X


Abbe Mouret felt more at ease when he found himself again alone, walking
along the dusty road. The stony fields brought him back to his dream of
austerity, of an inner life spent in a desert. From the trees all along
the sunken road disturbing moisture had fallen on his neck, which now
the burning sun was drying. The sight of the lean almond trees, the
scanty corn crops, the weak vines, on either side of the way, soothed
him, delivered him from the perturbation into which the lusty atmosphere
of the Paradou had thrown him. Amid the blinding glare that flowed from
heaven over the bare land, Jeanbernat's blasphemies no longer cast even
a shadow. A thrill of pleasure ran through the priest as he raised his
head and caught sight of the solitaire's motionless bar-like silhouette
and the pink patch of tiles on the church.

But, as he walked on, fresh anxiety beset the Abbe. La Teuse would give
him a fine reception; for his luncheon must have been waiting nearly two
hours for him. He pictured her terrible face, the flood of words with
which she would greet him, the angry clatter of kitchen ware which he
would hear the whole afternoon. When he had got through Les Artaud, his
fear became so lively that he hesitated, full of trepidation, and
wondered if it would not be better to go round and reach the parsonage
by way of the church. But, while he deliberated, La Teuse herself
appeared on the doorstep of the parsonage, her cap all awry, and her
hands on her hips. With drooping head he had perforce to climb the slope
under her storm-laden gaze, which he could feel weighing upon his
shoulders.

'I believe I am rather late, my good Teuse,' he stammered, as he turned
the path's last bend.

La Teuse waited till he stood quite close before her. She then gave him
a furious glance, and, without a word, turned and stalked before him
into the dining-room, banging her big heels upon the floor-tiles and so
rigid with ire that she hardly limped at all.

'I have had so many things to do,' began the priest, scared by this dumb
reception. 'I have been running about all the morning.'

But she cut him short with another look, so fixed, so full of anger,
that he felt his legs give way under him. He sat down, and began to eat.
She waited on him in the sharp, mechanical manner of an automaton, all

but breaking the plates with the violence with which she set them down.
The silence became so awful that, choking with emotion, he was unable to
swallow his third mouthful.

'My sister has had her luncheon?' he asked. 'Quite right of her.
Luncheon should always be served whenever I am kept out.'

No answer came. La Teuse stood there waiting to remove his plate as soon
as he should have emptied it. Thereupon, feeling that he could not
possibly eat with those implacable eyes crushing him, he pushed his
plate away. This angry gesture acted on La Teuse like a whip stroke,
rousing her from her obstinate stiffness. She fairly jumped.

'Ah! that's how it is!' she exclaimed. 'There you are again, losing your
temper! Very well, I am off; you can pay my fare, so that I may go back
home. I have had enough of Les Artaud, and your church, and everything
else!'

She took off her apron with trembling hands.

'You must have seen that I didn't wish to say anything to you. A nice
life, indeed! Only mountebanks do such things, Monsieur le Cure! This is
eleven o'clock, ain't it! Aren't you ashamed of sitting at table when
it's almost two o'clock? It's not like a Christian, no, it is not like a
Christian!'

And, taking her stand before him, she went on: 'Well, where do you come
from? whom have you seen? what business can have kept you? If only you
were a child you would have the whip. It isn't the place for a priest to
be, on the roads in the blazing sun like a tramp without a roof to put
over his head. A fine state you are in, with your shoes all white and
your cassock smothered in dust! Who will brush your cassock for you? Who
will buy you another one? Speak out, will you; tell me what you have
been doing! My word! if everybody didn't know you, they would end by
thinking queer things about you. And shall I tell you? Why, I won't say
but what you may have been up to something wrong. When folks lunch at
such hours they are capable of anything!'

Abbe Mouret let the storm blow over him. At the old servant's wrathful
words he experienced a kind of relief.

'Come, my good Teuse,' he said, 'you will first put your apron on
again.'

'No, no,' she cried, 'it's all over, I am going.'

But he got up and, laughing, tied her apron round her waist. She
struggled against him and stuttered: 'I tell you no! You are a wheedler.
I can see through your game, I see you want to come it over me with your
honeyed words. Where did you go? We'll see afterwards.'

He gaily sat down to table again like a man who has gained a victory.

'First, I must be allowed to eat. I am dying with hunger,' said he.

'No doubt,' she murmured, her pity moved. 'Is there any common sense in
it? Would you like me to fry you a couple of eggs? It would not take
long. Well, if you have enough. But everything is cold! And I had taken
such pains with your aubergines! Nice they are now! They look like old
shoe-leather. Luckily you haven't got a tender tooth like poor Monsieur
Caffin. Yes, you have some good points, I don't deny it.'

Thus chattering, she waited on him with all a mother's care. After he
had finished she ran to the kitchen to see if the coffee was still warm.
She frisked about and limped most outrageously in her delight at having
made things up with him. As a rule Abbe Mouret fought shy of coffee,
which always upset his nervous system; but on this occasion, to ratify
the conclusion of peace, he took the cup she brought him. And as he
lingered at table she sat down opposite him and repeated gently, like a
woman tortured by curiosity:

'Where have you been, Monsieur le Cure?'

'Well,' he answered with a smile, 'I have seen the Brichets, I have
spoken to Bambousse.'

Thereupon he had to relate to her what the Brichets had said, what
Bambousse had decided, and how they looked, and where they were at work.
When he repeated to her the answer of Rosalie's father, 'Of course!' she
exclaimed, 'if the child should die her mishap would go for nothing.'
And clasping her hands with a look of envious admiration she added, 'How
you must have chattered, your reverence! More than half the day spent to
obtain such a fine result! You took it easy coming home? It must have
been very hot on the road?'

The Abbe, who by this time had risen, made no answer. He had been on the
point of speaking about the Paradou, and asking for some information
concerning it. But a fear of being flooded with eager questions, and a
kind of vague unavowed shame, made him keep silence respecting his visit
to Jeanbernat. He cut all further questions short by asking:

'Where is my sister? I don't hear her.'

'Come along, sir,' said La Teuse, beginning to laugh, and raising her
finger to her lips.

They went into the next room, a country drawing-room, hung with faded
wall-paper showing large grey flowers, and furnished with four armchairs
and a sofa, covered with horse-hair. On the sofa now slept Desiree,
stretched out at full length, with her head resting on her clenched
hands. The pronounced curve of her bosom was raised somewhat by her
upstretched arms, bare to the elbows. She was breathing somewhat
heavily, her red lips parted, and thus showing her teeth.

'Lord! isn't she sleeping sound!' whispered La Teuse. 'She didn't even
hear you pitching into me just now. Well, she must be precious tired.
Just fancy, she was cleaning up her yard till nearly noon. And when she
had eaten something, she came and dropped down there like a shot. She
has not stirred since.'

For a moment the priest gazed lovingly at her. 'We must let her have as
much rest as she wants,' he said.

'Of course. Isn't it a pity she's such an innocent? Just look at those
big arms! Whenever I dress her I always think what a fine woman she
would have made. Ay, she would have brought you some splendid nephews,
sir. Don't you think she is like that stone lady in Plassans
corn-market?'

She spoke thus of a Cybele stretched upon sheaves of wheat, the work of
one of Puget's pupils, which was carved on the frontal of the market
building. Without replying, however, Abbe Mouret gently pushed her out
of the room, and begged her to make as little noise as possible. Till
evening, therefore, perfect silence settled on the parsonage. La Teuse
finished her washing in the shed. The priest, seated at the bottom of
the little garden, his breviary fallen on his lap, remained absorbed in
pious thoughts, while all around him rosy petals rained from the
blossoming peach-trees.

XI


About six o'clock there came a sudden wakening. A noise of doors opening
and closing, accompanied by bursts of laughter, shook the whole house.
Desiree appeared, her hair all down and her arms still half bare.

'Serge! Serge!' she called.

And catching sight of her brother in the garden, she ran up to him and
sat down for a minute on the ground at his feet, begging him to follow
her:

'Do come and see the animals! You haven't seen the animals yet, have
you? If you only knew how beautiful they are now!'

She had to beg very hard, for the yard rather scared him. But when he
saw tears in Desiree's eyes, he yielded. She threw herself on his neck
in a sudden puppy-like burst of glee, laughing more than ever, without
attempting to dry her cheeks.

'Oh! how nice you are!' she stammered, as she dragged him off. 'You
shall see the hens, the rabbits, the pigeons, and my ducks which have
got fresh water, and my goat, whose room is as clean as mine now. I have
three geese and two turkeys, you know. Come quick. You shall see all.'

Desiree was then twenty-two years old. Reared in the country by her
nurse, a peasant woman of Saint-Eutrope, she had grown up anyhow. Her
brain void of all serious thoughts, she had thriven on the fat soil and
open air of the country, developing physically but never mentally,
growing into a lovely animal--white, with rosy blood and firm skin. She
was not unlike a high-bred donkey endowed with the power of laughter.
Although she dabbled about from morning till night, her delicate hands
and feet, the supple outlines of her hips, the bourgeois refinement of
her maiden form remained unimpaired; so that she was in truth a creature
apart--neither lady nor peasant--but a girl nourished by the soil, with
the broad shoulders and narrow brow of a youthful goddess.

Doubtless it was by reason of her weak intellect that she was drawn
towards animals. She was never happy save with them; she understood
their language far better than that of mankind, and looked after them
with motherly affection. Her reasoning powers were deficient, but in
lieu thereof she had an instinct which put her on a footing of
intelligence with them. At their very first cry of pain she knew what
ailed them; she would choose dainties upon which they would pounce
greedily. A single gesture from her quelled their squabbles. She seemed
to know their good or their evil character at a glance; and related such
long tales about the tiniest chick, with such an abundance and
minuteness of detail, as to astound those to whom one chicken was
exactly like any other. Her farmyard had thus become a country, as it
were, over which she reigned; a country complex in its organisation,
disturbed by rebellions, peopled by the most diverse creatures whose
records were known to her alone. So accurate was her instinct that she
detected the unfertile eggs in a sitting, and foretold the number of a
litter of rabbits.

When, at sixteen, Desiree became a young woman, she retained all her
wonted health; and rapidly developed, with round, free-swaying bust,
broad hips like those of an antique statue, the full growth indeed of a
vigorous animal. One might have thought that she had sprung from the
rich soil of her poultry-yard, that she absorbed the sap with her sturdy
legs, which were as firm as young trees. And nought disturbed her amidst
all this plenitude. She found continuous satisfaction in being
surrounded by birds and animals which ever increased and multiplied,
their fruitfulness filling her with delight. Nothing could have been
healthier. She innocently feasted on the odour and warmth of life,
knowing no depraved curiosity, but retaining all the tranquillity of a
beautiful animal, simply happy at seeing her little world thus multiply,
feeling as if she thereby became a mother, the common natural mother of
one and all.

Since she had been living at Les Artaud, she had spent her days in
complete beatitude. At last she was satisfying the dream of her life,
the only desire which had worried her amidst her weak-minded puerility.
She had a poultry-yard, a nook all to herself, where she could breed
animals to her heart's content. And she almost lived there, building
rabbit-hutches with her own hands, digging out a pond for the ducks,
knocking in nails, fetching straw, allowing no one to assist her. All
that La Teuse had to do was to wash her afterwards. The poultry-yard was
situated behind the cemetery; and Desiree often had to jump the wall,
and run hither and thither among the graves after some fowl whom
curiosity had led astray. Right at the end was a shed giving
accommodation to the fowls and the rabbits; to the right was a little
stable for the goat. Moreover, all the animals lived together; the
rabbits ran about with the fowls, the nanny-goat would take a footbath
in the midst of the ducks; the geese, the turkeys, the guinea-fowls, and
the pigeons all fraternised in the company of three cats. Whenever
Desiree appeared at the wooden fence which prevented her charges from
making their way into the church, a deafening uproar greeted her.

'Eh! can't you hear them?' she said to her brother, as they reached the
dining-room door.

But, when she had admitted him and closed the gate behind them, she was
assailed so violently that she almost disappeared. The ducks and the
geese, opening and shutting their beaks, tugged at her skirts; the
greedy hens sprang up and pecked her hands; the rabbits squatted on her
feet and then bounded up to her knees; whilst the three cats leapt upon
her shoulders, and the goat bleated in its stable at being unable to
reach her.

'Leave me alone, do! all you creatures!' she cried with a hearty
sonorous laugh, feeling tickled by all the feathers, claws, and beaks
and paws rubbing against her.

However, she did not attempt to free herself. As she often said, she
would have let herself be devoured; it seemed so sweet to feel all this
life cling to her and encompass her with the warmth of eider-down. At
last only one cat persisted in remaining on her back.

'It's Moumou,' she said. 'His paws are like velvet.' Then, calling her
brother's attention to the yard, she proudly added: 'See, how clean it
is!'

The yard had indeed been swept out, washed, and raked over. But the
disturbed water and the forked-up litter exhaled so fetid and powerful
an odour that Abbe Mouret half choked. The dung was heaped against the
graveyard wall in a huge smoking mound.

'What a pile, eh?' continued Desiree, leading her brother into the
pungent vapour, 'I put it all there myself, nobody helped me. Go on, it
isn't dirty. It cleans. Look at my arms.'

As she spoke she held out her arms, which she had merely dipped into a
pail of water--regal arms they were, superbly rounded, blooming like
full white roses amidst the manure.

'Yes, yes,' gently said the priest, 'you have worked hard. It's very
nice now.'

Then he turned towards the wicket, but she stopped him.

'Do wait a bit. You shall see them all. You have no idea--' And so
saying, she dragged him to the rabbit house under the shed.

'There are young ones in all the hutches,' she said, clapping her hands
in glee.

Then at great length she proceeded to explain to him all about the
litters. He had to crouch down and come close to the wire netting,
whilst she gave him minute details. The mother does, with big restless
ears, eyed him askance, panting and motionless with fear. Then, in one
hutch, he saw a hairy cavity wherein crawled a living heap, an
indistinct dusky mass heaving like a single body. Close by some young
ones, with enormous heads, ventured to the edge of the hole. A little
farther were yet stronger ones, who looked like young rats, ferreting
and leaping about with their raised rumps showing their white scuts.
Others, white ones with pale ruby eyes, and black ones with jet eyes,
galloped round their hutches with playful grace. Now a scare would make
them bolt off swiftly, revealing at every leap their slender reddened
paws. Next they would squat down all in a heap, so closely packed that
their heads could no longer be seen.

'It is you they are frightened at,' Desiree kept on saying. 'They know
me well.'

She called them and drew some bread-crust from her pocket. The little
rabbits then became more confident, and, with puckered noses, kept
sidling up, and rearing against the netting one by one. She kept them
like that for a minute to show her brother the rosy down upon their
bellies, and then gave her crust to the boldest one. Upon this the whole
of them flocked up, sliding forward and squeezing one another, but never
quarreling. At one moment three little ones were all nibbling the same
piece of crust, but others darted away, turning to the wall so as to eat
in peace, while their mothers in the rear remained snuffing
distrustfully and refused the crusts.

'Oh! the greedy little things!' exclaimed Desiree. 'They would eat like
that till to-morrow morning! At night, even, you can bear them crunching
the leaves they have overlooked in the day-time.'

The priest had risen as if to depart, but she never wearied of smiling
on her dear little ones.

'You see the big one there, that's all white, with black ears--Well! he
dotes on poppies. He is very clever at picking them out from the other
weeds. The other day he got the colic. So I took him and kept him warm
in my pocket. Since then he has been quite frisky.'

