VI


The next day was Sunday. As the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy
Cross fell on a high mass day, Abbe Mouret desired to celebrate the
festival with especial solemnity. He was now full of extraordinary
devotion for the Cross, and had replaced the image of the Immaculate
Conception in his bedroom by a large crucifix of black wood, before
which he spent long hours in worship. To exalt the Cross, to plant it
before him, above all else, in a halo of glory, as the one object of his
life, gave him the strength he needed to suffer and to struggle. He
sometimes dreamed of hanging there himself, in Jesus's place, his head
crowned with thorns, nails driven through his hands and feet, and his
side rent by spears. What a coward he must be to complain of an
imaginary wound, when God bled there from His whole body, and yet
preserved on His lips the blessed smile of the Redemption! And however
unworthy it might be, he offered up his wound as a sacrifice, ended by
falling into ecstasy, and believing that blood did really stream from
his brow and side and limbs. Those were hours of relief, for he fancied
that all the impurity within him flowed forth from his wounds. And he
then usually drew himself up with the heroism of a martyr, and longed to
be called upon to suffer the most frightful tortures, in order that he
might bear them without a quiver of the flesh.

At early dawn that day he knelt before the crucifix, and grace came upon
him abundantly as dew. He made no effort, he simply fell upon his knees,
to receive it in his heart, to be permeated with it to the marrow of his
bones in sweetest and most refreshing fulness. On the previous day he
had prayed for grace in agony, and it had not come. At times it long
remained deaf to his entreaties, and then, when he simply clasped his
hands, in quite childlike fashion, it flowed down to succour him. It
came upon him that morning like a benediction, bringing perfect
serenity, absolute trusting faith. He forgot his anguish of the previous
days, and surrendered himself wholly to the triumphant joy of the Cross.
He seemed to be cased in such impenetrable armour that the world's most
deadly blows would glide off from it harmlessly. When he came down from
his bedroom, he stepped along with an air of serenity and victory. La
Teuse was astonished, and went to find Desiree, that he might kiss her;
and both of them clapped their hands, and said that they had not seen
him looking so well for the last six months.

But it was in the church, at high mass, that the priest felt that he
had really recovered divine grace. It was a long time since he had
approached the altar with such loving emotion; and he had to make a
great effort to restrain himself from weeping whilst he remained with
his lips pressed to the altar-cloth. It was a solemn high mass. The
local rural guard, an uncle of Rosalie, chanted in a deep bass voice
which rumbled through the low nave like a hoarse organ. Vincent, robed
in a surplice much too large for him, which had formerly belonged to
Abbe Caffin, carried an old silver censer, and was vastly amused by the
tinkling of its chains; he swung it to a great height, so as to produce
copious clouds of smoke, and glanced behind him every now and then to
see if he had succeeded in making any one cough. The church was almost
full, for everybody wanted to see his reverence's painting. Peasant
women laughed with pleasure because the place smelt so nice, while the
men, standing under the gallery, jerked their heads approvingly at each
deeper and deeper note that came from the rural guard. Filtering through
the paper window panes the full morning sun lighted up the brightly
painted walls, on which the women's caps cast shadows resembling huge
butterflies. The artificial flowers, with which the altar was decorated,
almost seemed to possess the moist freshness of natural ones newly
gathered; and when the priest turned round to bless the congregation, he
felt even stronger emotion than before, as he saw his church so clean,
so full, and so steeped in music and incense and light.

After the offertory, however, a buzzing murmur sped through the peasant
women. Vincent inquisitively turned his head, and in doing so, almost
let the charcoal in his censer fall upon the priest's chasuble. And,
wishing to excuse himself, as he saw the Abbe looking at him with an
expression of reproof, he murmured: 'It is your reverence's uncle, who
has just come in.'

At the end of the church, standing beside one of the slender wooden
pillars that supported the gallery, Abbe Mouret then perceived Doctor
Pascal. The doctor was not wearing his usual cheerful and slightly
scoffing expression. Hat in hand, he stood there looking very grave, and
followed the service with evident impatience. The sight of the priest at
the altar, his solemn demeanour, his slow gestures, and the perfect
serenity of his countenance, appeared to gradually increase his
irritation. He could not stay there till the end of the mass, but left
the church, and walked up and down beside his horse and gig, which he
had secured to one of the parsonage shutters.

'Will that nephew of mine never have finished censing himself?' he asked
of La Teuse, who was just coming out of the vestry.

'It is all over,' she replied. 'Won't you come into the drawing-room?
His reverence is unrobing. He knows you are here.'

'Well, unless he were blind, he couldn't very well help it,' growled the
doctor, as he followed La Teuse into the cold-looking, stiffly furnished
chamber, which she pompously called the drawing-room. Here for a few
minutes he paced up and down. The gloomy coldness of his surroundings
seemed to increase his irritation. As he strode about, flourishing a
stick he carried, he kept on striking the well-worn chair-seats of
horsehair which sounded hard and dead as stone. Then, tired of walking,
he took his stand in front of the mantelpiece, in the centre of which a
gaudily painted image of Saint Joseph occupied the place of a clock.

'Ah! here he comes at last,' he said, as he heard the door opening. And
stepping towards the Abbe he went on: 'Do you know that you made me
listen to half a mass? It is a very long time since that happened to me.
But I was bent on seeing you to-day. I have something to say to you.'

Then he stopped, and looked at the priest with an expression of
surprise. Silence fell. 'You at all events are quite well,' he resumed,
in a different voice.

'Yes, I am very much better than I was,' replied Abbe Mouret, with a
smile. 'I did not expect you before Thursday. Sunday isn't your day for
coming. Is there something you want to tell me?'

Uncle Pascal did not give an immediate answer. He went on looking at the
Abbe. The latter was still fresh from the influence of the church and
the mass. His hair was fragrant with the perfume of the incense, and in
his eyes shone all the joy of the Cross. His uncle jogged his head, as
he noticed that expression of triumphant peace.

'I have come from the Paradou,' he said, abruptly. 'Jeanbernat came to
fetch me there. I have seen Albine, and she disquiets me. She needs much
careful treatment.'

He kept his eyes fixed upon the priest as he spoke, but he did not
detect so much as a quiver of Serge's eyelids.

'She took great care of you, you know,' he added, more roughly. 'Without
her, my boy, you might now be in one of the cells at Les Tulettes, with
a strait waistcoat on. . . . Well, I promised that you would go to see
her. I will take you with me. It will be a farewell meeting. She is
anxious to go away.'

'I can do nothing more than pray for the person of whom you speak,' said
Abbe Mouret, softly.

And as the doctor, losing his temper, brought his stick down heavily
upon the couch, he added calmly, but in a firm voice:

'I am a priest, and can only help with prayers.'

'Ah, well! Yes, you are right,' said Uncle Pascal, dropping down into an
armchair, 'it is I who am an old fool. Yes, I wept like a child, as I
came here alone in my gig. That is what comes of living amongst books.
One learns a lot from them, but one makes a fool of oneself in the
world. How could I guess that it would all turn out so badly?'

He rose from his chair and began to walk about again, looking
exceedingly troubled.

'But yes, but yes, I ought to have guessed. It was all quite natural.
Though with one in your position, it was bound to be abominable! You are
not as other men. But listen to me, I assure you that otherwise you
would never have recovered. It was she alone, with the atmosphere she
set round you, who saved you from madness. There is no need for me to
tell you what a state you were in. It is one of my most wonderful cures.
But I can't take any pride, any pleasure in it, for now the poor girl is
dying of it!'

Abbe Mouret remained there erect, perfectly calm, his face reflecting
all the quiet serenity of a martyr whom nothing that man might do could
disturb.

'God will take mercy upon her,' he said.

'God! God!' muttered the doctor below his breath. 'Ah! He would do
better not to interfere. We might manage matters if we were left to
ourselves.' Then, raising his voice, he added: 'I thought I had
considered everything carefully, that is the most wonderful part of it.
Oh! what a fool I was! You would stay there, I thought, for a month to
recover your strength. The shade of the trees, the cheerful chatter of
the girl, all the youthfulness about you would quickly bring you round.
And then you, on your side, it seemed to me, would do something to
reclaim the poor child from her wild ways; you would civilise her, and,
between us, we should turn her into a young lady, for whom we should,
by-and-by, find a suitable husband. It seemed such a perfect scheme. And
then how was I to guess that old philosophising Jeanbernat would never
stir an inch from his lettuce-beds? Well! well! I myself never left my
own laboratory. I had such pressing work there. . . . And it is all my
fault! Ah! I am a stupid bungler!'

He was choking, and wished to go off. And he began to look about him for
his hat, though, all the while, he had it on his head.

'Good-bye!' he stammered; 'I am going. So you won't come? Do, now--for
my sake! You see how miserable, how upset I am. I swear to you that she
shall go away immediately afterwards. That is all settled. My gig is
here; you might be back in an hour. Come, do come, I beg you.'

The priest made a sweeping gesture; such a gesture as the doctor had
seen him make before the altar.

'No,' he said, 'I cannot.'

Then, as he accompanied his uncle out of the room, he added:

'Tell her to fall on her knees and pray to God. God will hear her as He
heard me, and He will comfort her as He has comforted me. There is no
other means of salvation.'

The doctor looked him full in the face, and shrugged his shoulders.

'Good-bye, then,' he repeated. 'You are quite well now, and have no
further need of me.'

But, as he was unfastening his horse, Desiree, who had heard his voice,
came running up. She was extremely attached to her uncle. When she had
been younger he had been wont to listen to her childish prattle for
hours without showing the least sign of weariness. And, even now, he did
his best to spoil her, and manifested the greatest interest in her
farmyard, often spending a whole afternoon with her amongst her fowls
and ducks, and smiling at her with his bright eyes. He seemed to
consider her superior to other girls. And so she now flung herself
round his neck, in an impulse of affection, and cried:

'Aren't you going to stay and have some lunch with us?'

But having kissed her, he said he could not remain, and unfastened her
arms from his neck with a somewhat pettish air. She laughed however, and
again clasped her arms round him.

'Oh! but you must,' she persisted. 'I have some eggs that have only just
been laid. I have been looking in the nests, and there are fourteen eggs
this morning. And, if you will stay, we can have a fowl, the white one,
that is always quarrelling with the others. When you were here on
Thursday, you know, it pecked the big spotted hen's eye out.'

But her uncle persisted in his refusal. He was irritated to find that he
could not unfasten the knot in which he had tied his reins. And then she
began to skip round him, clapping her hands and repeating in a sing-song
voice: 'Yes! yes! you'll stay, and we will eat it up, we'll eat it up!'

Her uncle could no longer resist her blandishments; he raised his head
and smiled at her. She seemed so full of life and health and sincerity;
her gaiety was as frank and natural as the sheet of sunlight which was
gilding her bare arms.

