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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Abbé Mouret's Transgression, by Émile Zola
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Abbé Mouret's Transgression
+La Faute De L'abbé Mouret
+
+Author: Émile Zola
+
+Editor: Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
+
+Release Date: November 28, 2004 [eBook #14200]
+[Most recently updated: June 8, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Dagny and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ABBÉ MOURET'S TRANSGRESSION ***
+
+
+
+
+ABBÉ MOURET’S TRANSGRESSION
+
+
+By Émile Zola
+
+
+Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+‘LA FAUTE DE L’ABBÉ MOURET’ was, with respect to the date of
+publication, the fourth volume of M. Zola’s ‘Rougon-Macquart’ series;
+but in the amended and final scheme of that great literary undertaking,
+it occupies the ninth place. It proceeds from the sixth volume of the
+series, ‘The Conquest of Plassans;’ which is followed by the two works
+that deal with the career of Octave Mouret, Abbé Serge Mouret’s elder
+brother. In ‘The Conquest of Plassans,’ Serge and his half-witted
+sister, Desirée, are seen in childhood at their home in Plassans, which
+is wrecked by the doings of a certain Abbé Faujas and his relatives.
+Serge Mouret grows up, is called by an instinctive vocation to the
+priesthood, and becomes parish priest of Les Artaud, a well-nigh pagan
+hamlet in one of those bare, burning stretches of country with which
+Provence abounds. And here it is that ‘La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret’ opens
+in the old ruinous church, perched upon a hillock in full view of the
+squalid village, the arid fields, and the great belts of rock which shut
+in the landscape all around.
+
+There are two elements in this remarkable story, which, from the
+standpoint of literary style, has never been excelled by anything that
+M. Zola has since written; and one may glance at it therefore from two
+points of view. Taking it under its sociological and religious aspect,
+it will be found to be an indirect indictment of the celibacy of the
+priesthood; that celibacy, contrary to Nature’s fundamental law, which
+assuredly has largely influenced the destinies of the Roman Catholic
+Church. To that celibacy, and to all the evils that have sprang from
+it, may be ascribed much of the irreligion current in France to-day.
+The periodical reports on criminality issued by the French Ministers of
+Justice since the foundation of the Republic in 1871, supply materials
+for a most formidable indictment of that vow of perpetual chastity which
+Rome exacts from her clergy. Nowadays it is undoubtedly too late for
+Rome to go back upon that vow and thereby transform the whole of her
+sacerdotal organisation; but, perhaps, had she done so in past times,
+before the spirit of inquiry and free examination came into being, she
+might have assured herself many more centuries of supremacy than have
+fallen to her lot. But she has ever sought to dissociate the law of the
+Divinity from the law of Nature, as though indeed the latter were but
+the invention of the Fiend.
+
+Abbé Mouret, M. Zola’s hero, finds himself placed between the law of
+the Divinity and the law of Nature: and the struggle waged within him by
+those two forces is a terrible one. That which training has implanted
+in his mind proves the stronger, and, so far as the canons of the Church
+can warrant it, he saves his soul. But the problem is not quite frankly
+put by M. Zola; for if Abbé Mouret transgresses he does so unwittingly,
+at a time when he is unconscious of his priesthood and has no memory of
+any vow. When the truth flashes upon him he is horrified with himself,
+and forthwith returns to the Church. A further struggle between the
+contending forces then certainly ensues, and ends in the final victory
+of the Church. But it must at least be said that in the lapses which
+occur in real life among the Roman priesthood, the circumstances are
+altogether different from those which M. Zola has selected for his
+story.
+
+The truth is that in ‘La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret,’ betwixt lifelike
+glimpses of French rural life, the author transports us to a realm of
+poesy and imagination. This is, indeed, so true that he has introduced
+into his work all the ideas on which he had based an early unfinished
+poem called ‘Genesis.’ He carries us to an enchanted garden,
+the Paradou--a name which one need hardly say is Provencal for
+Paradise*--and there Serge Mouret, on recovering from brain fever,
+becomes, as it were, a new Adam by the side of a new Eve, the fair and
+winsome Albine. All this part of the book, then, is poetry in prose.
+The author has remembered the ties which link Rousseau to the realistic
+school of fiction, and, as in the pages of Jean-Jacques, trees, springs,
+mountains, rocks, and flowers become animated beings and claim their
+place in the world’s mechanism. One may indeed go back far beyond
+Rousseau, even to Lucretius himself; for more than once we are
+irresistibly reminded of Lucretian scenes, above which through M. Zola’s
+pages there seems to hover the pronouncement of Sophocles:
+
+     No ordinance of man shall override
+     The settled laws of Nature and of God;
+     Not written these in pages of a book,
+     Nor were they framed to-day, nor yesterday;
+     We know not whence they are; but this we know,
+     That they from all eternity have been,
+     And shall to all eternity endure.