She poked her fingers through the wire netting and stroked the rabbits'
backs.

'Wouldn't you say it was satin?' she continued. 'They are dressed like
princes. And ain't they coquettish! Look, there's one who is always
cleaning himself. He wears the fur off his paws. . . . If only you knew
how funny they are! I say nothing, but I see all their little games.
That grey one looking at us, for instance, used to hate a little doe,
which I had to put somewhere else. There were terrible scenes between
them. It would take too long to tell you all, but the last time he gave
her a drubbing, when I came up in a rage, what do you think I saw? Why
that rascal huddled up at the back there as if he was just at his last
gasp. He wanted to make me believe that it was he who had to complain of
her.'

Then Desiree paused to apostrophise the rabbit. 'Yes, you may listen to
me; you're a rogue!' And turning towards her brother, 'He understands
all I say,' she added softly, with a wink.

But Abbe Mouret could stand it no longer. He was perturbed by the heat
that emanated from the litters, the life that crawled under the hair
plucked from the does' bellies, exhaling powerful emanations. On the
other hand, Desiree, as if slowly intoxicated, was growing brighter and
pinker.

'But there's nothing to take you away!' she cried; 'you always seem
anxious to go off. You must see my little chicks! They were born last
night.'

She took some rice and threw a handful before her. The hen gravely drew
near, clucking to the little band of chickens that followed her chirping
and scampering as if in bewilderment. When they were fairly in the
middle of the scattered rice the hen eagerly pecked at it, and threw
down the grains she cracked, while her little ones hastily began to
feed. All the charm of infancy was theirs. Half-naked as it were, with
round heads, eyes sparkling like steel needles, beaks so queerly set,
and down so quaintly ruffled up, they looked like penny toys. Desiree
laughed with enjoyment at sight of them.

'What little loves they are!' she stammered.

She took up two of them, one in each hand, and smothered them with eager
kisses. And then the priest had to inspect them all over, while she
coolly said to him:

'It isn't easy to tell the cocks. But I never make a mistake. This one
is a hen, and this one is a hen too.'

Then she set them on the ground again. Other hens were now coming up to
eat the rice. A large ruddy cock with flaming plumage followed them,
lifting his large feet with majestic caution.

'Alexander is getting splendid,' said the Abbe, to please his sister.

Alexander was the cock's name. He looked up at the young girl with his
fiery eye, his head turned round, his tail outspread, and then installed
himself close by her skirts.

'He is very fond of me,' she said. 'Only I can touch him. He is a good
bird. There are fourteen hens, and never do I find a bad egg in the
nests. Do I, Alexander?'

She stooped; the bird did not fly from her caress. A rush of blood
seemed to set his comb aflame; flapping his wings, and stretching out
his neck, he burst into a long crow which rang out like a blast from a
brazen throat. Four times did he repeat his crow while all the cocks of
Les Artaud answered in the distance. Desiree was greatly amused by her
brother's startled looks.

'He deafens one, eh?' she said. 'He has a splendid voice. But he's not
vicious, I assure you, though the hens are--You remember the big
speckled one, that used to lay yellow eggs? Well, the day before
yesterday she hurt her foot. When the others saw the blood they went
quite mad. They all followed her, pecking at her and drinking her blood,
so that by the evening they had eaten up her foot. I found her with her
head behind a stone, like an idiot, saying nothing, and letting herself
be devoured.'

The remembrance of the fowls' voracity made her laugh. She calmly
related other cruelties of theirs: young chickens devoured, of which she
had only found the necks and wings, and a litter of kittens eaten up in
the stable in a few hours.

'You might give them a human being,' she continued, 'they'd finish him.
And aren't they tough livers! They get on with a broken limb even. They
may have wounds, big holes in their bodies, and still they'll gobble
their victuals. That's what I like them for; their flesh grows again in
two days; they are always as warm as if they had a store of sunshine
under their feathers. When I want to give them a treat, I cut them up
some raw meat. And worms too! Wait, you'll see how they love them.'

She ran to the dungheap, and unhesitatingly picked up a worm she found
there. The fowls darted at her hands; but to amuse herself with the
sight of their greediness she held the worm high above them. At last she
opened her fingers, and forthwith the fowls hustled one another and
pounced upon the worm. One of them fled with it in her beak, pursued by
the others; it was thus taken, snatched away, and retaken many times
until one hen, with a mighty gulp, swallowed it altogether. At that they
all stopped short with heads thrown back, and eyes on the alert for
another worm. Desiree called them by their names, and talked pettingly
to them; while Abbe Mouret retreated a few steps from this display of
voracious life.

'No, I am not at all comfortable,' he said to his sister, when she tried
to make him feel the weight of a fowl she was fattening. 'It always
makes me uneasy to touch live animals.'

He tried to smile, but Desiree taxed him with cowardice.

'Ah well, what about my ducks, and geese, and turkeys?' said she. 'What
would you do if you had all those to look after? Ducks are dirty, if you
like. Do you hear them shaking their bills in the water? And when they
dive, you can only see their tails sticking straight up like ninepins.
Geese and turkeys, too, are not easy to manage. Isn't it fun to see them
walking along with their long necks, some quite white and others quite
black? They look like ladies and gentlemen. And I wouldn't advise you to
trust your finger to them. They would swallow it at a gulp. But my
fingers, they only kiss--see!'

Her words were cut short by a joyous bleat from the goat, which had at
last forced the door of the stable open. Two bounds and the animal was
close to her, bending its forelegs, and affectionately rubbing its horns
against her. To the priest, with its pointed beard and obliquely set
eyes, it seemed to wear a diabolical grin. But Desiree caught it round
the neck, kissed its head, played and ran with it, and talked about how
she liked to drink its milk. She often did so, she said, when she was
thirsty in the stable.

'See, it has plenty of milk,' she added, pointing to the animal's udder.

The priest lowered his eyes. He could remember having once seen in the
cloister of Saint-Saturnin at Plassans a horrible stone gargoyle,
representing a goat and a monk; and ever since he had always looked on
goats as dissolute creatures of hell. His sister had only been allowed
to get one after weeks of begging. For his part, whenever he came to the
yard, he shunned all contact with the animal's long silky coat, and
carefully guarded his cassock from the touch of its horns.

'All right, I'll let you go now,' said Desiree, becoming aware of his
growing discomfort. 'But you must just let me show you something else
first. Promise not to scold me, won't you? I have not said anything to
you about it, because you wouldn't have allowed it. . . . But if you
only knew how pleased I am!'

As she spoke she put on an entreating expression, clasped her hands, and
laid her head upon her brother's shoulder.

'Another piece of folly, no doubt,' he murmured, unable to refrain from
smiling.

'You won't mind, will you?' she continued, her eyes glistening with
delight. 'You won't be angry?--He is so pretty!'

Thereupon she ran to open the low door under the shed, and forthwith a
little pig bounded into the middle of the yard.

'Oh! isn't he a cherub?' she exclaimed with a look of profound rapture
as she saw him leap out.

The little pig was indeed charming, quite pink, his snout washed clean
by the greasy slops placed before him, though incessant routing in his
trough had left a ring of dirt about his eyes. He trotted about, hustled
the fowls, rushing to gobble up whatever was thrown them, and upsetting
the little yard with his sudden turns and twists. His ears flapped over
his eyes, his snout went snorting over the ground, and with his slender
feet he resembled a toy animal on wheels. From behind, his tail looked
like a bit of string that served to hang him up by.

'I won't have this beast here!' exclaimed the priest, terribly put out.

'Oh, Serge, dear old Serge,' begged Desiree again, 'don't be so unkind.
See, what a harmless little thing he is! I'll wash him, I'll keep him
very clean. La Teuse went and had him given her for me. We can't send
him back now. See, he is looking at you; he wants to smell you. Don't be
afraid, he won't eat you.'

But she broke off, seized with irresistible laughter. The little pig had
blundered in a dazed fashion between the goat's legs, and tripped her
up. And he was now madly careering round, squeaking, rolling, scaring
all the denizens of the poultry-yard. To quiet him Desiree had to get
him an earthen pan full of dish-water. In this he wallowed up to his
ears, splashing and grunting, while quick quivers of delight coursed
over his rosy skin. And now his uncurled tail hung limply down.

The stirring of this foul water put a crowning touch to Abbe Mouret's
disgust. Ever since he had been there, he had choked more and more; his
hands and chest and face were afire, and he felt quite giddy. The odour
of the fowls and rabbits, the goat, and the pig, all mingled in one
pestilential stench. The atmosphere, laden with the ferments of life,
was too heavy for his maiden shoulders. And it seemed to him that
Desiree had grown taller, expanding at the hips, waving huge arms,
sweeping the ground with her skirts, and stirring up all that powerful
odour which overpowered him. He had only just time to open the wicket.
His feet clung to the stone flags still dank with manure, in such wise
that it seemed as if he were held there by some clasp of the soil. And
suddenly, despite himself, there came back to him a memory of the
Paradou, with its huge trees, its black shadows, its penetrating
perfumes.

'There, you are quite red now,' Desiree said to him as she joined him
outside the wicket. 'Aren't you pleased to have seen everything? Do you
hear the noise they are making?'

On seeing her depart, the birds and animals had thrown themselves
against the trellis work emitting piteous cries. The little pig,
especially, gave vent to prolonged whines that suggested the sharpening
of a saw. Desiree, however, curtsied to them and kissed her finger-tips
to them, laughing at seeing them all huddled together there, like so
many lovers of hers. Then, hugging her brother, as she accompanied him
to the garden, she whispered into his ear with a blush: 'I should so
like a cow.'

He looked at her, with a ready gesture of disapproval.

'No, no, not now,' she hurriedly went on. 'We'll talk about it again
later on---- But there would be room in the stable. A lovely white cow
with red spots. You'd soon see what nice milk we should have. A goat
becomes too little in the end. And when the cow has a calf!'

At the mere thought of this she skipped and clapped her hands with glee;
and to the priest she seemed to have brought the poultry-yard away with
her in her skirts. So he left her at the end of the garden, sitting in
the sunlight on the ground before a hive, whence the bees buzzed like
golden berries round her neck, along her bare arms and in her hair,
without thought of stinging her.

XII


Brother Archangias dined at the parsonage every Thursday. As a rule he
came early so as to talk over parish matters. It was he who, for the
last three months, had kept the Abbe informed of all the affairs of the
valley. That Thursday, while waiting till La Teuse should call them,
they strolled about in front of the church. The priest, on relating his
interview with Bambousse, was surprised to find that the Brother thought
the peasant's reply quite natural.

'The man's right,' said the Ignorantin.* 'You don't give away chattels
like that. Rosalie is no great bargain, but it's always hard to see your
own daughter throw herself away on a pauper.'

  * A popular name in France for a Christian Brother.--ED.

'Still,' rejoined Abbe Mouret, 'a marriage is the only way of stopping
the scandal.'

The Brother shrugged his big shoulders and laughed aggravatingly. 'Do
you think you'll cure the neighbourhood with that marriage?' he
exclaimed. 'Before another two years Catherine will be following her
sister's example. They all go the same way, and as they end by marrying,
they snap their fingers at every one. These Artauds flourish in it all,
as on a congenial dungheap. There is only one possible remedy, as I have
told you before: wring all the girls' necks if you don't want the
country to be poisoned. No husbands, Monsieur le Cure, but a good thick
stick!'

Then calming down a bit, he added: 'Let every one do with their own as
they think best.'

He went on to speak about fixing the hours for the catechism classes;
but Abbe Mouret replied in an absent-minded way, his eyes dwelling on
the village at his feet in the setting sun. The peasants were wending
their way homewards, silently and slowly, with the dragging steps of
wearied oxen returning to their sheds. Before the tumble-down houses
stood women calling to one another, carrying on bawling conversations
from door to door, while bands of children filled the roadway with the
riot of their big clumsy shoes, grovelling and rolling and pushing each
other about. A bestial odour ascended from that heap of tottering
houses, and the priest once more fancied himself in Desiree's
poultry-yard, where life ever increased and multiplied. Here, too, was
the same incessant travail, which so disturbed him. Since morning his
mind had been running on that episode of Rosalie and Fortune, and now
his thoughts returned to it, to the foul features of existence, the
incessant, fated task of Nature, which sowed men broadcast like grains
of wheat. The Artauds were a herd penned in between four ranges of
hills, increasing, multiplying, spreading more and more thickly over the
land with each successive generation.

'See,' cried Brother Archangias, interrupting his discourse to point to
a tall girl who was letting her sweetheart snatch a kiss, 'there is
another hussy over there!'

He shook his long black arms at the couple and made them flee. In the
distance, over the crimson fields and the peeling rocks, the sun was
dying in one last flare. Night gradually came on. The warm fragrance of
the lavender became cooler on the wings of the light evening breeze
which now arose. From time to time a deep sigh fell on the ear as if
that fearful land, consumed by ardent passions, had at length grown calm
under the soft grey rain of twilight. Abbe Mouret, hat in hand,
delighted with the coolness, once more felt quietude descend upon him.

'Monsieur le Cure! Brother Archangias!' cried La Teuse. 'Come quick! The
soup is on the table.'

It was cabbage soup, and its odoriferous steam filled the parsonage
dining-room. The Brother seated himself and fell to, slowly emptying the
huge plate that La Teuse had put down before him. He was a big eater,
and clucked his tongue as each mouthful descended audibly into his
stomach. Keeping his eyes on his spoon, he did not speak a word.

'Isn't my soup good, then, Monsieur le Cure?' the old servant asked the
priest. 'You are only fiddling with your plate.'

'I am not a bit hungry, my good Teuse,' Serge replied, smiling.

'Well! how can one wonder at it when you go on as you do! But you would
have been hungry, if you hadn't lunched at past two o'clock.'

Brother Archangias, tilting into his spoon the last few drops of soup
remaining in his plate, said gravely: 'You should be regular in your
meals, Monsieur le Cure.'

At this moment Desiree, who also had finished her soup, sedately and in
silence, rose and followed La Teuse to the kitchen. The Brother, then
left alone with Abbe Mouret, cut himself some long strips of bread,
which he ate while waiting for the next dish.

'So you made a long round to-day?' he asked the priest. But before the
other could reply a noise of footsteps, exclamations, and ringing
laughter, arose at the end of the passage, in the direction of the yard.
A short altercation apparently took place. A flute-like voice which
disturbed the Abbe rose in vexed and hurried accents, which finally died
away in a burst of glee.

'What can it be?' said Serge, rising from his chair.

But Desiree bounded in again, carrying something hidden in her
gathered-up skirt. And she burst out excitedly: 'Isn't she queer? She
wouldn't come in at all. I caught hold of her dress; but she is awfully
strong; she soon got away from me.'

'Whom on earth is she talking about?' asked La Teuse, running in from
the kitchen with a dish of potatoes, across which lay a piece of bacon.

The girl sat down, and with the greatest caution drew from her skirt a
blackbird's nest in which three wee fledglings were slumbering. She laid
it on her plate. The moment the little birds felt the light, they
stretched out their feeble necks and opened their crimson beaks to ask
for food. Desiree clapped her hands, enchanted, seized with strange
emotion at the sight of these hitherto unknown creatures.

'It's that Paradou girl!' exclaimed the Abbe suddenly, remembering
everything.

La Teuse had gone to the window. 'So it is,' she said. 'I might have
known that grasshopper's voice---- Oh! the gipsy! Look, she's stopped
there to spy on us.'

