so desperate

was her haste, that she even broke the branches, she, who had ever shown

herself tender to the tiniest blades of grass. Soon her arms were full

of roses, she tottered beneath her burden of flowers. And having quite

stripped the rose trees, carrying away even the fallen petals, she

turned her steps to the pavilion; and when she had let her load of

blossoms slip upon the floor of the room with the blue ceiling, she

again went down to the garden.

This time she sought the violets. She made huge bunches of them,

which she pressed one by one against her breast. Then she sought the

carnations, plucking them all, even to the buds; massing them together

in big sheaves of white blossoms that suggested bowls of milk, and big

sheaves of the red ones, that seemed like bowls of blood. Then, too,

she sought the stocks, the patches of mirabilis, the heliotropes and

the lilies. She tore the last blossoming stocks off by the handful,

pitilessly crumpling their satin ruches; she devastated the beds of

mirabilis, whose flowers were scarcely opening to the evening air; she

mowed down the field of heliotropes, piling her harvest of blooms into

a heap; and she thrust bundles of lilies under her arms like handles

of reeds. When she was again laden with as much as she could carry,

she returned to the pavilion to cast the violets, the carnations, the

lilies, the stocks, the heliotrope, and the mirabilis by the side of

the roses. And then, without stopping to draw breath, she went down yet

again.

This time she repaired to that gloomy corner which seemed like the

graveyard of the flower-garden. A warm autumn had there brought on a

second crop of spring flowers. She raided the borders of tuberoses and

hyacinths; going down upon her knees, and gathering her harvest with

all a miser’s care, lest she should miss a single blossom. The tuberoses

seemed to her to be extremely precious flowers, which would distil drops

of gold and wealth and wondrous sweetness. The hyacinths, beaded with

pearly blooms, were like necklets, whose every pearl would pour forth

joys unknown to man. And although she almost buried herself beneath the

mass of tuberoses and hyacinths which she plucked, she next stripped a

field of poppies, and even found means to crop an expanse of marigolds

farther on. All these she heaped over the tuberoses and hyacinths, and

then ran back to the room with the blue ceiling, taking the greatest

care as she went that the breeze should not rob her of a single pistil.

And once more did she come downstairs.

But what was she to gather now? She had stripped the parterre bare. As

she rose upon the tips of her shoes in the dim gloom, she could only see

the garden lying there naked and dead, deprived of the tender eyes of

its roses, the crimson smile of its carnations, and the perfumed locks

of its heliotropes. Nevertheless, she could not return with empty arms.

So she laid hands upon the herbs and leafy plants. She crawled over the

ground, as though she would have carried off the very soil itself in

a clutch of supreme passion. She filled her skirt with a harvest of

aromatic plants, southernwood, mint, verbenas. She came across a border

of balm, and left not a leaf of it unplucked. She even broke off two big

fennels which she threw over her shoulders like a couple of trees. Had

she been able, she would have carried all the greenery of the garden

away with her between her teeth. When she reached the threshold of the

pavilion, she turned round and gave a last look at the Paradou. It was

quite dark now. The night had fully come and cast a black veil over

everything. Then for the last time she went up the stairs, never more to

step down them.

The spacious room was quickly decked. She had placed a lighted lamp upon

the table. She sorted out the flowers heaped upon the floor and arranged

them in big bunches, which she distributed about the room. First she

placed some lilies behind the lamp on the table, forming with them a

lofty lacelike screen which softened the light with its snowy purity.

Then she threw handfuls of carnations and stocks over the old sofa,

which was already strewn with red bouquets that had faded a century

ago, till all these were hidden, and the sofa looked like a huge bed of

stocks bristling with carnations. Next she placed the four armchairs in

front of the alcove. On the first one she piled marigolds, on the second

poppies, on the third mirabilis, and on the fourth heliotrope. The

chairs were completely buried in bloom, with nothing but the tips of

their arms visible. At last she thought of the bed. She pushed a little

table near the head of it, and reared thereon a huge pile of violets.

Then she covered the whole bed with the hyacinths and tuberoses she

had plucked. They were so abundant that they formed a thick couch

overflowing all around, so that the bed now looked like one colossal

bloom.