'You big silly!' he said; and clasping her by the wrists as she
continued skipping gleefully about him, he went on: 'No, dear; not
to-day. I have to go to see a poor girl who is ill. But I will come some
other morning. I promise you faithfully.'

'When? when?' she persisted. 'On Thursday? The cow is in calf, you know,
and she hasn't seemed at all well these last two days. You are a doctor,
and you ought to be able to give her something to do her good.'

Abbe Mouret, who had calmly remained there, could not restrain a slight
laugh.

The doctor gaily got into his gig and exclaimed: 'All right, my dear, I
will attend to your cow. Come and let me kiss you. Ah! how nice and
healthy you are! And you are worth more than all the others put
together. Ah! if every one was like my big silly, this earth would be
too beautiful!'

He set his horse off with a cluck of his tongue, and continued talking
to himself as the gig rattled down the hill.

'Yes, yes! there should be nothing but animals. Ah! if they were mere
animals, how happy and gay and strong they would all be! It has gone
well with the girl, who is as happy as her cow; but it has gone badly
with the lad, who is in torture beneath his cassock. A drop too much
blood, a little too much nerve, and one's whole life is wrecked!
. . . They are true Rougons and true Macquarts those children there!
The tail-end of the stock--its final degeneracy.'

Then, urging on his horse, he drove at a trot up the hill that led to
the Paradou.

VII


Sunday was a busy day for Abbe Mouret. He had to think of vespers, which
he generally said to empty seats, for even mother Brichet did not carry
her piety so far as to go back to church in the afternoon. Then, at four
o'clock, Brother Archangias brought the little rogues from his school to
repeat their catechism to his reverence. This lesson sometimes lasted
until late. When the children showed themselves quite intractable, La
Teuse was summoned to frighten them with her broom.

On that particular Sunday, about four o'clock, Desiree found herself
quite alone in the parsonage. As she felt a little bored, she went to
gather some food for her rabbits in the churchyard, where there were
some magnificent poppies, of which rabbits are extremely fond. Dragging
herself about on her knees between the grave-stones, she gathered
apronfuls of juicy verdure on which her pets fell greedily.

'Oh! what lovely plantains!' she muttered, stooping before Abbe Caffin's
tombstone, and delighted with the discovery she had made.

There were, indeed, some magnificent plantains spreading out their broad
leaves beside the stone. Desiree had just finished filling her apron
with them when she fancied she heard a strange noise behind her. A
rustling of branches and a rolling of small pebbles came from the ravine
which skirted one side of the graveyard, and at the bottom of which
flowed the Mascle, a stream which descended from the high lands of the
Paradou. But the ascent here was so rough, so impracticable, that
Desiree imagined that the noise could only have been made by some lost
dog or straying goat. She stepped quickly to the edge, and, as she
looked over, she was amazed to see amidst the brambles a girl who was
climbing up the rocks with extraordinary agility.

'I will give you a hand,' she said. 'You might easily break your neck
there.'

The girl, directly she saw she was discovered, started back, as though
she would rather go down again, but after a moment's hesitation she
ventured to take the hand that was held out to her.

'Oh! I know who you are,' said Desiree, with a beaming smile, and
letting her apron fall that she might grasp the girl by the waist. 'You
once gave me some blackbirds, but they all died, poor little dears. I
was so sorry about it.--Wait a bit, I know your name, I have heard it
before. La Teuse often mentions it when Serge isn't there; but she told
me that I was not to repeat it. Wait a moment, I shall remember it
directly!'

She tried to recall the name, and grew quite grave in the attempt. Then,
having succeeded in remembering it, she became gay again, and seemingly
found great pleasure in dwelling upon its musical sound.

'Albine! Albine!---- What a sweet name it is! At first I used to think
you must be a tomtit, because I once had a tomtit with a name very like
yours, though I don't remember exactly what it was.'

Albine did not smile. Her face was very pale, and there was a feverish
gleam in her eyes. A few drops of blood trickled from her hands. When
she had recovered her breath, she hastily exclaimed:

No! no! leave it alone. You will only stain your handkerchief. It
is nothing but a scratch. I didn't want to come by the road, as I
should have been seen--so I preferred coming along the bed of the
torrent---- Is Serge there?'

Desiree did not feel at all shocked at hearing the girl pronounce her
brother's name thus familiarly and with an expression of subdued
passion. She simply replied that he was in the church hearing the
children say their catechism.

'You must not speak at all loudly,' she added, raising her finger to her
lips. 'Serge forbade me to talk loudly when he is catechising the
children, and we shall get into trouble if we don't keep quiet. Let us
go into the stable--shall we? We can talk better there.'

'I want to see Serge,' said Albine, simply.

Desiree cast a hasty glance at the church, and then whispered, 'Yes,
yes; Serge will be finely caught. Come with me. We will hide ourselves,
and keep quite quiet. We shall have some fine fun!'

She had picked up the herbage which had fallen from her apron, and
quitting the graveyard she stole back to the parsonage, telling Albine
to hide herself behind her and make herself as little as possible. As
they stealthily glided through the farmyard, they caught sight of La
Teuse, who was crossing over to the vestry, but she did not appear to
notice them.

'There! There!' said Desiree, quite delighted, as they stowed themselves
away in the stable; 'keep quiet, and no one will know that we are here.
There is some straw there for you to lie down upon.'

Albine seated herself on a truss of straw.

'And Serge?' she asked, persisting in her one fixed idea.

'Listen! You can hear his voice. When he claps his hands, it will be all
over, and the children will go away--Listen! he is telling them a tale.'

They could indeed just hear Abbe Mouret's voice, which was wafted to
them through the vestry doorway which La Teuse had doubtless left open.
It came to them like a solemn murmur, in which they could distinguish
the name of Jesus thrice repeated. Albine trembled. She sprang up as
though to hasten to that beloved voice whose caressing accents she knew
so well, but all sound of it suddenly died away, shut off by the closing
of the door. Then she sat down again, to wait, her hands tightly
clasped, and her clear eyes gleaming with the intensity of her thoughts.
Desiree, who was lying at her feet, gazed up at her with innocent
admiration.

'How beautiful you are!' she whispered. 'You are like an image that
Serge used to have in his bedroom. It was quite white like you are, with
great curls floating about the neck; and the heart was quite bare and
uncovered, just in the place where I can feel yours beating---- But you
are not listening to me. You are looking quite sad. Let us play at
something? Will you?'

Then she stopped short, holding her breath and saying between her teeth:
'Ah! the wretches! they will get us caught!' She still had her apron
full of herbage with her, and her pets were taking it by assault. A
troop of fowls had surrounded her, clucking and calling each other, and
pecking at the hanging green stuff. The goat pushed its head slyly under
her arm, and began to eat the longer leaves. Even the cow, which was
tethered to the wall, strained at its cord and poked out its nose,
kissing her with its warm breath.

'Oh! you thieves!' cried Desiree. 'But this is for the rabbits, not for
you! Leave me alone, won't you! You, there, will get your ears boxed, if
you don't go away! And you too will have your tail pulled if I catch you
at it again. The wretches! they will be eating my hands soon!'

She drove the goat off, dispersed the fowls with her feet, and tapped
the cow's nose with her fists. But the creatures just shook themselves,
and then came back more greedily than ever, surrounding her, jumping on
her, and tearing open her apron. At this she whispered to Albine, as
though she were afraid the animals might hear her.

'Aren't they amusing, the dears? Watch them eat.'

Albine looked on with a grave expression.

'Now, now, be good,' resumed Desiree; 'you shall all have some, but you
must wait your turns. Now, big Lisa, you first. Eh! how fond you are of
plantain, aren't you?'

Big Lisa was the cow. She slowly munched a handful of the juicy leaves
which had grown beside Abbe Caffin's tomb. A thread of saliva hung down
from her mouth, and her great brown eyes shone with quiet enjoyment.

'There! now it's your turn,' continued Desiree, turning towards the
goat. 'You are fond of poppies, I know; and you like the flowers best,
don't you? The buds that shine in your teeth like red-hot butterflies!
See, here are some splendid ones; they came from the left-hand corner,
where there was a burial last year.'

As she spoke, she gave the goat a bunch of scarlet flowers, which the
animal ate from her hand. When there was nothing left in her grasp but
the stalks, she pushed these between its teeth. Behind her, in the
meanwhile, the fowls were desperately pecking away at her petticoats.
She threw them some wild chicory and dandelions which she had gathered
amongst the old slabs that were ranged alongside the church walls. It
was particularly over the dandelions that the fowls quarrelled, so
voraciously indeed, with such scratchings and flapping of wings, that
the other fowls in the yard heard them. And then came a general
invasion. The big yellow cock, Alexander, was the first to appear;
having seized a dandelion and torn it in halves, without attempting to
eat it, he called to the hens who were still outside to come and peck.
Then a white hen strutted in, then a black one, and then a whole crowd
of hens, who hustled one another, and trod on one another's tails, and
ended by forming a wild flood of feathers. Behind the fowls came the
pigeons, and the ducks, and the geese, and, last of all, the turkeys.
Desiree laughed at seeing herself thus surrounded by this noisy,
squabbling mob.

'This is what always happens,' said she, 'every time that I bring any
green stuff from the graveyard. They nearly kill each other to get at
it; they must find it very nice.'

Then she made a fight to keep a few handfuls of the leaves from the
greedy beaks which rose all round her, saying that something must really
be saved for the rabbits. She would surely get angry with them if they
went on like that, and give them nothing but dry bread in future.
However, she was obliged to give way. The geese tugged at her apron so
violently that she was almost pulled down upon her knees; the ducks
gobbled away at her ankles; two of the pigeons flew upon her head, and
some of the fowls fluttered about her shoulders. It was the ferocity of
creatures who smell flesh: the fat plantains, the crimson poppies, the
milky dandelions, in which remained some of the life of the dead.
Desiree laughed loudly, and felt that she was on the point of slipping
down, and letting go of her last two handfuls, when the fowls were
panic-stricken by a terrible grunting.

'Ah! it's you, my fatty,' she exclaimed, quite delighted; 'eat them up,
and set me at liberty.'

The pig waddled in; he was no longer the little pig of former days--pink
as a newly painted toy, with a tiny little tail, like a bit of string;
but a fat wobbling creature, fit to be killed, with a belly as round as
a monk's, and a back all bristling with rough hairs, that reeked of
fatness. His stomach had grown quite yellow from his habit of sleeping
on the manure heap. Waddling along on his shaky feet, he charged with
lowered snout at the scared fowls, and so left Desiree at liberty to
escape, and take the rabbits the few scraps of green stuff which she had
so strenuously defended. When she came back, all was peace again. The
stupid, ecstatic-looking geese were lazily swaying their long necks
about, the ducks and turkeys were waddling in ungainly fashion alongside
the wall; the fowls were quietly clucking and peaking at invisible
grains on the hard ground of the stable; while the pig, the goat, and
the big cow, were drowsily blinking their eyes, as though they were
falling asleep. Outside it had just begun to rain.