Abbe Mouret drew near. He, too, thought that he could see Albine's
orange-coloured skirt behind a juniper bush. But Brother Archangias, in
a towering passion, raised himself on tiptoe behind him, and, stretching
out his fist and wagging his churlish head, thundered forth: 'May the
devil take you, you brigand's daughter! I will drag you right round the
church by your hair if ever I catch you coming and casting your evil
spells here!'

A peal of laughter, fresh as the breath of night, rang out from the
path, followed by light hasty footsteps and the swish of a dress
rustling through the grass like an adder. Abbe Mouret, standing at the
window, saw something golden glide through the pine trees like a
moonbeam. The breeze, wafted in from the open country, was now laden
with that penetrating perfume of verdure, that scent of wildflowers,
which Albine had scattered from her bare arms, unfettered bosom, and
streaming tresses at the Paradou.

'An accursed soul! a child of perdition!' growled Brother Archangias, as
he reseated himself at the dinner table. He fell greedily upon his
bacon, and swallowed his potatoes whole instead of bread. La Teuse,
however, could not persuade Desiree to finish her dinner. That big baby
was lost in ecstasy over the nestlings, asking questions, wanting to
know what food they ate, if they laid eggs, and how the cockbirds could
be known.

The old servant, however, was troubled by a suspicion, and taking her
stand on her sound leg, she looked the young cure in the face.

'So you know the Paradou people?' she said.

Thereupon he simply told the truth, relating the visit he had paid to
old Jeanbernat. La Teuse exchanged scandalised glances with Brother
Archangias. At first she answered nothing, but went round and round the
table, limping frantically and stamping hard enough with her heels to
split the flooring.

'You might have spoken to me of those people these three months past,'
said the priest at last. 'I should have known at any rate what sort of
people I was going to call upon.'

La Teuse stopped short as if her legs had just broken.

'Don't tell falsehoods, Monsieur le Cure,' she stuttered, 'don't tell
them; you will only make your sin still worse. How dare you say I
haven't spoken to you of the Philosopher, that heathen who is the
scandal of the whole neighbourhood? The truth is, you never listen to me
when I talk. It all goes in at one ear and out at the other. Ah, if you
did listen to me, you'd spare yourself a good deal of trouble!'

'I, too, have spoken to you about those abominations,' affirmed the
Brother.

Abbe Mouret lightly shrugged his shoulders. 'Well, I didn't remember
it,' he said. It was only when I found myself at the Paradou that I
fancied I recollected certain tales. Besides, I should have gone to that
unhappy man all the same as I thought him in danger of death.'

Brother Archangias, his mouth full, struck the table violently with his
knife, and roared: 'Jeanbernat is a dog; he ought to die like a dog.'
Then seeing the priest about to protest he cut him short: 'No, no, for
him there is no God, no penitence, no mercy. It would be better to throw
the host to the pigs than carry it to that scoundrel.'

Then he helped himself to more potatoes, and with his elbows on the
table, his chin in his plate, began chewing furiously. La Teuse, her
lips pinched, quite white with anger, contented herself with saying
dryly: 'Let it be, his reverence will have his own way. He has secrets
from us now.'

Silence reigned. For a moment one only heard the working of Brother
Archangias's jaws, and the extraordinary rumbling of his gullet.
Desiree, with her bare arms round the nest in her plate, smiled to the
little ones, talking to them slowly and softly in a chirruping of her
own which they seemed to understand.

'People say what they have done when they have nothing to hide,'
suddenly cried La Teuse.

And then silence reigned again. What exasperated the old servant was the
mystery the priest seemed to make about his visit to the Paradou. She
deemed herself a woman who had been shamefully deceived. Her curiosity
smarted. She again walked round the table, not looking at the Abbe, not
addressing anybody, but comforting herself with soliloquy.

'That's it; that's why we have lunch so late! We go gadding about till
two o'clock in the afternoon. We go into such disreputable houses that
we don't even dare to tell what we've done. And then we tell lies, we
deceive everybody.'

'But nobody,' gently interrupted Abbe Mouret, who was forcing himself to
eat a little more, so as to prevent La Teuse from getting crosser than
ever, 'nobody asked me if I had been to the Paradou. I have not had to
tell any lies.'

La Teuse, however, went on as if she had never heard him.

'Yes, we go ruining our cassock in the dust, we come home rigged up
like a thief. And if some kind person takes an interest in us, and
questions us for our own good, we push her about and treat her like a
good-for-nothing woman, whom we can't trust. We hide things like a
slyboots, we'd rather die than breathe a word; we're not even
considerate enough to enliven our home by relating what we've seen.'

She turned to the priest, and looked him full in the face.

'Yes, you take that to yourself. You are a close one, you're a bad man!'

Thereupon she fell to crying and the Abbe had to soothe her.

'Monsieur Caffin used to tell me everything,' she moaned out.

However, she soon grew calmer. Brother Archangias was finishing a big
piece of cheese, apparently quite unruffled by the scene. In his opinion
Abbe Mouret really needed being kept straight, and La Teuse was right in
making him feel the reins. Having drunk a last glassful of the weak
wine, the Brother threw himself back in his chair to digest his meal.

'Well now,' finally asked the old servant, 'what did you see at the
Paradou? Tell us, at any rate.'

Abbe Mouret smiled and related in a few words how strangely Jeanbernat
had received him. La Teuse, after overwhelming him with questions, broke
out into indignant exclamations, while Brother Archangias clenched his
fists and brandished them aloft.

'May Heaven crush him!' said he, 'and burn both him and his witch!'

In his turn the Abbe then endeavoured to elicit some fresh particulars
about the people at the Paradou, and listened intently to the Brother's
monstrous narrative.

'Yes, that little she-devil came and sat down in the school. It's a long
time ago now, she might then have been about ten. Of course, I let her
come; I thought her uncle was sending her to prepare for her first
communion. But for two months she utterly revolutionised the whole
class. She made herself worshipped, the minx! She knew all sorts of
games, and invented all sorts of finery with leaves and shreds of rags.
And how quick and clever she was, too, like all those children of hell!
She was the top one at catechism. But one fine morning the old man burst
in just in the middle of our lessons. He was going to smash everything,
and shouted that the priests had taken his child from him. We had to get
the rural policeman to turn him out. As to the little one, she bolted. I
could see her through the window, in a field opposite, laughing at her
uncle's frenzy. She had been coming to school for the last two months
without his even suspecting it. He had regularly scoured the country
after her.'

'She's never taken her first communion,' exclaimed La Teuse below her
breath with a slight shudder.

'No, never,' rejoined Brother Archangias. 'She must be sixteen now.
She's growing up like a brute beast. I have seen her running on all
fours in a thicket near La Palud.'

'On all fours,' muttered the servant, turning towards the window with
superstitious anxiety.

Abbe Mouret attempted to express some doubt, but the Brother burst out:
'Yes, on all fours! And she jumped like a wild cat. If I had only had a
gun I could have put a bullet in her. We kill creatures that are far
more pleasing to God than she is. Besides, every one knows she comes
caterwauling every night round Les Artaud. She howls like a beast. If
ever a man should fall into her clutches, she wouldn't leave him a scrap
of skin on his bones, I know.'

The Brother's hatred of womankind was boiling over. He banged the table
with his fist, and poured forth all his wonted abuse.

'The devil's in them. They reek of the devil! And that's what bewitches
fools.'

The priest nodded approvingly. Brother Archangias's outrageous violence
and La Teuse's loquacious tyranny were like castigation with thongs,
which it often rejoiced him to find lashing his shoulders. He took a
pious delight in sinking into abasement beneath their coarse speech. He
seemed to see the peace of heaven behind contempt of the world and
degradation of his whole being. It was delicious to inflict
mortification upon his body, to drag his susceptible nature through a
gutter.

'There is nought but filth,' he muttered as he folded up his napkin.

La Teuse began to clear the table and wished to remove the plate on
which Desiree had laid the blackbird's nest. You are not going to bed
here, I suppose, mademoiselle,' she said. 'Do leave those nasty things.'

Desiree, however, defended her plate. She covered the nest with her bare
arms, no longer gay, but cross at being disturbed.

'I hope those birds are not going to be kept,' exclaimed Brother
Archangias. 'It would bring bad luck. You must wring their necks.'

And he already stretched out his big hands; but the girl rose and
stepped back quivering, hugging the nest to her bosom. She stared
fixedly at the Brother, her lips curling upwards, like those of a wolf
about to bite.

'Don't touch the little things,' she stammered. 'You are ugly.'

With such singular contempt did she emphasise that last word that Abbe
Mouret started as if the Brother's ugliness had just struck him for the
first time. The latter contented himself with growling. He had always
felt a covert hatred for Desiree, whose lusty physical development
offended him. When she had left the room, still walking backwards, and
never taking her eyes from him, he shrugged his shoulders and muttered
between his teeth some coarse abuse which no one heard.

'She had better go to bed,' said La Teuse. 'She would only bore us
by-and-by in church.'

'Has any one come yet?' asked Abbe Mouret.

'Oh, the girls have been outside a long time with armfuls of boughs. I
am just going to light the lamps. We can begin whenever you like.'

A few seconds later she could be heard swearing in the sacristy because
the matches were damp. Brother Archangias, who remained alone with the
priest, sourly inquired: 'For the month of Mary, eh?'

'Yes,' replied Abbe Mouret. 'The last few days the girls about here were
hard at work and couldn't come as usual to decorate the Lady Chapel. So
the ceremony was postponed till to-night.'

'A nice custom,' muttered the Brother. 'When I see them all putting up
their boughs I feel inclined to knock them down and make them confess
their misdeeds before touching the altar. It's a shame to allow women to
rustle their dresses so near the holy relics.'

The Abbe made an apologetic gesture. He had only been at Les Artaud a
little while, he must follow the customs.

'Whenever you like, Monsieur le Cure, we're ready!' now called out La
Teuse.

But Brother Archangias detained him a minute. 'I am off,' he said.
'Religion isn't a prostitute that it should be decorated with flowers
and laces.'

He walked slowly to the door. Then once more he stopped, and lifting one
of his hairy fingers added: 'Beware of your devotion to the Virgin.'

XIII


On entering the church Abbe Mouret found nine or ten big girls awaiting
him with boughs of ivy, laurel, and rosemary. Few garden flowers grew on
the rocks of Les Artaud, so the custom was to decorate the Lady altar
with a greenery which might last throughout the month of May. Thereto La
Teuse would add a few wallflowers whose stems were thrust into old
decanters.

'Will you let me do it, Monsieur le Cure?' she asked. 'You are not used
to it---- Come, stand there in front of the altar. You can tell me if
the decorations please you.'

He consented, and it was she who really directed the arrangements.
Having climbed upon a pair of steps she bullied the girls as they came
up to her in turn with their leafy contributions.

'Not so fast, now! You must give me time to fix the boughs. We can't
have all these bundles coming down on his reverence's head---- Come on,
Babet, it's your turn. What's the good of staring at me like that with
your big eyes? Fine rosemary yours is, my word! as yellow as a thistle.
You next, La Rousse. Ah, well, that is splendid laurel! You got that out
of your field at Croix-Verte, I know.'

The big girls laid their branches on the altar, which they kissed; and
there they lingered for a while, handing up the greenery to La Teuse.
The sly look of devotion they had assumed on stepping on to the
altar steps was quickly set aside, and soon they were laughing, digging
each other with their knees, swaying their hips against the altar's
edge, and thrusting their bosoms against the tabernacle itself. Over
them the tall Virgin in gilded plaster bent her tinted face, and smiled
with her rosy lips upon the naked Jesus she bore upon her left arm.

'That's it, Lisa!' cried La Teuse; 'why don't you sit on the altar while
you're about it? Just pull your petticoats straight, will you? Aren't
you ashamed of behaving like that?--If any one of you lolls about I'll
lay her boughs across her face.--Can't you hand me the things quietly?'

Then turning round, she asked:

'Do you like it, sir? Do you think it will do?'

She had converted the space behind the Virgin's statue into a verdant
niche, whence leafy sprays projected on either side, forming a bower,
and drooping over in front like palm leaves. The priest expressed his
approval, but ventured to remark: 'I think there ought to be a cluster
of more delicate foliage up above.'

'No doubt,' grumbled La Teuse. 'But they only bring me laurel and
rosemary--I should like to know who has brought an olive branch. Not
one, you bet! They are afraid of losing a single olive, the heathens!'

At this, however, Catherine came up laden with an enormous olive bough
which completely hid her.

'Oh, you've got some, you minx!' continued the old servant.

'Of course,' one of the other girls exclaimed, 'she stole it. I saw
Vincent breaking it off while she kept a look-out.'

But Catherine flew into a rage and swore it was not true. She turned,
and thrusting her auburn head through the greenery, which she still
tightly held, she started lying with marvellous assurance, inventing
quite a long story to prove that the olive bough was really hers.

'Besides,' she added, 'all the trees belong to the Blessed Virgin.'

Abbe Mouret was about to intervene, but La Teuse sharply inquired if
they wanted to make game of her and keep her arms up there all night. At
last she proceeded to fasten the olive bough firmly, while Catherine,
holding on to the steps behind her, mimicked the clumsy manner in which
she turned her huge person about with the help of her sound leg. Even
the priest could not forbear to smile.

'There,' said La Teuse, as she came down and stood beside him to get a
good view of her work, 'there's the top done. Now we will put some
clumps between the candlesticks, unless you would prefer a garland all
along the altar shelf.'

The priest decided in favour of some big clumps.

'Very good; come on, then,' continued the old servant, once more
clambering up the steps. 'We can't go to bed here. Just kiss the altar,
will you, Miette? Do you fancy you are in your stable? Monsieur le Cure,
do just see what they are up to over there! I can hear them laughing
like lunatics.'

On raising one of the two lamps the dark end of the church was lit up
and three of the girls were discovered romping about under the gallery;
one of them had stumbled and pitched head foremost into the holy water
stoup, which mishap had so tickled the others that they were rolling on
the ground to laugh at their ease. They all came back, however, looking
at the priest sheepishly, with lowered eyelids, but with their hands
swinging against their hips as if a scolding rather pleased them than
otherwise.

However, the measure of La Teuse's wrath was filled when she suddenly
perceived Rosalie coming up to the altar like the others with a bundle
of boughs in her arms.

'Get down, will you?' she cried to her. 'You are a cool one, and no
mistake, my lass!--Hurry up, off you go with your bundle.'

'What for, I'd like to know?' said Rosalie boldly. 'You can't say I have
stolen it.'

The other girls drew closer, feigning innocence and exchanging sparkling
glances.

'Clear out,' repeated La Teuse, 'you have no business here, do you
hear?'

Then, quite losing her scanty patience, she gave vent to a very coarse
epithet, which provoked a titter of delight among the peasant girls.

'Well, what next?' said Rosalie. 'Mind your own business. Is it any
concern of yours?'

Then she burst into a fit of sobbing and threw down her boughs, but let
the Abbe lead her aside and give her a severe lecture. He had already
tried to silence La Teuse; for he was beginning to feel uneasy amidst
the big shameless hussies who filled the church with their armfuls of
foliage. They were pushing right up to the altar step, enclosing him
with a belt of woodland, wafting in his face a rank perfume of aromatic
shoots.

'Let us make haste, be quick!' he exclaimed, clapping his hands lightly.

'Goodness knows I would rather be in my bed,' grumbled La Teuse. 'It's
not so easy as you think to fasten all these bits of stuff.'