+
+
+  * There is a village called Paradou in Provence, between
+    Les Baux and Arles.
+
+And if we pass to the young pair whose duo of love is sung amidst the
+varied voices of creation, we are irresistibly reminded of the Paul
+and Virginia of St. Pierre, and the Daphnis and Chloe of Longus. Beside
+them, in their marvellous garden, lingers a memory too of Manon and
+Des Grieux, with a suggestion of Lauzun and a glimpse of the art of
+Fragonard. All combine, all contribute--from the great classics to the
+eighteenth century _petits maitres_--to build up a story of love’s rise
+in the human breast in answer to Nature’s promptings.
+
+M. Zola wrote ‘La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret’ one summer under the trees of
+his garden, mindful the while of gardens that he had known in childhood:
+the flowery expanse which had stretched before his grandmother’s home
+at Pont-au-Beraud and the wild estate of Galice, between Roquefavour and
+Aix-en-Provence, through which he had roamed as a lad with friends then
+boys like himself: Professor Baille and Cezanne, the painter. And into
+his description of the wondrous Paradou he has put all his remembrance
+of the gardens and woods of Provence, where many a plant and flower
+thrive with a luxuriance unknown to England. True, in order to refresh
+his memory and avoid mistakes, he consulted various horticultural
+manuals whilst he was writing; of which circumstance captious critics
+have readily laid hold, to proclaim that the description of the Paradou
+is a mere florist’s catalogue.
+
+But it is nothing of the kind. The florist who might dare to offer
+such a catalogue to the public would be speedily assailed by all the
+horticultural journalists of England and all the customers of villadom.
+For M. Zola avails himself of a poet’s license to crowd marvel upon
+marvel, to exaggerate nature’s forces, to transform the tiniest blooms
+into giant examples of efflorescence, and to mingle even the seasons
+one with the other. But all this was premeditated; there was a picture
+before his mind’s eye, and that picture he sought to trace with his pen,
+regardless of all possible objections. It is the poet’s privilege to
+do this and even to be admired for it. It would be easy for some learned
+botanist, some expert zoologist, to demolish Milton from the standpoint
+of their respective sciences, but it would be absurd to do so. We ask of
+the poet the flowers of his imagination, and the further he carries us
+from the sordid realities, the limited possibilities of life, the more
+are we grateful to him.
+
+And M. Zola’s Paradou is a flight of fancy, even as its mistress, the
+fair, loving, guileless Albine, whose smiles and whose tears alike go
+to our hearts, is the daughter of imagination. She is a flower--the very
+flower of life’s youth--in the midst of all the blossoms of her
+garden. She unfolds to life and to love even as they unfold; she loves
+rapturously even as they do under the sun and the azure; and she dies
+with them when the sun’s caress is gone and the chill of winter has
+fallen. At the thought of her, one instinctively remembers Malherbe’s
+‘Ode A Du Perrier:’
+
+     She to this earth belonged, where beauty fast
+          To direst fate is borne:
+     A rose, she lasted, as the roses last,
+          Only for one brief morn.
+
+
+French painters have made subjects of many episodes in M. Zola’s
+works, but none has been more popular with them than Albine’s pathetic,
+perfumed death amidst the flowers. I know several paintings of great
+merit which that touching incident has inspired.
+
+Albine, if more or less unreal, a phantasm, the spirit as it were of
+Nature incarnate in womanhood, is none the less the most delightful of
+M. Zola’s heroines. She smiles at us like the vision of perfect beauty
+and perfect love which rises before us when our hearts are yet young and
+full of illusions. She is the ideal, the very quintessence of woman.
+
+In Serge Mouret, her lover, we find a man who, in more than one respect,
+recalls M. Zola’s later hero, the Abbé Froment of ‘Lourdes’ and ‘Rome.’
+He has the same loving, yearning nature; he is born--absolutely like
+Abbé Froment--of an unbelieving father and a mother of mystical mind.
+But unlike Froment he cannot shake off the shackles of his priesthood.
+Reborn to life after his dangerous illness, he relapses into the
+religion of death, the religion which regards life as impurity, which
+denies Nature’s laws, and so often wrecks human existence, as if
+indeed that had been the Divine purpose in setting man upon earth. His
+struggles suggest various passages in ‘Lourdes’ and ‘Rome.’ In fact, in
+writing those works, M. Zola must have had his earlier creation in
+mind. There are passages in ‘La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret’ culled from the
+writings of the Spanish Jesuit Fathers and the ‘Imitation’ of Thomas
+à Kempis that recur almost word for word in the Trilogy of the Three
+Cities. Some might regard this as evidence of the limitation of M.