The roses still remained. And these she scattered chancewise all over

the room, without even looking to see where they fell. Some of them

dropped upon the table, the sofa, and the chairs; and a corner of the

bed was inundated with them. For some minutes there was a rain of roses,

a real downpour of heavy blossoms, which settled in flowery pools in the

hollows of the floor. But as the heap seemed scarcely diminished, she

finished by weaving garlands of roses which she hung upon the walls.

She twined wreaths around the necks and arms and waists of the plaster

cupids that sported over the alcove. The blue ceiling, the oval panels,

edged with flesh-coloured ribbon, the voluptuous paintings, preyed upon

by time, were all hung with a mantle, a drapery of roses. The big room

was fully decked at last. Now she could die there.

For a moment she remained standing, glancing around her. She was looking

to see if death was there. And she gathered up the aromatic greenery,

the southernwood, the mint, the verbenas, the balm, and the fennel. She

broke them and twisted them and made wedges of them with which to stop

up every little chink and cranny about the windows and the door. Then

she drew the white coarsely sewn calico curtains and, without even a

sigh, laid herself upon the bed, on all the florescence of hyacinths and

tuberoses.

And then a final rapture was granted her. With her eyes wide open she

smiled at the room. Ah! how she had loved there! And how happily she was

there going to die! At that supreme moment the plaster cupids suggested

nothing impure to her; the amorous paintings disturbed her no more. She

was conscious of nothing beneath that blue ceiling save the intoxicating

perfume of the flowers. And it seemed to her as if this perfume was none

other than the old love-fragrance which had always warmed the room, now

increased a hundredfold, till it had become so strong and penetrating

that it would surely suffocate her. Perchance it was the breath of the

lady who had died there a century ago. In perfect stillness, with her

hands clasped over her heart, she continued smiling, while she listened

to the whispers of the perfumes in her buzzing head. They were singing

to her a soft strange melody of fragrance, which slowly and very gently

lulled her to sleep.

At first there was a prelude, bright and childlike; her hands, that had

just now twisted and twined the aromatic greenery, exhaled the pungency

of crushed herbage, and recalled her old girlish ramblings through the

wildness of the Paradou. Then there came a flutelike song, a song of

short musky notes, rising from the violets that lay upon the table near

the head of the bed; and this flutelike strain, trilling melodiously to

the soft accompaniment of the lilies on the other table, sang to her of

the first joys of love, its first confession, and first kiss beneath the

trees of the forest. But she began to stifle as passion drew nigh with

the clove-like breath of the carnations, which burst upon her in brazen

notes that seemed to drown all others. She thought that death was nigh

when the poppies and the marigolds broke into a wailing strain, which

recalled the torment of desire. But suddenly all grew quieter; she felt

that she could breathe more freely; she glided into greater serenity,

lulled by a descending scale that came from the throats of the stocks,

and died away amidst a delightful hymn from the heliotropes, which, with

their vanilla-like breath, proclaimed the approach of nuptial bliss.

Here and there the mirabilis gently trilled. Then came a hush. And

afterwards the roses languidly made their entry. Their voices streamed

from the ceiling, like the strains of a distant choir. It was a chorus

of great breadth, to which she at first listened with a slight quiver.

Then the volume of the strain increased, and soon her whole frame

vibrated with the mighty sounds that burst in waves around her. The

nuptials were at hand, the trumpet blasts of the roses announced

them. She pressed her hands more closely to her heart as she lay there

panting, gasping, dying. When she opened her lips for the kiss which was

to stifle her, the hyacinths and tuberoses shot out their perfume and

enveloped her with so deep, so great a sigh that the chorus of the roses

could be heard no more.

And then, amidst the final gasp of the flowers, Albine died.

XV

About three o’clock the next afternoon, La Teuse and Brother Archangias,

who were chatting on the parsonage-steps, saw Doctor Pascal’s gig

come at full gallop through the village. The whip was being vigorously

brandished from beneath the lowered hood.

‘Where can he be off to at that rate?’ murmured the old servant. ‘He

will break his neck.’

The gig had just reached the rising ground on which the church was

built. Suddenly, the horse reared and stopped, and the doctor’s head,

with its long white hair all dishevelled appeared from under the hood.

‘Is Serge there?’ he cried, in a voice full of indignant excitement.

La Teuse had stepped to the edge of the hill. ‘Monsieur le Curé is in

his room,’ she said. ‘He must be reading his breviary. Do you want to

speak to him? Shall I call him?’

