Abbe Mouret's Transgression



                   Edited with an Introduction by
                      Ernest Alfred Vizetelly



  Introduction


'LA FAUTE DE L'ABBE MOURET' was, with respect to the date of
publication, the fourth volume of M. Zola's 'Rougon-Macquart' series;
but in the amended and final scheme of that great literary undertaking,
it occupies the ninth place. It proceeds from the sixth volume of the
series, 'The Conquest of Plassans;' which is followed by the two works
that deal with the career of Octave Mouret, Abbe Serge Mouret's elder
brother. In 'The Conquest of Plassans,' Serge and his half-witted
sister, Desiree, are seen in childhood at their home in Plassans, which
is wrecked by the doings of a certain Abbe Faujas and his relatives.
Serge Mouret grows up, is called by an instinctive vocation to the
priesthood, and becomes parish priest of Les Artaud, a well-nigh pagan
hamlet in one of those bare, burning stretches of country with which
Provence abounds. And here it is that 'La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret' opens
in the old ruinous church, perched upon a hillock in full view of the
squalid village, the arid fields, and the great belts of rock which shut
in the landscape all around.

There are two elements in this remarkable story, which, from the
standpoint of literary style, has never been excelled by anything that
M. Zola has since written; and one may glance at it therefore from two
points of view. Taking it under its sociological and religious aspect,
it will be found to be an indirect indictment of the celibacy of the
priesthood; that celibacy, contrary to Nature's fundamental law, which
assuredly has largely influenced the destinies of the Roman Catholic
Church. To that celibacy, and to all the evils that have sprang from it,
may be ascribed much of the irreligion current in France to-day. The
periodical reports on criminality issued by the French Ministers of
Justice since the foundation of the Republic in 1871, supply materials
for a most formidable indictment of that vow of perpetual chastity which
Rome exacts from her clergy. Nowadays it is undoubtedly too late for
Rome to go back upon that vow and thereby transform the whole of her
sacerdotal organisation; but, perhaps, had she done so in past times,
before the spirit of inquiry and free examination came into being, she
might have assured herself many more centuries of supremacy than have
fallen to her lot. But she has ever sought to dissociate the law of the
Divinity from the law of Nature, as though indeed the latter were but
the invention of the Fiend.

Abbe Mouret, M. Zola's hero, finds himself placed between the law of the
Divinity and the law of Nature: and the struggle waged within him by
those two forces is a terrible one. That which training has implanted in
his mind proves the stronger, and, so far as the canons of the Church
can warrant it, he saves his soul. But the problem is not quite frankly
put by M. Zola; for if Abbe Mouret transgresses he does so unwittingly,
at a time when he is unconscious of his priesthood and has no memory of
any vow. When the truth flashes upon him he is horrified with himself,
and forthwith returns to the Church. A further struggle between the
contending forces then certainly ensues, and ends in the final victory
of the Church. But it must at least be said that in the lapses which
occur in real life among the Roman priesthood, the circumstances are
altogether different from those which M. Zola has selected for his
story.

The truth is that in 'La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret,' betwixt lifelike
glimpses of French rural life, the author transports us to a realm of
poesy and imagination. This is, indeed, so true that he has introduced
into his work all the ideas on which he had based an early unfinished
poem called 'Genesis.' He carries us to an enchanted garden, the
Paradou--a name which one need hardly say is Provencal for Paradise*
--and there Serge Mouret, on recovering from brain fever, becomes, as it
were, a new Adam by the side of a new Eve, the fair and winsome Albine.
All this part of the book, then, is poetry in prose. The author has
remembered the ties which link Rousseau to the realistic school of
fiction, and, as in the pages of Jean-Jacques, trees, springs,
mountains, rocks, and flowers become animated beings and claim their
place in the world's mechanism. One may indeed go back far beyond
Rousseau, even to Lucretius himself; for more than once we are
irresistibly reminded of Lucretian scenes, above which through M. Zola's
pages there seems to hover the pronouncement of Sophocles:

     No ordinance of man shall override
     The settled laws of Nature and of God;
     Not written these in pages of a book,
     Nor were they framed to-day, nor yesterday;
     We know not whence they are; but this we know,
     That they from all eternity have been,
     And shall to all eternity endure.


  * There is a village called Paradou in Provence, between
    Les Baux and Arles.

And if we pass to the young pair whose duo of love is sung amidst the
varied voices of creation, we are irresistibly reminded of the Paul and
Virginia of St. Pierre, and the Daphnis and Chloe of Longus. Beside
them, in their marvellous garden, lingers a memory too of Manon and Des
Grieux, with a suggestion of Lauzun and a glimpse of the art of
Fragonard. All combine, all contribute--from the great classics to the
eighteenth century _petits maitres_--to build up a story of love's rise
in the human breast in answer to Nature's promptings.

M. Zola wrote 'La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret' one summer under the trees of
his garden, mindful the while of gardens that he had known in childhood:
the flowery expanse which had stretched before his grandmother's home at
Pont-au-Beraud and the wild estate of Galice, between Roquefavour and
Aix-en-Provence, through which he had roamed as a lad with friends then
boys like himself: Professor Baille and Cezanne, the painter. And into
his description of the wondrous Paradou he has put all his remembrance
of the gardens and woods of Provence, where many a plant and flower
thrive with a luxuriance unknown to England. True, in order to refresh
his memory and avoid mistakes, he consulted various horticultural
manuals whilst he was writing; of which circumstance captious critics
have readily laid hold, to proclaim that the description of the Paradou
is a mere florist's catalogue.

But it is nothing of the kind. The florist who might dare to offer such
a catalogue to the public would be speedily assailed by all the
horticultural journalists of England and all the customers of villadom.
For M. Zola avails himself of a poet's license to crowd marvel upon
marvel, to exaggerate nature's forces, to transform the tiniest blooms
into giant examples of efflorescence, and to mingle even the seasons one
with the other. But all this was premeditated; there was a picture
before his mind's eye, and that picture he sought to trace with his pen,
regardless of all possible objections. It is the poet's privilege to do
this and even to be admired for it. It would be easy for some leaned
botanist, some expert zoologist, to demolish Milton from the standpoint
of their respective sciences, but it would be absurd to do so. We ask of
the poet the flowers of his imagination, and the further he carries us
from the sordid realities, the limited possibilities of life, the more
are we grateful to him.

And M. Zola's Paradou is a flight of fancy, even as its mistress, the
fair, loving, guileless Albine, whose smiles and whose tears alike go to
our hearts, is the daughter of imagination. She is a flower--the very
flower of life's youth--in the midst of all the blossoms of her garden.
She unfolds to life and to love even as they unfold; she loves
rapturously even as they do under the sun and the azure; and she dies
with them when the sun's caress is gone and the chill of winter has
fallen. At the thought of her, one instinctively remembers Malherbe's
'Ode A Du Perrier:'

     She to this earth belonged, where beauty fast
          To direst fate is borne:
     A rose, she lasted, as the roses last,
          Only for one brief morn.


French painters have made subjects of many episodes in M. Zola's works,
but none has been more popular with them than Albine's pathetic,
perfumed death amidst the flowers. I know several paintings of great
merit which that touching incident has inspired.

Albine, if more or less unreal, a phantasm, the spirit as it were of
Nature incarnate in womanhood, is none the less the most delightful of
M. Zola's heroines. She smiles at us like the vision of perfect beauty
and perfect love which rises before us when our hearts are yet young and
full of illusions. She is the ideal, the very quintessence of woman.

In Serge Mouret, her lover, we find a man who, in more than one respect,
recalls M. Zola's later hero, the Abbe Froment of 'Lourdes' and 'Rome.'
He has the same loving, yearning nature; he is born--absolutely like
Abbe Froment--of an unbelieving father and a mother of mystical mind.
But unlike Froment he cannot shake off the shackles of his priesthood.
Reborn to life after his dangerous illness, he relapses into the
religion of death, the religion which regards life as impurity, which
denies Nature's laws, and so often wrecks human existence, as if indeed
that had been the Divine purpose in setting man upon earth. His
struggles suggest various passages in 'Lourdes' and 'Rome.' In fact, in
writing those works, M. Zola must have had his earlier creation in mind.
There are passages in 'La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret' culled from the
writings of the Spanish Jesuit Fathers and the 'Imitation' of Thomas a
Kempis that recur almost word for word in the Trilogy of the Three
Cities. Some might regard this as evidence of the limitation of M.
Zola's powers, but I think differently. I consider that he has in both
instances designedly taken the same type of priest in order to show how
he may live under varied circumstances; for in the earlier instance he
has led him to one goal, and in the later one to another. And the
passages of prayer, entreaty, and spiritual conflict simply recur
because they are germane, even necessary, to the subject in both cases.

Of the minor characters that figure in 'La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret' the
chief thing to be said is that they are lifelike. If Serge is almost
wholly spiritual, if Albine is the daughter of poesy, they, the others,
are of the earth earthy. As a result of their appearance on the scene,
there are some powerful contrasting passages in the book. Archangias,
the coarse and brutal Christian Brother who serves as a foil to Abbe
Mouret; La Teuse, the priest's garrulous old housekeeper; Desiree, his
'innocent' sister, a grown woman with the mind of a child and an almost
crazy affection for every kind of bird and beast, are all admirably
portrayed. Old Bambousse, though one sees but little of him, stands out
as a genuine type of the hard-headed French peasant, who invariably
places pecuniary considerations before all others. And Fortune and
Rosalie, Vincent and Catherine, and their companions, are equally true
to nature. It need hardly be said that there is many a village in France
similar to Les Artaud. That hamlet's shameless, purely animal life has
in no wise been over-pictured by M. Zola. Those who might doubt him need
not go as far as Provence to find such communities. Many Norman hamlets
are every whit as bad, and, in Normandy, conditions are aggravated by a
marked predilection for the bottle, which, as French social-scientists
have been pointing out for some years now, is fast hastening the
degenerescence of the peasantry, both morally and physically.

With reference to the English version of 'La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret'
herewith presented, I may just say that I have subjected it to
considerable revision and have retranslated all the more important
passages myself.

     MERTON, SURREY.                                    E. A. V.

Book I



                                I

As La Teuse entered the church she rested her broom and feather-brush
against the altar. She was late, as she had that day began her
half-yearly wash. Limping more than ever in her haste and hustling the
benches, she went down the church to ring the _Angelus_. The bare, worn
bell-rope dangled from the ceiling near the confessional, and ended in a
big knot greasy from handling. Again and again, with regular jumps, she
hung herself upon it; and then let her whole bulky figure go with it,
whirling in her petticoats, her cap awry, and her blood rushing to her
broad face.

Having set her cap straight with a little pat, she came back breathless
to give a hasty sweep before the altar. Every day the dust persistently
settled between the disjoined boards of the platform. Her broom rummaged
among the corners with an angry rumble. Then she lifted the altar cover
and was sorely vexed to find that the large upper cloth, already darned
in a score of places, was again worn through in the very middle, so as
to show the under cloth, which in its turn was so worn and so
transparent that one could see the consecrated stone, embedded in the
painted wood of the altar. La Teuse dusted the linen, yellow from long
usage, and plied her feather-brush along the shelf against which she set
the liturgical altar-cards. Then, climbing upon a chair, she removed the
yellow cotton covers from the crucifix and two of the candlesticks. The
brass of the latter was tarnished.

'Dear me!' she muttered, 'they really want a clean! I must give them a
polish up!'