+Zola’s powers, but I think differently. I consider that he has in both
+instances designedly taken the same type of priest in order to show how
+he may live under varied circumstances; for in the earlier instance
+he has led him to one goal, and in the later one to another. And the
+passages of prayer, entreaty, and spiritual conflict simply recur
+because they are germane, even necessary, to the subject in both cases.
+
+Of the minor characters that figure in ‘La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret’ the
+chief thing to be said is that they are lifelike. If Serge is almost
+wholly spiritual, if Albine is the daughter of poesy, they, the others,
+are of the earth earthy. As a result of their appearance on the scene,
+there are some powerful contrasting passages in the book. Archangias,
+the coarse and brutal Christian Brother who serves as a foil to Abbé
+Mouret; La Teuse, the priest’s garrulous old housekeeper; Desirée, his
+‘innocent’ sister, a grown woman with the mind of a child and an almost
+crazy affection for every kind of bird and beast, are all admirably
+portrayed. Old Bambousse, though one sees but little of him, stands
+out as a genuine type of the hard-headed French peasant, who invariably
+places pecuniary considerations before all others. And Fortune and
+Rosalie, Vincent and Catherine, and their companions, are equally true
+to nature. It need hardly be said that there is many a village in France
+similar to Les Artaud. That hamlet’s shameless, purely animal life has
+in no wise been over-pictured by M. Zola. Those who might doubt him need
+not go as far as Provence to find such communities. Many Norman hamlets
+are every whit as bad, and, in Normandy, conditions are aggravated by a
+marked predilection for the bottle, which, as French social-scientists
+have been pointing out for some years now, is fast hastening the
+degenerescence of the peasantry, both morally and physically.
+
+With reference to the English version of ‘La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret’
+herewith presented, I may just say that I have subjected it to
+considerable revision and have retranslated all the more important
+passages myself.
+
+     MERTON, SURREY.                                    E. A. V.
+
+
+
+
+
+ABBÉ MOURET’S TRANSGRESSION
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+As La Teuse entered the church she rested her broom and feather-brush
+against the altar. She was late, as she had that day began her
+half-yearly wash. Limping more than ever in her haste and hustling the
+benches, she went down the church to ring the _Angelus_. The bare, worn
+bell-rope dangled from the ceiling near the confessional, and ended in a
+big knot greasy from handling. Again and again, with regular jumps, she
+hung herself upon it; and then let her whole bulky figure go with it,
+whirling in her petticoats, her cap awry, and her blood rushing to her
+broad face.
+
+Having set her cap straight with a little pat, she came back breathless
+to give a hasty sweep before the altar. Every day the dust persistently
+settled between the disjoined boards of the platform. Her broom rummaged
+among the corners with an angry rumble. Then she lifted the altar cover
+and was sorely vexed to find that the large upper cloth, already darned
+in a score of places, was again worn through in the very middle, so
+as to show the under cloth, which in its turn was so worn and so
+transparent that one could see the consecrated stone, embedded in the
+painted wood of the altar. La Teuse dusted the linen, yellow from long
+usage, and plied her feather-brush along the shelf against which she set
+the liturgical altar-cards. Then, climbing upon a chair, she removed the
+yellow cotton covers from the crucifix and two of the candlesticks. The
+brass of the latter was tarnished.
+
+‘Dear me!’ she muttered, ‘they really want a clean! I must give them a
+polish up!’
+
+Then hopping on one leg, swaying and stumping heavily enough to drive in
+the flagstones, she hastened to the sacristy for the Missal, which
+she placed unopened on the lectern on the Epistle side, with its edges
+turned towards the middle of the altar. And afterwards she lighted the
+two candles. As she went off with her broom, she gave a glance round
+her to make sure that the abode of the Divinity had been put in proper
+order. All was still, save that the bell-rope near the confessional
+still swung between roof and floor with a sinuous sweep.
+
+Abbé Mouret had just come down to the sacristy, a small and chilly
+apartment, which a passage separated from his dining-room.
+
+‘Good morning, Monsieur le Curé,’ said La Teuse, laying her broom aside.
+‘Oh! you have been lazy this morning! Do you know it’s a quarter past
+six?’ And without allowing the smiling young priest sufficient time to
+reply, she added ‘I’ve a scolding to give you. There’s another hole in
+the cloth again. There’s no sense in it. We have only one other, and
+I’ve been ruining my eyes over it these three days in trying to mend it.