Finally, however, she succeeded in setting some lofty plumes of foliage
between the candlesticks. Next she folded the steps, which were laid
behind the high altar by Catherine. And then she only had to arrange two
clumps of greenery at the sides of the altar table. The last boughs
sufficed for this, and indeed there were some left which the girls
strewed over the sanctuary floor up to the wooden rails. The Lady altar
now looked like a grove, a shrubbery with a verdant lawn before it.

At present La Teuse was willing to make way for Abbe Mouret, who
ascended the altar steps, and, again lightly clapping his hands,
exclaimed: 'Young ladies, to-morrow we will continue the devotions of
the month of Mary. Those who may be unable to come ought at least to say
their Rosary at home.'

He knelt, and the peasant girls, with a mighty rustle of skirts, sank
down and settled themselves on their heels. They followed his prayer
with a confused muttering, through which burst here and there a giggle.
One of them, on being pinched from behind, burst into a scream, which
she attempted to stifle with a sudden fit of coughing; and this so
diverted the others that for a moment after the Amen they remained
writhing with merriment, their noses close to the stone flags.

La Teuse dismissed them; while the priest, after crossing himself,
remained absorbed before the altar, no longer hearing what went on
behind him.

'Come, now, clear out,' muttered the old woman. 'You're a pack of
good-for-nothings, who can't even respect God. It's shameful, it's
unheard of, for girls to roll about on the floor in church like beasts
in a meadow---- What are you doing there, La Rousse? If I see you
pinching any one, you'll have to deal with me! Oh, yes, you may put out
your tongue at me; I'll tell his reverence about it. Out you get; out
you get, you minxes!'

She drove them slowly towards the door, while running and bobbling round
them frantically. And she had succeeded, as she thought, in getting
every one of them outside, when she caught sight of Catherine and
Vincent calmly installed in the confessional, where they were eating
something with an air of great enjoyment. She drove them away; and as
she popped her head outside the church, before closing the door, she
espied Rosalie throwing her arm over the shoulder of Fortune, who had
been waiting for her. The pair of them vanished in the darkness amid a
faint sound of kisses.

'To think that such creatures dare to come to our Lady's altar!' La
Teuse stuttered as she shot the bolts. 'The others are no better, I am
sure. If they came to-night with their boughs, it was only for a bit of
fun and to get kissed by the lads on going off! Not one of them will put
herself out of the way to-morrow; his reverence will have to say his
_Aves_ by himself---- We shall only see the jades who have got
assignations.'

Thus soliloquising, she thrust the chairs back into their places, and
looked round to see if anything suspicious was lying about before
going off to bed. In the confessional she picked up a handful of
apple-parings, which she threw behind the high altar. And she also found
a bit of ribbon torn from some cap, and a lock of black hair, which she
made up into a small parcel, with the view of opening an inquiry into
the matter. With these exceptions the church seemed to her tidy. There
was oil enough for the night in the bracket-lamp of the sanctuary, and
as to the flags of the choir, they could do without washing till
Saturday.

'It's nearly ten o'clock, Monsieur le Cure,' she said, drawing near the
priest, who was still on his knees. 'You might as well come up now.'

He made no answer, but only bowed his head.

'All right, I know what that means,' continued La Teuse. 'In another
hour he will still be on the stones there, giving himself a
stomach-ache. I'm off, as I shall only bore him. All the same, I can't
see much sense in it, eating one's lunch when others are at dinner, and
going to bed when the fowls get up!---- I worry you, don't I, your
reverence? Good-night. You're not at all reasonable!'

She made ready to go, but suddenly came back to put out one of the two
lamps, muttering the while that such late prayers spelt ruination in
oil. Then, at last, she did go off, after passing her sleeve brushwise
over the cloth of the high altar, which seemed to her grey with dust.
Abbe Mouret, his eyes uplifted, his arms tightly clasped against his
breast, then remained alone.

XIV


With only one lamp burning amid the verdure on the altar of the Virgin,
huge floating shadows filled the church at either end. From the pulpit a
sheet of gloom projected to the rafters of the ceiling. The confessional
looked quite black under the gallery, showing strange outlines
suggestive of a ruined sentry-box. All the light, softened and tinted as
it were by the green foliage, rested slumberingly upon the tall gilded
Virgin, who seemed to descend with queenly mien, borne upon the cloud
round which gambolled the winged cherubim. At sight of that round lamp
gleaming amid the boughs one might have thought the pallid moon was
rising on the verge of a wood, casting its light upon a regal
apparition, a princess of heaven, crowned and clothed with gold, who
with her nude and Divine Infant had come to stroll in the mysterious
woodland avenues. Between the leaves, along the lofty plumes of
greenery, within the large ogival arbour, and even along the branches
strewing the flagstones, star-like beams glided drowsily, like the milky
rain of light that filters through the bushes on moonlit nights. Vague
sounds and creakings came from the dusky ends of the church; the large
clock on the left of the chancel throbbed slowly, with the heavy
breathing of a machine asleep. And the radiant vision, the Mother with
slender bands of chestnut hair, as if reassured by the nocturnal quiet
of the nave, came lower and lower, scarce bending the blades of grass in
the clearings beneath the gentle flight of her cloudy chariot.

Abbe Mouret gazed at her. This was the hour when he most loved the
church. He forgot the woeful figure on the cross, the Victim bedaubed
with carmine and ochre, who gasped out His life behind him, in the
chapel of the Dead. His thoughts were no longer distracted by the garish
light from the windows, by the gayness of morning coming in with the
sun, by the irruption of outdoor life--the sparrows and the boughs
invading the nave through the shattered panes. At that hour of night
Nature was dead; shadows hung the whitewashed walls with crape; a chill
fell upon his shoulders like a salutary penance-shirt. He could now
wholly surrender himself to the supremest love, without fear of any
flickering ray of light, any caressing breeze or scent, any buzzing of
an insect's wing disturbing him amidst the delight of loving. Never had
his morning mass afforded him the superhuman joys of his nightly
prayers.

With quivering lips Abbe Mouret now gazed at the tall Virgin. He could
see her coming towards him from the depths of her green bower in
ever-increasing splendour. No longer did a flood of moonlight seem to
float across the tree-tops. She seemed to him clothed with the sun; she
advanced majestically, glorious, colossal, and so all-powerful that he
was tempted at times to cast himself face downwards to shun the flaming
splendour of that gate opening into heaven. Then, amidst the adoration
of his whole being, which stayed his words upon his lips, he remembered
Brother Archangias's final rebuke, as he might have remembered words of
blasphemy. The Brother often reproved him for his devotion to the
Virgin, which he declared was veritable robbery of devotion due to God.
In the Brother's opinion it enervated the soul, put religion into
petticoats, created and fostered a state of sentimentalism quite
unworthy of the strong. He bore the Virgin a grudge for her womanhood,
her beauty, her maternity; he was ever on his guard against her,
possessed by a covert fear of feeling tempted by her gracious mien, of
succumbing to her seductive sweetness. 'She will lead you far!' he had
cried one day to the young priest, for in her he saw the commencement of
human passion. From contemplating her one might glide to delight in
lovely chestnut hair, in large bright eyes, and the mystery of garments
falling from neck to toes. His was the blunt rebellion of a saint who
roughly parted the Mother from the Son, asking as He did: 'Woman, what
have we in common, thou and I?'

But Abbe Mouret thrust away such thoughts, prostrated himself,
endeavoured to forget the Brother's harsh attacks. His rapture in the
immaculate purity of Mary alone raised him from the depths of lowliness
in which he sought to bury himself. Whenever, alone before the tall
golden Virgin, he so deceived himself as to imagine that he could see
her bending down for him to kiss her braided locks, he once more became
very young, very good, very strong, very just, full of tenderness.

Abbe Mouret's devotion to the Virgin dated from his early youth. Already
when he was quite a child, somewhat shy and fond of shrinking into
corners, he took pleasure in the thought that a lovely lady was watching
over him: that two blue eyes, so sweet, ever followed him with their
smile. When he felt at night a breath of air glide across his hair, he
would often say that the Virgin had come to kiss him. He had grown up
beneath this womanly caress, in an atmosphere full of the rustle of
divine robes. From the age of seven he had satisfied the cravings of his
affection by expending all the pence he received as pocket money in the
purchase of pious picture-cards, which he jealously concealed that he
alone might feast on them. But never was he tempted by the pictures of
Jesus and the Lamb, of Christ on the Cross, of God the Father, with a
mighty beard, stooping over a bank of clouds; his preference was always
for the winning portraits of Mary, with her tiny smiling mouth and
delicate outstretched hands. By degrees he had made quite a collection
of them all--of Mary between a lily and a distaff, Mary carrying her
child as if she were his elder sister, Mary crowned with roses, and Mary
crowned with stars. For him they formed a family of lovely young
maidens, alike in their attractiveness, in the grace, kindliness, and
sweetness of their countenances, so youthful beneath their veils, that
although they bore the name of 'Mother of God,' he had felt no awe of
them as he had often felt for grown-up persons.

They seemed to him of his own age, little girls such as he wished to
meet with, little girls of heaven such as the little boys who die when
seven years old have for eternal playmates in some nook of Paradise. But
even at this early age he was self-contained; and full of the exquisite
bashfulness of adolescence he grew up without betraying the secret of
his religious love. Mary grew up with him, being invariably a year or
two older than himself, as should always be the case with one's chiefest
friend. When he was eighteen, she was twenty; she no longer kissed his
forehead at night time, but stood a little further from him with folded
arms, chastely smiling, ravishingly sweet. And he--he only named her now
in a whisper, feeling as if he would faint each time the well-loved name
passed his lips in prayer. No more did he dream of childish games within
the garden of heaven, but of continual contemplation before that white
figure, whose perfect purity he feared to sully with his breath. Even
from his own mother did he conceal the fervour of his love for Mary.

Then, a few years later, at the seminary, his beautiful affection for
her, seemingly so just, so natural, was disturbed by inward qualms. Was
the cult of Mary necessary for salvation? Was he not robbing God by
giving Mary a part, the greater part, of his love, his thoughts, his
heart, his entire being? Perplexing questions were these, provoking an
inward struggle which increased his passion, riveted his bonds. For he
dived into all the subtleties of his affection, found unknown joys in
discussing the lawfulness of his feelings. The books treating of
devotion to the Virgin brought him excuses, joyful raptures, a wealth of
arguments which he repeated with prayerful fervour. From them he learned
how, in Mary, to be the slave of Jesus. He went to Jesus through Mary.
He cited all kinds of proofs, he discriminated, he drew inferences.
Mary, whom Jesus had obeyed on earth, should be obeyed by all mankind;
Mary still retained her maternal power in heaven, where she was the
great dispenser of God's treasures, the only one who could beseech Him,
the only one who allotted the heavenly thrones; and thus Mary, a mere
creature before God, but raised up to Him, became the human link between
heaven and earth, the intermediary of every grace, of every mercy; and
his conclusion always was that she should be loved above all else in God
himself. Another time he was attracted by more complicated theological
curiosities: the marriage of the celestial spouse, the Holy Ghost
sealing the Vase of Election, making of the Virgin Mary an everlasting
miracle, offering her inviolable purity to the devotion of mankind. She
was the Virgin overcoming all heresies, the irreconcilable foe of Satan,
the new Eve of whom it had been foretold that she should crush the
Serpent's head, the august Gate of Grace, by which the Saviour had
already entered once and through which He would come again at the Last
Day--a vague prophecy, allotting a yet larger future role to Mary, which
threw Serge into a dreamy imagining of some immense expansion of divine
love.

This entry of woman into the jealous, cruel heaven depicted by the Old
Testament, this figure of whiteness set at the feet of the awesome
Trinity, appeared to him the very grace itself of religion, the one
consolation for all the dread inspired by things of faith, the one
refuge when he found himself lost amidst the mysteries of dogma. And
when he had thus proved to himself, point by point, that she was the way
to Jesus--easy, short, perfect, and certain--he surrendered himself anew
to her, wholly and without remorse: he strove to be her true devotee,
dead to self and steeped in submission.

It was an hour of divine voluptuousness! The books treating of devotion
to the Virgin burned his hands. They spoke to him in a language of love,
warm, fragrant as incense. Mary no longer seemed a young maiden veiled
in white, standing with crossed arms, a foot or two away from his
pillow. She came surrounded by splendour, even as John saw her, clothed
with the sun, crowned with twelve stars, and having the moon beneath her
feet. She perfumed him with her fragrance, inflamed him with longing for
heaven, ravished him even with the ardent glow of the planets flaming on
her brow. He threw himself before her and called himself her slave. No
word could have been sweeter than that word of slave, which he repeated,
which he relished yet more and more as it trembled on his stammering
tongue, whilst casting himself at her feet--to become her thing, her
mite, the dust lightly scattered by the waving of her azure robe. With
David he exclaimed: 'Mary is made for me,' and with the Evangelist he
added: 'I have taken her for my all.' He called her his 'beloved
mistress,' for words failed him, and he fell into the prattle of child
or lover, his breath breaking with intensity of passion. She was the
Blessed among women, the Queen of Heaven glorified by the nine Choirs of
Angels, the Mother of Predilection, the Treasure of the Lord. All the
vivid imagery of her cult unrolled itself before him comparing to her an
earthly paradise of virgin soil, with beds of flowering virtues, green
meadows of hope, impregnable towers of strength, and smiling dwellings
of confidence. Again she was a fountain sealed by the Holy Ghost, a
shrine and dwelling-place of the Holy Trinity, the Throne of God, the
City of God, the Altar of God, the Temple of God, and the World of God.
And he walked in that garden, in its shade, its sunlight, beneath its
enchanting greenery; he sighed after the water of that Fountain; he
dwelt within Mary's beauteous precincts--resting, hiding, heedlessly
straying there, drinking in the milk of infinite love that fell drop by
drop from her virginal bosom.

Every morning, on rising at the seminary, he greeted Mary with a hundred
bows, his face turned towards the strip of sky visible from his window.
And at night in like fashion he bade her farewell with his eyes fixed
upon the stars. Often, when he thus gazed out on fine bright nights,
when Venus gleamed golden and dreamy through the warm atmosphere, he
forgot himself, and then, like a soft song, would fall from his lips the
_Ave maris Stella_, that tender hymn which set before his eyes a distant
azure land, and a tranquil sea, scarce wrinkled by a caressing quiver,
and illuminated by a smiling star, a very sun in size. He recited, too,
the _Salve Regina_, the _Regina Coeli_, the _O gloriosa Domina_, all the
prayers and all the canticles. He would read the Office of the Virgin,
the holy books written in her honour, the little Psalter of St.
Bonaventura, with such devout tenderness, that he could not turn the
leaves for tears. He fasted and mortified himself, that he might offer
up to her his bruised and wounded flesh. Ever since the age of ten he
had worn her livery--the holy scapular, the twofold image of Mary sewn
on squares of cloth, whose warmth upon his chest and back thrilled him
with delight. Later on, he also took to wearing the little chain in
token of his loving slavery. But his greatest act of love was ever the
Angelic Salutation, the _Ave Maria_, his heart's perfect prayer. 'Hail,
Mary----' and he saw her advancing towards him, full of grace, blessed
amongst women; and he cast his heart at her feet for her to tread on it
in sweetness. He multiplied and repeated that salutation in a hundred
different ways, ever seeking some more efficacious one. He would say
twelve _Aves_ to commemorate the crown of twelve stars that encircled
Mary's brow; he would say fourteen in remembrance of her fourteen joys;
at another time he would recite seven decades of them in honour of the
years she lived on earth. For hours the beads of his Rosary would glide
between his fingers. Then, again, on certain days of mystical
assignation he would launch into the endless muttering of the Rosary.