Then hopping on one leg, swaying and stumping heavily enough to drive in
the flagstones, she hastened to the sacristy for the Missal, which she
placed unopened on the lectern on the Epistle side, with its edges
turned towards the middle of the altar. And afterwards she lighted the
two candles. As she went off with her broom, she gave a glance round her
to make sure that the abode of the Divinity had been put in proper
order. All was still, save that the bell-rope near the confessional
still swung between roof and floor with a sinuous sweep.

Abbe Mouret had just come down to the sacristy, a small and chilly
apartment, which a passage separated from his dining-room.

'Good morning, Monsieur le Cure,' said La Teuse, laying her broom aside.
'Oh! you have been lazy this morning! Do you know it's a quarter past
six?' And without allowing the smiling young priest sufficient time to
reply, she added 'I've a scolding to give you. There's another hole in
the cloth again. There's no sense in it. We have only one other, and
I've been ruining my eyes over it these three days in trying to mend it.
You will leave our poor Lord quite bare, if you go on like this.'

Abbe Mouret was still smiling. 'Jesus does not need so much linen, my
good Teuse,' he cheerfully replied. 'He is always warm, always royally
received by those who love Him well.'

Then stepping towards a small tap, he asked: 'Is my sister up yet? I
have not seen her.'

'Oh, Mademoiselle Desiree has been down a long time,' answered the
servant, who was kneeling before an old kitchen sideboard in which the
sacred vestments were kept. 'She is already with her fowls and rabbits.
She was expecting some chicks to be hatched yesterday, and it didn't
come off. So you can guess her excitement.' Then the worthy woman broke
off to inquire: 'The gold chasuble, eh?'

The priest, who had washed his hands and stood reverently murmuring a
prayer, nodded affirmatively. The parish possessed only three chasubles:
a violet one, a black one, and one in cloth-of-gold. The last had to be
used on the days when white, red, or green was prescribed by the ritual,
and it was therefore an all important garment. La Teuse lifted it
reverently from the shelf covered with blue paper, on which she laid it
after each service; and having placed it on the sideboard, she
cautiously removed the fine cloths which protected its embroidery. A
golden lamb slumbered on a golden cross, surrounded by broad rays of
gold. The gold tissue, frayed at the folds, broke out in little slender
tufts; the embossed ornaments were getting tarnished and worn. There was
perpetual anxiety, fluttering concern, at seeing it thus go off spangle
by spangle. The priest had to wear it almost every day. And how on earth
could it be replaced--how would they be able to buy the three chasubles
whose place it took, when the last gold threads should be worn out?

Upon the chasuble La Teuse next laid out the stole, the maniple, the
girdle, alb and amice. But her tongue still wagged while she crossed the
stole with the maniple, and wreathed the girdle so as to trace the
venerated initial of Mary's holy name.

'That girdle is not up to much now,' she muttered; 'you will have to
make up your mind to get another, your reverence. It wouldn't be very
hard; I could plait you one myself if I only had some hemp.'

Abbe Mouret made no answer. He was dressing the chalice at a small
table. A large old silver-gilt chalice it was with a bronze base, which
he had just taken from the bottom of a deal cupboard, in which the
sacred vessels and linen, the Holy Oils, the Missals, candlesticks, and
crosses were kept. Across the cup he laid a clean purificator, and on
this set the silver-gilt paten, with the host in it, which he covered
with a small lawn pall. As he was hiding the chalice by gathering
together the folds in the veil of cloth of gold matching the chasuble,
La Teuse exclaimed:

'Stop, there's no corporal in the burse. Last night I took all the dirty
purificators, palls, and corporals to wash them--separately, of course
--not with the house-wash. By-the-bye, your reverence, I didn't tell
you: I have just started the house-wash. A fine fat one it will be!
Better than the last.'

Then while the priest slipped a corporal into the burse and laid the
latter on the veil, she went on quickly:

'By-the-bye, I forgot! that gadabout Vincent hasn't come. Do you wish me
to serve your mass, your reverence?'

The young priest eyed her sternly.

'Well, it isn't a sin,' she continued, with her genial smile. 'I did
serve a mass once, in Monsieur Caffin's time. I serve it better, too,
than ragamuffins who laugh like heathens at seeing a fly buzzing about
the church. True I may wear a cap, I may be sixty years old, and as
round as a tub, but I have more respect for our Lord than those imps of
boys whom I caught only the other day playing at leap-frog behind the
altar.'

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

'What a hole this village is!' she grumbled. 'Not a hundred and fifty
people in it! There are days, like to-day, when you wouldn't find a
living soul in Les Artaud. Even the babies in swaddling clothes are gone
to the vineyards! And goodness knows what they do among such vines
--vines that grow under the pebbles and look as dry as thistles! A
perfect wilderness, three miles from any highway! Unless an angel comes
down to serve your mass, your reverence, you've only got me to help you,
on my honour! or one of Mademoiselle Desiree's rabbits, no offence to
your reverence!'

Just at that moment, however, Vincent, the Brichets' younger son, gently
opened the door of the sacristy. His shock of red hair and his little,
glistening, grey eyes exasperated La Teuse.

'Oh! the wretch!' she cried. 'I'll bet he's just been up to some
mischief! Come on, you scamp, since his reverence is afraid I might
dirty our Lord!'

On seeing the lad, Abbe Mouret had taken up the amice. He kissed the
cross embroidered in the centre of it, and for a second laid the cloth
upon his head; then lowering it over the collar-band of his cassock, he
crossed it and fastened the tapes, the right one over the left. He next
donned the alb, the symbol of purity, beginning with the right sleeve.
Vincent stooped and turned around him, adjusting the alb, in order that
it should fall evenly all round him to a couple of inches from the
ground. Then he presented the girdle to the priest, who fastened it
tightly round his loins, as a reminder of the bonds wherewith the
Saviour was bound in His Passion.

La Teuse remained standing there, feeling jealous and hurt and
struggling to keep silence; but so great was the itching of her tongue,
that she soon broke out once more: 'Brother Archangias has been here. He
won't have a single child at school to-day. He went off again like a
whirlwind to pull the brats' ears in the vineyards. You had better see
him. I believe he has got something to say to you.'

Abbe Mouret silenced her with a wave of the hand. Then he repeated the
usual prayers while he took the maniple--which he kissed before slipping
it over his left forearm, as a symbol of the practice of good works--and
while crossing on his breast the stole, the symbol of his dignity and
power. La Teuse had to help Vincent in the work of adjusting the
chasuble, which she fastened together with slender tapes, so that it
might not slip off behind.

'Holy Virgin! I had forgotten the cruets!' she stammered, rushing to the
cupboard. 'Come, look sharp, lad!'

Thereupon Vincent filled the cruets, phials of coarse glass, while she
hastened to take a clean finger-cloth from a drawer. Abbe Mouret,
holding the chalice by its stem with his left hand, the fingers of his
right resting meanwhile on the burse, then bowed profoundly, but without
removing his biretta, to a black wooden crucifix, which hung over the
side-board. The lad bowed too, and, bearing the cruets covered with the
finger-cloth, led the way out of the sacristy, followed by the priest,
who walked on with downcast eyes, absorbed in deep and prayerful
meditation.

II


The empty church was quite white that May morning. The bell-rope near
the confessional hung motionless once more. The little bracket light,
with its stained glass shade, burned like a crimson splotch against the
wall on the right of the tabernacle. Vincent, having set the cruets on
the credence, came back and knelt just below the altar step on the left,
while the priest, after rendering homage to the Holy Sacrament by a
genuflexion, went up to the altar and there spread out the corporal, on
the centre of which he placed the chalice. Then, having opened the
Missal, he came down again. Another bend of the knee followed, and,
after crossing himself and uttering aloud the formula, 'In the name of
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,' he raised his joined hands to
his breast, and entered on the great divine drama, with his countenance
blanched by faith and love.

'_Introibo ad altare Dei_.'

'_Ad Deum qui loetificat juventutem meam_,' gabbled Vincent, who,
squatting on his heels, mumbled the responses of the antiphon and the
psalm, while watching La Teuse as she roved about the church.

The old servant was gazing at one of the candles with a troubled look.
Her anxiety seemed to increase while the priest, bowing down with hands
joined again, recited the _Confiteor_. She stood still, in her turn
struck her breast, her head bowed, but still keeping a watchful eye on
the taper. For another minute the priest's grave voice and the server's
stammers alternated:

'_Dominus vobiscum_.'

'_Et cum spiritu tuo_.'

Then the priest, spreading out his hands and afterwards again joining
them, said with devout compunction: '_Oremus_' (Let us pray).

La Teuse could now stand it no longer, but stepped behind the altar,
reached the guttering candle, and trimmed it with the points of her
scissors. Two large blobs of wax had already been wasted. When she came
back again putting the benches straight on her way, and making sure that
there was holy-water in the fonts, the priest, whose hands were resting
on the edge of the altar-cloth, was praying in subdued tones. And at
last he kissed the altar.

Behind him, the little church still looked wan in the pale light of
early morn. The sun, as yet, was only level with the tiled roof. The
_Kyrie Eleisons_ rang quiveringly through that sort of whitewashed
stable with flat ceiling and bedaubed beams. On either side three lofty
windows of plain glass, most of them cracked or smashed, let in a raw
light of chalky crudeness.

The free air poured in as it listed, emphasising the naked poverty of
the God of that forlorn village. At the far end of the church, above the
big door which was never opened and the threshold of which was green
with weeds, a boarded gallery--reached by a common miller's ladder
--stretched from wall to wall. Dire were its creakings on festival days
beneath the weight of wooden shoes. Near the ladder stood the
confessional, with warped panels, painted a lemon yellow. Facing it,
beside the little door, stood the font--a former holy-water stoup
resting on a stonework pedestal. To the right and to the left, halfway
down the church, two narrow altars stood against the wall, surrounded by
wooden balustrades. On the left-hand one, dedicated to the Blessed
Virgin, was a large gilded plaster statue of the Mother of God, wearing
a regal gold crown upon her chestnut hair; while on her left arm sat
the Divine Child, nude and smiling, whose little hand raised the
star-spangled orb of the universe. The Virgin's feet were poised on
clouds, and beneath them peeped the heads of winged cherubs. Then the
right-hand altar, used for the masses for the dead, was surmounted by a
crucifix of painted papier-mache--a pendant, as it were, to the Virgin's
effigy. The figure of Christ, as large as a child of ten years old,
showed Him in all the horror of His death-throes, with head thrown back,
ribs projecting, abdomen hollowed in, and limbs distorted and splashed
with blood. There was a pulpit, too--a square box reached by a five-step
block--near a clock with running weights, in a walnut case, whose thuds
shook the whole church like the beatings of some huge heart concealed,
it might be, under the stone flags. All along the nave the fourteen
Stations of the Cross, fourteen coarsely coloured prints in narrow black
frames, bespeckled the staring whiteness of the walls with the yellow,
blue, and scarlet of scenes from the Passion.

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

The mystery of love, the immolation of the Holy Victim, was about to
begin. The server took the Missal and bore it to the left, or
Gospel-side, of the altar, taking care not to touch the pages of the
book. Each time he passed before the tabernacle he made a genuflexion
slantwise, which threw him all askew. Returning to the right-hand side
once more, he stood upright with crossed arms during the reading of the
Gospel. The priest, after making the sign of the cross upon the Missal,
next crossed himself: first upon his forehead--to declare that he would
never blush for the divine word; then on his mouth--to show his
unchanging readiness to confess his faith; and finally on his heart--to
mark that it belonged to God alone.