+You will leave our poor Lord quite bare, if you go on like this.’
+
+Abbé Mouret was still smiling. ‘Jesus does not need so much linen, my
+good Teuse,’ he cheerfully replied. ‘He is always warm, always royally
+received by those who love Him well.’
+
+Then stepping towards a small tap, he asked: ‘Is my sister up yet? I
+have not seen her.’
+
+‘Oh, Mademoiselle Desirée has been down a long time,’ answered the
+servant, who was kneeling before an old kitchen sideboard in which the
+sacred vestments were kept. ‘She is already with her fowls and rabbits.
+She was expecting some chicks to be hatched yesterday, and it didn’t
+come off. So you can guess her excitement.’ Then the worthy woman broke
+off to inquire: ‘The gold chasuble, eh?’
+
+The priest, who had washed his hands and stood reverently murmuring a
+prayer, nodded affirmatively. The parish possessed only three chasubles:
+a violet one, a black one, and one in cloth-of-gold. The last had to be
+used on the days when white, red, or green was prescribed by the ritual,
+and it was therefore an all important garment. La Teuse lifted it
+reverently from the shelf covered with blue paper, on which she laid
+it after each service; and having placed it on the sideboard, she
+cautiously removed the fine cloths which protected its embroidery. A
+golden lamb slumbered on a golden cross, surrounded by broad rays of
+gold. The gold tissue, frayed at the folds, broke out in little slender
+tufts; the embossed ornaments were getting tarnished and worn. There was
+perpetual anxiety, fluttering concern, at seeing it thus go off spangle
+by spangle. The priest had to wear it almost every day. And how on earth
+could it be replaced--how would they be able to buy the three chasubles
+whose place it took, when the last gold threads should be worn out?
+
+Upon the chasuble La Teuse next laid out the stole, the maniple, the
+girdle, alb and amice. But her tongue still wagged while she crossed
+the stole with the maniple, and wreathed the girdle so as to trace the
+venerated initial of Mary’s holy name.
+
+‘That girdle is not up to much now,’ she muttered; ‘you will have to
+make up your mind to get another, your reverence. It wouldn’t be very
+hard; I could plait you one myself if I only had some hemp.’
+
+Abbé Mouret made no answer. He was dressing the chalice at a small
+table. A large old silver-gilt chalice it was with a bronze base, which
+he had just taken from the bottom of a deal cupboard, in which the
+sacred vessels and linen, the Holy Oils, the Missals, candlesticks, and
+crosses were kept. Across the cup he laid a clean purificator, and on
+this set the silver-gilt paten, with the host in it, which he covered
+with a small lawn pall. As he was hiding the chalice by gathering
+together the folds in the veil of cloth of gold matching the chasuble,
+La Teuse exclaimed:
+
+‘Stop, there’s no corporal in the burse. Last night I took all the
+dirty purificators, palls, and corporals to wash them--separately, of
+course--not with the house-wash. By-the-bye, your reverence, I didn’t
+tell you: I have just started the house-wash. A fine fat one it will be!
+Better than the last.’
+
+Then while the priest slipped a corporal into the burse and laid the
+latter on the veil, she went on quickly:
+
+‘By-the-bye, I forgot! that gadabout Vincent hasn’t come. Do you wish me
+to serve your mass, your reverence?’
+
+The young priest eyed her sternly.
+
+‘Well, it isn’t a sin,’ she continued, with her genial smile. ‘I did
+serve a mass once, in Monsieur Caffin’s time. I serve it better, too,
+than ragamuffins who laugh like heathens at seeing a fly buzzing about
+the church. True I may wear a cap, I may be sixty years old, and as
+round as a tub, but I have more respect for our Lord than those imps of
+boys whom I caught only the other day playing at leap-frog behind the
+altar.’
+
+The priest was still looking at her and shaking his head.
+
+‘What a hole this village is!’ she grumbled. ‘Not a hundred and fifty
+people in it! There are days, like to-day, when you wouldn’t find a
+living soul in Les Artaud. Even the babies in swaddling clothes are
+gone to the vineyards! And goodness knows what they do among such
+vines--vines that grow under the pebbles and look as dry as thistles! A
+perfect wilderness, three miles from any highway! Unless an angel comes
+down to serve your mass, your reverence, you’ve only got me to help you,
+on my honour! or one of Mademoiselle Desirée’s rabbits, no offence to
+your reverence!’