'Ah! well, there's a shower coming on!' cried Desiree, throwing herself
down on the straw. 'You had better stay where you are, my dears, if you
don't want to get soaked.'

Then she turned to Albine and added: 'How stupid they all look, don't
they? They only wake up just to eat!'

Albine still remained silent. The merry laughter of that buxom girl as
she struggled amidst those greedy necks and gluttonous beaks, which
tickled and kissed her, and seemed bent on devouring her very flesh, had
rendered the unhappy daughter of the Paradou yet paler than she had been
before. So much gaiety, so much vitality, so much boisterous health made
her despair. She strained her feverish arms to her desolate bosom, which
desertion had parched.

'And Serge?' she asked again, in the same clear, stubborn voice.

'Hush!' said Desiree. 'I heard him just now. He hasn't finished
yet---- We have been making a pretty disturbance; La Teuse must
surely have grown deaf this afternoon---- Let us keep quiet now.
I like to hear the rain fall.'

The shower beat in at the open doorway, casting big drops upon the
threshold. The restless fowls, after venturing out for a moment, had
quickly retreated to the far end of the stable; where, indeed, with the
exception of three ducks who remained quietly walking in the rain, all
the pets had now taken refuge, clustering round the girl's skirts. It
was growing very warm amongst the straw. Desiree pulled two big trusses
together, made a bed of them, and lay down at full length. She felt
extremely comfortable there.

'It is so nice,' she murmured. 'Come and lie down like me. It is so
springy and soft, all this straw; and it tickles one so funnily in the
neck. Do you roll about in the straw at home? There is nothing I am
fonder of---- Sometimes I tickle the soles of my feet with it. That is
very funny, too----'

But at that moment, the big yellow cock, who had been gravely stalking
towards her, jumped upon her breast.

'Get away with you, Alexander! get away!' she cried. 'What a tiresome
creature he is! The idea of his perching himself on me---- You are too
rough, sir, and you scratch me with your claws. Do you hear me? I don't
want you to go away, but you must be good, and mustn't peck at my hair.'

Then she troubled herself no further about him. The cock still
maintained his position, every now and then glancing inquisitively at
the girl's chin with his gleaming eye. The other birds all began to
cluster round her. After rolling amongst the straw, she was now lying
lazily on her back with her arms stretched out.

'Ah! how pleasant it is,' she said; 'but then it makes me feel so
sleepy. Straw always makes one drowsy, doesn't it? Serge doesn't like
it. Perhaps you don't either. What do you like? Tell me, so that I may
know.'

She was gradually dozing off. For a moment she opened her eyes widely,
as though she were looking for something, and then her eyelids fell with
a tranquil smile of content. She seemed to be asleep, but after a few
minutes she opened her eyes again, and said:

'The cow is going to have a calf---- That will be so nice, and will
please me more than anything.'

Then she sank into deep slumber. The fowls had ended by perching on her
body; she was buried beneath a wave of living plumage. Hens were
brooding over her feet; geese stretched their soft downy necks over her
legs. The pig lay against her left side, while on the right, the goat
poked its bearded head under her arm. The pigeons were roosting and
nestling all over her, on her hands, her waist, and her shoulders. And
there she lay asleep, in all her rosy freshness, caressed by the cow's
warm breath, while the big cock still squatted just below her bosom with
gleaming comb and quivering wings.

Outside, the rain was falling less heavily. A sunbeam, escaping from
beneath a cloud, gilded the fine drops of water. Albine, who had
remained perfectly still, watched the slumber of Desiree, that big,
plump girl who found her great delight in rolling about in the straw.
She wished that she, too, could slumber away so peacefully, and feel
such pleasure, because a few straws had tickled her neck. And she felt
jealous of those strong arms, that firm bosom, all that vitality, all
that purely animal development which made the other like a tranquil
easy-minded sister of the big red and white cow.

However, the rain had now quite ceased. The three cats of the parsonage
filed out into the yard one after the other, keeping close to the wall,
and taking the greatest precautions to avoid wetting their paws. They
peeped into the stable, and then stalked up to the sleeping girl, and
lay down, purring, close by her. Moumou, the big black cat, curled
itself up close to her cheek, and gently licked her chin.

'And Serge?' murmured Albine, quite mechanically.

What was it that kept them apart? Who was it that prevented them from
being happy together? Why might she not love him, and why might she not
be loved, freely and in the broad sunlight, as the trees lived and
loved? She knew not, but she felt that she had been forsaken, and had
received a mortal wound. Yet she was possessed by a stubborn, determined
longing, a very necessity, indeed, of once more clasping her love in her
arms, of concealing him somewhere, that he might be hers in all
felicity. She rose to her feet. The vestry door had just been opened
again. A clapping of hands sounded, followed by the uproar of a swarm of
children clattering in wooden shoes over the stone flags. The
catechising was over. Then Albine gently glided out of the stable, where
she had been waiting for an hour amidst the reeking warmth that emanated
from Desiree's pets.

As she quietly slipped through the passage that led to the vestry, she
caught sight of La Teuse, who was going to her kitchen, and who
fortunately did not turn her head. Certain, now, of not being seen and
stopped, Albine softly pushed the door which was before her, keeping
hold of it in order that it might make no noise as it closed again.

And she found herself in the church.

VIII


At first she could see nobody. Outside, the rain had again begun to fall
in fine close drops. The church looked very grey and gloomy. She passed
behind the high altar, and walked on towards the pulpit. In the middle
of the nave, there were only a number of empty benches, left there in
disorder by the urchins of the catechism class. Amidst all this void
came a low tic-tac from the swaying pendulum. She went down the church
to knock at the confessional-box, which she saw standing at the other
end. But, just as she passed the Chapel of the Dead, she caught sight of
Abbe Mouret prostrated before the great bleeding Christ. He did not
stir; he must have thought that it was only La Teuse putting the seats
in order behind him.

But Albine laid her hand upon his shoulder.

'Serge,' she said, 'I have come for you.'

The priest raised his head with a start. His face was very pale. He
remained on his knees and crossed himself, while his lips still quivered
with the words of his prayer.

'I have been waiting for you,' she continued. 'Every morning and
every evening I looked to see if you were not coming. I have counted
the days till I could keep the reckoning no longer. Ah! for weeks and
weeks---- Then, when I grew sure that you were not coming, I set out
myself, and came here. I said to myself: "I will fetch him away with
me." Give me your hand and let us go.'

She stretched out her hands, as though to help him to rise. But he only
crossed himself, afresh. He still continued his prayers as he looked at
her. He had succeeded in calming the first quiver of his flesh. From the
Divine grace which had been streaming around him since the early
morning, like a celestial bath, he derived a superhuman strength.

'It is not right for you to be here,' he said, gravely. 'Go away. You
are aggravating your sufferings.'

'I suffer no longer,' she said, with a smile. 'I am well again; I am
cured, now that I see you once more---- Listen! I made myself out worse
than I really was, to induce them to go and fetch you. I am quite
willing to confess it now. And that promise of going away, of leaving
the neighbourhood, you didn't suppose I should have kept it, did you?
No, indeed, unless I had carried you away with me on my shoulders. The
others don't know it, but you must know that I cannot now live anywhere
but at your side.'

She grew quite cheerful again, and drew close to the priest with the
caressing ways of a child of nature, never noticing his cold and rigid
demeanour. And she became impatient, clapped her hands, and exclaimed:

'Come, Serge; make up your mind and come. We are only losing time. There
is no necessity to think so much about it. It is quite simple; I am
going to take you with me. If you don't want any one to see you, we will
go along by the Mascle. It is not very easy walking, but I managed it
all by myself; and, when we are together, we can help each other. You
know the way, don't you? We cross the churchyard, we descend to the
torrent, and then we shall only have to follow its course right up to
the garden. And one is quite at home down there. Nobody can see us,
there is nothing but brambles and big round stones. The bed of the
stream is nearly dry. As I came along, I thought: "By-and-by, when he is
with me, we will walk along gently together and kiss one another." Come,
Serge, be quick; I am waiting for you.'

The priest no longer appeared to hear her. He had betaken himself to his
prayers again, and was asking Heaven to grant him the courage of the
saints. Before entering upon the supreme struggle, he was arming himself
with the flaming sword of faith. For a moment he had feared he was
wavering. He had required all a martyr's courage and endurance to remain
firmly kneeling there on the flagstones, while Albine was calling him:
his heart had leapt out towards her, all his blood had surged
passionately through his veins, filling him with an intense yearning to
clasp her in his arms and kiss her hair. Her mere breath had awakened
all the memory of their love; the vast garden, their saunters beneath
the trees, and all the joy of their companionship.

But Divine grace was poured down upon him more abundantly, and the
torturing strife, during which all his blood seemed to quit his veins,
lasted but a moment. Nothing human then remained within him. He had
become wholly God's.

Albine, however, again touched him on the shoulder. She was growing
uneasy and angry.

'Why do you not speak to me?' she asked. 'You can't refuse; you will
come with me? Remember that I shall die if you refuse. But no! you
can't; it is impossible. We lived together once; it was vowed that we
should never separate. Twenty times, at least, did you give yourself to
me. You bade me take you wholly, your limbs, your breath, your very life
itself. I did not dream it all. There is nothing of you that you have
not given to me; not a hair in your head which is not mine. Your hands
are mine. For days and days have I held them clasped in mine. Your face,
your lips, your eyes, your brow, all, all are mine, and I have lavished
my love upon them. Do you hear me, Serge?'

She stood erect before him, full of proud assertion, with outstretched
arms. And, in a louder voice, she repeated:

'Do you hear me, Serge? You belong to me.'

Then Abbe Mouret slowly rose to his feet. He leant against the altar,
and replied:

'No. You are mistaken. I belong to God.'

He was full of serenity. His shorn face seemed like that of some stone
saint, whom no impulse of the flesh can disturb. His cassock fell around
him in straight folds like a black winding-sheet, concealing all the
outlines of his body. Albine dropped back at the sight of that sombre
phantom of her former love. She missed his freely flowing beard, his
freely flowing curls. And in the midst of his shorn locks she saw the
pallid circle of his tonsure, which disquieted her as if it had been
some mysterious evil, some malignant sore which had grown there, and
would eat away all memory of the happy days they had spent together. She
could recognise neither his hands, once so warm with caresses, nor his
lissom neck, once so sonorous with laughter; nor his agile feet, which
had carried her into the recesses of the woodlands. Could this, indeed,
be the strong youth with whom she had lived one whole season--the youth
with soft down gleaming on his bare breast, with skin browned by the
sun's rays, with every limb full of vibrating life? At this present hour
he seemed fleshless; his hair had fallen away from him, and all his
virility had withered within that womanish gown, which left him sexless.

'Oh! you frighten me,' she murmured. 'Did you think then that I was
dead, that you put on mourning? Take off that black thing; put on a
blouse. You can tuck up the sleeves, and we will catch crayfishes again.
Your arms used to be as white as mine.'