Uncle Pascal, who seemed almost distracted, made an angry gesture with

his whip hand. Bending still further forward, at the risk of falling

out, he replied:

‘Ah! he’s reading his breviary, is he? No! no! don’t call him. I should

strangle him, and that would do no good. I wanted to tell him that

Albine was dead. Dead! do you hear me? Tell him, from me, that she is

dead!’

And he drove off, lashing his horse so fiercely that it almost bolted.

But, twenty paces away, he pulled up again, and once more stretching out

his head, cried loudly:

‘Tell him, too, from me, that she was _enceinte_! It will please him to

know that.’

Then the gig rolled on wildly again, jolting dangerously as it ascended

the stony hill that led to the Paradou. La Teuse was quite dumbfounded.

But Brother Archangias sniggered and looked at her with savage delight

glittering in his eyes. She noticed this at last, and thrust him away

from her, almost making him fall down the steps.

‘Be off with you!’ she stammered, full of anger, seeking to relieve her

feelings by abusing him. ‘I shall grow to hate you. Is it possible to

rejoice at any one’s death? I wasn’t fond of the girl, myself; but it is

very sad to die at her age. Be off with you, and don’t go on sniggering

like that, or I will throw my scissors in your face!’

It was only about one o’clock that a peasant, who had gone to Plassans

to sell vegetables, had told Doctor Pascal of Albine’s death, and had

added that Jeanbernat wished to see him. The doctor now was feeling a

little relieved by what he had just shouted as he passed the parsonage.

He had gone out of his way expressly to give himself that satisfaction.

He reproached himself for the death of the girl as for a crime in which

he had participated. All along the road he had never ceased overwhelming

himself with insults, and though he wiped the tears from his eyes that

he might see where to guide his horse, he ever angrily drove his gig

over heaps of stones, as if hoping that he would overturn himself and

break one of his limbs. However, when he reached the long lane that

skirted the endless wall of the park, a glimmer of hope broke upon him.

Perhaps Albine was only in a dead faint. The peasant had told him that

she had suffocated herself with flowers. Ah! if he could only get there

in time, if he could only save her! And he lashed his horse ferociously

as though he were lashing himself.

It was a lovely day. The pavilion was all bathed in sunlight, just as

it had been in the fair spring-time. But the leaves of the ivy which

mounted to the roof were spotted and patched with rust, and bees

no longer buzzed round the tall gilliflowers. Doctor Pascal hastily

tethered his horse and pushed open the gate of the little garden. All

around still prevailed that perfect silence amidst which Jeanbernat

had been wont to smoke his pipe; but, to-day, the old man was no longer

seated on his bench watching his lettuces.

‘Jeanbernat!’ called the doctor.

No one answered. Then, on entering the vestibule, he saw something that

he had never seen before. At the end of the passage, below the dark

staircase, was a door opening into the Paradou, and he could see the

vast garden spreading there beneath the pale sunlight, with all its

autumn melancholy, its sere and yellow foliage. The doctor hurried

through the doorway and took a few steps over the damp grass.

‘Ah! it is you, doctor!’ said Jeanbernat in a calm voice.

The old man was digging a hole at the foot of a mulberry-tree. He had

straightened his tall figure on hearing the approach of footsteps.

But he promptly betook himself to his task again, throwing out at each

effort a huge mass of rich soil.

‘What are you doing there?’ asked Doctor Pascal.

Jeanbernat straightened himself again and wiped the sweat off his

face with the sleeve of his jacket. ‘I am digging a hole,’ he answered

simply. ‘She always loved the garden, and it will please her to sleep

here.’

The doctor nearly choked with emotion. For a moment he stood by the

edge of the grave, incapable of speaking, but watching Jeanbernat as the

other sturdily dug on.

‘Where is she?’ he asked at last.

‘Up there, in her room. I left her on the bed. I should like you to

go and listen to her heart before she is put away in here. I listened

myself, but I couldn’t hear anything at all.’