+
+Just at that moment, however, Vincent, the Brichets’ younger son, gently
+opened the door of the sacristy. His shock of red hair and his little,
+glistening, grey eyes exasperated La Teuse.
+
+‘Oh! the wretch!’ she cried. ‘I’ll bet he’s just been up to some
+mischief! Come on, you scamp, since his reverence is afraid I might
+dirty our Lord!’
+
+On seeing the lad, Abbé Mouret had taken up the amice. He kissed the
+cross embroidered in the centre of it, and for a second laid the cloth
+upon his head; then lowering it over the collar-band of his cassock, he
+crossed it and fastened the tapes, the right one over the left. He next
+donned the alb, the symbol of purity, beginning with the right sleeve.
+Vincent stooped and turned around him, adjusting the alb, in order
+that it should fall evenly all round him to a couple of inches from
+the ground. Then he presented the girdle to the priest, who fastened
+it tightly round his loins, as a reminder of the bonds wherewith the
+Saviour was bound in His Passion.
+
+La Teuse remained standing there, feeling jealous and hurt and
+struggling to keep silence; but so great was the itching of her tongue,
+that she soon broke out once more: ‘Brother Archangias has been here.
+He won’t have a single child at school to-day. He went off again like a
+whirlwind to pull the brats’ ears in the vineyards. You had better see
+him. I believe he has got something to say to you.’
+
+Abbé Mouret silenced her with a wave of the hand. Then he repeated the
+usual prayers while he took the maniple--which he kissed before slipping
+it over his left forearm, as a symbol of the practice of good works--and
+while crossing on his breast the stole, the symbol of his dignity
+and power. La Teuse had to help Vincent in the work of adjusting the
+chasuble, which she fastened together with slender tapes, so that it
+might not slip off behind.
+
+‘Holy Virgin! I had forgotten the cruets!’ she stammered, rushing to the
+cupboard. ‘Come, look sharp, lad!’
+
+Thereupon Vincent filled the cruets, phials of coarse glass, while
+she hastened to take a clean finger-cloth from a drawer. Abbé Mouret,
+holding the chalice by its stem with his left hand, the fingers of his
+right resting meanwhile on the burse, then bowed profoundly, but without
+removing his biretta, to a black wooden crucifix, which hung over the
+side-board. The lad bowed too, and, bearing the cruets covered with the
+finger-cloth, led the way out of the sacristy, followed by the priest,
+who walked on with downcast eyes, absorbed in deep and prayerful
+meditation.
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+The empty church was quite white that May morning. The bell-rope near
+the confessional hung motionless once more. The little bracket light,
+with its stained glass shade, burned like a crimson splotch against the
+wall on the right of the tabernacle. Vincent, having set the cruets on
+the credence, came back and knelt just below the altar step on the left,
+while the priest, after rendering homage to the Holy Sacrament by a
+genuflexion, went up to the altar and there spread out the corporal,
+on the centre of which he placed the chalice. Then, having opened the
+Missal, he came down again. Another bend of the knee followed, and,
+after crossing himself and uttering aloud the formula, ‘In the name of
+the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,’ he raised his joined hands to
+his breast, and entered on the great divine drama, with his countenance
+blanched by faith and love.
+
+‘_Introibo ad altare Dei_.’
+
+‘_Ad Deum qui loetificat juventutem meam_,’ gabbled Vincent, who,
+squatting on his heels, mumbled the responses of the antiphon and the
+psalm, while watching La Teuse as she roved about the church.
+
+The old servant was gazing at one of the candles with a troubled look.
+Her anxiety seemed to increase while the priest, bowing down with hands
+joined again, recited the _Confiteor_. She stood still, in her turn
+struck her breast, her head bowed, but still keeping a watchful eye on
+the taper. For another minute the priest’s grave voice and the server’s
+stammers alternated:
+
+‘_Dominus vobiscum_.’
+
+‘_Et cum spiritu tuo_.’
+
+Then the priest, spreading out his hands and afterwards again joining
+them, said with devout compunction: ‘_Oremus_’ (Let us pray).
+
+La Teuse could now stand it no longer, but stepped behind the altar,
+reached the guttering candle, and trimmed it with the points of her
+scissors. Two large blobs of wax had already been wasted. When she came
+back again putting the benches straight on her way, and making sure that
+there was holy-water in the fonts, the priest, whose hands were resting
+on the edge of the altar-cloth, was praying in subdued tones. And at
+last he kissed the altar.
+
+Behind him, the little church still looked wan in the pale light of
+early morn. The sun, as yet, was only level with the tiled roof. The
+_Kyrie Eleisons_ rang quiveringly through that sort of whitewashed
+stable with flat ceiling and bedaubed beams. On either side three lofty
+windows of plain glass, most of them cracked or smashed, let in a raw
+light of chalky crudeness.