'_Dominus vobiscum_,' said he, turning round and facing the cold white
church.

'_Et cum spirits tuo_,' answered Vincent, who once more was on his
knees.

The Offertory having been recited, the priest uncovered the chalice. For
a moment he held before his breast the paten containing the host, which
he offered up to God, for himself, for those present, and for all the
faithful, living and dead. Then, slipping it on to the edge of the
corporal without touching it with his fingers, he took up the chalice
and carefully wiped it with the purificator. Vincent had in the
meanwhile fetched the cruets from the credence table, and now presented
them in turn, first the wine and then the water. The priest then offered
up on behalf of the whole world the half-filled chalice, which he next
replaced upon the corporal and covered with the pall. Then once again he
prayed, and returned to the side of the altar where the server let a
little water dribble over his thumbs and forefingers to purify him
from the slightest sinful stain. When he had dried his hands on the
finger-cloth, La Teuse--who stood there waiting--emptied the
cruet-salver into a zinc pail at the corner of the altar.

'_Orate, fratres_,' resumed the priest aloud as he faced the empty
benches, extending and reclasping his hands in a gesture of appeal to
all men of good-will. And turning again towards the altar, he continued
his prayer in a lower tone, while Vincent began to mutter a long Latin
sentence in which he eventually got lost. Now it was that the yellow
sunbeams began to dart through the windows; called, as it were, by the
priest, the sun itself had come to mass, throwing golden sheets of light
upon the left-hand wall, the confessional, the Virgin's altar, and the
big clock.

A gentle creak came from the confessional; the Mother of God, in a halo,
in the dazzlement of her golden crown and mantle smiled tenderly with
tinted lips upon the infant Jesus; and the heated clock throbbed out the
time with quickening strokes. It seemed as if the sun peopled the
benches with the dusty motes that danced in his beams, as if the little
church, that whitened stable, were filled with a glowing throng.
Without, were heard the sounds that told of the happy waking of the
countryside, the blades of grass sighed out content, the damp leaves
dried themselves in the warmth, the birds pruned their feathers and took
a first flit round. And indeed the countryside itself seemed to enter
with the sun; for beside one of the windows a large rowan tree shot up,
thrusting some of its branches through the shattered panes and
stretching out leafy buds as if to take a peep within; while through the
fissures of the great door the weeds on the threshold threatened to
encroach upon the nave. Amid all this quickening life, the big Christ,
still in shadow, alone displayed signs of death, the sufferings of
ochre-daubed and lake-bespattered flesh. A sparrow raised himself up for
a moment at the edge of a hole, took a glance, then flew away; but only
to reappear almost immediately when with noiseless wing he dropped
between the benches before the Virgin's altar. A second sparrow
followed; and soon from all the boughs of the rowan tree came others
that calmly hopped about the flags.

'_Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth_,' said the priest in
a low tone, whilst slightly stooping.

Vincent rang the little bell thrice; and the sparrows, scared by the
sudden tinkling, flew off with such a mighty buzz of wings that La
Teuse, who had just gone back into the sacristy, came out again,
grumbling; 'The little rascals! they will mess everything. I'll bet that
Mademoiselle Desiree has been here again to scatter bread-crumbs for
them.'

The dread moment was at hand. The body and the blood of a God were about
to descend upon the altar. The priest kissed the altar-cloth, clasped
his hands, and multiplied signs of the cross over host and chalice. The
prayers of the canon of the mass now fell from his lips in a very
ecstasy of humility and gratitude. His attitude, his gestures, the
inflections of his voice, all expressed his consciousness of his
littleness, his emotion at being selected for so great a task. Vincent
came and knelt beside him, lightly lifted the chasuble with his left
hand, the bell ready in his right; and the priest, his elbows resting on
the edge of the altar, holding the host with the thumbs and forefingers
of both hands, pronounced over it the words of consecration: _Hoc est
enim corpus meum_. Then having bowed the knee before it, he raised it
slowly as high as his hands could reach, following it upwards with his
eyes, while the kneeling server rang the bell thrice. Then he
consecrated the wine--_Hic est enim calix_--leaning once more upon his
elbows, bowing, raising the cup aloft, his right hand round the stem,
his left holding its base, and his eyes following it aloft. Again the
server rang the bell three times. The great mystery of the Redemption
had once more been repeated, once more had the adorable Blood flowed
forth.

'Just you wait a bit,' growled La Teuse, as she tried to scare away the
sparrows with outstretched fist.

But the sparrows were now fearless. They had come back even while the
bell was ringing, and, unabashed, were fluttering about the benches. The
repeated tinklings even roused them into liveliness, and they answered
back with little chirps which crossed amid the Latin words of prayer,
like the rippling laughs of free urchins. The sun warmed their plumage,
the sweet poverty of the church captivated them. They felt at home
there, as in some barn whose shutters had been left open, and screeched,
fought, and squabbled over the crumbs they found upon the floor. One
flew to perch himself on the smiling Virgin's golden veil; another,
whose daring put the old servant in a towering rage, made a hasty
reconnaissance of La Teuse's skirts. And at the altar, the priest, with
every faculty absorbed, his eyes fixed upon the sacred host, his thumbs
and forefingers joined, did not even hear this invasion of the warm May
morning, this rising flood of sunlight, greenery and birds, which
overflowed even to the foot of the Calvary where doomed nature was
wrestling in the death-throes.

'_Per omnia soecula soeculorum_,' he said.

'Amen,' answered Vincent.

The _Pater_ ended, the priest, holding the host over the chalice, broke
it in the centre. Detaching a particle from one of the halves, he
dropped it into the precious blood, to symbolise the intimate union into
which he was about to enter with God. He said the _Agnus Dei_ aloud,
softly recited the three prescribed prayers, and made his act of
unworthiness, and then with his elbows resting on the altar, and with
the paten beneath his chin, he partook of both portions of the host at
once. After a fervent meditation, with his hands clasped before his
face, he took the paten and gathered from the corporal the sacred
particles of the host that had fallen, and dropped them into the
chalice. One particle which had adhered to his thumb he removed with his
forefinger. And, crossing himself, chalice in hand, with the paten once
again below his chin, he drank all the precious blood in three draughts,
never taking his lips from the cup's rim, but imbibing the divine
Sacrifice to the last drop.

Vincent had risen to fetch the cruets from the credence table. But
suddenly the door of the passage leading to the parsonage flew open and
swung back against the wall, to admit a handsome child-like girl of
twenty-two, who carried something hidden in her apron.

'Thirteen of them,' she called out. 'All the eggs were good.' And she
opened out her apron and revealed a brood of little shivering chicks,
with sprouting down and beady black eyes. 'Do just look,' said she;
'aren't they sweet little pets, the darlings! Oh, look at the little
white one climbing on the others' backs! and the spotted one already
flapping his tiny wings! The eggs were a splendid lot; not one of them
unfertile.'

La Teuse, who was helping to serve the mass in spite of all
prohibitions, and was at that very moment handing the cruets to Vincent
for the ablutions, thereupon turned round and loudly exclaimed: 'Do be
quiet, Mademoiselle Desiree! Don't you see we haven't finished yet?'

Through the open doorway now came the strong smell of a farmyard,
blowing like some generative ferment into the church amidst the warm
sunlight that was creeping over the altar. Desiree stood there for a
moment delighted with the little ones she carried, watching Vincent
pour, and her brother drink, the purifying wine, in order that nought of
the sacred elements should be left within his mouth. And she stood there
still when he came back to the side of the altar, holding the chalice in
both hands, so that Vincent might pour over his forefingers and thumbs
the wine and water of ablution, which he likewise drank. But when the
mother hen ran up clucking with alarm to seek her little ones, and
threatened to force her way into the church, Desiree went off, talking
maternally to her chicks, while the priest, after pressing the
purificator to his lips, wiped first the rim and next the interior of
the chalice.

Then came the end, the act of thanksgiving to God. For the last time the
server removed the Missal, and brought it back to the right-hand side.
The priest replaced the purificator, paten, and pall upon the chalice;
once more pinched the two large folds of the veil together, and laid
upon it the burse containing the corporal. His whole being was now one
act of ardent thanksgiving. He besought from Heaven the forgiveness of
his sins, the grace of a holy life, and the reward of everlasting
life. He remained as if overwhelmed by this miracle of love, the
ever-recurring immolation, which sustained him day by day with the blood
and flesh of his Savior.

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

'_Deo gratias_,' answered Vincent.

And having turned back to kiss the altar, the priest faced round anew,
his left hand just below his breast, his right outstretched whilst
blessing the church, which the gladsome sunbeams and noisy sparrows
filled.

'_Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus, Pater et Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus_.'

'_Amen_,' said the server, as he crossed himself.

The sun had risen higher, and the sparrows were growing bolder. While
the priest read from the left-hand altar-card the passage of the Gospel
of St. John, announcing the eternity of the Word, the sunrays set the
altar ablaze, whitened the panels of imitation marble, and dimmed the
flame of the two candles, whose short wicks were now merely two dull
spots. The victorious orb enveloped with his glory the crucifix, the
candlesticks, the chasuble, the veil of the chalice--all the gold work
that paled beneath his beams. And when at last the priest, after taking
the chalice in his hands and making a genuflexion, covered his head and
turned from the altar to follow the server, laden with the cruets and
finger-cloth, to the sacristy, the planet remained sole master of the
church. Its rays in turn now rested on the altar-cloth, irradiating the
tabernacle-door with splendour, and celebrating the fertile powers of
May. Warmth rose from the stone flags. The daubed walls, the tall
Virgin, the huge Christ, too, all seemed to quiver as with shooting sap,
as if death had been conquered by the earth's eternal youth.

III


Le Teuse hastily put out the candles, but lingered to make one last
attempt to drive away the sparrows, and so when she returned to the
sacristy with the Missal she no longer found Abbe Mouret there. Having
washed his hands and put away the sacred vessels and vestments, he was
now standing in the dining room, breakfasting off a cup of milk.

'You really ought to prevent your sister from scattering bread in the
church,' said La Teuse on coming in. 'It was last winter she hit upon
that pretty prank. She said the sparrows were cold, and that God might
well give them some food. You see, she'll end by making us sleep with
all her fowls and rabbits.'

'We should be all the warmer,' pleasantly replied the young priest. 'You
are always grumbling, La Teuse. Do let our poor Desiree pet her animals.
She has no other pleasure, poor innocent!'

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

'I do believe you yourself wouldn't mind a bit if the magpies actually
built their nests in the church. You never can see anything, everything
seems just what it ought to be to you. Your sister is precious lucky in
having had you to take charge of her when you left the seminary. No
father, no mother. I should like to know who would let her mess about as
she does in a farmyard.'

Then softening, she added in a gentler tone: 'To be sure, it would be a
pity to cross her. She hasn't a touch of malice in her. She's like a
child of ten, although she's one of the finest grown girls in the
neighbourhood. And I have to put her to bed, as you know, every night,
and send her to sleep with stories, just like a little child.'

Abbe Mouret had remained standing, finishing the cup of milk he held
between his fingers, which were slightly reddened by the chill
atmosphere of the dining-room--a large room with painted grey walls, a
floor of square tiles, and having no furniture beyond a table and a few
chairs. La Teuse picked up a napkin which she had laid at a corner of
the table in readiness for breakfast.