She laid her hand on his cassock, as though to tear it off him; but he
repulsed her with a gesture, without touching her. He looked at her now
and strengthened himself against temptation by never allowing his eyes
to leave her. She seemed to him to have grown taller. She was no longer
the playful damsel adorned with bunches of wild-flowers, and casting to
the winds gay, gipsy laughter, nor was she the amorosa in white skirts,
gracefully bending her slender form as she sauntered lingeringly beside
the hedges. Now, there was a velvety bloom upon her lips; her hips were
gracefully rounded; her bosom was in full bloom. She had become a woman,
with a long oval face that seemed expressive of fruitfulness. Life
slumbered within her. And her cheeks glowed with luscious maturity.

The priest, bathed in the voluptuous atmosphere that seemed to emanate
from all that feminine ripeness, took a bitter pleasure in defying the
caresses of her coral lips, the tempting smile of her eyes, the witching
charm of her bosom, and all the intoxication which seemed to pour from
her at every movement. He even carried his temerity so far as to search
with his gaze for the spots that he had once so hotly kissed, the
corners of her eyes and lips, her narrow temples, soft as satin, and the
ambery nape of her neck, which was like velvet. And never, even in her
embrace, had he tasted such felicity as he now felt in martyring
himself, by boldly looking in the face the love that he refused. At
last, fearing lest he might there yield to some new allurement of the
flesh, he dropped his eyes, and said, very gently:

'I cannot hear you here. Let us go out, if you, indeed, persist in
adding to the pain of both of us. Our presence in this place is a
scandal. We are in God's house.'

'God!' cried Albine, excitedly, suddenly becoming a child of nature once
more. 'God! Who is He? I know nothing of your God! I want to know
nothing of Him if He has stolen you away from me, who have never harmed
Him. My uncle Jeanbernat was right then when he said that your God was
only an invention to frighten people, and make them weep! You are lying;
you love me no longer, and that God of yours does not exist.'

'You are in His house now,' said Abbe Mouret, sternly. 'You blaspheme.
With a breath He might turn you into dust.'

She laughed with proud disdain, and raised her hands as if to defy
Heaven.

'Ah! then,' said she, 'you prefer your God to me. You think He is
stronger than I am, and you imagine that He will love you better than I
did. Oh! but you are a child, a foolish child. Come, leave all this
folly. We will return to the garden together, and love each other, and
be happy and free. That, that is life!'

This time she succeeded in throwing an arm round his waist, and she
tried to drag him away. But he, quivering all over, freed himself from
her embrace, and again took his stand against the altar.

'Go away!' he faltered. 'If you still love me, go away. . . . O Lord,
pardon her, and pardon me too, for thus defiling this Thy house. Should
I go with her beyond the door, I might, perhaps, follow her. Here, in
Thy presence, I am strong. Suffer that I may remain here, to protect
Thee from insult.'

Albine remained silent for a moment. Then, in a calm voice, she said:

'Well, let us stay here, then. I wish to speak to you. You cannot,
surely, be cruel. You will understand me. You will not let me go away
alone. Oh! do not begin to excuse yourself. I will not lay my hands upon
you again, since it distresses you. I am quite calm now as you can see.
We will talk quietly, as we used to do in the old days when we lost our
way, and did not hurry to find it again, that we might have the more
time to talk together.'

She smiled at that memory, and continued:

'I don't know about these things myself. My uncle Jeanbernat used to
forbid me to go to church. "Silly girl," he'd say to me, "why do you
want to go to a stuffy building when you have got a garden to run about
in?" I grew up quite happy and contented. I used to look in the birds'
nests without even taking the eggs. I did not even pluck the flowers,
for fear of hurting the plants; and you know that I could never torture
an insect. Why, then, should God be angry with me?'

'You should learn to know Him, pray to Him, and render Him the constant
worship which is His due,' answered the priest.

'Ah! it would please you if I did, would it not?' she said. 'You would
forgive me, and love me again? Well, I will do all that you wish me.
Tell me about God, and I will believe in Him, and worship Him. All that
you tell me shall be a truth to which I will listen on my knees. Have I
ever had a thought that was not your own? We will begin our long walks
again; and you shall teach me, and make of me whatever you will. Say
"yes," I beg of you.'

Abbe Mouret pointed to his cassock.

'I cannot,' he simply said. 'I am a priest.'

'A priest!' she repeated after him, the smile dying out of her eyes. 'My
uncle says that priests have neither wife, nor sister, nor mother. So
that is true, then. But why did you ever come? It was you who took me
for your sister, for your wife. Were you then lying?'

The priest raised his pale face, moist with the sweat of agony. 'I have
sinned,' he murmured.

'When I saw you so free,' the girl went on, 'I thought that you were no
longer a priest. I believed that all that was over, that you would
always remain there with me, and for my sake.---- And now, what would
you have me do, if you rob me of my whole life?'

'What I do,' he answered; 'kneel down, suffer on your knees, and never
rise until God pardons you.'

'Are you a coward, then?' she exclaimed, her anger roused once more, her
lips curving scornfully.

He staggered, and kept silence. Agony held him by the throat; but he
proved stronger than pain. He held his head erect, and a smile almost
played about his trembling lips. Albine for a moment defied him with her
fixed glance; then, carried away by a fresh burst of passion, she
exclaimed:

'Well, answer me. Accuse me! Say it was I who came to tempt you! That
will be the climax! Speak, and say what you can for yourself. Strike me
if you like. I should prefer your blows to that corpse-like stiffness
you put on. Is there no blood left in your veins? Have you no spirit?
Don't you hear me calling you a coward? Yes, indeed, you are a coward.
You should never have loved me, since you may not be a man. Is it that
black robe of yours which holds you back? Tear it off! When you are
naked, perhaps you will remember yourself again.'

The priest slowly repeated his former words:

'I have sinned. I had no excuse for my sin. I do penitence for my sin
without hope of pardon. If I tore off my cassock, I should tear away my
very flesh, for I have given myself wholly to God, soul and body. I am a
priest.'

'And I! what is to become of me?' cried Albine.

He looked unflinchingly at her.

'May your sufferings be reckoned against me as so many crimes! May I be
eternally punished for the desertion in which I am forced to leave you!
That will be only just. All unworthy though I be, I pray for you each
night.'

She shrugged her shoulders with an air of great discouragement. Her
anger was subsiding. She almost felt inclined to pity him.

'You are mad,' she murmured. 'Keep your prayers. It is you yourself that
I want. But you will never understand me. There were so many things I
wanted to tell you! Yet you stand there and irritate me with your
chatter of another world. Come, let us try to talk sensibly. Let us wait
for a moment till we are calmer. You cannot dismiss me in this way, I
cannot leave you here. It is because you are here that you are so
corpse-like, so cold that I dare not touch you. We won't talk any more
just now. We will wait a little.'

She ceased speaking, and took a few steps, examining the little church.
The rain was still gently pattering against the windows; and the cold
damp light seemed to moisten the walls. Not a sound came from outside
save the monotonous plashing of the rain. The sparrows were doubtless
crouching for shelter under the tiles, and the rowan-tree's deserted
branches showed but indistinctly in the veiling, drenching downpour.
Five o'clock struck, grated out, stroke by stroke, from the wheezy chest
of the old clock; and then the silence fell again, seeming to grow yet
deeper, dimmer, and more despairing. The priest's painting work, as yet
scarcely dry, gave to the high altar and the wainscoting an appearance
of gloomy cleanliness, like that of some convent chapel where the sun
never shines. Grievous anguish seemed to fill the nave, splashed with
the blood that flowed from the limbs of the huge Christ; while, along
the walls, the fourteen scenes of the Passion displayed their awful
story in red and yellow daubs, reeking with horror. It was life that was
suffering the last agonies there, amidst that deathlike quiver of the
atmosphere, upon those altars which resembled tombs, in that bare vault
which looked like a sepulchre. The surroundings all spoke of slaughter
and gloom, terror and anguish and nothingness. A faint scent of incense
still lingered there, like the last expiring breath of some dead girl,
who had been hurriedly stifled beneath the flagstones.

'Ah,' said Albine at last, 'how sweet it used to be in the sunshine!
Don't you remember? One morning we walked past a hedge of tall rose
bushes, to the left of the flower-garden. I recollect the very colour of
the grass; it was almost blue, shot with green. When we reached the end
of the hedge we turned and walked back again, so sweet was the perfume
of the sunny air. And we did nothing else, that morning; we took just
twenty paces forward and then twenty paces back. It was so sweet a spot
you would not leave it. The bees buzzed all around; and there was a
tomtit that never left us, but skipped along by our side from branch to
branch. You whispered to me, "How delightful is life!" Ah! life! it was
the green grass, the trees, the running waters, the sky, and the sun,
amongst which we seemed all fair and golden.'

She mused for another moment and then continued: 'Life 'twas the
Paradou. How vast it used to seem to us! Never were we able to find the
end of it. The sea of foliage rolled freely with rustling waves as far
as the eye could reach. And all that glorious blue overhead! we were
free to grow, and soar, and roam, like the clouds without meeting more
obstacles than they. The very air was ours!'

She stopped and pointed to the low walls of the church.

'But, here, you are in a grave. You cannot stretch out your hand without
hurting it against the stones. The roof hides the sky from you and blots
out the sun. It is all so small and confined that your limbs grow stiff
and cramped as though you were buried alive.'

'No,' answered the priest. 'The church is wide as the world.'

But she waved her hands towards the crosses, and the dying Christ, and
the pictures of the Passion.

'And you live in the very midst of death. The grass, the trees, the
springs, the sun, the sky, all are in the death throes around you.'

'No, no; all revives, all grows purified and reascends to the source of
light.'

He had now drawn himself quite erect, with flashing eyes. And feeling
that he was now invincible, so permeated with faith as to disdain
temptation, he quitted the altar, took Albine's hand, and led her, as
though she had been his sister, to the ghastly pictures of the Stations
of the Cross.

'See,' he said, 'this is what God suffered! Jesus is cruelly scourged.
Look! His shoulders are naked; His flesh is torn; His blood flows down
His back. . . . And Jesus is crowned with thorns. Tears of blood trickle
down His gashed brow. On His temple is a jagged wound. . . . Again Jesus
is insulted by the soldiers. His murderers have scoffingly thrown a
purple robe around His shoulders, and they spit upon His face and strike
Him, and press the thorny crown deep into His flesh.'

Albine turned away her head, that she might not see the crudely painted
pictures, in which the ochreous flesh of Christ had been plentifully
bedaubed with carmine wounds. The purple robe round His shoulders seemed
like a shred of His skin torn away.