The doctor went upstairs. The room had not been disturbed. Only a

window had been opened. There the withered flowers, stifled by their own

perfumes, exhaled but the faint odour of dead beauty. Within the alcove,

however, there still hung an asphyxiating warmth, which seemed to

trickle into the room and gradually disperse in tiny puffs. Albine,

snowy-pale, with her hands upon her heart and a smile playing over her

face, lay sleeping on her couch of hyacinths and tuberoses. And she

was quite happy, since she was quite dead. Standing by the bedside,

the doctor gazed at her for a long time, with a keen expression such as

comes into the eyes of scientists who attempt to work resurrections. But

he did not even disturb her clasped hands. He kissed her brow, on the

spot where her latent maternity had already set a slight shadow. Below,

in the garden, Jeanbernat was still driving his spade into the ground in

heavy, regular fashion.

A quarter of an hour later, however, the old man came upstairs. He had

completed his work. He found the doctor seated by the bedside, buried

in such a deep reverie that he did not seem conscious of the heavy tears

that were trickling down his cheeks.

The two men only glanced at each other. Then, after an interval of

silence, Jeanbernat slowly said:

‘Well, was I not right? There is nothing, nothing, nothing. It is all

mere nonsense.’

He remained standing and began to pick up the roses that had fallen from

the bed, throwing them, one by one, upon Albine’s skirts.

‘The flowers,’ he said, ‘live only for a day, while the rough nettles,

like me, wear out the very stones amidst which they spring.... Now it’s

all over; I can kick the bucket; I am nearly distracted. My last ray of

sunlight has been snuffed out. It’s all nonsense, as I said before.’

He threw himself upon one of the chairs in his turn. He did not shed

a tear; he bore himself with rigid despair, like some automaton whose

mechanism is broken. Mechanically he reached out his hand and took a

book that lay on the little table strewn with violets. It was one of the

books stored away in the loft, an odd volume of Holbach,* which he had

been reading since the morning, while watching by Albine’s body. As the

doctor still remained silent, buried in distressful thought, he began to

turn its pages over. But a sadden idea occurred to him.

* Doubtless Holbach’s now forgotten _Catechism of Nature_, into

which M. Zola himself may well have peeped whilst writing this

story.--ED.

‘If you will help me,’ he said to the doctor, ‘we will carry her

downstairs, and bury her with all her flowers.’

Uncle Pascal shuddered. Then he explained to the old man that it was not

allowed for one to keep the dead in that fashion.

‘What! it isn’t allowed!’ cried Jeanbernat. ‘Well, then, I will allow

it myself! Doesn’t she belong to me? Isn’t she mine? Do you think I am

going to let the priests walk off with her? Let them try, if they want

to get a shot from my gun!’

He sprang to his feet and waved his book about with a terrible gesture.

But the doctor caught hold of his hands and clasped them within his own,

beseeching him to be calm. And for a long time he talked to him, saying

all that he had upon his mind. He blamed himself, made fragmentary

confessions of his fault, and vaguely hinted at those who had killed

Albine.

‘Listen,’ he said in conclusion, ‘she is yours no longer; you must give

her up.’

But Jeanbernat shook his head, and again waved his hand in token of

refusal. However, his obstinate resolution was shaken; and at last he

said:

‘Well, well, let them take her, and may she break their arms for them!

I only wish that she could rise up out of the ground and kill them all

with fright.... By the way. I have a little business to settle over

there. I will go to-morrow.... Good-bye, then, doctor. The hole will do

for me.’

And, when the doctor had left, he again sat down by the dead girl’s

side, and gravely resumed the perusal of his book.

XVI

That morning there was great commotion in the yard at the parsonage.

The Artaud butcher had just slaughtered Matthew, the pig, in the shed.

Desirée, quite enthusiastic about it all, had held Matthew’s feet, while

he was being bled, kissing him on the back that he might feel the pain

of the knife less, and telling him that it was absolutely necessary that

he should be killed, now that he had got so fat. No one could cut off a

goose’s neck with a single stroke of the hatchet more unconcernedly than

she could, or gash open a fowl’s throat with a pair of scissors. However

much she loved her charges, she looked upon their slaughter with great

equanimity. It was quite necessary, she would say. It made room for the

young ones who were growing up. And that morning she was very gay.

‘Mademoiselle,’ grumbled La Teuse every minute, ‘you will end by making

yourself ill. There is no sense in working yourself up into such a

state, just because a pig has been slaughtered. You are as red as if you

had been dancing a whole night.’