'It isn't much linen you dirty,' she muttered. 'One would think you
could never sit down, that you are always just about to start off. Ah!
if you had known Monsieur Caffin, the poor dead priest whose place you
have taken! What a man he was for comfort! Why, he couldn't have
digested his food, if he had eaten standing. A Norman he was, from
Canteleu, like myself. I don't thank him, I tell you, for having brought
me to such a wild-beast country as this. When first we came, O, Lord!
how bored we were! But the poor priest had had some uncomfortable tales
going about him at home. . . . Why, sir, didn't you sweeten your milk,
then? Aren't those the two lumps of sugar?'

The priest put down his cup.

'Yes, I must have forgotten, I believe,' he said.

La Teuse stared at him and shrugged her shoulders. She folded up inside
the napkin a slice of stale home-made bread which had also been left
untouched on the table. Then just as the priest was about to go out, she
ran after him and knelt down at his feet, exclaiming: 'Stop, your
shoe-laces are not even fastened. I cannot imagine how your feet can
stand those peasant shoes, you're such a little, tender man and look as
if you had been preciously spoilt! Ah, the bishop must have known a deal
about you, to go and give you the poorest living in the department.'

'But it was I who chose Les Artaud,' said the priest, breaking into
another smile. 'You are very bad-tempered this morning, La Teuse. Are we
not happy here? We have got all we want, and our life is as peaceful as
if in paradise.'

She then restrained herself and laughed in her turn, saying: 'You are a
holy man, Monsieur le Cure. But come and see what a splendid wash I have
got. That will be better than squabbling with one another.'

The priest was obliged to follow, for she might prevent him going out
at all if he did not compliment her on her washing. As he left the
dining-room he stumbled over a heap of rubbish in the passage.

'What is this?' he asked.

Oh, nothing,' said La Teuse in her grimest tone. 'It's only the
parsonage coming down. However, you are quite content, you've got all
you want. Good heavens! there are holes and to spare. Just look at that
ceiling, now. Isn't it cracked all over? If we don't get buried alive
one of these days, we shall owe a precious big taper to our guardian
angel. However, if it suits you--It's like the church. Those broken
panes ought to have been replaced these two years. In winter our Lord
gets frozen with the cold. Besides, it would keep out those rascally
sparrows. I shall paste paper over the holes. You see if I don't.'

'A capital idea,' murmured the priest, 'they might very well be pasted
over. As to the walls, they are stouter than we think. In my room, the
floor has only given way slightly in front of the window. The house will
see us all buried.'

On reaching the little open shed near the kitchen, in order to please La
Teuse he went into ecstasies over the washing; he even had to dip his
fingers into it and feel it. This so pleased the old woman that her
attentions became quite motherly. She no longer scolded, but ran to
fetch a clothes-brush, saying: 'You surely are not going out with
yesterday's mud on your cassock! If you had left it out on the banister,
it would be clean now--it's still a good one. But do lift it up well
when you cross any field. The thistles tear everything.'

While speaking she kept turning him round like a child, shaking him from
head to foot with her energetic brushing.

'There, there, that will do,' he said, escaping from her at last. 'Take
care of Desiree, won't you? I will tell her I am going out.'

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

Desiree came flying up, her cheeks ruddy with glee, her head bare, her
black locks twisted tightly upon her neck, and her hands and arms
smothered up to the elbows with manure. She had been cleaning out her
poultry house. When she caught sight of her brother just about to go out
with his breviary under his arm, she laughed aloud, and kissed him on
his mouth, with her arms thrown back behind her to avoid soiling him.

'No, no,' she hurriedly exclaimed, 'I should dirty you. Oh! I am having
such fun! You must see the animals when you come back.'

Thereupon she fled away again. Abbe Mouret then said that he would be
back about eleven for luncheon, and as he started, La Teuse, who had
followed him to the doorstep, shouted after him her last injunctions.

'Don't forget to see Brother Archangias. And look in also at the
Brichets'; the wife came again yesterday about that wedding. Just
listen, Monsieur le Cure! I met their Rosalie. She'd ask nothing better
than to marry big Fortune. Have a talk with old Bambousse; perhaps he
will listen to you now. And don't come back at twelve o'clock, like the
other day. Come, say you'll be back at eleven, won't you?'

But the priest turned round no more. So she went in again, growling
between her teeth:

'When does he ever listen to me? Barely twenty-six years old and does
just as he likes. To be sure, he's an old man of sixty for holiness; but
then he has never known life; he knows nothing, it's no trouble to him
to be as good as a cherub!'

IV


When Abbe Mouret had got beyond all hearing of La Teuse he stopped,
thankful to be alone at last. The church was built on a hillock, which
sloped down gently to the village. With its large gaping windows and
bright red tiles, it stretched out like a deserted sheep-cote. The
priest turned round and glanced at the parsonage, a greyish building
springing from the very side of the church; but as if fearful that he
might again be overtaken by the interminable chatter that had been
buzzing in his ears ever since morning, he turned up to the right again,
and only felt safe when he at last stood before the great doorway, where
he could not be seen from the parsonage. The front of the church, quite
bare and worn by the sunshine and rain of years, was crowned by a narrow
open stone belfry, in which a small bell showed its black silhouette,
whilst its rope disappeared through the tiles. Six broken steps, on one
side half buried in the earth, led up to the lofty arched door, now
cracked, smothered with dust and rust and cobwebs, and so frailly hung
upon its outwrenched hinges that it seemed as if the first slight puff
would secure free entrance to the winds of heaven. Abbe Mouret, who had
an affection for this dilapidated door, leaned against one of its leaves
as he stood upon the steps. Thence he could survey the whole country
round at a glance. And shading his eyes with his hands he scanned the
horizon.

In the month of May exuberant vegetation burst forth from that stony
soil. Gigantic lavenders, juniper bushes, patches of rank herbage
swarmed over the church threshold, and scattered clumps of dark greenery
even to the very tiles. It seemed as if the first throb of shooting sap
in the tough matted underwood might well topple the church over. At that
early hour, amid all the travail of nature's growth, there was a hum of
vivifying warmth, and the very rocks quivered as with a long and silent
effort. But the Abbe failed to comprehend the ardour of nature's painful
labour; he simply thought that the steps were tottering, and thereupon
leant against the other side of the door.

The countryside stretched away for a distance of six miles, bounded by a
wall of tawny hills speckled with black pine-woods. It was a fearful
landscape of arid wastes and rocky spurs rending the soil. The few
patches of arable ground were like scattered pools of blood, red fields
with rows of lean almond trees, grey-topped olive trees and long lines
of vines, streaking the soil with their brown stems. It was as if some
huge conflagration had swept by there, scattering the ashes of forests
over the hill-tops, consuming all the grass of the meadow lands, and
leaving its glare and furnace-like heat behind in the hollows. Only here
and there was the softer note of a pale green patch of growing corn. The
landscape generally was wild, lacking even a threadlet of water, dying
of thirst, and flying away in clouds of dust at the least breath of
wind. But at the farthest point where the crumbling hills on the horizon
had left a breach one espied some distant fresh moist greenery, a
stretch of the neighbouring valley fertilised by the Viorne, a river
flowing down from the gorges of the Seille.

The priest lowered his dazzled glance upon the village, whose few
scattered houses straggled away below the church--wretched hovels they
were of rubble and boards strewn along a narrow path without sign of
streets. There were about thirty of them altogether, some squatting
amidst muck-heaps, and black with woeful want; others roomier and more
cheerful-looking with their roofs of pinkish tiles. Strips of garden,
victoriously planted amidst stony soil, displayed plots of vegetables
enclosed by quickset hedges. At this hour Les Artaud was empty, not a
woman was at the windows, not a child was wallowing in the dust; parties
of fowls alone went to and fro, ferreting among the straw, seeking food
up to the very thresholds of the houses, whose open doors gaped in the
sunlight. A big black dog seated on his haunches at the entrance to the
village seemed to be mounting guard over it.

Languor slowly stole over Abbe Mouret. The rising sun steeped him in
such warmth that he leant back against the church door pervaded by a
feeling of happy restfulness. His thoughts were dwelling on that hamlet
of Les Artaud, which had sprung up there among the stones like one of
the knotty growths of the valley. All its inhabitants were related, all
bore the same name, so that from their very cradle they were
distinguished among themselves by nicknames. An Artaud, their ancestor,
had come hither and settled like a pariah in this waste. His family had
grown with all the wild vitality of the herbage that sucked life from
the rocky boulders. It had at last become a tribe, a rural community, in
which cousin-ships were lost in the mists of centuries. They
intermarried with shameless promiscuity. Not an instance could be cited
of any Artaud taking himself a wife from any neighbouring village; only
some of the girls occasionally went elsewhere. The others were born and
died fixed to that spot, leisurely increasing and multiplying on their
dunghills with the irreflectiveness of trees, and with no definite
notion of the world that lay beyond the tawny rocks, in whose midst they
vegetated. And yet there were already rich and poor among them; fowls
having at times disappeared, the fowl-houses were now closed at night
with stout padlocks; moreover one Artaud had killed another Artaud one
evening behind the mill. These folk, begirt by that belt of desolate
hills, were truly a people apart--a race sprung from the soil, a
miniature replica of mankind, three hundred souls all told, beginning
the centuries yet once again.

Over the priest the sombre shadows of seminary life still hovered. For
years he had never seen the sun. He perceived it not even now, his eyes
closed and gazing inwards on his soul, and with no feeling for
perishable nature, fated to damnation, save contempt. For a long time in
his hours of devout thought he had dreamt of some hermit's desert, of
some mountain hole, where no living thing--neither being, plant, nor
water--should distract him from the contemplation of God. It was an
impulse springing from the purest love, from a loathing of all physical
sensation. There, dying to self, and with his back turned to the light
of day, he would have waited till he should cease to be, till nothing
should remain of him but the sovereign whiteness of the soul. To him
heaven seemed all white, with a luminous whiteness as if lilies there
snowed down upon one, as if every form of purity, innocence, and
chastity there blazed. But his confessor reproved him whenever he
related his longings for solitude, his cravings for an existence of
Godlike purity; and recalled him to the struggles of the Church, the
necessary duties of the priesthood. Later on, after his ordination, the
young priest had come to Les Artaud at his own request, there hoping to
realise his dream of human annihilation. In that desolate spot, on that
barren soil, he might shut his ears to all worldly sounds, and live the
dreamy life of a saint. For some months past, in truth, his existence
had been wholly undisturbed, rarely had any thrill of the village-life
disturbed him; and even the sun's heat scarcely brought him any glow of
feeling as he walked the paths, his whole being wrapped in heaven,
heedless of the unceasing travail of life amidst which he moved.