When, alone in his cell, with time to give to his love, he knelt upon
the floor, the whole of Mary's garden with its lofty flowers of chastity
blossomed around him. Between his fingers glided the Rosary's wreath of
_Aves_, intersected by _Paters_, like a garland of white roses mingled
with the lilies of the Annunciation, the blood-hued flowers of Calvary,
and the stars of the Coronation. He would slowly tread those fragrant
paths, pausing at each of the fifteen dizains of _Aves_, and dwelling on
its corresponding mystery; he was beside himself with joy, or grief, or
triumph, according as the mystery belonged to one or other of the three
series--the joyful, the sorrowful, or the glorious. What an incomparable
legend it was, the history of Mary, a complete human life, with all its
smiles and tears and triumph, which he lived over again from end to end
in a single moment! And first he entered into joy with the five glad
Mysteries, steeped in the serene calm of dawn. First the Archangel's
salutation, the fertilising ray gliding down from heaven, fraught with
the spotless union's adorable ecstasy; then the visit to Elizabeth on a
bright hope-laden morn, when the fruit of Mary's womb for the first time
stirred and thrilled her with the shock at which mothers blench; then
the birth in a stable at Bethlehem, and the long string of shepherds
coming to pay homage to her Divine Maternity; then the new-born babe
carried into the Temple on the arms of his mother who smiled, still
weary, but already happy at offering her child to God's justice, to
Simeon's embrace, to the desires of the world; and lastly, Jesus at a
later age revealing Himself before the doctors, in whose midst He is
found by His anxious mother, now proud and comforted.

But, after that tender radiant dawn, it seemed to Serge as if the sky
were suddenly overcast. His feet now trod on brambles, the beads of the
Rosary pricked his fingers; he cowered beneath the horror of the five
Sorrowful Mysteries: Mary, agonising in her Son in the garden of Olives,
suffering with Him from the scourging, feeling on her own brow the
wounds made by the crown of thorns, bearing the fearful weight of His
Cross, and dying at his feet on Calvary. Those inevitable sufferings,
that harrowing martyrdom of the queen he worshipped, and for whom he
would have shed his blood like Jesus, roused in him a feeling of
shuddering repulsion which ten years' practice of the same prayers and
the same devotions had failed to weaken. But as the beads flowed on,
light suddenly burst upon the darkness of the Crucifixion, and the
resplendent glory of the five last Mysteries shone forth in all the
brightness of a cloudless sun. Mary was transfigured, and sang the
hallelujah of the Resurrection, the victory over Death and the eternity
of life. With outstretched hands, and dazed with admiration, she beheld
the triumph of her Son ascending into heaven on golden clouds, fringed
with purple. She gathered the Apostles round her, and, as on the day of
her conception, participated in the glow of the Spirit of Love,
descending now in tongues of fire. She, too, was carried up to heaven by
a flight of angels, borne aloft on their white wings like a spotless
ark, and tenderly set down amid the splendour of the heavenly thrones;
and there, in her supreme glory, amidst a splendour so dazzling that the
light of the sun was quenched, God crowned her with the stars of the
firmament. Impassioned love has but one word. In reciting a hundred and
fifty _Aves_ Serge had not once repeated himself. The monotonous murmur,
the ever recurring words, akin to the 'I love you' of lovers, assumed
each time a deeper and deeper meaning; and he lingered over it all,
expressed everything with the aid of the one solitary Latin sentence,
and learned to know Mary through and through, until, as the last bead of
his Rosary slipped from his hand, his heart grew faint with the thought
of parting from her.

Many a night had the young man spent in this way. Daybreak had found him
still murmuring his prayers. It was the moon, he would say to cheat
himself, that was making the stars wane. His superiors had to reprove
him for those vigils, which left him languid and pale as if he had been
losing blood. On the wall of his cell had long hung a coloured engraving
of the Sacred Heart of Mary, an engraving which showed the Virgin
smiling placidly, throwing open her bodice, and revealing a crimson
fissure, wherein glowed her heart, pierced with a sword, and crowned
with white roses. That sword tormented him beyond measure, brought him
an intolerable horror of suffering in woman, the very thought of which
scattered his pious submissiveness to the winds. He erased the weapon,
and left only the crowned and flaming heart which seemed to be half torn
from that exquisite flesh, as if tendered as an offering to himself. And
it was then he felt beloved: Mary was giving him her heart, her living
heart, even as it throbbed in her bosom, dripping with her rosy blood.

In all this there was no longer the imagery of devout passion, but a
material entity, a prodigy of affection which impelled him, when he was
praying before the engraving, to open out his hands in order that he
might reverently receive the heart that leaped from that immaculate
bosom. He could see it, hear it beat; he was loved, that heart was
beating for himself! His whole being quickened with rapture; he would
fain have kissed that heart, have melted in it, have lain beside it
within the depths of that open breast. Mary's love for him was an active
one; she desired him to be near her, to be wholly hers in the eternity
to come; her love was efficacious, too, she was ever solicitous for him,
watching over him everywhere, guarding him from the slightest breach of
his fidelity. She loved him tenderly, more than the whole of womankind
together, with a love as azure, as deep, as boundless as the sky itself.
Where could he ever find so delightful a mistress? What earthly caress
could be compared to the air in which he moved, the breath of Mary? What
mundane union or enjoyment could be weighed against that everlasting
flower of desire which grew unceasingly, and yet was never over-blown?
At this thought the _Magnificat_ would exhale from his mouth, like a
cloud of incense. He sang the joyful song of Mary, her thrill of joy at
the approach of her Divine Spouse. He glorified the Lord who overthrew
the mighty from their thrones, and who sent Mary to him, poor destitute
child that he was, dying of love on the cold tiled floor of his cell.

And when he had given all up to Mary--his body, his soul, his earthly
goods, and spiritual chattels--when he stood before her stripped, bare,
with all his prayers exhausted, there welled from his burning lips the
Virgin's litanies, with their reiterated, persistent, impassioned
appeals for heavenly succour. He fancied himself climbing a flight of
pious yearnings, which he ascended step by step at each bound of his
heart. First he called her 'Holy.' Next he called her 'Mother,' most
pure, most chaste, amiable, and admirable. And with fresh ardour he six
times proclaimed her maidenhood; his lips cooled and freshened each time
that he pronounced that name of 'Virgin,' which he coupled with power,
goodness, and fidelity. And as his heart drew him higher up the ladder
of light, a strange voice from his veins spoke within him, bursting into
dazzling flowers of speech. He yearned to melt away in fragrance, to be
spread around in light, to expire in a sigh of music. As he named her
'Mirror of Justice,' 'Seat of Wisdom,' and 'Source of Joy,' he could
behold himself pale with ecstasy in that mirror, kneeling on the warmth
of the divine seat, quaffing intoxication in mighty draughts from the
holy Source.

Again he would transform her, throwing off all restraint in his frantic
love, so as to attain to a yet closer union with her. She became a
'Vessel of Honour,' chosen of God, a 'Bosom of Election,' wherein he
desired to pour his being, and slumber for ever.* She was the 'Mystical
Rose'--a great flower which bloomed in Paradise, with petals formed of
the angels clustering round their queen, a flower so fresh, so fragrant,
that he could inhale its perfume from the depths of his unworthiness
with a joyful dilation of his sides which stretched them to bursting.
She became changed into a 'House of Gold,' a 'Tower of David,' and a
'Tower of Ivory,' of inestimable richness, of a whiteness that swans
might envy, and of lofty, massive, rounded form, which he would fain
have encircled with his outstretched arms as with a girdle of
submissiveness. She stood on the distant skyline as the 'Gate of
Heaven,' a glimpse of which he caught behind her shoulders when a puff
of wind threw back the folds of her veil. She rose in splendour from
behind the mountain in the waning hour of night, like the 'Morning Star'
to help all travellers astray, like the very dawn of Love. And when he
had ascended to this height--scant of breath, yet still unsatiated--he
could only further glorify her with the title of 'Queen,' with which he
nine times hailed her, as with nine parting salutations from the censer
of his soul. His canticle died joyfully away in those last ejaculations
of triumph: 'Queen of virgins, Queen of all saints. Queen conceived
without sin!' She, ever before him, shone in splendour; and he, on the
topmost step, only reached by Mary's intimates, remained there yet
another moment, swooning amidst the subtle atmosphere around him; still
too far away to kiss the edge of her azure robe, already feeling that he
was about to fall, but ever possessed by a desire to ascend again and
again, and seek that superhuman felicity.

  * Curiously enough I find no trace of 'Bosom of Election' in the
    Litany of the Blessed Virgin as printed in English Catholic
    works.--ED.

How many times had not the Litany of the Virgin, recited in common in
the seminary chapel, left the young man with broken limbs and void head,
as if from some great fall! And since his departure from the seminary,
Abbe Mouret had grown to love the Virgin still more. He gave to her that
impassioned cult which to Brother Archangias savoured of heresy. In his
opinion it was she who would save the Church by some matchless prodigy
whose near appearance would entrance the world. She was the only miracle
of our impious age--the blue-robed lady that showed herself to little
shepherdesses, the whiteness that gleamed at night between two clouds,
her veil trailing over the low thatched roofs of peasant homes. When
Brother Archangias coarsely asked him if he had ever espied her, he
simply smiled and tightened his lips as if to keep his secret. Truth to
say, he saw her every night. She no longer seemed a playful sister or a
lovely pious maiden; she wore a bridal robe, with white flowers in her
hair; and from beneath her drooping eyelids fell moist glances of
hopeful promise that set his cheeks aglow. He could feel that she was
coming, that she was promising to delay no longer; that she said to him,
'Here I am, receive me!' Thrice a day when the _Angelus_ rang out--at
break of dawn, in the fulness of midday, and at the gentle fall of
twilight--he bared his head and said an _Ave_ with a glance around him
as if to ascertain whether the bell were not at last announcing Mary's
coming. He was five-and-twenty. He awaited her.

During the month of May the young priest's expectation was fraught with
joyful hope. To La Teuse's grumblings he no longer paid the slightest
attention. If he remained so late praying in the church, it was because
he entertained the mad idea that the great golden Virgin would at last
come down from her pedestal. And yet he stood in awe of that Virgin, so
like a princess in her mien. He did not love all the Virgins alike, and
this one inspired him with supreme respect. She was, indeed, the Mother
of God, she showed the fertile development of form, the majestic
countenance, the strong arms of the Divine Spouse bearing Jesus. He
pictured her thus, standing in the midst of the heavenly court, the
train of her royal mantle trailing among the stars; so far above him,
and of such exceeding might, that he would be shattered into dust should
she deign to cast her eyes upon him. She was the Virgin of his days of
weakness, the austere Virgin who restored his inward peace by an awesome
glimpse of Paradise.

That night Abbe Mouret remained for over an hour on his knees in the
empty church. With folded hands and eyes fixed on the golden Virgin
rising planet-like amid the verdure, he sought the drowsiness of
ecstasy, the appeasement of the strange discomfort he had felt that day.
But he failed to find the semi-somnolence of prayer with the delightful
ease he knew so well. However glorious and pure Mary might reveal
herself, her motherhood, the maturity of her charms, and the bare infant
she bore upon her arm, disquieted him. It seemed as if in heaven itself
there were a repetition of the exuberant life, through which he had been
moving since the morning. Like the vines of the stony slopes, like the
trees of the Paradou, like the human troop of Artauds, Mary suggested
the blossoming, the begetting of life. Prayer came but slowly to his
lips; fancies made his mind wander. He perceived things he had never
seen before--the gentle wave of her chestnut hair, the rounded swell of
her rosy throat. She had to assume a sterner air and overwhelm him with
the splendour of her sovereign power to bring him back to the unfinished
sentences of his broken prayer. At last the sight of her golden crown,
her golden mantle, all the golden sheen which made of her a mighty
princess, reduced him once more to slavish submission, and his prayer
again flowed evenly, and his mind became wrapped in worship.

In this ecstatic trance, half asleep, half awake, he remained till
eleven o'clock, heedless of his aching knees, fancying himself suspended
in mid air, rocked to and fro like a child, and yielding to restful
slumber, though conscious of some unknown weight that oppressed his
heart. Meanwhile the church around him filled with shadows, the lamp
grew dim, and the lofty sprays of leafage darkened the tall Virgin's
varnished face.

When the clock, about to strike, gave out a rending whine, a shudder
passed through Abbe Mouret. He had not hitherto felt the chill of the
church upon his shoulders, but now he was shivering from head to foot.
As he crossed himself a memory swiftly flashed through the stupor of his
wakening--the chattering of his teeth recalled to him the nights he had
spent on the floor of his cell before the Sacred Heart of Mary, when his
whole frame would quiver with fever. He rose up painfully, displeased
with himself. As a rule, he would leave the altar untroubled in his
flesh and with Mary's sweet breath still fresh upon his brow. That
night, however, as he took the lamp to go up to his room he felt as if
his throbbing temples were bursting. His prayer had not profited him;
after a transient alleviation he still experienced the burning glow
which had been rising in his heart and brain since morning. When he
reached the sacristy door, he turned and mechanically raised the lamp to
take a last look at the tall Virgin. But she was now shrouded in the
deep shadows falling from the rafters, buried in the foliage around her
whence only the golden cross upon her crown emerged.

XV


Abbe Mouret's bedroom, which occupied a corner of the vicarage, was a
spacious one, having two large square windows; one of which opened above
Desiree's farmyard, whilst the other overlooked the village, the valley
beyond, the belt of hills, the whole landscape. The yellow-curtained
bed, the walnut chest of drawers, and the three straw-bottomed chairs
seemed lost below that lofty ceiling with whitewashed joists. A faint
tartness, the somewhat musty odour of old country houses, ascended from
the tiled and ruddled floor that glistened like a mirror. On the chest
of drawers a tall statuette of the Immaculate Conception rose greyly
between some porcelain vases which La Teuse had filled with white lilac.

Abbe Mouret set his lamp on the edge of the chest of drawers before the
Virgin. He felt so unwell that he determined to light the vine-stem fire
which was laid in readiness. He stood there, tongs in hand, watching the
kindling wood, his face illuminated by the flame. The house beneath
slumbered in unbroken stillness. The silence filled his ears with a hum,
which grew into a sound of whispering voices. Slowly and irresistibly
these voices mastered him and increased the feeling of anxiety which had
almost choked him several times that day. What could be the cause of
such mental anguish? What could be the strange trouble which had slowly
grown within him and had now become so unbearable? He had not fallen
into sin. It seemed as if but yesterday he had left the seminary with
all his ardent faith, and so fortified against the world that he moved
among men beholding God alone. And, suddenly, he fancied himself in his
cell at five o'clock in the morning, the hour for rising. The deacon on
duty passed his door, striking it with his stick, and repeating the
regulation summons--

'_Benedicamus Domino_!'

'_Deo gratias_!' he answered half asleep, with his eyes still swollen
with slumber.