But Desirée only clapped her hands and turned away and bustled about

again. La Teuse, for her part, complained that her legs were sinking

under her. Since six o’clock in the morning her big carcass had been

perpetually rolling between the kitchen and the yard, for she had black

puddings to make. It was she who had whisked the blood in two large

earthenware pans, and she had thought that she would never get finished,

since mademoiselle was for ever calling her away for mere nothings.

It must be admitted that, at the very moment when the butcher was

bleeding Matthew, Desirée had been thrilled with wild excitement, for

Lisa, the cow, was about to calve. And the girl’s delight at this had

quite turned her head.

‘One goes and another comes!’ she cried, skipping and twirling round.

‘Come here, La Teuse! come here!’

It was eleven o’clock. Every now and then the sound of chanting was

wafted from the church. A confused murmur of doleful voices, a muttering

of prayers could be heard amidst scraps of Latin pronounced in louder

and clearer tones.

‘Come! oh, do come!’ repeated Desirée for the twentieth time.

‘I must go and toll the bell, now,’ muttered the old servant. ‘I shall

never get finished really. What is it that you want now, mademoiselle?’

But she did not wait for an answer. She threw herself upon a swarm of

fowls, who were greedily drinking the blood from the pans. And having

angrily kicked them away, and then covered up the pans, she called to

Desirée:

‘It would be a great deal better if, instead of tormenting me, you only

came to look after these wretched birds. If you let them do as they like

there will be no black-pudding for you. Do you hear?’

Desirée only laughed. What of it, if the fowls did drink a few drops of

the blood? It would fatten them. Then she again tried to drag La Teuse

off to the cow, but the old servant refused to go.

‘I must go and toll the bell. The procession will be coming out of

church directly. You know that quite well.’

At this moment the voices in the church rose yet more loudly, and a

sound of steps could be distinctly heard.

‘No! no!’ insisted Desirée, dragging La Teuse towards the stable. ‘Just

come and look at her, and tell me what ought to be done.’

La Teuse shrugged her shoulders. All that the cow wanted was to be left

alone and not bothered. Then she set off towards the vestry, but, as she

passed the shed, she raised a fresh cry:

‘There! there!’ she shrieked, shaking her fist. ‘Ah! the little wretch!’

Matthew was lying at full length on his back, with his feet in the air,

under the shed, waiting to be singed.* The gash which the knife had made

in his neck was still quite fresh, and was beaded with drops of blood.

And a little white hen was very delicately picking off these drops of

blood one by one.

* In some parts of France pigs, when killed, are singed, not scalded,

as is, I think, the usual practice in England.--ED.

‘Why, of course,’ quietly remarked Desirée, ‘she’s regaling herself.’

And the girl stooped and patted the pig’s plump belly, saying: ‘Eh! my

fat fellow, you have stolen their food too often to grudge them a wee

bit of your neck now!’

La Teuse hastily doffed her apron and threw it round Matthew’s neck.

Then she hurried away and disappeared within the church. The great door

had just creaked on its rusty hinges, and a burst of chanting rose in

the open air amidst the quiet sunshine. Suddenly the bell began to toll

with slow and regular strokes. Desirée, who had remained kneeling

beside the pig patting his belly, raised her head to listen, while still

continuing to smile. When she saw that she was alone, having glanced

cautiously around, she glided away into the cow’s stable and closed the

door behind her.

The little iron gate of the graveyard, which had been opened quite wide

to let the body pass, hung against the wall, half torn from its hinges.

The sunshine slept upon the herbage of the empty expanse, into which the

funeral procession passed, chanting the last verse of the _Miserere_.

Then silence fell.

‘_Requiem æternam dona ei, Domine_,’ resumed Abbé Mouret, in solemn

tones.

‘_Et lux perpetua luceat ei_,’ Brother Archangias bellowed.

At the head walked Vincent, wearing a surplice and bearing the cross,

a large copper cross, half the silver plating of which had come off. He

lifted it aloft with both his hands. Then followed Abbé Mouret, looking

very pale in his black chasuble, but with his head erect, and without

a quiver on his lips as he chanted the office, gazing into the distance

with fixed eyes. The flame of the lighted candle which he was carrying

scarcely showed in the daylight. And behind him, almost touching him,

came Albine’s coffin, borne by four peasants on a sort of litter,

painted black. The coffin was clumsily covered with too short a pall,

and at the lower end of it the fresh deal of which it was made could be

seen, with the heads of the nails sparkling with a steely glitter. Upon

the pall lay flowers: handfuls of white roses, hyacinths, and tuberoses,

taken from the dead girl’s very bed.