'Why suffer? why die?' she said. 'O Serge, if you would only
remember! . . . You told me, that morning, that you were tired. But
I knew that you were only pretending, for the air was quite cool and we
had only been walking for a quarter of an hour. But you wanted to sit
down that you might hold me in your arms. Right down in the orchard, by
the edge of a stream, there was a cherry tree--you remember it, don't
you?--which you never could pass without wishing to kiss my hands. And
your kisses ran all up my arms and shoulders to my lips. Cherry time was
over, and so you devoured my lips. . . . It used to make us feel so sad
to see the flowers fading, and one day, when you found a dead bird in
the grass, you turned quite pale, and caught me to your breast, as if to
forbid the earth to take me.'

But the priest drew her towards the other Stations of the Cross.

'Hush! hush!' he cried, 'look here, and here! Bow down in grief and
pity---- Jesus falls beneath the weight of His cross. The ascent of
Calvary is very tiring. He has dropped down on His knees. But He does
not stay to wipe even the sweat from His brow, He rises up again and
continues His journey. . . . And again Jesus falls beneath the weight of
His cross. At each step He staggers. This time He has fallen on His
side, so heavily that for a moment He lies there quite breathless. His
lacerated hands have relaxed their hold upon the cross. His bruised and
aching feet leave blood-stained prints behind them. Agonising weariness
overwhelms Him, for He carries upon His shoulders the sins of the whole
world.'

Albine gazed at the pictured Jesus, lying in a blue shirt prostrate
beneath the cross, the blackness of which bedimmed the gold of His
aureole. Then, with her glance wandering far away, she said:

'Oh! those meadow-paths! Have you no memory left, Serge? Have you
forgotten those soft grassy walks through the meadows, amidst very seas
of greenery? On the afternoon I am telling you of, we had only meant to
stay out of doors an hour; but we went wandering on and were still
wandering when the stars came out above us. Ah! how velvety it was, that
endless carpet, soft as finest silk! It was just like a green sea whose
gentle waters lapped us round. And well we knew whither those beguiling
paths that led nowhere, were taking us! They were taking us to our love,
to the joy of living together, to the certainty of happiness.'

With his hands trembling with anguish, Abbe Mouret pointed to the
remaining pictures.

'Jesus,' he stammered, 'Jesus is nailed to the cross. The nails are
hammered through His outspread hands. A single nail suffices for his
feet, whose bones split asunder. He, Himself, while His flesh quivers
with pain, fixes His eyes upon heaven and smiles. . . . Jesus is
crucified between two thieves. The weight of His body terribly
aggravates His wounds. From His brow, from His limbs, does a bloody
sweat stream down. The two thieves insult Him, the passers-by mock at
Him, the soldiers cast lots for His raiment. And the shadowy darkness
grows deeper and the sun hides himself. . . . Jesus dies upon the cross.
He utters a piercing cry and gives up the ghost. Oh! most terrible of
deaths! The veil of the temple is rent in twain from top to bottom. The
earth quakes, the stones are broken, and the very graves open.'

The priest had fallen on his knees, his voice choked by sobs, his eyes
fixed upon the three crosses of Calvary, where writhed the gaunt pallid
bodies of the crucified. Albine placed herself in front of the paintings
in order that he might no longer see them.

'One evening,' she said, 'I lay through the long gloaming with my head
upon your lap. It was in the forest, at the end of that great avenue of
chestnut-trees, through which the setting sun shot a parting ray. Ah!
what a caressing farewell He bade us! He lingered awhile by our feet
with a kindly smile, as if saying "Till to-morrow." The sky slowly grew
paler. I told you merrily that it was taking off its blue gown, and
donning its gold-flowered robe of black to go out for the evening. And
it was not night that fell, but a soft dimness, a veil of love and
mystery, reminding us of those dusky paths, where the foliage arches
overhead, one of those paths in which one hides for a moment with the
certainty of finding the joyousness of daylight at the other end.

'That evening the calm clearness of the twilight gave promise of a
splendid morrow. When I saw that it did not grow dark as quickly as you
wished, I pretended to fall asleep. I may confess it to you now, but I
was not really sleeping while you kissed me on the eyes. I felt your
kisses and tried to keep from laughing. And then, when the darkness
really came, it was like one long caress. The trees slept no more than I
did. At night, don't you remember, the flowers always breathed a
stronger perfume.'

Then, as he still remained on his knees, while tears streamed down his
face, she caught him by the wrists, and pulled him to his feet, resuming
passionately:

'Oh! if you knew you would bid me carry you off; you would fasten your
arms about my neck, lest I should go away without you. . . . Yesterday I
had a longing to see the garden once more. It seems larger, deeper, more
unfathomable than ever. I discovered there new scents, so sweetly
aromatic that they brought tears into my eyes. In the avenues I found a
rain of sunbeams that thrilled me with desire. The roses spoke to me of
you. The bullfinches were amazed at seeing me alone. All the garden
broke out into sighs. Oh! come! Never has the grass spread itself out
more softly. I have marked with a flower the hidden nook whither I long
to take you. It is a nest of greenery in the midst of a tangle of
brushwood. And there one can hear all the teeming life of the garden, of
the trees and the streams and the sky. The earth's very breathing will
softly lull us to rest there. Oh! come! come! and let us love one
another amidst that universal loving!'

But he pushed her from him. He had returned to the Chapel of the
Dead and stood in front of the painted papier-mache Christ, big as a
ten-year-old boy, that writhed in such horridly realistic agony. There
were real iron nails driven into the figure's limbs, and the wounds
gaped in the torn and bleeding flesh.

'O Jesus, Who hast died for us!' cried the priest, 'convince her of our
nothingness! Tell her that we are but dust, rottenness, and damnation!
Ah! suffer that I may hide my head in a hair-cloth and rest it against
Thy feet and stay there, motionless, until I rot away in death. The
earth will no longer exist for me. The sun will no longer shine. I shall
see nothing more, feel nothing, hear nothing. Nought of all this
wretched world will come to turn my soul from its adoration of Thee.'

He was gradually becoming more and more excited, and he stepped towards
Albine with upraised hands.

'You said rightly. It is Death that is present here; Death that is
before my eyes; Death that delivers and saves one from all rottenness.
Hear me! I renounce, I deny life, I wholly refuse it, I spit upon it.
Those flowers of yours stink; your sun dazzles and blinds; your grass
makes lepers of those that lie upon it; your garden is but a
charnel-place where all rots and putrefies. The earth reeks with
abomination. You lie when you talk of love and light and gladsome life
in the depths of your palace of greenery. There is nought but darkness
there. Those trees of yours exhale a poison which transforms men into
beasts; your thickets are charged with the venom of vipers; your streams
carry pestilence in their blue waters. If I could snatch away from that
world of nature, which you extol, its kirtle of sunshine and its girdle
of greenery, you would see it hideous like a very fury, a skeleton,
rotting away with disease and vice.

'And even if you spoke the truth, even if your hands were really filled
with pleasures, even if you should carry me to a couch of roses and
offer me the dreams of Paradise, I would defend myself yet the more
desperately from your embraces. There is war between us; war eternal and
implacable. See! the church is very small; it is poverty-stricken; it is
ugly; its confessional-box and pulpit are made of common deal, its font
is merely of plaster, its altars are formed of four boards which I have
painted myself. But what of that? It is yet vaster than your garden,
greater than the valley, greater, even, than the whole earth. It is an
impregnable fortress which nothing can ever break down. The winds, the
sun, the forests, the ocean, all that is, may combine to assault it; yet
it will stand erect and unshaken for ever!

'Yes, let all the jungles tower aloft and assail the walls with their
thorny arms, let all the legions of insects swarm out of their holes in
the ground and gnaw at the walls; the church, ruinous though it may
seem, will never fall before the invasion of life. It is Death, Death
the inexpugnable! . . . And do you know what will one day happen? The
tiny church will grow and spread to such a colossal size, and will cast
around such a mighty shadow, that all that nature, you speak of, will
give up the ghost. Ah! Death, the Death of everything, with the skies
gaping to receive our souls, above the curse-stricken ruins of the
world!'

As he shouted those last words, he pushed Albine forcibly towards the
door. She, extremely pale, retreated step by step. When he had finished
in a gasping voice she very gravely answered:

'It is all over, then? You drive me away? Yet, I am your wife. It is you
who made me so. And God, since He permitted it, cannot punish us to such
a point as this.'

She was now on the threshold, and she added:

'Listen! Every day, at sunset, I go to the end of the garden, to the
spot where the wall has fallen in. I shall wait for you there.'

And then she disappeared. The vestry door fell back with a sound like a
deep sigh.

IX


The church was perfectly silent, except for the murmuring sound of the
rain, which was falling heavily once more. In that sudden change to
quietude the priest's anger subsided, and he even felt moved. It was
with his face streaming with tears, his frame shaken by sobs, that he
went back to throw himself on his knees before the great crucifix. A
torrent of ardent thanksgiving burst from his lips.

'Thanks be to Thee, O God, for the help which Thou hast graciously
bestowed upon me. Without Thy grace I should have hearkened unto the
promptings of my flesh, and should have miserably returned to my sin. It
was Thy grace that girded my loins as with armour for battle; Thy grace
was indeed my armour, my courage, the support of my soul, that kept me
erect, beyond weakness. Oh! my God, Thou wert in me; it was Thy voice
that spoke in me, for I no longer felt the cowardice of the flesh, I
could have cut asunder my very heart-strings. And now, O God, I offer
Thee my bleeding heart. It no longer belongs to any creature of this
world; it is Thine alone. To give it to Thee I have wrenched it from all
worldly affection. But think not, O God, that I take any pride to myself
for this victory. I know that without Thee I am nothing; and I humbly
cast myself at Thy feet.'

He sank down upon the altar steps, unable to utter another word, while
his breath panted incense-like from his parted lips. The divine grace
bathed him in ineffable ecstasy. He sought Jesus in the recesses of his
being, in that sanctuary of love which he was ever preparing for His
worthy reception. And Jesus was now present there. The Abbe knew it by
the sweet influences which permeated him. And thereupon he joined with
Jesus in that spiritual converse which at times bore him away from earth
to companionship with God. He sighed out the verse from the 'Song of
Solomon,' 'My beloved is mine, and I am his; He feedeth his flock among
the lilies, until the day be cool, and the shadows flee away.' He
pondered over the words of the 'Imitation:' 'It is a great art to know
how to talk with Jesus, and it requires much prudence to keep Him near
one.' And then, with adorable condescension, Jesus came down to him, and
spoke with him for hours of his needs, his happiness, and his hopes.
Their confidences were not less affectionate and touching than those of
two friends, who meet after long separation and quietly retire to
converse on the bank of some lonely stream; for during those hours of
divine condescension Jesus deigned to be his friend, his best, most
faithful friend, one who never forsook him, and who in return for a
little love gave him all the treasures of eternal life. That day the
priest was eager to prolong the sweet converse, and indeed, when six
o'clock sounded through the quiet church, he was still listening to the
words which echoed through his soul.