And he jumped out upon his strip of carpet, washed himself, made his
bed, swept his room, and refilled his little pitcher. He enjoyed this
petty domestic work while the morning air sent a thrilling shiver
throughout his frame. He could hear the sparrows in the plane-trees of
the court-yard, rising at the same time as himself with a deafening
noise of wings and notes--their way of saying their prayers, thought he.
Then he went down to the meditation room, and stayed there on his knees
for half an hour after prayers, to con that reflection of St. Ignatius:
'What profit be it to a man to gain the whole world if he lose his
soul?' A subject, this, fertile in good resolutions, which impelled him
to renounce all earthly goods, and dwell on that fond dream of a desert
life, beneath the solitary wealth and luxury of a vast blue sky. When
ten minutes had passed, his bruised knees became so painful that his
whole being slowly swooned into ecstasy, in which he pictured himself as
a mighty conqueror, the master of an immense empire, flinging down his
crown, breaking his sceptre, trampling under foot unheard-of wealth,
chests of gold, floods of jewels, and rich stuffs embroidered with
precious stones, before going to bury himself in some Thebais, clothed
in rough drugget that rasped his back. Mass, however, snatched him from
these heated fancies, upon which he looked back as upon some beautiful
reality which might have been his lot in ancient times; and then, his
communion made, he chanted the psalm for the day unconscious of any
other voice than his own, which rang out with crystal purity, flying
upward till it reached the very ear of the Lord.

When he returned to his room he ascended the stairs step by step, as
advised by St. Bonaventura and St. Thomas Aquinas. His gait was slow,
his mien grave; he kept his head bowed as he walked along, finding
ineffable delight in complying with the most trifling regulations. Next
came breakfast. It was pleasant in the refectory to see the hunks of
bread and the glasses of white wine, set out in rows. He had a good
appetite, and was of a joyous mood. He would say, for instance, that the
wine was truly Christian--a daring allusion to the water which the
bursar was taxed with putting in the bottles. Still his gravity at once
returned to him on going in to lectures. He took notes on his knees,
while the professor, resting his hands on the edge of his desk, talked
away in familiar Latin, interspersed with an occasional word in French,
when he was at fault for a better. A discussion would then follow in
which the students argued in a strange jargon, with never a smile upon
their faces. Then, at ten o'clock, there came twenty minutes' reading of
Holy Writ. He fetched the Sacred Book, a volume richly bound and
gilt-edged. Having kissed it with especial reverence, he read it out
bare-headed, bowing every time he came upon the name of Jesus, Mary, or
Joseph. And with the arrival of the second meditation he was ready to
endure for love of God another and even longer spell of kneeling than
the first. He avoided resting on his heels for a second even. He
delighted in that examination of conscience which lasted for
three-quarters of an hour. He racked his memory for sins, and at times
even fancied himself damned for forgetting to kiss the pictures on his
scapular the night before, or for having gone to sleep upon his left
side--abominable faults which he would have willingly redeemed by
wearing out his knees till night; and yet happy faults, in that they
kept him busy, for without them he would have no occupation for his
unspotted heart, steeped in a life of purity.

He would return to the refectory, as if relieved of some great crime.
The seminarists on duty, wearing blue linen aprons, and having their
cassock sleeves tucked up, brought in the vermicelli soup, the boiled
beef cut into little squares, and the helps of roast mutton and French
beans. Then followed a terrific rattling of jaws, a gluttonous silence,
a desperate plying of forks, only broken by envious greedy glances at
the horseshoe table, where the heads of the seminary ate more delicate
meats and drank ruddier wines. And all the while above the hubbub some
strong-lunged peasant's son, with a thick voice and utter disregard for
punctuation, would hem and haw over the perusal of some letters from
missionaries, some episcopal pastoral, or some article from a religious
paper. To this he listened as he ate. Those polemical fragments, those
narratives of distant travels, surprised, nay, even frightened him, with
their revelations of bustling, boundless fields of action, of which he
had never dreamt, beyond the seminary walls. Eating was still in
progress when the wooden clapper announced the recreation hour. The
recreation-ground was a sandy yard, in which stood eight plane-trees,
which in summer cast cool shadows around. On the south side rose a wall,
seventeen feet high, and bristling with broken glass, above which all
that one saw of Plassans was the steeple of St. Mark, rising like a
stony needle against the blue sky. To and fro he slowly paced the court
with a row of fellow-students; and each time he faced the wall he eyed
that spire which to him represented the whole town, the whole earth
spread beneath the scudding clouds. Noisy groups waxed hot in
disputation round the plane-trees; friends would pair off in the corners
under the spying glance of some director concealed behind his
window-blind. Tennis and skittle matches would be quickly organised to
the great discomfort of quiet loto players who lounged on the ground
before their cardboard squares, which some bowl or ball would suddenly
smother with sand. But when the bell sounded the noise ceased, a flight
of sparrows rose from the plane-trees, and the breathless students
betook themselves to their lesson in plain-chant with folded arms and
hanging heads. And thus Serge's day closed in peacefulness; he returned
to his work; then, at four o'clock, he partook of his afternoon snack,
and renewed his everlasting walk in sight of St. Mark's spire. Supper
was marked by the same rattling of jaws and the same droning perusal as
the midday meal. And when it was over Serge repaired to the chapel to
attend prayers, and finally betook himself to bed at a quarter past
eight, after first sprinkling his pallet with holy water to ward off all
evil dreams.

How many delightful days like these had he not spent in that ancient
convent of old Plassans, where abode the aroma of centuries of piety!
For five years had the days followed one another, flowing on with the
unvarying murmur of limpid water. In this present hour he recalled a
thousand little incidents which moved him. He remembered going with his
mother to purchase his first outfit, his two cassocks, his two waist
sashes, his half-dozen bands, his eight pairs of socks, his surplice,
and his three-cornered hat. And how his heart had beaten that mild
October evening when the seminary door had first closed behind him! He
had gone thither at twenty, after his school years, seized with a
yearning to believe and love. The very next day he had forgotten all, as
if he had fallen into a long sleep in that big silent house. He once
more saw the narrow cell in which he had lived through his two years as
student of philosophy--a little hutch with only a bed, a table, and a
chair, divided from the other cells by badly fitted partitions, in a
vast hall containing about fifty similar little dens. And he again saw
the cell he had dwelt in three years longer while in the theology class
--a larger one, with an armchair, a dressing-table, and a bookcase--a
happy room full of the dreams which his faith had evoked. Down those
endless passages, up those stairs of stone, in all sorts of nooks,
sudden inspirations, unexpected aid had come to him. From the lofty
ceilings fell the voices of guardian angels. There was not a flagstone
in the halls, not an ashlar of the walls, not a bough of the
plane-trees, but it spoke to him of the delights of his contemplative
life, his lispings of tenderness, his gradual initiation, the favours
vouchsafed him in return for self-bestowal, all that happiness of divine
first love.

On such and such a day, on awaking, he had beheld a bright flood of
light which had steeped him in joy. On such and such an evening as he
closed the door of his cell he had felt warm hands clasping his neck so
lovingly that he had lost consciousness, and had afterwards found
himself on the floor weeping and choked by sobs. Again, at other times,
especially in the little archway leading to the chapel, he had
surrendered himself to supple arms which raised him from the ground. All
heaven had then been concerned in him, had moved round him, and imparted
to his slightest actions a peculiar sense, an astonishing perfume, which
seemed to cling faintly to his clothes, to his very skin. And again, he
remembered the Thursday walks. They started at two o'clock for some
verdant nook about three miles from Plassans. Often they sought a meadow
on the banks of the Viorne, where the gnarled willows steeped their
leaves in the stream. But he saw nothing--neither the big yellow flowers
in the meadow, nor the swallows sipping as they flew by, with wings
lightly touching the surface of the little river. Till six o'clock,
seated in groups beneath the willows, his comrades and himself recited
the Office of the Virgin in common, or read in pairs the 'Little Hours,'
the book of prayers recommended to young seminarists, but not enjoined
on them.

Abbe Mouret smiled as he stirred the burning embers of his vine-stock
fire. In all that past he only found great purity and perfect obedience.
He had been a lily whose sweet scent had charmed his masters. He could
not recall a single bad action. He had never taken advantage of the
absolute freedom of those walks, when the two prefects in charge would
go off to have a chat with a parish priest in the neighbourhood, or to
have a smoke behind a hedge, or to drink beer with a friend. Never had
he hidden a novel under his mattress, nor a bottle of _anisette_ in a
cupboard. For a long time, even, he had had no suspicion of the
sinfulness around him--of the wings of chicken and the cakes smuggled
into the seminary in Lent, of the guilty letters brought in by servers,
of the abominable conversations carried on in whispers in certain
corners of the courtyard. He had wept hot tears when he first perceived
that few among his fellows loved God for His own sake. There were
peasants' sons there who had taken orders simply through their terror of
conscription, sluggards who dreamed of a career of idleness, and
ambitious youths already agitated by a vision of the staff and the
mitre. And when he found the world's wickedness reappearing at the
altar's very foot, he had withdrawn still further into himself, giving
himself still more to God, to console Him for being forsaken.

He did recollect, however, that he had crossed his legs one day in
class, and that, when the professor reproved him for it, his face had
become fiery red, as if he had committed some abominable action. He was
one of the best students, never arguing, but learning his texts by
heart. He established the existence and eternity of God by proofs drawn
from Holy Writ, the opinions of the fathers of the Church, the universal
consensus of all mankind. This kind of reasoning filled him with an
unshakeable certainty. During his first year of philosophy, he had
worked at his logic so earnestly that his professor had checked him,
remarking that the most learned were not the holiest. In his second
year, therefore, he had carried out his study of metaphysics as a
regulation task, constituting but a small fraction of his daily duties.
He felt a growing contempt for science; he wished to remain ignorant, in
order to preserve the humility of his faith. Later on, he only followed
the course of Rohrbacher's 'Ecclesiastical History' from submission; he
ventured as far as Gousset's arguments, and Bouvier's 'Theological
Course,' without daring to take up Bellarmin, Liguori, Suarez, or St.
Thomas Aquinas. Holy Writ alone impassioned him. Therein he found all
desirable knowledge, a tale of infinite love which should be sufficient
instruction for all men of good-will. He simply adopted the dicta of his
teachers, casting on them the care of inquiry, needing nought of such
rubbish to know how to love, and accusing books of stealing away the
time which should be devoted to prayer. He even succeeded in forgetting
his years of college life. He no longer knew anything, but was
simplicity itself, a child brought back to the lispings of his
catechism.

Such was the manner in which he had ascended step by step to the
priesthood. And here his recollections thronged more quickly on him,
softer, still warm with heavenly joy. Each year he had drawn nearer to
God. His vacations had been spent in holy fashion at an uncle's, in
confessions every day and communions twice a week. He would lay fasts
upon himself, hide rock-salt inside his trunk, and kneel on it with
bared knees for hours together. At recreation time he remained in
chapel, or went up to the room of one of the directors, who told him
pious and extraordinary stories. Then, as the fast of the Holy Trinity
drew nigh, he was rewarded beyond all measure, overwhelmed by the
stirring emotion which pervades all seminaries on the eve of
ordinations. This was the great festival of all, when the sky opened to
allow the elect to rise another step nearer unto God. For a fortnight in
advance he imposed a bread and water diet on himself. He closed his
window blinds so that he might not see the daylight at all, and he
prostrated himself in the gloom to implore Jesus to accept his
sacrifice. During the last four days he suffered torturing pangs,
terrible scruples, which would force him from his bed in the middle of
the night to knock at the door of some strange priest giving the
Retreat--some barefooted Carmelite, or often a converted Protestant
respecting whom some wonderful story was current. To him he would make
at great length a general confession of his whole life in a voice
choking with sobs. Absolution alone quieted him, refreshed him, as if he
had enjoyed a bath of grace.

On the morning of the great day he felt wholly white; and so vividly was
he conscious of his whiteness that he seemed to himself to shed light
around him. The seminary bell rang out in clear notes, while all the
scents of June--the perfume of blossoming stocks, of mignonette and of
heliotropes--came over the lofty courtyard wall. In the chapel relatives
were waiting in their best attire, so deeply moved that the women sobbed
behind their veils. Next came the procession--the deacons about to
receive their priesthood in golden chasubles, the sub-deacons in
dalmatics, those in minor orders and the tonsured with their surplices
floating on their shoulders and their black birettas in their hands. The
organ rolled diffusing the flutelike notes of a canticle of joy. At the
altar, the bishop officiated, staff in hand, assisted by two canons. All
the Chapter were there, the priests of all the parishes thronged thick
amid a dazzling wealth of apparel, a flaring of gold beneath a broad ray
of sunlight falling from a window in the nave. The epistle over, the
ordination began.

At this very hour Abbe Mouret could remember the chill of the scissors
when he was marked with the tonsure at the beginning of his first year
of theology. It had made him shudder slightly. But the tonsure had then
been very small, hardly larger than a penny. Later, with each fresh
order conferred on him, it had grown and grown until it crowned him with
a white spot as large as a big Host. The organ's hum grew softer, and
the censers swung with a silvery tinkling of their slender chains,
releasing a cloudlet of white smoke, which unrolled in lacelike folds.
He could see himself, a tonsured youth in a surplice, led to the altar
by the master of ceremonies; there he knelt and bowed his head down low,
while the bishop with golden scissors snipped off three locks--one over
his forehead, and the other two near his ears. Yet another twelvemonth,
and he could again see himself in the chapel amid the incense, receiving
the four minor orders. Led by an archdeacon, he went to the main
doorway, closed the door with a bang, and opened it again, to show that
to him was entrusted the care of churches; next he rang a small bell
with his right hand, in token that it was his duty to call the faithful
to the divine offices; then he returned to the altar, where fresh
privileges were conferred upon him by the bishop--those of singing the
lessons, of blessing the bread, of catechising children, of exorcising
evil spirits, of serving the deacons, of lighting and extinguishing the
candles of the altars.

Next came back the memory of the ensuing ordination, more solemn and
more dread, amid the same organ strains which sounded now like God's own
thunder: this time he wore a sub-deacon's dalmatic upon his shoulders,
he bound himself for ever by the vow of chastity, he trembled in every
pore, despite his faith, at the terrible _Accedite_ from the bishop,
which put to flight two of his companions, blanching by his side. His
new duties were to serve the priest at the altar, to prepare the cruets,
sing the epistle, wipe the chalice, and carry the cross in processions.
And, at last, he passed once more, and for the last time, into the
chapel, in the radiance of a June sun: but this time he walked at the
very head of the procession, with alb girdled about his waist, with
stole crossed over his breast, and chasuble falling from his neck. All
but fainting from emotion, he could perceive the pallid face of the
bishop giving him the priesthood, the fulness of the ministry, by the
threefold laying of his hands. And after taking the oath of
ecclesiastical obedience, he felt himself uplifted from the stone flags,
when the prelate in a full voice repeated the Latin words: '_Accipe
Spiritum Sanctum. . . . Quorum remiseris peccata, remittuntur eis, et
quorum retinueris, retenta sunt_.'--'Receive the Holy Ghost. . . . Whose
sins thou dost forgive they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost
retain, they are retained.'