‘Just be careful!’ cried Brother Archangias to the peasants, as they

slightly tilted the litter in order to get it through the gateway. ‘You

will be upsetting everything on to the ground!’

He kept the coffin in its place with one of his fat hands. With the

other--as there was no second clerk--he was carrying the holy-water

vessel, and he likewise represented the choirman, the rural guard, who

had been unable to come.

‘Come in, too, you others,’ he exclaimed, turning round.

There was a second funeral, that of Rosalie’s baby, who had died the

previous day from an attack of convulsions. The mother, the father, old

mother Brichet, Catherine, and two big girls, La Rousse and Lisa, were

there. The two last were carrying the baby’s coffin, one supporting each

end.

Suddenly all voices were hushed again, and there came another interval

whilst the bell continued tolling in slow and desolate accents. The

funeral procession crossed the entire burial-ground, going towards

the corner which was formed by the church and the wall of Desirée’s

poultry-yard. Swarms of grasshoppers leaped away at the approaching

footsteps, and lizards hurried into their holes. A heavy warmth hung

over this corner of the loamy cemetery. The crackling of the dry grass

beneath the tramp of the mourners sounded like choking sobs.

‘There! stop where you are!’ cried the Brother, barring the way before

the two big girls who were carrying the baby’s coffin. ‘Wait for your

turn. Don’t be getting in our legs here.’

The two girls laid the baby on the ground. Rosalie, Fortune, and old

mother Brichet were lingering in the middle of the graveyard, while

Catherine slyly followed Brother Archangias. Albine’s grave was on

the left hand of Abbé Caffin’s tomb, whose white stone seemed in the

sunshine to be flecked with silvery spangles. The deep cavity, freshly

dug that morning, yawned amidst thick tufts of grass. Big weeds, almost

uprooted, drooped over the edges, and a fallen flower lay at the bottom,

staining the dark soil with its crimson petals. When Abbé Mouret came

forward, the soft earth crumbled and gave way beneath his feet; he was

obliged to step back to keep himself from slipping into the grave.

‘_Ego sum_--’ he began in a full voice, which rose above the mournful

tolling of the bell.

During the anthem, those who were present instinctively cast furtive

glances towards the bottom of the empty grave. Vincent, who had planted

the cross at the foot of the cavity opposite the priest, pushed the

loose earth with his foot, and amused himself by watching it fall. This

drew a laugh from Catherine, who was leaning forward from behind him to

get a better view. The peasants had set the litter on the grass and were

stretching their arms, while Brother Archangias prepared the sprinkler.

‘Come here, Voriau!’ called Fortune.

The big black dog, who had gone to sniff at the coffin, came back

sulkily.

‘Why has the dog been brought?’ exclaimed Rosalie.

‘Oh! he followed us,’ said Lisa, smiling quietly.

They were all chatting together in subdued tones round the baby’s

coffin. The father and mother occasionally forgot all about it, but

on catching sight of it again, lying between them at their feet, they

relapsed into silence.

‘And so old Bambousse wouldn’t come?’ said La Rousse. Mother Brichet

raised her eyes to heaven.

‘He threatened to break everything to pieces yesterday when the little

one died,’ said she. ‘No, no, I must say that he is not a good man.

Didn’t he nearly strangle me, crying out that he had been robbed, and

that he would have given one of his cornfields for the little one to

have died three days before the wedding?’

‘One can never tell what will happen,’ remarked Fortune with a knowing

look.

‘What’s the good of the old man putting himself out about it? We are

married, all the same, now,’ added Rosalie.

Then they exchanged a smile across the little coffin while Lisa and

La Rousse nudged each other with their elbows. But afterwards they all

became very serious again. Fortune picked up a clod of earth to throw at

Voriau, who was now prowling about amongst the old tombstones.

‘Ah! they’ve nearly finished over there, now!’ La Rousse whispered very

softly.