The big black dog watching over Les Artaud had determined to come up to
Abbe Mouret, and now sat upon its haunches at the priest's feet; but the
unconscious man remained absorbed amidst the sweetness of the morning.
On the previous evening he had begun the exercises of the Rosary, and to
the intercession of the Virgin with her Divine Son he attributed the
great joy which filled his soul. How despicable appeared all the good
things of the earth! How thankfully he recognised his poverty! When he
entered into holy orders, after losing on the same day both his father
and his mother through a tragedy the fearful details of which were even
now unknown to him,* he had relinquished all his share of their property
to an elder brother. His only remaining link with the world was his
sister; he had undertaken the care of her, stirred by a kind of
religious affection for her feeble intelligence. The dear innocent was
so childish, such a very little girl, that she recalled to him the poor
in spirit to whom the Gospel promises the kingdom of heaven. Of late,
however, she had somewhat disturbed him; she was growing too lusty, too
full of health and life. But his discomfort was yet of the slightest.
His days were spent in that inner life he had created for himself, for
which he had relinquished all else. He closed the portals of his senses,
and sought to free himself from all bodily needs, so that he might be
but a soul enrapt in contemplation. To him nature offered only snares
and abominations; he gloried in maltreating her, in despising her, in
releasing himself from his human slime. And as the just man must be a
fool according to the world, he considered himself an exile on this
earth; his thoughts were solely fixed upon the favours of Heaven,
incapable as he was of understanding how an eternity of bliss could be
weighed against a few hours of perishable enjoyment. His reason duped
him and his senses lied; and if he advanced in virtue it was
particularly by humility and obedience. His wish was to be the last of
all, one subject to all, in order that the divine dew might fall upon
his heart as upon arid sand; he considered himself overwhelmed with
reproach and with confusion, unworthy of ever being saved from sin. He
no longer belonged to himself--blind, deaf, dead to the world as he was.
He was God's thing. And from the depth of the abjectness to which he
sought to plunge, Hosannahs suddenly bore him aloft, above the happy and
the mighty into the splendour of never-ending bliss.

  * This forms the subject of M. Zola's novel, _The Conquest of
    Plassans_. ED.

Thus, at Les Artaud, Abbe Mouret had once more experienced, each time he
read the 'Imitation,' the raptures of the cloistered life which he had
longed for at one time so ardently. As yet he had not had to fight any
battle. From the moment that he knelt down, he became perfect,
absolutely oblivious of the flesh, unresisting, undisturbed, as if
overpowered by the Divine grace. Such ecstasy at God's approach is well
known to some young priests: it is a blissful moment when all is hushed,
and the only desire is but a boundless craving for purity. From no human
creature had he sought his consolations. He who believes a certain thing
to be all in all cannot be troubled: and he did believe that God was all
in all, and that humility, obedience, and chastity were everything. He
could remember having heard temptation spoken of as an abominable
torture that tries the holiest. But he would only smile: God had never
left him. He bore his faith about him thus like a breast-plate
protecting him from the slightest breath of evil. He could recall how he
had hidden himself and wept for very love; he knew not whom he loved,
but he wept for love, for love of some one afar off. The recollection
never failed to move him. Later on he had decided on becoming a priest
in order to satisfy that craving for a superhuman affection which was
his sole torment. He could not see where greater love could be. In that
state of life he satisfied his being, his inherited predisposition, his
youthful dreams, his first virile desires. If temptation must come, he
awaited it with the calmness of the seminarist ignorant of the world. He
felt that his manhood had been killed in him: it gladdened him to feel
himself a creature set apart, unsexed, turned from the usual paths of
life, and, as became a lamb of the Lord, marked with the tonsure.

V


While the priest pondered the sun was heating the big church-door.
Gilded flies buzzed round a large flower that was blooming between two
of the church-door steps. Abbe Mouret, feeling slightly dazed, was at
last about to move away, when the big black dog sprang, barking
violently, towards the iron gate of the little graveyard on the left of
the church. At the same time a harsh voice called out: 'Ah! you young
rascal! So you stop away from school, and I find you in the graveyard!
Oh, don't say no: I have been watching you this quarter of an hour.'

As the priest stepped forward he saw Vincent, whom a Brother of the
Christian Schools was clutching tightly by the ear. The lad was
suspended, as it were, over a ravine skirting the graveyard, at the
bottom of which flowed the Mascle, a mountain torrent whose crystal
waters plunged into the Viorne, six miles away.

'Brother Archangias!' softly called the priest, as if to appease the
fearful man.

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

'Oh, it's you, Monsieur le Cure?' he growled. 'Just fancy, this rascal
is always poking his nose into the graveyard. I don't know what he can
be up to here. I ought to let go of him and let him smash his skull down
there. It would be what he deserves.'

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

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

And he himself helped Vincent to scramble up again.

'Come, my young friend, what were you doing there?' he asked. 'You must
not go playing in graveyards.'

The lad had opened his eyes, and crept away, fearfully, from the
Brother, to place himself under the priest's protection.

'I'll tell you,' he said in a low voice, as he raised his bushy head.
'There is a tomtit's nest in the brambles there, under that rock. For
over ten days I've been watching it, and now the little ones are
hatched, so I came this morning after serving your mass.'

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

Thereupon he stepped aside, picked a clod of earth off a grave and flung
it into the brambles. But he missed the nest. Another clod, however,
more skilfully thrown upset the frail cradle, and precipitated the
fledglings into the torrent below.

'Now, perhaps,' he continued, clapping his hands to shake off the earth
that soiled them, 'you won't come roaming here any more, like a heathen;
the dead will pull your feet at night if you go walking over them
again.'

Vincent, who had laughed at seeing the nest dive into the stream, looked
round him and shrugged his shoulders like one of strong mind.

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

The graveyard, in truth, was not a place to inspire fear. It was a
barren piece of ground whose narrow paths were smothered by rank weeds.
Here and there the soil was bossy with mounds. A single tombstone, that
of Abbe Caffin, brand-new and upright, could be perceived in the centre
of the ground. Save this, all around there were only broken fragments of
crosses, withered tufts of box, and old slabs split and moss-eaten.
There were not two burials a year. Death seemed to make no dwelling in
that waste spot, whither La Teuse came every evening to fill her apron
with grass for Desiree's rabbits. A gigantic cypress tree, standing near
the gate, alone cast shadow upon the desert field. This cypress, a
landmark visible for nine miles around, was known to the whole
countryside as the Solitaire.

'It's full of lizards,' added Vincent, looking at the cracks of the
church-wall. 'One could have a fine lark--'

But he sprang out with a bound on seeing the Brother lift his foot. The
latter proceeded to call the priest's attention to the dilapidated state
of the gate, which was not only eaten up with rust, but had one hinge
off, and the lock broken.

'It ought to be repaired,' said he.

Abbe Mouret smiled, but made no reply. Addressing Vincent, who was
romping with the dog: 'I say, my boy,' he asked, 'do you know where old
Bambousse is at work this morning?'

The lad glanced towards the horizon. 'He must be at his Olivettes field
now,' he answered, pointing towards the left. 'But Voriau will show your
reverence the way. He's sure to know where his master is.' And he
clapped his hands and called: 'Hie! Voriau! hie!'

The big black dog paused a moment, wagging his tail, and seeking to read
the urchin's eyes. Then, barking joyfully, he set off down the slope to
the village. Abbe Mouret and Brother Archangias followed him, chatting.
A hundred yards further Vincent surreptitiously bolted, and again glided
up towards the church, keeping a watchful eye upon them, and ready to
dart behind a bush if they should look round. With adder-like
suppleness, he once more glided into the graveyard, that paradise full
of lizards, nests, and flowers.

Meantime, while Voriau led the way before them along the dusty road,
Brother Archangias was angrily saying to the priest: 'Let be! Monsieur
le Cure, they're spawn of damnation, those toads are! They ought to have
their backs broken, to make them pleasing to God. They grow up in
irreligion, like their fathers. Fifteen years have I been here, and not
one Christian have I been able to turn out. The minute they quit my
hands, good-bye! They think of nothing but their land, their vines,
their olive-trees. Not one ever sets foot in church. Brute beasts they
are, struggling with their stony fields! Guide them with the stick,
Monsieur le Cure, yes, the stick!'

Then, after drawing breath, he added with a terrific wave of his hands:

'Those Artauds, look you, are like the brambles over-running these
rocks. One stem has been enough to poison the whole district. They cling
on, they multiply, they live in spite of everything. Nothing short of
fire from heaven, as at Gomorrha, will clear it all away.'

'We should never despair of sinners,' said Abbe Mouret, all inward
peacefulness, as he leisurely walked on.

'But these are the devil's own,' broke in the Brother still more
violently. 'I've been a peasant, too. Up to eighteen I dug the earth;
and later on, when I was at the Training College, I had to sweep, pare
vegetables, do all the heavy work. It's not their toilsome labour I find
fault with. On the contrary, for God prefers the lowly. But the Artauds
live like beasts! They are like their dogs, they never attend mass, and
make a mock of the commandments of God and of the Church. They think of
nothing but their plots of lands, so sweet they are on them!'

Voriau, his tail wagging, kept stopping and moving on again as soon as
he saw that they still followed him.

'There certainly are some grievous things going on,' said Abbe Mouret.
'My predecessor, Abbe Caffin--'

'A poor specimen,' interrupted the Brother. 'He came here to us from
Normandy owing to some disreputable affair. Once here, his sole thought
was good living; he let everything go to rack and ruin.'

'Oh, no, Abbe Caffin certainly did what he could; but I must own that
his efforts were all but barren in results. My own are mostly
fruitless.'

Brother Archangias shrugged his shoulders. He walked on for a minute in
silence, swaying his tall bony frame, which looked as if it had been
roughly fashioned with a hatchet. The sun beat down upon his neck,
shadowing his hard, sword-edged peasant's face.

'Listen to me, Monsieur le Cure,' he said at last. 'I am too much
beneath you to lecture you; but still, I am almost double your age, I
know this part, and therefore I feel justified in telling you that you
will gain nothing by gentleness. The catechism, understand, is enough.
God has no mercy on the wicked. He burns them. Stick to that.'

Then, as Abbe Mouret, whose head remained bowed, did not open his mouth,
he went on: 'Religion is leaving the country districts because it is
made over indulgent. It was respected when it spoke out like an
unforgiving mistress. I really don't know what they can teach you now in
the seminaries. The new priests weep like children with their
parishioners. God no longer seems the same. I dare say, Monsieur le
Cure, that you don't even know your catechism by heart now?'

But the priest, wounded by the imperiousness with which the Brother so
roughly sought to dominate him, looked up and dryly rejoined:

'That will do, your zeal is very praiseworthy. But haven't you something
to tell me? You came to the parsonage this morning, did you not?'

Thereupon Brother Archangias plumply answered: 'I had to tell you just
what I have told you. The Artauds live like pigs. Only yesterday I
learned that Rosalie, old Bambousse's eldest daughter, is in the family
way. It happens with all of them before they get married. And they
simply laugh at reproaches, as you know.'

'Yes,' murmured Abbe Mouret, 'it is a great scandal. I am just on my way
to see old Bambousse to speak to him about it; it is desirable that they
should be married as soon as possible. The child's father, it seems, is
Fortune, the Brichets' eldest son. Unfortunately the Brichets are poor.'

'That Rosalie, now,' continued the Brother, 'is just eighteen. Not four
years since I still had her under me at school, and she was already a
gadabout. I have now got her sister Catherine, a chit of eleven, who
seems likely to become even worse than her elder. One comes across her
in every corner with that little scamp, Vincent. It's no good, you may
pull their ears till they bleed, the woman always crops up in them. They
carry perdition about with them and are only fit to be thrown on a
muck-heap. What a splendid riddance if all girls were strangled at their
birth!'

His loathing, his hatred of woman made him swear like a carter. Abbe
Mouret, who had been listening to him with unmoved countenance, smiled
at last at his rabid utterances. He called Voriau, who had strayed into
a field close by.

'There, look there!' cried Brother Archangias, pointing to a group
of children playing at the bottom of a ravine, 'there are my young
devils, who play the truant under pretence of going to help their
parents among the vines! You may be certain that jade of a Catherine is
among them. . . . There, didn't I tell you! Till to-night, Monsieur le
Cure. Oh, just you wait, you rascals!'