+
+The free air poured in as it listed, emphasising the naked poverty of
+the God of that forlorn village. At the far end of the church, above
+the big door which was never opened and the threshold of which was
+green with weeds, a boarded gallery--reached by a common miller’s
+ladder--stretched from wall to wall. Dire were its creakings on festival
+days beneath the weight of wooden shoes. Near the ladder stood the
+confessional, with warped panels, painted a lemon yellow. Facing it,
+beside the little door, stood the font--a former holy-water stoup
+resting on a stonework pedestal. To the right and to the left, halfway
+down the church, two narrow altars stood against the wall, surrounded
+by wooden balustrades. On the left-hand one, dedicated to the Blessed
+Virgin, was a large gilded plaster statue of the Mother of God, wearing
+a regal gold crown upon her chestnut hair; while on her left arm sat
+the Divine Child, nude and smiling, whose little hand raised the
+star-spangled orb of the universe. The Virgin’s feet were poised on
+clouds, and beneath them peeped the heads of winged cherubs. Then the
+right-hand altar, used for the masses for the dead, was surmounted by a
+crucifix of painted papier-mache--a pendant, as it were, to the Virgin’s
+effigy. The figure of Christ, as large as a child of ten years old,
+showed Him in all the horror of His death-throes, with head thrown back,
+ribs projecting, abdomen hollowed in, and limbs distorted and splashed
+with blood. There was a pulpit, too--a square box reached by a five-step
+block--near a clock with running weights, in a walnut case, whose thuds
+shook the whole church like the beatings of some huge heart concealed,
+it might be, under the stone flags. All along the nave the fourteen
+Stations of the Cross, fourteen coarsely coloured prints in narrow black
+frames, bespeckled the staring whiteness of the walls with the yellow,
+blue, and scarlet of scenes from the Passion.
+
+‘_Deo Gratias_,’ stuttered out Vincent at the end of the Epistle.
+
+The mystery of love, the immolation of the Holy Victim, was about
+to begin. The server took the Missal and bore it to the left, or
+Gospel-side, of the altar, taking care not to touch the pages of the
+book. Each time he passed before the tabernacle he made a genuflexion
+slantwise, which threw him all askew. Returning to the right-hand side
+once more, he stood upright with crossed arms during the reading of the
+Gospel. The priest, after making the sign of the cross upon the Missal,
+next crossed himself: first upon his forehead--to declare that he
+would never blush for the divine word; then on his mouth--to show his
+unchanging readiness to confess his faith; and finally on his heart--to
+mark that it belonged to God alone.
+
+‘_Dominus vobiscum_,’ said he, turning round and facing the cold white
+church.
+
+‘_Et cum spiritu tuo_,’ answered Vincent, who once more was on his
+knees.
+
+The Offertory having been recited, the priest uncovered the chalice. For
+a moment he held before his breast the paten containing the host, which
+he offered up to God, for himself, for those present, and for all the
+faithful, living and dead. Then, slipping it on to the edge of the
+corporal without touching it with his fingers, he took up the chalice
+and carefully wiped it with the purificator. Vincent had in the
+meanwhile fetched the cruets from the credence table, and now presented
+them in turn, first the wine and then the water. The priest then offered
+up on behalf of the whole world the half-filled chalice, which he next
+replaced upon the corporal and covered with the pall. Then once again
+he prayed, and returned to the side of the altar where the server let a
+little water dribble over his thumbs and forefingers to purify him
+from the slightest sinful stain. When he had dried his hands on
+the finger-cloth, La Teuse--who stood there waiting--emptied the
+cruet-salver into a zinc pail at the corner of the altar.
+
+‘_Orate, fratres_,’ resumed the priest aloud as he faced the empty
+benches, extending and reclasping his hands in a gesture of appeal to
+all men of good-will. And turning again towards the altar, he continued
+his prayer in a lower tone, while Vincent began to mutter a long Latin
+sentence in which he eventually got lost. Now it was that the yellow
+sunbeams began to dart through the windows; called, as it were, by the
+priest, the sun itself had come to mass, throwing golden sheets of light
+upon the left-hand wall, the confessional, the Virgin’s altar, and the
+big clock.
+
+A gentle creak came from the confessional; the Mother of God, in a halo,
+in the dazzlement of her golden crown and mantle smiled tenderly with
+tinted lips upon the infant Jesus; and the heated clock throbbed out
+the time with quickening strokes. It seemed as if the sun peopled the
+benches with the dusty motes that danced in his beams, as if the
+little church, that whitened stable, were filled with a glowing throng.