Abbé Mouret was just concluding the _De profundis_ in front of Albine’s

grave. Then, with slow steps, he approached the coffin, drew himself up

erect, and gazed at it for a moment without a quiver in his glance. He

looked taller, his face shone with a serenity that seemed to transfigure

him. He stooped and picked up a handful of earth, and scattered it over

the coffin crosswise. Then, in a voice so steady and clear that not a

syllable was lost, he said:

‘_Revertitur in terrain suam unde erat, et spiritus redit ad Deum qui

dedit illum_.’

A shudder ran through those who were present. Lisa seemed to reflect for

a moment, and then remarked with an expression of worry: ‘It is not very

cheerful, eh, when one thinks that one’s own turn will come some day or

other.’

But Brother Archangias had now handed the sprinkler to the priest, who

took it and shook it several times over the corpse.

‘_Requiescat in pace_,’ he murmured.

‘_Amen_,’ responded Vincent and the Brother together, in tones so

respectively shrill and deep that Catherine had to cram her fist into

her mouth to keep from laughing.

‘No, indeed, it is certainly not cheerful,’ continued Lisa. ‘There

really was nobody at all at that funeral. The graveyard would be quite

empty without us.’

‘I’ve heard say that she killed herself,’ said old mother Brichet.

‘Yes, I know,’ interrupted La Rousse. ‘The Brother didn’t want to

let her be buried amongst Christians, but Monsieur le Curé said

that eternity was for everybody. I was there. But all the same the

Philosopher might have come.’

At that very moment Rosalie reduced them all to silence by murmuring:

‘See! there he is, the Philosopher.’

Jeanbernat was, indeed, just entering the graveyard. He walked straight

to the group that stood around Albine’s grave; and he stepped along with

so lithe, so springy a gait, that none of them heard him coming. When

he was close to them, he remained for a moment behind Brother Archangias

and seemed to fix his eyes, for an instant, on the nape of the Brother’s

neck. Then, just as the Abbé Mouret was finishing the office, he calmly

drew a knife from his pocket, opened it, and with a single cut sliced

off the Brother’s right ear.

There had been no time for any one to interfere. The Brother gave a

terrible yell.

‘The left one will be for another occasion,’ said Jeanbernat quietly, as

he threw the ear upon the ground. Then he went off.

So great and so general was the stupefaction that nobody followed him.

Brother Archangias had dropped upon the heap of fresh soil which had

been thrown out of the grave. He was staunching his bleeding wound with

his handkerchief. One of the four peasants who had carried the coffin,

wanted to lead him away, conduct him home; but he refused with a gesture

and remained where he was, fierce and sullen, wishing to see Albine

lowered into the pit.

‘There! it’s our turn at last!’ said Rosalie with a little sigh.

But Abbé Mouret still lingered by the grave, watching the bearers who

were slipping cords under Albine’s coffin in order that they might let

it down gently. The bell was still tolling; but La Teuse must have been

getting tired, for it tolled irregularly, as though it were becoming a

little irritated at the length of the ceremony.

The sun was growing hotter and the Solitaire’s shadow crept slowly over

the grass and the grave mounds. When Abbé Mouret was obliged to step

back in order to give the bearers room, his eyes lighted upon the marble

tombstone of Abbé Caffin, that priest who also had loved, and who was

now sleeping there so peacefully beneath the wild-flowers.

Then, all at once, even as the coffin descended, supported by the cords,

whose knots made it strain and creak, a tremendous uproar arose in the

poultry-yard on the other side of the wall. The goat began to bleat. The

ducks, the geese, and the turkeys raised their loudest calls and flapped

their wings. The fowls all cackled at once. The yellow cock, Alexander,

crowed forth his trumpet notes. The rabbits could even be heard leaping

in their hutches and shaking their wooden floors. And, above all this

lifeful uproar of the animal creation, a loud laugh rang out. There was

a rustling of skirts. Desirée, with her hair streaming, her arms bare

to the elbows, and her face crimson with triumph, burst into sight, her

hands resting upon the coping of the wall. She had doubtless climbed

upon the manure-heap.

‘Serge! Serge!’ she cried.

At that moment Albine’s coffin had reached the bottom of the grave.

The cords had just been withdrawn. One of the peasants was throwing the

first shovelful of earth into the cavity.

‘Serge! Serge!’ Desirée cried, still more loudly, clapping her hands,

‘the cow has got a calf!’

THE END