Off he went at a run, his dirty neckband flying over his shoulder, and
his big greasy cassock tearing up the thistles. Abbe Mouret watched him
swoop down into the midst of the children, who scattered like frightened
sparrows. But he succeeded in seizing Catherine and one boy by the ears
and led them back towards the village, clutching them tightly with his
big hairy fingers, and overwhelming them with abuse.

The priest walked on again. Brother Archangias sometimes aroused strange
scruples in his mind. With his vulgarity and coarseness the Brother
seemed to him the true man of God, free from earthly ties, submissive in
all to Heaven's will, humble, blunt, ready to shower abuse upon sin. He,
the priest, would then feel despair at his inability to rid himself more
completely of his body; he regretted that he was not ugly, unclean,
covered with vermin like some of the saints. Whenever the Brother had
wounded him by some words of excessive coarseness, or by some over-hasty
churlishness, he would blame himself for his refinement, his innate
shrinking, as if these were really faults. Ought he not to be dead to
all the weaknesses of this world? And this time also he smiled sadly as
he thought how near he had been to losing his temper at the Brother's
roughly put lesson. It was pride, it seemed to him, seeking to work his
perdition by making him despise the lowly. However, in spite of himself,
he felt relieved at being alone again, at being able to walk on gently,
reading his breviary, free at last from the grating voice that had
disturbed his dream of heavenly love.

VI


The road wound on between fallen rocks, among which the peasants had
succeeded here and there in reclaiming six or seven yards of chalky
soil, planted with old olive trees. Under the priest's feet the dust in
the deep ruts crackled lightly like snow. At times, as he felt a warmer
puff upon his face, he would raise his eyes from his book, as if to seek
whence came this soft caress; but his gaze was vacant, straying without
perception over the glowing horizon, over the twisted outlines of that
passion-breathing landscape as it stretched out in the sun before him,
dry, barren, despairing of the fertilisation for which it longed. And he
would lower his hat over his forehead to protect himself against the
warm breeze and tranquilly resume his reading, his cassock raising
behind him a cloudlet of dust which rolled along the surface of the
road.

'Good morning, Monsieur le Cure,' a passing peasant said to him.

Sounds of digging alongside the cultivated strips of ground again
roused him from his abstraction. He turned his head and perceived big
knotty-limbed old men greeting him from among the vines. The Artauds
were eagerly satisfying their passion for the soil, in the sun's full
blaze. Sweating brows appeared from behind the bushes, heaving chests
were slowly raised, the whole scene was one of ardent fructification,
through which he moved with the calm step born of ignorance. No
discomfort came to him from the great travail of love that permeated
that splendid morning.

'Steady! Voriau, you mustn't eat people!' some one gaily shouted in a
powerful voice by way of silencing the dog's loud barks.

Abbe Mouret looked up.

'Oh! it's you. Fortune?' he said, approaching the edge of the field in
which the young peasant was at work. 'I was just on my way to speak to
you.'

Fortune was of the same age as the priest: a bigly built, bold-looking
young fellow, with skin already hardened. He was clearing a small plot
of stony heath.

'What about, Monsieur le Cure?' he asked.

'About Rosalie and you,' replied the priest.

Fortune began to laugh. Perhaps he thought it droll that a priest should
interest himself in such a matter.

'Well,' he muttered, 'I'm not to blame in it nor she either. So much the
worse if old Bambousse refuses to let me have her. You saw yourself how
his dog was trying to bite me just now; he sets him on me.'

Then, as Abbe Mouret was about to continue, old Artaud, called Brichet,
whom he had not previously perceived, emerged from the shadow of a bush
behind which he and his wife were eating. He was a little man, withered
by age, with a cringing face.

'Your reverence must have been told a pack of lies,' he exclaimed. 'The
youngster is quite ready to marry Rosalie. What's happened isn't
anybody's fault. It has happened to others who got on all right just the
same. The matter doesn't rest with us. You ought to speak to Bambousse.
He's the one who looks down on us because he's got money.'

'Yes, we are very poor,' whined his wife, a tall lachrymose woman, who
also rose to her feet. 'We've only this scrap of ground where the very
devil seems to have been hailing stones. Not a bite of bread from it,
even. Without you, your reverence, life would be impossible.'

Brichet's wife was the one solitary devotee of the village. Whenever she
had been to communion, she would hang about the parsonage, well knowing
that La Teuse always kept a couple of loaves for her from her last
baking. At times she was even able to carry off a rabbit or a fowl given
her by Desiree.

'There's no end to the scandals,' continued the priest. 'The marriage
must take place without delay.'

'Oh! at once! as soon as the others are agreeable,' said the old woman,
alarmed about her periodical presents. 'What do you say, Brichet? we are
not such bad Christians as to go against his reverence?'

Fortune sniggered.

'Oh, I'm quite ready,' he said, 'and so is Rosalie. I saw her yesterday
at the back of the mill. We haven't quarrelled. We stopped there to have
a bit of a laugh.'

But Abbe Mouret interrupted him: 'Very well, I am now going to speak to
Bambousse. He is over there, at Les Olivettes, I believe.'

The priest was going off when the mother asked him what had become of
her younger son Vincent, who had left in the early morning to serve
mass. There was a lad now who badly needed his reverence's admonitions.
And she walked by the priest's side for another hundred yards, bemoaning
her poverty, the failure of the potato crop, the frost which had nipped
the olive trees, the hot weather which threatened to scorch up the
scanty corn. Then, as she left him, she solemnly declared that her son
Fortune always said his prayers, both morning and evening.

Voriau now ran on in front, and suddenly, at a turn in the road, he
bolted across the fields. The priest then struck into a small path
leading up a low hill. He was now at Les Olivettes, the most fertile
spot in the neighbourhood, where the mayor of the commune, Artaud,
otherwise Bambousse, owned several fields of corn, olive plantations,
and vines. The dog was now romping round the skirts of a tall brunette,
who burst into a loud laugh as she caught sight of the priest.

'Is your father here, Rosalie?' the latter asked.

'Yes, just across there,' she said, pointing with her hand and still
smiling.

Leaving the part of the field she had been weeding, she walked on before
him with the vigorous springiness of a hard-working woman, her head
unshielded from the sun, her neck all sunburnt, her hair black and
coarse like a horse's mane. Her green-stained hands exhaled the odour of
the weeds she had been pulling up.

'Father,' she called out, 'here's Monsieur le Cure asking for you.'

And there she remained, bold, unblushing, with a sly smile still
hovering over her features. Bambousse, a stout, sweating, round-faced
man, left his work and gaily came towards the priest.

'I'd take my oath you are going to speak to me about the repairs of the
church,' he exclaimed, as he clapped his earthy hands. 'Well, then,
Monsieur le Cure, I can only say no, it's impossible. The commune hasn't
got the coin. If the Lord provides plaster and tiles, we'll provide the
workmen.'

At this jest of his the unbelieving peasant burst into a loud guffaw,
slapped his thighs, coughed, and almost choked himself.

'It was not for the church I came,' replied the Abbe Mouret. 'I wanted
to speak to you about your daughter Rosalie.'

'Rosalie? What has she done to you, then?' inquired Bambousse, his eyes
blinking.

The girl was boldly staring at the young priest, scrutinising his white
hands and slender, feminine neck, as if trying to make him redden. He,
however, bluntly and with unruffled countenance, as if speaking of
something quite indifferent, continued:

'You know what I mean, Bambousse. She must get married.'

'Oh, that's it, is it?' muttered the old man, with a bantering look.
'Many thanks for the message. The Brichets sent you, didn't they? Mother
Brichet goes to mass, and so you give her a helping hand to marry her
son--it's all very fine. But, I've got nothing to do with that. It
doesn't suit me. That's all.'

Thereupon the astonished priest represented to him that the scandal must
be stopped, and that he ought to forgive Fortune, as the latter was
willing to make reparation for his transgression, and that, lastly, his
daughter's reputation demanded a speedy marriage.

'Ta, ta, ta,' replied Bambousse, what a lot of words! I shall keep my
daughter, please understand it. All that's got nothing to do with me.
That Fortune is a beggarly pauper, without a brass farthing. What an
easy job, if one could marry a girl like that! At that rate we should
have all the young things marrying off morning and night. Thank Heaven!
I'm not worried about Rosalie: everybody knows what has happened; but it
makes no difference. She can marry any one she chooses in the
neighbourhood.'

'But the child?' interrupted the priest.

'The child indeed! There'll be time enough to think of that when it's
born.'

Rosalie, perceiving the turn the priest's application was taking, now
thought it proper to ram her fists into her eyes and whimper. And she
even let herself fall upon the ground.

'Shut up, will you, you hussy!' howled her father in a rage. And he
proceeded to revile her in the coarsest terms, which made her laugh
silently behind her clenched fists.

'You won't shut up? won't you? Just wait a minute then, you jade!'
continued old Bambousse. And thereupon he picked up a clod of earth and
flung it at her. It burst upon her knot of hair, crumbling down her neck
and smothering her in dust. Dizzy from the blow, she bounded to her feet
and fled, sheltering her head between her hands. But Bambousse had time
to fling two more clods at her, and if the first only grazed her left
shoulder, the next caught her full on the base of the spine, with such
force that she fell upon her knees.

'Bambousse!' cried the priest, as he wrenched from the peasant's hand a
number of stones which he had just picked up.

'Let be, Monsieur le Cure,' said the other. 'It was only soft earth. I
ought to have thrown these stones at her. It's easy to see that you
don't know girls. Hard as nails, all of them. I might duck that one in
the well, I might break all her bones with a cudgel, and she'd still be
just the same. But I've got my eye on her, and if I catch her! . . . Ah!
well, they are all like that.'

He was already comforted. He took a good pull at a big flat bottle of
wine, encased in wicker-work, which lay warming on the hot ground. And
breaking once more into a laugh, he said: 'If I only had a glass,
Monsieur le Cure, I would offer you some with pleasure.'

'So then,' again asked the priest, 'this marriage?'

'No, it can't be; I should get laughed at. Rosalie is a stout wench.
She's worth a man to me. I shall have to hire a lad the day she goes
off. . . . We can have another talk about it after the vintage. Besides,
I don't want to be robbed. Give and take, say I. That's fair. What do
you think?'

Nevertheless for another long half-hour did the priest remain there
preaching to Bambousse, speaking to him of God, and plying him with all
the reasons suited to the circumstances. But the old man had resumed his
work; he shrugged his shoulders, jested, and grew more and more
obstinate. At last, he broke out: 'But if you asked me for a sack of
corn, you would give me money, wouldn't you? So why do you want me to
let my daughter go for nothing?'

Much discomfited, Abbe Mouret left him. As he went down the path he saw
Rosalie rolling about under an olive tree with Voriau, who was licking
her face. With her arms whirling, she kept on repeating: 'You tickle me,
you big stupid. Leave off!'

When she perceived the priest, she made an attempt at a blush, settled
her clothes, and once more raised her fists to her eyes. He, on his
part, sought to console her by promising to attempt some fresh efforts
with her father, adding that, in the meantime, she should do nothing to
aggravate her sin. And then, as she impudently smiled at him, he
pictured hell, where wicked women burn in torment. And afterwards he
left her, his duty done, his soul once more full of the serenity which
enabled him to pass undisturbed athwart the corruptions of the world.