XVI


This evocation of the deep joys of his youth had given Abbe Mouret a
touch of feverishness. He no longer felt the cold. He put down the tongs
and walked towards the bedstead as if about to go to bed, but turned
back and pressed his forehead to a window-pane, looking out into the
night with sightless eyes. Could he be ill? Why did he feel such languor
in all his limbs, why did his blood burn in every vein? On two
occasions, while at the seminary, he had experienced similar attacks--a
sort of physical discomfort which made him most unhappy; one day,
indeed, he had gone to bed in raving delirium. Then he bethought himself
of a young girl possessed by evil spirits, whom Brother Archangias
asserted he had cured with a simple sign of the cross, one day when she
fell down before him. This reminded him of the spiritual exorcisms which
one of his teachers had formerly recommended to him: prayer, a general
confession, frequent communion, the choosing of a wise confessor who
should have great authority on his mind. And then, without any
transition, with a suddenness which astonished himself, he saw in the
depths of his memory the round face of one of his old friends, a
peasant, who had been a choir boy at eight years old, and whose expenses
at the seminary were defrayed by a lady who watched over him. He was
always laughing, he rejoiced beforehand at the anticipated emoluments of
his career; twelve hundred francs of stipend, a vicarage at the end of a
garden, presents, invitations to dinners, little profits from weddings,
and baptismal and burial fees. That young fellow must indeed be happy in
his parish.

The feeling of melancholy regret evoked by this recollection surprised
Abbe Mouret extremely. Was he not happy, too? Until that day he had
regretted nothing, wished for nothing, envied nothing. Even as he
searched himself at that very moment he failed to find any cause for
bitterness. He believed himself the same as in the early days of his
deaconship, when the obligatory perusal of his breviary at certain
stated hours had filled his days with continuous prayer. No doubts had
tormented him; he had prostrated himself before the mysteries he could
not understand; he had sacrificed his reason, which he despised, with
the greatest ease. When he left the seminary, he had rejoiced at finding
himself a stranger among his fellowmen, no longer walking like them,
carrying his head differently, possessed of the gestures, words, and
opinions of a being apart. He had felt emasculated, nearer to the
angels, cleansed of sexuality. It had almost made him proud to belong no
longer to his species, to have been brought up for God and carefully
purged of all human grossness by a jealously watchful training. Again,
it had seemed to him as if for years he had been dwelling in holy oil,
prepared with all due rites, which had steeped his flesh in
beatification. His limbs, his brain, had lost material substance to gain
in soulfulness, impregnated with a subtle vapour which, at times,
intoxicated him and dizzied him as if the earth had suddenly failed
beneath his feet. He displayed the fears, the unwittingness, the open
candour of a cloistered maiden. He sometimes remarked with a smile that
he was prolonging his childhood, under the impression that he was still
quite little, retaining the same sensations, the same ideas, the same
opinions as in the past. At six years old, for instance, he had known as
much of God as he knew at twenty-five; in prayer the inflexions of his
voice were still the same, and he yet took a childish pleasure in
folding his hands quite correctly. The world too seemed to him the same
as he had seen in former days when his mother led him by the hand. He
had been born a priest, and a priest he had grown up. Whenever he
displayed before La Teuse some particularly gross ignorance of life, she
would stare him in the face, astounded, and remark with a strange smile
that 'he was Mademoiselle Desiree's brother all over.'

In all his existence he could only recall one shock of shame. It had
happened during his last six months at the seminary, between his
deaconship and priesthood. He had been ordered to read the work of Abbe
Craisson, the superior of the great seminary at Valence: '_De rebus
Veneris ad usum confessariorum_.' And he had risen from this book
terrified and choking with sobs. That learned casuistry, dealing so
fully with the abominations of mankind, descending to the most monstrous
examples of vice, violated, as it were, all his virginity of body and
mind. He felt himself for ever befouled. Yet every time he heard
confessions he inevitably recurred to that catechism of shame. And
though the obscurities of dogma, the duties of his ministry, and the
death of all free will within him left him calm and happy at being
nought but the child of God, he retained, in spite of himself, a carnal
taint of the horrors he must needs stir up; he was conscious of an
ineffaceable stain, deep down somewhere in his being, which might some
day grow larger and cover him with mud.

The moon was rising behind the Garrigue hills. Abbe Mouret, still more
and more feverish, opened the window and leaned out upon his elbows,
that he might feel upon his face the coolness of the night. He could no
longer remember at what time exactly this illness had come upon him. He
recollected, however, that in the morning, while saying mass, he had
been quite calm and restful. It must have been later, perhaps during his
long walk in the sun, or while he shivered under the trees of the
Paradou, or while stifling in Desiree's poultry-yard. And then he lived
through the day again.

Before him stretched the vast plain, more direful still beneath the
pallid light of the oblique moonbeams. The olive and almond trees showed
like grey spots amid the chaos of rocks spreading to the sombre row of
hills on the horizon. There were big splotches of gloom, bumpy ridges,
blood-hued earthy pools in which red stars seemed to contemplate one
another, patches of chalky light, suggestive of women's garments cast
off and disclosing shadowy forms which slumbered in the hollow folds of
ground. At night that glowing landscape weltered there strangely,
passionately, slumbering with uncovered bosom, and outspread twisted
limbs, whilst heaving mighty sighs, and exhaling the strong aroma of a
sweating sleeper. It was as if some mighty Cybele had fallen there
beneath the moon, intoxicated with the embraces of the sun. Far away,
Abbe Mouret's eyes followed the path to Les Olivettes, a narrow pale
ribbon stretching along like a wavy stay-lace. He could hear Brother
Archangias whipping the truant schoolgirls, and spitting in the faces of
their elder sisters. He could see Rosalie slyly laughing in her hands
while old Bambousse hurled clods of earth after her and smote her on her
hips. Then, too, he thought, he had still been well, his neck barely
heated by the lovely morning sunshine. He had felt but a quivering
behind him, that confused hum of life, which he had faintly heard since
morning when the sun, in the midst of his mass, had entered the church
by the shattered windows. Never, then, had the country disturbed him, as
it did at this hour of night, with its giant bosom, its yielding
shadows, its gleams of ambery skin, its lavish goddess-like nudity,
scarce hidden by the silvery gauze of moonlight.

The young priest lowered his eyes, and gazed upon the village of Les
Artaud. It had sunk into the heavy slumber of weariness, the soundness
of peasants' sleep. Not a light: the battered hovels showed like dusky
mounds intersected by the white stripes of cross lanes which the
moonbeams swept. Even the dogs were surely snoring on the thresholds of
the closed doors. Had the Artauds poisoned the air of the parsonage with
some abominable plague? Behind him gathered and swept the gust whose
approach filled him with so much anguish. Now he could detect a sound
like the tramping of a flock, a whiff of dusty air, which reached him
laden with the emanations of beasts. Again came back his thoughts of a
handful of men beginning the centuries over again, springing up between
those naked rocks like thistles sown by the winds. In his childhood
nothing had amazed and frightened him more than those myriads of insects
which gushed forth when he raised certain damp stones. The Artauds
disturbed him even in their slumber; he could recognise their breath in
the air he inhaled. He would have liked to have had the rocks alone
below his window. The hamlet was not dead enough; the thatched roofs
bulged like bosoms; through the gaping cracks in the doors came low
faint sounds which spoke of all the swarming life within. Nausea came
upon him. Yet he had often faced it all without feeling any other need
than that of refreshing himself in prayer.

His brow perspiring, he proceeded to open the other window, as if to
seek cooler air. Below him, to his left, lay the graveyard with the
Solitaire erect like a bar, unstirred by the faintest breeze. From the
empty field arose an odour like that of a newly mown meadow. The grey
wall of the church, that wall full of lizards and planted with
wall-flowers, gleamed coldly in the moonlight, and the panes of one of
the windows glistened like plates of steel. The sleeping church could
now have no other life within it than the extra-human life of the
Divinity embodied in the Host enclosed in the tabernacle. He thought of
the bracket lamp's yellow glow peeping out of the gloom, and was tempted
to go down once more to try to ease his ailing head amid those deep
shadows. But a strange feeling of terror held him back; he suddenly
fancied, while his eyes were fixed upon the moonlit panes, that he saw
the church illumined by a furnace-like glare, the blaze of a festival of
hell, in which whirled the Month of May, the plants, the animals, and
the girls of Les Artaud, who wildly encircled trees with their bare
arms. Then, as he leaned over, he saw beneath him Desiree's
poultry-yard, black and steaming. He could not clearly distinguish the
rabbit-hutches, the fowls' roosting-places, or the ducks' house. The
place was all one big mass heaped up in stench, still exhaling in its
sleep a pestiferous odour. From under the stable-door came the acrid
smell of the nanny-goat; while the little pig, stretched upon his back,
snorted near an empty porringer. And suddenly with his brazen throat
Alexander, the big yellow cock, raised a crow, which awoke in the
distance impassioned calls from all the cocks of the village.

Then all at once Abbe Mouret remembered: The fever had struck him in
Desiree's farmyard, while he was looking at the hens still warm from
laying, the rabbit-does plucking the down from under them. And now the
feeling that some one was breathing on his neck became so distinct that
he turned at last to see who was behind him. And then he recalled Albine
bounding out of the Paradou, and the door slamming upon the vision of an
enchanted garden; he recalled the girl racing alongside the interminable
wall, following the gig at a run, and throwing birch leaves to the
breeze as kisses; he recalled her, again, in the twilight, laughing at
the oaths of Brother Archangias, her skirts skimming over the path like
a cloudlet of dust bowled along by the evening breeze. She was sixteen;
how strange she looked, with her rather elongated face! she savoured of
the open air, of the grass, of mother earth. And so accurate was his
recollection of her that he could once more see a scratch upon one of
her supple wrists, a rosy scar on her white skin. Why did she laugh like
that when she looked at him with her blue eyes? He was engulfed in her
laugh as in a sonorous wave which resounded and pressed close to him on
every side; he inhaled it, he felt it vibrate within him. Yes, all his
evil came from that laugh of hers which he had quaffed.

Standing in the middle of the room, with both windows open, he remained
shivering, seized with a fright which made him hide his face in his
hands. So this was the ending of the whole day; this evocation of a fair
girl, with a somewhat long face and eyes of blue. And the whole day came
in through the open windows. In the distance--the glow of those red
lands, the ardent passion of the big rocks, of the olive-trees springing
up amid the stones, of the vines twisting their arms by the roadside.
Nearer--the steam of human sweat borne in upon the air from Les Artaud,
the musty odour of the cemetery, the fragrance of incense from the
church, tainted by the scent of greasy-haired wenches. And there was
also the steaming muck-heap, the fumes of the poultry-yard, the
oppressing ferment of animal germs. And all these vapours poured in at
once, in one asphyxiating gust, so offensive, so violent, as to choke
him. He tried to close his senses, to subdue and annihilate them. But
Albine reappeared before him like a tall flower that had sprung and
grown beautiful in that soil. She was the natural blossom of that
corruption, delicate in the sunshine, her white shoulders expanding in
youthfulness, her whole being so fraught with the gladness of life, that
she leaped from her stem and darted upon his mouth, scenting him with
her long ripple of laughter.

A cry burst from the priest. He had felt a burning touch upon his lips.
A stream as of fire coursed through his veins. And then, in search of
refuge, he threw himself on his knees before the statuette of the
Immaculate Conception, exclaiming, with folded hands:

'Holy Virgin of Virgins, pray for me!'

XVII


The Immaculate Conception, set on the walnut chest of drawers, was
smiling softly, with her slender lips, marked by a dash of carmine. Her
form was small and wholly white. Her long white veil, falling from head
to foot, had but an imperceptible thread of gold around its edge. Her
gown, draped in long straight folds over a sexless figure, was fastened
around her flexible neck. Not a single lock of her chestnut hair peeped
forth. Her countenance was rosy, with clear eyes upturned to heaven: her
hands were clasped--rosy, childlike hands, whose finger-tips appeared
beneath the folds of her veil, above the azure scarf which seemed to
girdle her waist with two streaming ends of the firmament. Of all her
womanly charms not one was bared, except her feet, adorable feet which
trod the mystical eglantine. And from those nude feet sprang golden
roses, like the natural efflorescence of her twofold purity of flesh.

'Virgin most faithful, pray for me,' the priest despairingly pleaded.

This Virgin had never distressed him. She was not a mother yet; she did
not offer Jesus to him, her figure did not yet present the rounded
outlines of maternity. She was not the Queen of Heaven descending,
crowned with gold and clothed in gold like a princess of the earth,
borne in triumph by a flight of cherubim. She had never assumed an
awesome mien; had never spoken to him with the austere severity of an
all-powerful mistress, the very sight of whom must bow all foreheads to
the dust. He could dare to look on her and love her, without fear of
being moved by the gentle wave of her chestnut hair; her bare feet alone
excited his affection, those feet of love which blossomed like a garden
of chastity in too miraculous a manner for him to seek to cover them
with kisses. She scented his room with lily-like fragrance. She was
indeed the silver lily planted in a golden vase, she was precious,
eternal, impeccable purity. Within the white veil, so closely drawn
round her, there could be nothing human--only a virgin flame, burning
with ever even glow. At night when he went to bed, in the morning when
he woke, he could see her there, still and ever wearing that same
ecstatic smile.

'Mother most pure, Mother most chaste, Mother ever-virgin, pray for me!'
he stammered in his fear, pressing close to the Virgin's feet, as if he
could hear Albine's sonorous footfalls behind him. 'You are my refuge,
the source of my joy, the seat of my wisdom, the tower of ivory in which
I have shut up my purity. I place myself in your spotless hands, I
beseech you to take me, to cover me with a corner of your veil, to hide
me beneath your innocence, behind the hallowed rampart of your garment
--so that no fleshly breath may reach me. I need you, I die without you,
I shall feel for ever parted from you, if you do not bear me away in
your helpful arms, far hence into the glowing whiteness wherein you
dwell. O Mary, conceived without sin, annihilate me in the depths of the
immaculate snow that falls from your every limb. You are the miracle of
eternal chastity. Your race has sprung from a very beam of grace, like
some wondrous tree unsown by any germ. Your son, Jesus, was born of the
breath of God; you yourself were born without defilement of your
mother's womb, and I would believe that this virginity goes back thus
from age to age in endless unwittingness of flesh. Oh! to live, to grow
up outside the pale of the senses! Oh! to perpetuate life solely by the
contact of a celestial kiss!'

This despairing appeal, this cry of purified longing, calmed the young
priest's fears. The Virgin--wholly white, with eyes turned heavenward,
appeared to smile more tenderly with her thin red lips. And in a
softened voice he went on:

'I should like to be a child once more. I should like to be always a
child, walking in the shadow of your gown. When I was quite little, I
clasped my hands when I uttered the name of Mary. My cradle was white,
my body was white, my every thought was white. I could see you
distinctly, I could hear you calling me, I went towards you in the light
of a smile over scattered rose-petals. And nought else did I feel or
think, I lived but just enough to be a flower at your feet. No one
should grow up. You would have around you none but fair young heads, a
crowd of children who would love you with pure hands, unsullied lips,
tender limbs, stainless as if fresh from a bath of milk. To kiss a
child's cheek is to kiss its soul. A child alone can say your name
without befouling it. In later years our lips grow tainted and reek of
our passions. Even I, who love you so much, and have given myself to
you, I dare not at all times call on you, for I would not let you come
in contact with the impurities of my manhood. I have prayed and
chastised my flesh, I have slept in your keeping, and lived in chastity;
and yet I weep to see that I am not yet dead enough to this world to be
your betrothed. O Mary! adorable Virgin, why can I not be only five
years old--why could I not remain the child who pressed his lips to your
pictures? I would take you to my heart, I would lay you by my side, I
would clasp and kiss you like a friend--like a girl of my own age. Your
close hanging garments, your childish veil, your blue scarf--all that
youthfulness which makes you like an elder sister would be mine. I would
not try to kiss your locks, for hair is a naked thing which should not
be seen; but I would kiss your bare feet, one after the other, for
nights and nights together, until my lips should have shred the petals
of those golden roses, those mystical roses of our veins.'