+Without, were heard the sounds that told of the happy waking of the
+countryside, the blades of grass sighed out content, the damp leaves
+dried themselves in the warmth, the birds pruned their feathers and took
+a first flit round. And indeed the countryside itself seemed to enter
+with the sun; for beside one of the windows a large rowan tree shot
+up, thrusting some of its branches through the shattered panes and
+stretching out leafy buds as if to take a peep within; while through
+the fissures of the great door the weeds on the threshold threatened to
+encroach upon the nave. Amid all this quickening life, the big Christ,
+still in shadow, alone displayed signs of death, the sufferings of
+ochre-daubed and lake-bespattered flesh. A sparrow raised himself up for
+a moment at the edge of a hole, took a glance, then flew away; but
+only to reappear almost immediately when with noiseless wing he
+dropped between the benches before the Virgin’s altar. A second sparrow
+followed; and soon from all the boughs of the rowan tree came others
+that calmly hopped about the flags.
+
+‘_Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth_,’ said the priest in
+a low tone, whilst slightly stooping.
+
+Vincent rang the little bell thrice; and the sparrows, scared by the
+sudden tinkling, flew off with such a mighty buzz of wings that La
+Teuse, who had just gone back into the sacristy, came out again,
+grumbling; ‘The little rascals! they will mess everything. I’ll bet that
+Mademoiselle Desirée has been here again to scatter bread-crumbs for
+them.’
+
+The dread moment was at hand. The body and the blood of a God were about
+to descend upon the altar. The priest kissed the altar-cloth, clasped
+his hands, and multiplied signs of the cross over host and chalice.
+The prayers of the canon of the mass now fell from his lips in a very
+ecstasy of humility and gratitude. His attitude, his gestures, the
+inflections of his voice, all expressed his consciousness of his
+littleness, his emotion at being selected for so great a task. Vincent
+came and knelt beside him, lightly lifted the chasuble with his left
+hand, the bell ready in his right; and the priest, his elbows resting on
+the edge of the altar, holding the host with the thumbs and forefingers
+of both hands, pronounced over it the words of consecration: _Hoc est
+enim corpus meum_. Then having bowed the knee before it, he raised it
+slowly as high as his hands could reach, following it upwards with
+his eyes, while the kneeling server rang the bell thrice. Then he
+consecrated the wine--_Hic est enim calix_--leaning once more upon his
+elbows, bowing, raising the cup aloft, his right hand round the stem,
+his left holding its base, and his eyes following it aloft. Again the
+server rang the bell three times. The great mystery of the Redemption
+had once more been repeated, once more had the adorable Blood flowed
+forth.
+
+‘Just you wait a bit,’ growled La Teuse, as she tried to scare away the
+sparrows with outstretched fist.
+
+But the sparrows were now fearless. They had come back even while the
+bell was ringing, and, unabashed, were fluttering about the benches. The
+repeated tinklings even roused them into liveliness, and they answered
+back with little chirps which crossed amid the Latin words of prayer,
+like the rippling laughs of free urchins. The sun warmed their plumage,
+the sweet poverty of the church captivated them. They felt at home
+there, as in some barn whose shutters had been left open, and screeched,
+fought, and squabbled over the crumbs they found upon the floor. One
+flew to perch himself on the smiling Virgin’s golden veil; another,
+whose daring put the old servant in a towering rage, made a hasty
+reconnaissance of La Teuse’s skirts. And at the altar, the priest, with
+every faculty absorbed, his eyes fixed upon the sacred host, his thumbs
+and forefingers joined, did not even hear this invasion of the warm
+May morning, this rising flood of sunlight, greenery and birds, which
+overflowed even to the foot of the Calvary where doomed nature was
+wrestling in the death-throes.
+
+‘_Per omnia soecula soeculorum_,’ he said.
+
+‘Amen,’ answered Vincent.
+
+The _Pater_ ended, the priest, holding the host over the chalice,
+broke it in the centre. Detaching a particle from one of the halves, he
+dropped it into the precious blood, to symbolise the intimate union into
+which he was about to enter with God. He said the _Agnus Dei_ aloud,
+softly recited the three prescribed prayers, and made his act of
+unworthiness, and then with his elbows resting on the altar, and with
+the paten beneath his chin, he partook of both portions of the host
+at once. After a fervent meditation, with his hands clasped before
+his face, he took the paten and gathered from the corporal the sacred
+particles of the host that had fallen, and dropped them into the
+chalice. One particle which had adhered to his thumb he removed with his
+forefinger. And, crossing himself, chalice in hand, with the paten once
+again below his chin, he drank all the precious blood in three draughts,
+never taking his lips from the cup’s rim, but imbibing the divine
+Sacrifice to the last drop.