VII


The morning was becoming terribly hot. In that huge rocky amphitheatre
the sun kindled a furnace-like glare from the moment when the first fine
weather began. By the planet's height in the sky Abbe Mouret now
perceived that he had only just time to return home if he wished to get
there by eleven o'clock and escape a scolding from La Teuse. Having
finished reading his breviary and made his application to Bambousse, he
swiftly retraced his steps, gazing as he went at his church, now a grey
spot in the distance, and at the black rigid silhouette which the big
cypress-tree, the Solitaire, set against the blue sky. Amidst the
drowsiness fostered by the heat, he thought of how richly that evening
he might decorate the Lady chapel for the devotions of the month of
Mary. Before him the road offered a carpet of dust, soft to the tread
and of dazzling whiteness.

At the Croix-Verte, as the Abbe was about to cross the highway leading
from Plassans to La Palud, a gig coming down the hill compelled him to
step behind a heap of stones. Then, as he crossed the open space, a
voice called to him: 'Hallo, Serge, my boy!'

The gig had pulled up and from it a man leant over. The priest
recognised him--he was an uncle of his, Doctor Pascal Rougon, or
Monsieur Pascal, as the poor folk of Plassans, whom he attended for
nothing, briefly styled him. Although barely over fifty, he was already
snowy white, with a big beard and abundant hair, amidst which his
handsome regular features took an expression of shrewdness and
benevolence.*

  * See M. Zola's novels, _Dr. Pascal_ and _The Fortune of the
    Rougons_.--ED.

'So you potter about in the dust at this hour of the day?' he said
gaily, as he stooped to grasp the Abbe's hands. 'You're not afraid of
sunstroke?'

'No more than you are, uncle,' answered the priest, laughing.

'Oh, I have the hood of my trap to shield me. Besides, sick folks won't
wait. People die at all times, my boy.' And he went on to relate that he
was now on his way to old Jeanbernat, the steward of the Paradou, who
had had an apoplectic stroke the night before. A neighbour, a peasant on
his way to Plassans market, had summoned him.

'He must be dead by this time,' the doctor continued. 'However, we must
make sure. . . . Those old demons are jolly tough, you know.'

He was already raising his whip, when Abbe Mouret stopped him.

'Stay! what o'clock do you make it, uncle?'

'A quarter to eleven.'

The Abbe hesitated; he already seemed to hear La Teuse's terrible voice
bawling in his ears that his luncheon was getting cold. But he plucked
up courage and added swiftly: 'I'll go with you, uncle. The unhappy man
may wish to reconcile himself to God in his last hour.'

Doctor Pascal could not restrain a laugh.

'What, Jeanbernat!' he said; 'ah, well! if ever you convert him! Never
mind, come all the same. The sight of you is enough to cure him.'

The priest got in. The doctor, apparently regretting his jest, displayed
an affectionate warmth of manner, whilst from time to time clucking his
tongue by way of encouraging his horse. And out of the corner of his eye
he inquisitively observed his nephew with the keenness of a scientist
bent on taking notes. In short kindly sentences he inquired about his
life, his habits, and the peaceful happiness he enjoyed at Les Artaud.
And at each satisfactory reply he murmured, as if to himself in a tone
of reassurance: 'Come, so much the better; that's just as it should be!'

He displayed peculiar anxiety about the young priest's state of health.
And Serge, greatly surprised, assured him that he was in splendid trim,
and had neither fits of giddiness or of nausea, nor headaches
whatsoever.

'Capital, capital,' reiterated his uncle Pascal. 'In spring, you see,
the blood is active. But you are sound enough. By-the-bye, I saw your
brother Octave at Marseilles last month. He is off to Paris, where he
will get a fine berth in a high-class business. The young beggar, a nice
life he leads.'

'What life?' innocently inquired the priest.

To avoid replying the doctor chirruped to his horse, and then went on:
'Briefly, everybody is well--your aunt Felicite, your uncle Rougon, and
the others. Still, that does not hinder our needing your prayers. You
are the saint of the family, my lad; I rely upon you to save the whole
lot.'

He laughed, but in such a friendly, good-humoured way that Serge himself
began to indulge in jocularity.

'You see,' continued Pascal, 'there are some among the lot whom it won't
be easy to lead to Paradise. Some nice confessions you'd hear if all
came in turn. For my part, I can do without their confessions; I watch
them from a distance; I have got their records at home among my
botanical specimens and medical notes. Some day I shall be able to draw
up a wondrously interesting diagram. We shall see; we shall see!'

He was forgetting himself, carried away by his enthusiasm for science. A
glance at his nephew's cassock pulled him up short.

'As for you, you're a parson,' he muttered; 'you did well; a parson's a
very happy man. The calling absorbs you, eh? And so you've taken to the
good path. Well! you would never have been satisfied otherwise. Your
relatives, starting like you, have done a deal of evil, and still they
are unsatisfied. It's all logically perfect, my lad. A priest completes
the family. Besides, it was inevitable. Our blood was bound to run to
that. So much the better for you; you have had the most luck.'
Correcting himself, however, with a strange smile, he added: 'No, it's
your sister Desiree who has had the best luck of all.'

He whistled, whipped up his horse, and changed the conversation. The
gig, after climbing a somewhat steep slope, was threading its way
through desolate ravines; at last it reached a tableland, where the
hollow road skirted an interminable and lofty wall. Les Artaud had
disappeared; they found themselves in the heart of a desert.

'We are getting near, are we not?' asked the priest.

'This is the Paradou,' replied the doctor, pointing to the wall.
'Haven't you been this way before, then? We are not three miles from Les
Artaud. A splendid property it must have been, this Paradou. The park
wall this side alone is quite a mile and a half long. But for over a
hundred years it's all been running wild.'

'There are some fine trees,' observed the Abbe, as he looked up in
astonishment at the luxuriant mass of foliage which jutted over.

'Yes, that part is very fertile. In fact, the park is a regular forest
amidst the bare rocks which surround it. The Mascle, too, rises there; I
have heard four or five springs mentioned, I fancy.'

In short sentences, interspersed with irrelevant digressions, he then
related the story of the Paradou, according to the current legend of the
countryside. In the time of Louis XV., a great lord had erected a
magnificent palace there, with vast gardens, fountains, trickling
streams, and statues--a miniature Versailles hidden away among the
stones, under the full blaze of the southern sun. But he had there spent
but one season with a lady of bewitching beauty, who doubtless died
there, as none had ever seen her leave. Next year the mansion was
destroyed by fire, the park doors were nailed up, the very loopholes of
the walls were filled with mould; and thus, since that remote time, not
a glance had penetrated that vast enclosure which covered the whole of
one of the plateaux of the Garrigue hills.

'There can be no lack of nettles there,' laughingly said Abbe Mouret.
'Don't you find that the whole wall reeks of damp, uncle?'

A pause followed, and he asked:

'And whom does the Paradou belong to now?'

'Why, nobody knows,' the doctor answered. 'The owner did come here once,
some twenty years ago. But he was so scared by the sight of this adders'
nest that he has never turned up since. The real master is the
caretaker, that old oddity, Jeanbernat, who has managed to find quarters
in a lodge where the stones still hang together. There it is, see--that
grey building yonder, with its windows all smothered in ivy.'

The gig passed by a lordly iron gate, ruddy with rust, and lined inside
with a layer of boards. The wide dry thoats were black with brambles. A
hundred yards further on was the lodge inhabited by Jeanbernat. It stood
within the park, which it overlooked. But the old keeper had apparently
blocked up that side of his dwelling, and had cleared a little garden by
the road. And there he lived, facing southwards, with his back turned
upon the Paradou, as if unaware of the immensity of verdure that
stretched away behind him.

The young priest jumped down, looking inquisitively around him and
questioning the doctor, who was hurriedly fastening the horse to a ring
fixed in the wall.

'And the old man lives all alone in this out-of-the-way hole?' he asked.

'Yes, quite alone,' replied his uncle, adding, however, the next
minute: 'Well, he has with him a niece whom he had to take in, a queer
girl, a regular savage. But we must make haste. The whole place looks
death-like.'

VIII


The house with its shutters closed seemed wrapped in slumber as it stood
there in the midday sun, amidst the hum of the big flies that swarmed
all up the ivy to the roof tiles. The sunlit ruin was steeped in happy
quietude. When the doctor had opened the gate of the narrow garden,
which was enclosed by a lofty quickset hedge, there, in the shadow cast
by a wall, they found Jeanbernat, tall and erect, and calmly smoking his
pipe, as in the deep silence he watched his vegetables grow.

'What, are you up then, you humbug?' exclaimed the astonished doctor.

'So you were coming to bury me, were you?' growled the old man harshly.
'I don't want anybody. I bled myself.'

He stopped short as he caught sight of the priest, and assumed so
threatening an expression that the doctor hastened to intervene.

'This is my nephew,' he said; 'the new Cure of Les Artaud--a good
fellow, too. Devil take it, we haven't been bowling over the roads at
this hour of the day to eat you, Jeanbernat.'

The old man calmed down a little.

'I don't want any shavelings here,' he grumbled. 'They're enough to make
one croak. Mind, doctor, no priests, and no physics when I go off, or we
shall quarrel. Let him come in, however, as he is your nephew.'

Abbe Mouret, struck dumb with amazement, could not speak a word. He
stood there in the middle of the path scanning that strange solitaire,
with scorched, brick-tinted face, and limbs all withered and twisted
like a bundle of ropes, who seemed to bear the burden of his eighty
years with a scornful contempt for life. When the doctor attempted to
feel his pulse, his ill-humour broke out afresh.

'Do leave me in peace! I bled myself with my knife, I tell you. It's all
over, now. Who was the fool of a peasant who disturbed you? The doctor
here, and the priest as well, why not the mutes too! Well, it can't be
helped, people will be fools. It won't prevent us from having a drink,
eh?'

He fetched a bottle and three glasses, and stood them on an old table
which he brought out into the shade. Then, having filled the glasses to
the brim, he insisted on clinking them. His anger had given place to

jeering cheerfulness.

'It won't poison you, Monsieur le Cure,' he said. 'A glass of good wine
isn't a sin. Upon my word, however, this is the first time I ever
clinked a glass with a cassock, but no offence to you. That poor Abbe
Caffin, your predecessor, refused to argue with me. He was afraid.'

Jeanbernat gave vent to a hearty laugh, and then went on: 'Just fancy,
he had pledged himself that he would prove to me that God exists. So,
whenever I met him, I defied him to do it; and he sloped off
crestfallen, I can tell you.'

'What, God does not exist!' cried Abbe Mouret, roused from his silence.

'Oh! just as you please,' mockingly replied Jeanbernat. 'We'll begin
together all over again, if it's any pleasure to you. But I warn you
that I'm a tough hand at it. There are some thousands of books in one of
the rooms upstairs, which were rescued from the fire at the Paradou: all
the philosophers of the eighteenth century, a whole heap of old books on
religion. I've learned some fine things from them. I've been reading
them these twenty years. Marry! you'll find you've got some one who can
talk, Monsieur le Cure.'

He had risen, slowly waving his hand towards the surrounding horizon, to
the earth and to the sky, and repeating solemnly: 'There's nothing,
nothing, nothing. When the sun is snuffed out, all will be at an end.'

Doctor Pascal nudged Abbe Mouret with his elbow. With blinking eyes he
was curiously observing the old man and nodding approvingly in order to
induce him to talk. 'So you are a materialist, Jeanbernat?' he said.