On his side there was unreserved confession, unimpeded by the restraints
of language, natural effusion of the heart which spoke even more quickly
than the mind. Abbe Mouret told everything to Jesus, as to a God who had
come down in all the intimacy of the most loving tenderness, and who
would listen to everything. He confessed that he still loved Albine; and
he was surprised that he had been able to speak sternly to her and drive
her away, without his whole being breaking out into revolt. He marvelled
at it, and smiled as though it were some wonderful miracle performed by
another. And Jesus told him that he must not be astonished, and that the
greatest saints were often but unconscious instruments in the hands of
God. Then the Abbe gave expression to a doubt. Had he not lost merit in
seeking refuge in the Cross and even in the Passion of his Saviour? Had
he not shown that he possessed as yet but little courage, since he had
not dared to fight unaided? But Jesus evinced kindly tolerance, and
answered that man's weakness was God's continual care, and that He
especially loved those suffering souls, to whose assistance He went,
like a friend to the bedside of a sick companion.

But was it a sin to love Albine, a sin for which he, Serge, would be
damned? No; if his love was clean of all fleshly taint, and added
another hope to his desire for eternal life. But, then, how was he to
love her? In silence; without speaking a word to her, without taking a
step towards her; simply allowing his pure affection to breathe forth,
like a sweet perfume, pleasing unto heaven. And Jesus smiled with
increasing kindliness, drawing nearer as if to encourage confession, in
such wise that the priest grew bolder and began to recapitulate Albine's
charms. She had hair that was fair and golden as an angel's; she was
very white, with big soft eyes, like those of the aureoled saints. Jesus
seemed to listen to this in silence, though a smile still played upon
His face. And the priest continued: She had grown much taller. She was
now like a queen, with rounded form and splendid shoulders. Oh! to clasp
her waist, were it only for a second, and to feel her shoulders drawn
close by his embrace! But the smile on the divine countenance then
paled and died away, as a star sinks and falls beneath the horizon.
Abbe Mouret now spoke all alone. Ah! had he not shown himself too
hard-hearted? Why had he driven her away without one single word of
affection, since Heaven allowed him to love her?

'I do love her! I do love her!' he cried aloud, in a distracted voice,
that rang through the church.

He thought he saw her still standing there. She was stretching out her
arms to him; she was beautiful enough to make him break all his vows. He
threw himself upon her bosom without thought of the reverence due to his
surroundings, he clasped her and rained kisses upon her face. It was
before her that he now knelt, imploring her mercy, and beseeching her to
forgive him his unkindness. He told her that, at times a voice which was
not his own spoke through his lips. Could he himself ever have treated
her harshly? It was the strange voice that had repulsed her. It could
not, surely, be he himself, for he would have been unable to touch a
hair of her head without loving emotion. And yet he had driven her away.
The church was really empty! Whither should he hasten to find her again,
to bring her back, and wipe her tears away with kisses? The rain was
streaming down more violently than ever. The roads must be rivers of
mud. He pictured her to himself lashed by the downpour, tottering
alongside the ditches, her clothes soaked and clinging to her skin. No!
no! it could not have been himself; it was that other voice, the jealous
voice that had so cruelly sought to slay his love.

'O Jesus!' he cried in desperation, 'be merciful and give her back to
me!'

But his Lord was no longer there. Then Abbe Mouret, awaking with a
start, turned horribly pale. He understood it all. He had not known how
to keep Jesus with him. He had lost his friend, and had been left
defenceless against the powers of evil. Instead of that inward light,
which had shone so brightly within him as he received his God, he now
found utter darkness, a foul vapour that irritated his senses. Jesus had
withdrawn His grace on leaving him; and he, who since early morning had
been so strong with heaven-sent help, now felt utterly miserable,
forsaken, weak and helpless as an infant. How frightful was his fall!
How galling its bitterness! To have straggled so heroically, to have
remained unshaken, invincible, implacable, while the temptress actually
stood before him, with all her warm life, her swelling bosom and superb
shoulders, her perfume of love and passion; and then to fall so
shamefully, to throb with desire, when she had disappeared, leaving
behind her but the echo of her skirts, and the fragrance diffused from
her white neck! Now, these mere recollections sufficed to make her all
powerful, her influence permeated the church.

'Jesus! Jesus!' cried the priest, once more, 'return, come back to me;
speak to me once again!'

But Jesus remained deaf to his cry. For a moment Abbe Mouret raised his
arms to heaven in desperate entreaty. His shoulders cracked and strained
beneath the wild violence of his supplications. But soon his hands fell
down again in discouragement. Heaven preserved that hopeless silence
which suppliants at times encounter. Then he once more sat down on the
altar steps, heart-crushed and with ashen face, pressing his elbows to
his sides, as though he were trying to reduce his flesh to the smallest
proportions possible.

'My God! Thou deserted me!' he murmured. 'Nevertheless, Thy will be
done!'

He spoke not another word, but sat there, panting breathlessly, like a
hunted beast that cowers motionless in fear of the hounds. Ever since
his sin, he had thus seemed to be the sport of the divine grace. It
denied itself to his most ardent prayers; it poured down upon him,
unexpectedly and refreshingly, when he had lost all hope of winning it
for long years to come.

At first he had been inclined to rebel against this dispensation of
Heaven, complaining like a betrayed lover, and demanding the immediate
return of that consoling grace, whose kiss made him so strong. But
afterwards, after unavailing outbursts of anger, he had learned to
understand that humility profited him most and could alone enable him to
endure the withdrawal of the divine assistance. Then, for hours and for
days, he would humble himself and wait for comfort which came not. In
vain he cast himself unreservedly into the hands of God, annihilated
himself before the Divinity, wearied himself with the incessant
repetition of prayers. He could not perceive God's presence with him;
and his flesh, breaking free from all restraint, rose up in rebellious
desire. It was a slow agony of temptation, in which the weapons of faith
fell, one by one, from his faltering hands, in which he lay inert in the
clutch of passion, in which he beheld with horror his own ignominy,
without having the courage to raise his little finger to free himself
from the thraldom of sin.

Such was now his life. He had felt sin's attacks in every form. Not a
day passed that he was not tried. Sin assumed a thousand guises,
assailed him through his eyes and ears, flew boldly at his throat,
leaped treacherously upon his shoulders, or stole torturingly into his
bones. His transgression was ever present, he almost always beheld
Albine dazzling as the sunshine, lighting up the greenery of the
Paradou. He only ceased to see her in those rare moments when the divine
grace deigned to close his eyes with its cool caresses. And he strove to
hide his sufferings as one hides those of some disgraceful disease. He
wrapped himself in the endless silence, which no one knew how to make
him break, filling the parsonage with his martyrdom and resignation, and
exasperating La Teuse, who, at times, when his back was turned, would
shake her fist at heaven.

This time he was alone now, and need take no care to hide his torment.
Sin had just struck him such an overwhelming blow, that he had not
strength left to move from the altar steps, where he had fallen. He
remained there, sighing, and groaning, parched with agony, incapable of
a single tear. And he thought of the calm unruffled life that had once
been his. Ah! the perfect peace, the full confidence of his first days
at Les Artaud! The path of salvation had seemed so straight and easy
then! He had smiled at the very mention of temptation. He had lived in
the midst of wickedness, without knowledge of it, without fear of it,
certain of being able to withstand it. He had been a model priest, so
pure and chaste, so inexperienced and innocent in God's sight, that God
had led him by the hand like a little child.

But now, all that childlike innocence was dead, God visited him in the
morning, and forthwith tried him. A state of temptation became his life
on earth. Now that full manhood and sin had come upon him, he entered
into the everlasting struggle. Could it be that God really loved him
more now than before? The great saints have all left fragments of their
torn flesh upon the thorns of the way of sorrow. He tried to gather some
consolation from this circumstance. At each laceration of his flesh,
each racking of his bones, he tried to assure himself of some exceeding
great reward. And then, no infliction that Heaven might now cast upon
him could be too heavy. He even looked back with scorn on his former
serenity, his easy fervour, which had set him on his knees with mere
girlish enthusiasm, and left him unconscious even of the bruising of the
hard stones. He strove also to discover pleasure in pain, in plunging
into it, annihilating himself in it. But, even while he poured out
thanks to God, his teeth chattered with growing terror, and the voice of
his rebellious blood cried out to him that this was all falsehood, and
that the only happiness worth desiring was in Albine's arms, amongst the
flowers of the Paradou.

Yet he had put aside Mary for Jesus, sacrificing his heart that he might
subdue his flesh, and hoping to implant some virility in his faith. Mary
disquieted him too much, with her smoothly braided hair, her
outstretched hands, and her womanly smile. He could never kneel before
her without dropping his eyes, for fear of catching sight of the hem of
her dress. Then, too, he accused her of having treated him too tenderly
in former times. She had kept him sheltered so long within the folds of
her robe, that he had let himself slip from her arms to those of a human
creature without being conscious even of the change of his affection. He
thought of all the roughness of Brother Archangias, of his refusal to
worship Mary, of the distrustful glances with which he had seemed to
watch her. He himself despaired of ever rising to such a height of
roughness, and so he simply left her, hiding her images and deserting
her altar. Yet she remained in his heart, like some love which, though
unavowed, is ever present. Sin, with sacrilege whose very horror made
him shudder, made use of her to tempt him.

Whenever he still invoked her, as he did at times of irrepressible
emotion, it was Albine who showed herself beneath the white veil, with
the blue scarf knotted round her waist and the golden roses blooming on
her bare feet. All the representations of the Virgin, the Virgin with
the royal mantle of cloth-of-gold, the Virgin crowned with stars, the
Virgin visited by the Angel of the Annunciation, the peaceful Virgin
poised between a lily and a distaff, all brought him some memory of
Albine, her smiling eyes or her delicately curved mouth or her softly
rounded cheeks.

Thereupon, by a supreme effort, he drove the female element from his
worship, and sought refuge in Jesus, though even His gentle mildness
sometimes proved a source of disquietude to him. What he needed was a
jealous God, an implacable God, the Jehovah of the Old Testament, girded
with thunder and manifesting Himself only to chastise the terrified
world. He had done with the saints and the angels and the Divine Mother;
he bowed down before God Himself alone, the omnipotent Master, who
demanded from him his every breath. And he felt the hand of this God
laid heavily upon him, holding him helpless at His mercy through space
and time, like a guilty atom. Ah! to be nothing, to be damned, to dream
of hell, to wrestle vainly against hideous temptations, all that was
surely good.