He stopped, waiting for the Virgin to look down upon him and touch his
forehead with the edges of her veil. But she remained enwrapped in
muslin to her neck and finger-nails and ankles, so slim, so
etherealised, that she already seemed to be above earth, to be wholly
heaven's own.

'Well, then,' he went on more wildly still, 'grant that I become a child
again, O kindly Virgin! Virgin most powerful. Grant that I may be only
five years old. Rid me of my senses, rid me of my manhood. Let a miracle
sweep away all the man that has grown up within me. You reign in heaven,
nothing is easier to you than to change me, to rid me of all my strength
so that evermore I may be unable to raise my little finger without your
leave. I wish never more to feel either nerve, or muscle, or the beating
of my heart. I long to be simply a thing--a white stone at your feet, on
which you will leave but a perfume; a stone that will not move from
where you cast it, but will remain earless and eyeless, content to lie
beneath your heel, unable to think of foulness! Oh! then what bliss for
me! I shall reach without an effort and at a bound my dream of
perfection. I shall at last proclaim myself your true priest. I shall
become what all my studies, my prayers, my five years of initiation have
been unable to make me. Yes, I reject life; I say that the death of
mankind is better than abomination. Everything is stained; everywhere is
love tainted. Earth is steeped in impurity, whose slightest drops yield
growths of shame. But that I may be perfect, O Queen of angels, hearken
to my prayer, and grant it! Make me one of those angels that have only
two great wings behind their cheeks; I shall then no longer have a body,
no longer have any limbs; I will fly to you if you call me. I shall be
but a mouth to sing your praises, a pair of spotless wings to cradle you
in your journeys through the heavens. O death! death! Virgin, most
venerable, grant me the death of all! I will love you for the death of
my body, the death of all that lives and multiplies. I will consummate
with you the sole marriage that my heart desires. I will ascend, ever
higher and higher, till I have reached the brasier in which you shine in
splendour. There one beholds a mighty planet, an immense white rose,
whose every petal glows like a moon, a silver throne whence you beam
with such a blaze of innocence that heaven itself is all illumined by
the gleam of your veil alone. All that is white, the early dawns, the
snow on inaccessible peaks, the lilies barely opening, the water of
hidden, unknown springs, the milky sap of the plants untouched by the
sun, the smiles of maidens, the souls of children dead in their cradles
--all rains upon your white feet. And I will rise to your mouth like a
subtle flame; I will enter into you by your parted lips, and the bridal
will be fulfilled, while the archangels are thrilled by our joyfulness.
Oh, to be maiden, to love in maidenhood, to preserve amid the sweetest
kisses one's maiden whiteness! To possess all love, stretched on the
wings of swans, in a sky of purity, in the arms of a mistress of light,
whose caresses are but raptures of the soul! Oh, there lies the
perfection, the super-human dream, the yearning which shatters my very
bones, the joy which bears me up to heaven! O Mary, Vessel of Election,
rid me of all that is human in me, so that you may fearlessly surrender
to me the treasure of your maidenhood!'

And then Abbe Mouret, felled by fever, his teeth chattering, swooned
away on the floor.

Book II



                                 I

Through calico curtains, carefully drawn across the two large windows, a
pale white light like that of breaking day filtered into the room. It
was a lofty and spacious room, fitted up with old Louis XV. furniture,
the woodwork painted white, the upholstery showing a pattern of red
flowers on a leafy ground. On the piers above the doors on either side
of the alcove were faded paintings still displaying the rosy flesh of
flying Cupids, whose games it was now impossible to follow. The
wainscoting with oval panels, the folding doors, the rounded ceiling
(once sky-blue and framed with scrolls, medallions, and bows of
flesh-coloured ribbons), had all faded to the softest grey. Opposite the
windows the large alcove opened beneath banks of clouds which plaster
Cupids drew aside, leaning over, and peeping saucily towards the bed.
And like the windows, the alcove was curtained with coarsely hemmed
calico, whose simplicity seemed strange in this room where lingered a
perfume of whilom luxury and voluptuousness.

Seated near a pier table, on which a little kettle bubbled over a
spirit-lamp, Albine intently watched the alcove curtains. She was gowned
in white, her hair gathered up in an old lace kerchief, her hands
drooping wearily, as she kept watch with the serious mien of youthful
womanhood. A faint breathing, like that of a slumbering child, could be
heard in the deep silence. But she grew restless after a few minutes,
and could not restrain herself from stepping lightly towards the alcove
and raising one of the curtains. On the edge of the big bed lay Serge,
apparently asleep, with his head resting on his bent arm. During his
illness his hair had lengthened, and his beard had grown. He looked very
white, with sunken eyes and pallid lips.

Moved by the sight Albine was about to let the curtain fall again. But
Serge faintly murmured, 'I am not asleep.'

He lay perfectly still with his head on his arm, without stirring even a
finger, as if overwhelmed by delightful weariness. His eyes had slowly
opened, and his breath blew lightly on one of his hands, raising the
golden down on his fair skin.

'I heard you,' he murmured again. 'You were walking very gently.'*

  * From this point in the original Serge and Albine thee and thou
    one another; but although this _tutoiement_ has some bearing on
    the development of the story, it was impossible to preserve it
    in an English translation.--ED.

His voice enchanted her. She went up to his bed and crouched beside it
to bring her face on a level with his own. 'How are you?' she asked, and
then continued: 'Oh! you are well now. Do you know, I used to cry the
whole way home when I came back from over yonder with bad news of you.
They told me you were delirious, and that if your dreadful fever did
spare your life, it would destroy your reason. Oh, didn't I kiss your
uncle Pascal when he brought you here to recruit your health!'

Then she tucked in his bed-clothes like a young mother.

'Those burnt-up rocks over yonder, you see, were no good to you. You
need trees, and coolness, and quiet. The doctor hasn't even told a soul
that he was hiding you away here. That's a secret between himself and
those who love you. He thought you were lost. Nobody will ever disturb
you, you may be sure of that! Uncle Jeanbernat is smoking his pipe by
his lettuce bed. The others will get news of you on the sly. Even the
doctor isn't coming back any more. I am to be your doctor now. You don't
want any more physic, it seems. What you now want is to be loved; do you
see?'

He did not seem to hear her, his brain as yet was void. His eyes,
although his head remained motionless, wandered inquiringly round the
room, and it struck her that he was wondering where he might be.

'This is my room,' she said. 'I have given it to you. Isn't it a pretty
one? I took the finest pieces of furniture out of the lumber attic, and
then I made those calico curtains to prevent the daylight from dazzling
me. And you're not putting me out a bit. I shall sleep on the second
floor. There are three or four empty rooms there.'

Still he looked anxious.

'You're alone?' he asked.

'Yes; why do you ask that?'

He made no answer, but muttered wearily: 'I have been dreaming, I am
always dreaming. I hear bells ringing, and they tire me.'

And after a pause he went on: 'Go and shut the door, bolt it; I want you
to be alone, quite alone.'

When she came back, bringing a chair with her, and sat down by his
pillow, he looked as gleeful as a child, and kept on saying: 'Nobody can
come in now. I shall not hear those bells any more. When you are talking
to me, it rests me.'

'Would you like something to drink?' she asked.

He made a sign that he was not thirsty. He looked at Albine's hands as
if so astonished, so delighted to see them, that with a smile she laid
one on the edge of his pillow. Then he let his head glide down, and
rested his cheek against that small, cool hand, saying, with a light
laugh: 'Ah! it's as soft as silk. It is just as if it were sending a
cool breeze through my hair. Don't take it away, please.'

Then came another long spell of silence. They gazed on one another with
loving kindliness--Albine calmly scanning herself in the convalescent's
eyes, Serge apparently listening to some faint whisper from the small,
cool hand.

'Your hand is so nice,' he said once more. 'You can't fancy what good it
does me. It seems to steal inside me, and take away all the pain in my
limbs. It's as if I were being soothed all over, relieved, cured.'

He gently rubbed his cheek against it, with growing animation, as if he
were at last coming back to life.

'You won't give me anything nasty to drink, will you? You won't worry me
with all sorts of physic? Your hand is quite enough for me. I have come
here for you to put it there under my head.'

'Dear Serge,' said Albine softly, 'how you must have suffered.'

'Suffered! yes, yes; but it's a long time ago. I slept badly, I had such
frightful dreams. If I could, I would tell you all about it.'

He closed his eyes for a moment and strove hard to remember.

'I can see nothing but darkness,' he stammered. 'It is very odd, I have
just come back from a long journey. I don't even know now where I
started from. I had fever, I know, a fever that raced through my veins
like a wild beast. That was it--now I remember. The whole time I had a
nightmare, in which I seemed to be crawling along an endless underground
passage; and every now and then I had an attack of intolerable pain, and
then the passage would be suddenly walled up. A shower of stones fell
from overhead, the side walls closed in, and there I stuck, panting, mad
to get on; and then I bored into the obstacle and battered away with
feet and fists, and skull, despairing of ever being able to get through
the ever increasing mound of rubbish. At other times, I only had to
touch it with my finger and it vanished: I could then walk freely along
the widened gallery, weary only from the pangs of my attack.'

Albine tried to lay a hand upon his lips.

'No,' said he, 'it doesn't tire me to talk. I can whisper to you here,
you see. I feel as if I were thinking and you could hear me. The
queerest point about that underground journey of mine was that I hadn't
the faintest idea of turning back again; I got obstinate, although I had
the thought before me that it would take me thousands of years to clear
away a single heap of wreckage. It seemed a fated task, which I had to
fulfil under pain of the greatest misfortunes. So, with my knees all
bruised, and my forehead bumping against the hard rock, I set myself to
work with all my might, so that I might get to the end as quickly as
possible. The end? What was it? . . . Ah! I do not know, I do not know.'

He closed his eyes and pondered dreamily. Then, with a careless pout, he
again sank upon Albine's hand and said laughing: 'How silly of me! I am
a child.'

But the girl, to ascertain if he were wholly hers, questioned him and
led him back to the confused recollections he had tried to summon up. He
could remember nothing, however; he was truly in a happy state of
childhood. He fancied that he had been born the day before.

'Oh! I am not strong enough yet,' he said. 'My furthest recollection is
of a bed which burned me all over, my head rolled about on a pillow like
a pan of live coals, and my feet wore away with perpetual rubbing
against each other. I was very bad, I know. It seemed as if I were
having my body changed, as if I were being taken all to pieces, and put
together again like some broken machine.'

He laughed at this simile, and continued: 'I shall be all new again.
My illness has given me a fine cleaning. But what was it you were
asking me? No, nobody was there. I was suffering all by myself at
the bottom of a black hole. Nobody, nobody. And beyond that, nothing
--I can see nothing. . . . Let me be your child, will you? You shall
teach me to walk. I can see nothing else but you now. I care for nothing
but you. . . . I can't remember, I tell you. I came, you took me, and
that is all.'

And restfully, pettingly, he said once more: 'How warm your hand is now!
it is as nice as the sun. Don't let us talk any more. It makes me hot.'

A quivering silence fell from the blue ceiling of the large room. The
spirit lamp had just gone out, and from the kettle came a finer and
finer thread of steam. Albine and Serge, their heads side by side upon
the pillow, gazed at the large calico curtains drawn across the windows.
Serge's eyes, especially, were attracted to them as to the very source
of light, in which he sought to steep himself, as in diluted sunshine
fitted to his weakness. He could tell that the sun lay behind that
yellower gleam upon one corner of the curtain, and that sufficed to make
him feel himself again. Meanwhile a far-off rustle of leaves came upon
his listening ear, and against the right-hand window the clean-cut
greenish shadow of a lofty bough brought him disturbing thoughts of the
forest which he could feel to be near him.

'Would you like me to open the curtains?' asked Albine, misunderstanding
his steady gaze.

'No, no,' he hastily replied.

'It's a fine day; you would see the sunlight and the trees.'

'No, please don't. . . . I don't want to see anything outside. That
bough there tires me with its waving and its rising, as if it was alive.
Leave your hand here, I will go to sleep. All is white now. It's so
nice.'

And then he calmly fell asleep, while Albine watched beside him and
breathed upon his face to make his slumber cool.

II


The fine weather broke up on the morrow, and it rained heavily. Serge's
fever returned, and he spent a day of suffering, with his eyes
despairingly fixed upon the curtains through which the light now fell
dim and ashy grey as in a cellar. He could no longer see a trace of
sunshine, and he looked in vain for the shadow that had scared him, the
shadow of that lofty bough which had disappeared amid the mist and the
pouring rain, and seemed to have carried away with it the whole forest.
Towards evening he became slightly delirious and cried out to Albine
that the sun was dead, that he could hear all the sky, all the country
bewailing the death of the sun. She had to soothe him like a child,
promising him the sun, telling him that it would come back again, that
she would give it to him. But he also grieved for the plants. The seeds,
he said, must be suffering underground, waiting for the return of light;
they had nightmares, they also dreamed that they were crawling along an
underground passage, hindered by mounds of ruins, struggling madly to
reach the sunshine. And he began to weep and sob out in low tones that
winter was a disease of the earth, and that he should die with the
earth, unless the springtide healed them both.

For three days more the weather was truly frightful. The downpour burst
over the trees with the awful clamour of an overflowing river. Gusts of
wind rolled by and beat against the windows with the violence of
enormous waves. Serge had insisted on Albine closing the shutters. By
lamplight he was no longer troubled by the gloom of the pallid curtains,
he no longer felt the greyness of the sky glide in through the smallest
chinks, and flow up to him like a cloud of dust intent on burying him.
However, increasing apathy crept upon him as he lay there with shrunken
arms and pallid features; his weakness augmented as the earth grew more
ailing. At times, when the clouds were inky black, when the bending
trees cracked, and the grass lay limp beneath the downpour like the hair
of a drowned woman, he all but ceased to breathe, and seemed to be
passing away, shattered by the hurricane. But at the first gleam of
light, at the tiniest speck of blue between two clouds, he breathed once
more and drank in the soothing calm of the drying leaves, the whitening
paths, the fields quaffing their last draught of water. Albine now also
longed for the sun; twenty times a day would she go to the window on the
landing to scan the sky, delighted at the smallest scrap of white that
she espied, but perturbed when she perceived any dusky, copper-tinted,
hail-laden masses, and ever dreading lest some sable cloud should kill
her dear patient. She talked of sending for Doctor Pascal, but Serge
would not have it.

'To-morrow there will be sunlight on the curtains,' he said, 'and then I
shall be well again.'

One evening when his condition was most alarming, Albine again gave him
her hand to rest his cheek upon. But when she saw that it brought him no
relief she wept to find herself powerless. Since he had fallen into the
lethargy of winter she had felt too weak to drag him unaided from the
nightmare in which he was struggling. She needed the assistance of
spring. She herself was fading away, her arms grew cold, her breath
scant; she no longer knew how to breathe life into him. For hours
together she would roam about the spacious dismal room, and as she
passed before the mirror and saw herself darkening in it, she thought
she had become hideous.

One morning, however, as she raised his pillows, not daring to try again
the broken spell of her hands, she fancied that she once more caught the
first day's smile on Serge's lips.

'Open the shutters,' he said faintly.

She thought him still delirious, for only an hour previously she had
seen but a gloomy sky on looking out from the landing.

'Hush, go to sleep,' she answered sadly; 'I have promised to wake you at
the very first ray---- Sleep on, there's no sun out yet.'

'Yes, I can feel it, its light is there. . . . Open the shutters.'