'Oh, I am only a poor man,' replied the old fellow, relighting his pipe.
'When Count de Corbiere, whose foster-brother I was, died from a fall
from his horse, his children sent me here to look after this park of the
Sleeping Beauty, in order to get rid of me. I was sixty years old then,
and I thought I was about done. But death forgot me; and I had to make
myself a burrow. If one lives all alone, look you, one gets to see
things in rather a queer fashion. The trees are no longer trees, the
earth puts on the ways of a living being, the stones seem to tell you
tales. A parcel of rubbish, eh? But I know some secrets that would
fairly stagger you. Besides, what do you think there is to do in this
devilish desert? I read the old books; it was more amusing than
shooting. The Count, who used to curse like a heathen, was always saying
to me: "Jeanbernat, my boy, I fully expect to meet you again in the hot
place, so that you will be able to serve me there as you have up here."'

Once more he waved his hand to the horizon and added: 'You hear,
nothing; there's nothing. It's all foolery.'

Dr. Pascal began to laugh.

'A pleasant piece of foolery, at any rate,' he said. 'Jeanbernat, you
are a deceiver. I suspect you are in love, in spite of your affectation
of being _blase_. You were speaking very tenderly of the trees and
stones just now.'

'Oh, no, I assure you,' murmured the old man, 'I have done with that. At
one time, it's true, when I first knew you and used to go herborising
with you, I was stupid enough to love all sorts of things I came across
in that huge liar, the country. Fortunately, the old volumes have killed
all that. I only wish my garden was smaller; I don't go out into the
road twice a year. You see that bench? That's where I spend all my time,
just watching my lettuces grow.'

'And what about your rounds in the park?' broke in the doctor.

'In the park!' repeated Jeanbernat, with a look of profound surprise.
'Why, it's more than twelve years since I set foot in it! What do you
suppose I could do inside that cemetery? It's too big. It's stupid, what
with those endless trees and moss everywhere and broken statues, and
holes in which one might break one's neck at every step. The last time I
went in there, it was so dark under the trees, there was such a stink of
wild flowers, and such queer breezes blew along the paths, that I felt
almost afraid. So I have shut myself up to prevent the park coming in
here. A patch of sunlight, three feet of lettuce before me, and a big
hedge shutting out all the view, why, that's more than enough for
happiness. Nothing, that's what I'd like, nothing at all, something so
tiny that nothing from outside could come to disturb me. Seven feet of
earth, if you like, just to be able to croak on my back.'

He struck the table with his fist, and suddenly raised his voice to call
out to Abbe Mouret: 'Come, just another glass, your reverence. The old
gentleman isn't at the bottom of the bottle, you know.'

The priest felt ill at ease. To lead back to God that singular old man,
whose reason seemed to him to be strangely disordered, appeared a task
beyond his powers. He now remembered certain bits of gossip he had heard
from La Teuse about the Philosopher, as the peasants of Les Artaud
dubbed Jeanbernat. Scraps of scandalous stories vaguely floated in his
memory. He rose, making a sign to the doctor that he wished to leave
this house, where he seemed to inhale an odour of damnation. But, in
spite of his covert fears, a strange feeling of curiosity made him
linger. He simply walked to the end of the garden, throwing a searching
glance into the vestibule, as if to see beyond it, behind the walls. All
he could perceive, however, through the gaping doorway, was the black
staircase. So he came back again, and sought for some hole, some glimpse
of that sea of foliage which he knew was near by the mighty murmur that
broke upon the house, like the sound of waves.

'And is the little one well?' asked the doctor, taking up his hat.

'Pretty well,' answered Jeanbernat. 'She's never here. She often
disappears all day long--still, she may be in the upstair rooms.'

He raised his head and called: 'Albine! Albine!' Then with a
shrug of his shoulders, he added: 'Yes, my word, she is a nice
hussy. . . . Well, till next time, Monsieur le Cure. I'm always
at your disposal.'

Abbe Mouret, however, had no time to accept the Philosopher's challenge.
A door suddenly opened at the end of the vestibule; a dazzling breach
was made in the black darkness of the wall, and through the breach came
a vision of a virgin forest, a great depth of woodland, beneath a flood
of sunbeams. In that sudden blaze of light the priest distinctly
perceived certain far-away things: a large yellow flower in the middle
of a lawn, a sheet of water falling from a lofty rock, a colossal tree
filled with a swarm of birds; and all this steeped, lost, blazing in
such a tangle of greenery, such riotous luxuriance of vegetation, that
the whole horizon seemed one great burst of shooting foliage. The door
banged to, and everything vanished.

'Ah! the jade!' cried Jeanbernat, 'she was in the Paradou again!'

Albine was now laughing on the threshold of the vestibule. She wore an
orange-coloured skirt, with a large red kerchief fastened round her
waist, thus looking like some gipsy in holiday garb. And she went on
laughing, her head thrown back, her bosom swelling with mirth, delighted
with her flowers, wild flowers which she had plaited into her fair hair,
fastened to her neck, her bodice, and her bare slender golden arms. She
seemed like a huge nosegay, exhaling a powerful perfume.

'Ay, you are a beauty!' growled the old man. 'You smell of weeds enough
to poison one--would any one think she was sixteen, that doll?'

Albine remained unabashed, however, and laughed still more heartily.
Doctor Pascal, who was her great friend, let her kiss him.

'So you are not frightened in the Paradou?' he asked.

'Frightened? What of?' she said, her eyes wide open with astonishment.
'The walls are too high, no one can get in. There's only myself. It is
my garden, all my very own. A fine big one, too. I haven't found out
where it ends yet.'

'And the animals?' interrupted the doctor.

'The animals? Oh! they don't hurt; they all know me well.'

'But it is very dark under the trees?'

'Course! there's shade: if there were none, the sun would burn my face
up. It is very pleasant in the shade among the leaves.'

She flitted about, filling the little garden with the rustling sweep of
her skirts, and scattering round the pungent odour of wild flowers which
clung to her. She had smiled at Abbe Mouret without trace of shyness,
without heed of the astonished look with which he observed her. The
priest had stepped aside. That fair-haired maid, with long oval face,
glowing with life, seemed to him to be the weird mysterious offspring of
the forest of which he had caught a glimpse in a sheet of sunlight.

'I say, I have got some blackbird nestlings; would you like them?'

Albine asked the doctor.

'No, thanks,' he answered, laughing. 'You should give them to the Cure's
sister; she is very fond of pets. Good day, Jeanbernat.'

Albine, however, had fastened on the priest.

'You are the vicar of Les Artaud, aren't you? You have a sister? I'll go
and see her. Only you must not speak to me about God. My uncle will not
have it.'

'You bother us, be off,' exclaimed Jeanbernat, shrugging his shoulders.
Then bounding away like a goat, dropping a shower of flowers behind her,
she disappeared. The slam of a door was heard, and from behind the house
came bursts of laughter, which died away in the distance like the
scampering rush of some mad animal let loose among the grass.

'You'll see, she will end by sleeping in the Paradou,' muttered the old
man with indifference.

And as he saw his visitors off, he added: 'If you should find me dead
one of these fine days, doctor, just do me the favour of pitching me
into the muck-pit there, behind my lettuces. Good evening, gentlemen.'

He let the wooden gate which closed the hedge fall to again, and the
house assumed once more its aspect of happy peacefulness in the noonday
sunlight, amidst the buzzing of the big flies that swarmed all up the
ivy even to the roof tiles.

IX


The gig once more rolled along the road skirting the Paradou's
interminable wall. Abbe Mouret, still silent, scanned with upturned eyes
the huge boughs which stretched over that wall, like the arms of giants
hidden there. All sorts of sounds came from the park: rustling of wings,
quivering of leaves, furtive bounds at which branches snapped, mighty
sighs that bowed the young shoots--a vast breath of life sweeping over
the crests of a nation of trees. At times, as he heard a birdlike note
that seemed like a human laugh, the priest turned his head, as if he
felt uneasy.

'A queer girl!' said his uncle as he eased the reins a little. 'She was
nine years old when she took up her quarters with that old heathen. Some
brother of his had ruined himself, though in what I can't remember. The
little one was at school somewhere when her father killed himself. She
was even quite a little lady, up to reading, embroidery, chattering, and
strumming on the piano. And such a coquette too! I saw her arrive with
open-worked stockings, embroidered skirts, frills, cuffs, a heap of
finery. Ah, well! the finery didn't last long!'

He laughed. A big stone nearly upset the gig.

'It will be lucky if I don't leave a wheel in this cursed road!' he
muttered. 'Hold on, my boy.'

The wall still stretched beside them: the priest still listened.

'As you may well imagine,' continued the doctor, 'the Paradou, what with
its sun, its stones, and its thistles, would wreck a whole outfit every
day. Three or four mouthfuls, that's all it made of all the little one's
beautiful dresses. She used to come back naked. Now she dresses like a
savage. To-day she was rather presentable; but sometimes she has
scarcely anything on beyond her shoes and chemise. Did you hear her? The
Paradou is hers. The very day after she came she took possession of it.
She lives in it; jumps out of the window when Jeanbernat locks the door,
bolts off in spite of all, goes nobody knows whither, buries herself in
some invisible burrows known only to herself. She must have a fine time
in that wilderness.'

'Hark, uncle!' interrupted Abbe Mouret. 'Isn't that some animal running
behind the wall?'

Uncle Pascal listened.

'No,' he said after a minute's silence, 'it is the rattle of the trap
on the stones. No, the child doesn't play the piano now. I believe she
has even forgotten how to read. Just picture to yourself a young lady
gone back to a state of primevalness, turned out to play on a desert
island. My word, if ever you get to know of a girl who needs proper
bringing up, I advise you not to entrust her to Jeanbernat. He has a
most primitive way of letting nature alone. When I ventured to speak to
him about Albine he answered me that he must not prevent trees from
growing as they pleased. He says he is for the normal development of
temperaments. . . . All the same, they are very interesting, both of
them. I never come this way without paying them a visit.'

The gig was now emerging from the hollowed road. At this point the
wall of the Paradou turned and wound along the crest of the hills as
far as one could see. As Abbe Mouret turned to take a last look at that
grey-hued barrier, whose impenetrable austerity had at last begun to
annoy him, a rustling of shaken boughs was heard and a clump of young
birch trees seemed to bow in greeting from above the wall.

'I knew some animal was running behind,' said the priest.

But, although nobody could be seen, though nothing was visible in the
air above save the birches rocking more and more violently, they heard a
clear, laughing voice call out: 'Good-bye, doctor! good-bye, Monsieur le
Cure! I am kissing the tree, and the tree is sending you my kisses.'

'Why! it is Albine,' exclaimed Doctor Pascal. 'She must have followed
the trap at a run. Jumping over bushes is mere play to her, the little
elf!'

And he in his turn shouted out:

'Good-bye, my pet! How tall you must be to bow like that.'

The laughter grew louder, the birches bowed still lower, scattering
their leaves around even on the hood of the gig.

'I am as tall as the trees; all the leaves that fall are kisses,'
replied the voice now mellowed by distance, so musical, so merged into
the rippling whispers of the park, that the young priest was thrilled.

The road grew better. On coming down the slope Les Artaud reappeared in
the midst of the scorched plain. When the gig reached the turning to the
village, Abbe Mouret would not let his uncle drive him back to the
vicarage. He jumped down, saying:

'No, thanks, I prefer to walk: it will do me good.'

'Well, just as you like,' at last answered the doctor. And with a
clasp of the hand, he added: 'Well, if you only had such parishioners
as that old brute Jeanbernat, you wouldn't often be disturbed. However,
you yourself wanted to come. And mind you keep well. At the slightest
ache, night or day, send for me. You know I attend all the family
gratis. . . . There, good-bye, my boy.'