From Jesus he took but the cross. He was seized with that passion for
the cross which has made so many lips press themselves again and again
to the crucifix till they were worn away with kissing. He took up the
cross and followed Jesus. He sought to make it heavier, the mightiest of
burdens; it was great joy to him to fall beneath its weight, to drag it
on his knees, his back half broken. In it he beheld the only source of
strength for the soul, of joy for the mind, of the consummation of
virtue and the perfection of holiness. In it lay all that was good; all
ended in death upon it. To suffer and to die, those words ever sounded
in his ears, as the end and goal of mortal wisdom. And, when he had
fastened himself to the cross, he enjoyed the boundless consolation of
God's love. It was no longer, now, upon Mary that he lavished filial
tenderness or lover's passion. He loved for love's mere sake, with an
absolute abstract love. He loved God with a love that lifted him out of
himself, out of all else, and wrapped him round with a dazzling radiance
of glory. He was like a torch that burns away with blazing light. And
death seemed to him to be only a great impulse of love.

But what had he omitted to do that he was thus so sorely tried? With
his hand he wiped away the perspiration that streamed down his brow,
and reflected that, that very morning, he had made his usual
self-examination without finding any great guilt within him. Was he not
leading a life of great austerity and mortification of the flesh? Did he
not love God solely and blindly? Ah! how he would have blessed His Holy
Name had He only restored him his peace, deeming him now sufficiently
punished for his transgression! But, perhaps, that sin of his could
never be expiated. And then, in spite of himself, his mind reverted to
Albine and the Paradou, and all their memories.

At first he tried to make excuses for himself. He had fallen, one
evening, senseless upon the tiled floor of his bedroom, stricken with
brain fever. For three weeks he had remained unconscious. His blood
surged furiously through his veins and raged within him like a torrent
that had burst its banks. His whole body, from the crown of his head to
the soles of his feet, was so scoured and renewed and wrought afresh by
the mighty labouring of his ailment, that in his delirium he had
sometimes thought he could hear the very hammer blows of workmen that
nailed his bones together again. Then, one morning, he had awakened,
feeling like a new being. He was born a second time, freed of all that
his five-and-twenty years of life had successively implanted in him. His
childish piety, his education at the seminary, the faith of his early
priesthood, had all vanished, had been carried off, and their place was
bare and empty. In truth, it could be hell alone that had thus prepared
him for the reception of evil, disarming him of all his former weapons,
and reducing his body to languor and softness, through which sin might
readily enter.

He, perfectly unconscious of it all, unknowingly surrendered himself to
the gradual approach of evil. When he had reopened his eyes in the
Paradou, he had felt himself an infant once more, with no memory of the
past, no knowledge of his priesthood. He experienced a gentle pleasure,
a glad feeling of surprise at thus beginning life afresh, as though it
were all new and strange to him and would be delightful to learn. Oh!
the sweet apprenticeship, the charming observations, the delicious
discoveries! That Paradou was a vast abode of felicity; and hell, in
placing him there, had known full well that he would be defenceless.
Never, in his first youth, had he known such enjoyment in growing. That
first youth of his, when he now thought of it, seemed quite black and
gloomy, graceless, wan and inactive, as if it had been spent far away
from the sunlight.

But at the Paradou, how joyfully had he hailed the sun! How admiringly
had he gazed at the first tree, at the first flower, at the tiniest
insect he had seen, at the most insignificant pebble he had picked up!
The very stones charmed him. The horizon was a source of never-ending
amazement. One clear morning, the memory of which still filled his eyes,
bringing back a perfume of jasmine, a lark's clear song, he had been so
affected by emotion that he felt all power desert his limbs. He had long
found pleasure in learning the sensations of life. And, ah! the morning
when Albine had been born beside him amidst the roses! As he thought of
it, an ecstatic smile broke out upon his face. She rose up like a star
that was necessary to the very sun's existence. She illumined
everything, she made everything clear. She made his life complete.

Then in fancy he once again walked with her through the Paradou. He
remembered the little curls that waved behind her neck as she ran on
before him. She exhaled delicious scent, and the touch of her warm
swaying skirts seemed like a caress. And when she clasped him with her
supple curving arms, he half expected to see her, so slight and slender
she was, twine herself around him. It was she who went foremost. She led
him through winding paths, where they loitered, that their walk might
last the longer. It was she who instilled into him love for nature; and
it was by watching the loves of the plants that he had learned to love
her, with a love that was long, indeed, in bursting into life, but whose
sweetness had been theirs at last. Beneath the shade of the giant tree
they had reached their journey's goal. Oh! to clasp her once again--yet
once again!

A low groan suddenly came from the priest. He hastily sprang up and
then flung himself down again. Temptation had just assailed him
afresh. Into what paths were his recollections leading him? Did he
not know, only too well, that Satan avails himself of every wile to
insinuate his serpent-head into the soul, even when it is absorbed in
self-examination? No! no! he had no excuse. His illness had in no wise
authorised him to sin. He should have set strict guard upon himself, and
have sought God anew upon recovering from his fever. And what a
frightful proof he now had of his vileness: he was not even able to make
calm confession of his sin. Would he never be able to silence his
nature? He wildly thought of scooping his brains out of his skull that
he might be able to think no more, and of opening his veins that his
blood might no longer torment him. For a moment he buried his face
within his hands, shuddering as though the beasts that he felt prowling
around him might infect him with the hot breath of temptation.

But his thoughts strayed on in spite of himself, and his blood throbbed
wildly in his very heart. Though he held his clenched fists to his eyes,
he still saw Albine, dazzling like a sun. Every effort that he made to
press the vision from his sight only made her shine out before him with
increased brilliancy. Was God, then, utterly forsaking him, that he
could find no refuge from temptation? And, in spite of all his efforts
to control his thoughts, he espied every tiny blade of grass that thrust
itself up by Albine's skirts; he saw a little thistle-flower fastened in
her hair, against which he remembered that he had pricked his lips.
Even the perfumed atmosphere of the Paradou floated round him, and
well-remembered sounds came back, the repeated call of a bird, then an
interval of hushed silence, then a sigh floating through the trees.

Why did not Heaven at once strike him dead with its lightning? That
would have been less cruel. It was with a voluptuous pang, like the
pangs which assail the damned, that he recalled his transgression. He
shuddered when he again heard in his heart the abominable words that he
had spoken at Albine's feet. Their echoes were now accusing him before
the throne of God. He had acknowledged Woman as his sovereign. He had
yielded to her as a slave, kissing her feet, longing to be the water she
drank and the bread she ate. He began to understand now why he could no
longer recover self-control. God had given him over to Woman. But he
would chastise her, scourge her, break her very limbs to force her to
let him go! It was she who was the slave; she, the creature of impurity,
to whom the Church should have denied a soul. Then he braced himself,
and shook his fists at the vision of Albine; but his fists opened and
his hands glided along her shoulders in a loving caress, while his lips,
just now breathing out anger and insult, pressed themselves to her hair,
stammering forth words of adoration.

Abbe Mouret opened his eyes again. The burning apparition of Albine
vanished. It was sudden and unexpected solace. He was able to weep.
Tears flowed slowly and refreshingly down his cheeks, and he drew a long
breath, still fearing to move, lest the Evil One should again grip him
by the neck, for he yet thought that he heard the snarl of a beast
behind him. And then he found such pleasure in the cessation of his
sufferings that his one thought was to prolong the enjoyment of it.

Outside the rain had ceased falling. The sun was setting in a vast
crimson glow, which spread across the windows like curtains of
rose-coloured satin. The church was quite warm and bright in the parting
breath of the sinking luminary. The priest thanked God for the respite
He had been pleased to vouchsafe to him. A broad ray of light, like a
beam of gold-dust, streamed through the nave and illumined the far end
of the building, the clock, the pulpit, and the high altar. Perhaps the
Divine grace was returning to him from heaven along that radiant path.
He watched with interest the atoms that came and went with prodigious
speed through the ray, like a swarm of busy messengers ever hastening
with news from the sun to the earth. A thousand lighted candles
would not have filled the church with such splendour. Curtains of
cloth-of-gold seemed to hang behind the high altar; treasures of the
goldsmith's art covered all the ledges; candle-holders arose in dazzling
sheaves; censers glowed full of burning gems; sacred vases gleamed like
fiery comets; and around all there seemed to be a rain of luminous
flowers amidst waving lacework--beds, bouquets, and garlands of roses,
from whose expanding petals dropped showers of stars.

Never had Abbe Mouret desired such magnificence for his poor church. He
smiled, and dreamt of how he might retain all that splendour there, and
then arrange it most effectively. He would have preferred to see the
curtains of cloth-of-gold hung rather higher; the vases, too, needed
more careful arrangement; and he thought that the bouquets of flowers
might be tied up more neatly, and the garlands be more regularly shaped.
Yet how wondrously magnificent it all was! He was the pontiff of a
church of gold. Bishops, princes, princesses, arrayed in royal mantles,
multitudes of believers, bending to the ground, were coming to visit it,
encamping in the valley, waiting for weeks at the door until they should
be able to enter. They kissed his feet, for even his feet had turned to
gold, and worked miracles. The bath of gold mounted to his knees. A
golden heart was beating within his golden breast, with so clear a
musical pulsation that the waiting crowds could hear it from outside.
Then a feeling of overweening pride seized upon him. He was an idol. The
golden beam mounted still higher, the high altar was all ablaze with
glory, and the priest grew certain that the Divine grace must be
returning to him, such was his inward satisfaction. The fierce snarl
behind him had now grown gentle and coaxing, and he only felt on his
shoulder a soft velvety pressure, as though some giant cat were lightly
caressing him.

He still pursued his reverie. Never before had he seen things under such
a favourable light. Everything seemed quite easy to him now that he once
more felt full of strength. Since Albine was waiting for him, he would
go and join her. It was only natural. On the previous morning he had
married Fortune and Rosalie. The Church did not forbid marriages. He saw
that young couple again as they knelt before him, smiling and nudging
each other while his hands were held over them in benediction. Then, in
the evening, they had shown him their room. Each word that he had spoken
to them echoed loudly in his ear. He had told Fortune that God had sent
him a companion, because He did not wish man to live alone; and he had
told Rosalie that she must cleave to her husband, never leaving him, but
always acting as his obedient helpmate. But he had said these things
also for Albine and himself. Was she not his companion, his obedient
helpmate, whom God had sent to him that his manhood might not wither up
in solitude? Besides, they had been joined the one to the other. He felt
surprised that he had not understood and recognised it at once; that he
had not gone away with her, as his duty plainly required that he should
have done. But he had quite made up his mind now; he would certainly
join her in the morning. He could be with her in half an hour. He would
go through the village, and take the road up the hill; it was much the
shortest way. He could do what he pleased; he was the master, and no one
would presume to say anything to him. If any one looked at him, a wave
of his hand would force them to bend their heads. He would live with
Albine. He would call her his wife. They would be very happy together.

The golden stream mounted still higher, and played amongst his fingers.
Again did he seem to be immersed in a bath of gold. He would take the
altar-vases away to ornament his house, he would keep up a fine
establishment, he would pay his servants with fragments of chalices
which he could easily break with his fingers. He would hang his
bridal-bed with the cloth-of-gold that draped the altar; and he would
give his wife for jewels the golden hearts and chaplets and crosses that
hung from the necks of the Virgin and the saints. The church itself, if
another storey were added to it, would supply them with a palace. God
would have no objection to make since He had allowed them to love each
other. And, besides, was it not he who was now God, with the people
kissing his golden miracle-working feet?

Abbe Mouret rose. He made that sweeping gesture of Jeanbernat's, that
wide gesture of negation, that took in everything as far as the horizon.

'There is nothing, nothing, nothing!' he said. 'God does not exist.'

A mighty shudder seemed to sweep through the church. The terrified
priest turned deadly pale and listened. Who had spoken? Who was it that
had blasphemed? Suddenly the velvety caress, whose gentle pressure he
had felt upon his shoulder, turned fierce and savage: sharp talons
seemed to be rending his flesh, and once more he felt his blood
streaming forth. Yet he remained on his feet, struggling against the
sudden attack. He cursed and reviled the triumphant sin that sniggered
and grinned round his temples, whilst all the hammers of the Evil One
battered at them. Why had he not been on his guard against Satan's
wiles? Did he not know full well that it was his habit to glide up
softly with gentle paws that he might drive them like blades into the
very vitals of his victim?

His anger increased as he thought how he had been entrapped, like a mere
child. Was he destined, then, to be ever hurled to the ground, with sin
crouching victoriously on his breast? This time he had actually denied
his God. It was all one fatal descent. His transgression had destroyed
his faith, and then dogma had tottered. One single doubt of the flesh,
pleading abomination, sufficed to sweep heaven away. The divine
ordinances irritated one; the divine mysteries made one smile. Then came
other temptations and allurements; gold, power, unrestrained liberty, an
irresistible longing for enjoyment, culminating in luxuriousness,
sprawling on a bed of wealth and pride. And then God was robbed. His
vessels were broken to adorn woman's impurity. Ah! well, then, he was
damned. Nothing could make any difference to him now. Sin might speak
aloud. It was useless to struggle further. The monsters who had hovered
about his neck were battening on his vitals now. He yielded to them with
hideous satisfaction. He shook his fists at the church. No; he believed
no longer in the divinity of Christ; he believed no longer in the Holy
Trinity; he believed in naught but himself, and his muscles and the
appetites of his body. He wanted to live. He felt the necessity of being
a man. Oh! to speed along through the open air, to be lusty and strong,
to owe obedience to no jealous master, to fell one's enemies with
stones, to carry off the fair maidens that passed upon one's shoulders.
He would break out from that living tomb where cruel hands had thrust
him. He would awaken his manhood, which had only been slumbering. And
might he die of shame if he should find that it were really dead! And
might the Divinity be accursed if, by the touch of His finger, He had
made him different from the rest of mankind.

The priest stood erect, his mind all dazed and scared. He fancied that,
at this fresh outburst of blasphemy, the church was falling down upon
him. The sunlight, which had poured over the high altar, had gradually
spread and mounted the walls like ruddy fire. Flames soared and licked
the rafters, then died away in a sanguineous, ember-like glow. And all
at once the church became quite black. It was as though the fires of the
setting sun had burst the roof asunder, pierced the walls, thrown open
wide breaches on every side to some exterior foe. The gloomy framework
seemed to shake beneath some violent assault. Night was coming on
quickly.

Then, in the far distance, the priest heard a gentle murmur rising from
the valley of Les Artaud. The time had been when he had not understood
the impassioned language of those burning lands, where writhed but
knotted vine-stocks, withered almond-trees, and decrepit olives
sprawling with crippled limbs. Protected by his ignorance, he had passed
undisturbed through all that world of passion. But, to-day, his ear
detected the slightest sigh of the leaves that lay panting in the heat.
Afar off, on the edge of the horizon, the hills, still hot with the
sinking luminary's farewell, seemed to set themselves in motion with the
tramp of an army on the march. Nearer at hand, the scattered rocks, the
stones along the road, all the pebbles in the valley, throbbed and
rolled as if possessed by a craving for motion. Then the tracts of ruddy
soil, the few fields that had been reduced to cultivation, seemed to
heave and growl like rivers that had burst their banks, bearing along in
a blood-like flood the engenderings of seeds, the births of roots, the
embraces of plants. Soon everything was in motion. The vine-branches
appeared to crawl along like huge insects; the parched corn and the dry
grass formed into dense, lance-waving battalions; the trees stretched
out their boughs like wrestlers making ready for a contest; the fallen
leaves skipped forward; the very dust on the road rolled on. It was a
moving multitude reinforced by fresh recruits at every step; a legion,
the sound of whose coming went on in front of it; an outburst of
passionate life, sweeping everything along in a mighty whirlwind of
fruitfulness. And all at once the assault began. From the limits of the
horizon, the whole countryside, the hills and stones and fields and
trees, rushed upon the church. At the first shock, the building quivered
and cracked. The walls were pierced and the tiles on the roof were
thrown down. But the great Christ, although shaken, did not fall.

A short respite followed. Outside, the voices sounded more angrily, and
the priest could now distinguish human ones amongst them. The Artauds,
those bastards who sprang up out of the rocky soil with the persistence
of brambles, were now in their turn blowing a blast that reeked of
teeming life. They had planted everywhere forests of humanity that
swallowed up all around them. They came up to the church, they shattered
the door with a push, and threatened to block up the very nave with the
invading scions of their race. Behind them came the beasts; the oxen
that tried to batter down the walls with their horns, the flocks of
asses, goats, and sheep, that dashed against the ruined church like
living waves, while swarms of wood-lice and crickets attacked the
foundations and reduced them to dust with their sawlike teeth. Yet
again, on the other side, there was Desiree's poultry-yard, where the
dunghill reeked with suffocating fumes. Here the big cock, Alexander,
sounded the assault, and the hens loosened the stones with their beaks,
and the rabbits burrowed under the very altars; whilst the pig, too fat
to stir, grunted and waited till all the sacred ornaments should be
reduced to warm ashes in which he might wallow at his ease.

A great roar ascended, and a second assault was delivered. The
villagers, the animals, all that overflowing sea of life assailed the
church with such impetuosity that the rafters bent and curved. This time
a part of the walls tottered and fell down, the ceiling shook, the
woodwork of the windows was carried away, and the grey mist of the
evening streamed in through the frightful gaping breaches. The great
Christ now only clung to His cross by the nail that pierced His left
hand.

A mighty shout hailed the downfall of the block of wall. Yet the church
still stood there firmly, in spite of the injuries it had received. It
offered a stern, silent, unflinching resistance, clutching desperately
to the tiniest stones of its foundations. It seemed as though, to keep
itself from falling, it required only the support of its slenderest
pillar, which, by some miracle of equilibration, held up the gaping
roof. Then Abbe Mouret beheld the rude plants of the plateau, the
dreadful-looking growths that had become hard as iron amidst the arid
rocks, that were knotted like snakes and bossy with muscles, set
themselves to work. The rust-hued lichens gnawed away at the rough
plasterwork like fiery leprosy. Then the thyme-plants thrust their roots
between the bricks like so many iron wedges. The lavenders insinuated
hooked fingers into the loosened stonework, and by slow persistent
efforts tore the blocks asunder. The junipers, the rosemaries, the
prickly holly bushes, climbed higher and battered the walls with
irresistible blows; and even the grass, the grass whose dry blades
slipped beneath the great door, stiffened itself into steel-like spears
and made its way down the nave, where it forced up the flagstones with
powerful levers. It was a victorious revolt, it was revolutionary nature
constructing barricades out of the overturned altars, and wrecking the
church which had for centuries cast too deep a shadow over it. The other
combatants had fallen back, and let the plants, the thyme and the
lavender and the lichens, complete the overthrow of the building with
their ceaseless little blows, their constant gnawing, which proved more
destructive than the heavier onslaught of the stronger assailants.

Then, suddenly, the end came. The rowan-tree, whose topmost branches had
already forced their way through the broken windows under the vaulted
roof, rushed in violently with its formidable stream of greenery. It
planted itself in the centre of the nave and grew there monstrously. Its
trunk expanded till its girth became so colossal that it seemed as
though it would burst the church asunder like a girdle spanning it too
closely. Its branches shot out in knotted arms, each one of which broke
down a piece of the wall or thrust off a strip of the roof, and they
went on multiplying without cessation, each branch ramifying, till a
fresh tree sprang out of each single knot, with such impetuosity of
growth that the ruins of the church, pierced through and through like a
sieve, flew into fragments, scattering a fine dust to the four quarters
of the heavens.

Now the giant tree seemed to reach the stars; its forest of branches was
a forest of legs, arms, and breasts full of sap; the long locks of women
streamed down from it; men's heads burst out from the bark; and up aloft
pairs of lovers, lying languid by the edges of their nests, filled the
air with the music of their delights.

A final blast of the storm which had broken over the church swept away
the dust of its remains: the pulpit and the confessional-box, which had
been ground into powder, the lacerated holy pictures, the shattered
sacred vessels, all the litter at which the legion of sparrows that had
once dwelt amongst the tiles was eagerly pecking. The great Christ, torn
from the cross, hung for a moment from one of the streaming women's
curls, and then was whirled away into the black darkness, in the depths
of which it sank with a loud crash. The Tree of Life had pierced the
heavens; it overtopped the stars.

Abbe Mouret was filled with the mad joy of an accursed spirit at the
sight before him. The church was vanquished; God no longer had a house.
And thenceforward God could no longer trouble him. He was free to rejoin
Albine, since it was she who triumphed. He laughed at himself for having
declared, an hour previously, that the church would swallow up the whole
earth with its shadow. The earth, indeed, had avenged itself by
consuming the church. The mad laughter into which he broke had the
effect of suddenly awakening him from his hallucination. He gazed
stupidly round the nave, which the evening shadows were slowly
darkening. Through the windows he could see patches of star-spangled
sky; and he was about to stretch out his arms to feel the walls, when he
heard Desiree calling to him from the vestry-passage:

'Serge! Serge! Are you there? Why don't you answer? I have been looking
for you for this last half-hour.'

She came in; she was holding a lighted lamp; and the priest then saw
that the church was still standing. He could no longer understand
anything, but remained in a horrible state of doubt betwixt the
unconquerable church, springing up again from its ashes, and Albine, the
all-powerful, who could shake the very throne of God by a single breath.

X


Desiree came up to him, full of merry chatter.

'Are you there? Are you there?' she cried. 'Why are you playing at
hide-and-seek? I called out to you at the top of my voice at least a
dozen times. I thought you must have gone out.'

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 Abbe 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.
Desiree 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 Cure,' 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
Cure. 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.

Abbe 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.' Abbe 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 Desiree'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 Abbe 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 Abbe
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 Abbe 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.

Abbe 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 Abbe 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 Abbe Mouret, he growled:

'I knew you were in there. I saw that the stones had been
disturbed. . . . Listen to me, Monsieur le Cure. 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 Abbe 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 Abbe 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 Abbe 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 Abbe'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 Cure 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.