+
+Vincent had risen to fetch the cruets from the credence table. But
+suddenly the door of the passage leading to the parsonage flew open
+and swung back against the wall, to admit a handsome child-like girl of
+twenty-two, who carried something hidden in her apron.
+
+‘Thirteen of them,’ she called out. ‘All the eggs were good.’ And she
+opened out her apron and revealed a brood of little shivering chicks,
+with sprouting down and beady black eyes. ‘Do just look,’ said she;
+‘aren’t they sweet little pets, the darlings! Oh, look at the little
+white one climbing on the others’ backs! and the spotted one already
+flapping his tiny wings! The eggs were a splendid lot; not one of them
+unfertile.’
+
+La Teuse, who was helping to serve the mass in spite of all
+prohibitions, and was at that very moment handing the cruets to Vincent
+for the ablutions, thereupon turned round and loudly exclaimed: ‘Do be
+quiet, Mademoiselle Desirée! Don’t you see we haven’t finished yet?’
+
+Through the open doorway now came the strong smell of a farmyard,
+blowing like some generative ferment into the church amidst the warm
+sunlight that was creeping over the altar. Desirée stood there for a
+moment delighted with the little ones she carried, watching Vincent
+pour, and her brother drink, the purifying wine, in order that nought of
+the sacred elements should be left within his mouth. And she stood there
+still when he came back to the side of the altar, holding the chalice in
+both hands, so that Vincent might pour over his forefingers and thumbs
+the wine and water of ablution, which he likewise drank. But when the
+mother hen ran up clucking with alarm to seek her little ones, and
+threatened to force her way into the church, Desirée went off,
+talking maternally to her chicks, while the priest, after pressing the
+purificator to his lips, wiped first the rim and next the interior of
+the chalice.
+
+Then came the end, the act of thanksgiving to God. For the last time the
+server removed the Missal, and brought it back to the right-hand side.
+The priest replaced the purificator, paten, and pall upon the chalice;
+once more pinched the two large folds of the veil together, and laid
+upon it the burse containing the corporal. His whole being was now one
+act of ardent thanksgiving. He besought from Heaven the forgiveness of
+his sins, the grace of a holy life, and the reward of everlasting
+life. He remained as if overwhelmed by this miracle of love, the
+ever-recurring immolation, which sustained him day by day with the blood
+and flesh of his Savior.
+
+Having read the final prayers, he turned and said: ‘_Ite, missa est_.’
+
+‘_Deo gratias_,’ answered Vincent.
+
+And having turned back to kiss the altar, the priest faced round anew,
+his left hand just below his breast, his right outstretched whilst
+blessing the church, which the gladsome sunbeams and noisy sparrows
+filled.
+
+‘_Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus, Pater et Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus_.’
+
+‘_Amen_,’ said the server, as he crossed himself.
+
+The sun had risen higher, and the sparrows were growing bolder. While
+the priest read from the left-hand altar-card the passage of the Gospel
+of St. John, announcing the eternity of the Word, the sunrays set the
+altar ablaze, whitened the panels of imitation marble, and dimmed the
+flame of the two candles, whose short wicks were now merely two dull
+spots. The victorious orb enveloped with his glory the crucifix, the
+candlesticks, the chasuble, the veil of the chalice--all the gold work
+that paled beneath his beams. And when at last the priest, after taking
+the chalice in his hands and making a genuflexion, covered his head and
+turned from the altar to follow the server, laden with the cruets and
+finger-cloth, to the sacristy, the planet remained sole master of the
+church. Its rays in turn now rested on the altar-cloth, irradiating the
+tabernacle-door with splendour, and celebrating the fertile powers
+of May. Warmth rose from the stone flags. The daubed walls, the tall
+Virgin, the huge Christ, too, all seemed to quiver as with shooting sap,
+as if death had been conquered by the earth’s eternal youth.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Le Teuse hastily put out the candles, but lingered to make one last
+attempt to drive away the sparrows, and so when she returned to the
+sacristy with the Missal she no longer found Abbé Mouret there. Having
+washed his hands and put away the sacred vessels and vestments, he was
+now standing in the dining room, breakfasting off a cup of milk.
+
+‘You really ought to prevent your sister from scattering bread in the
+church,’ said La Teuse on coming in. ‘It was last winter she hit upon
+that pretty prank. She said the sparrows were cold, and that God might
+well give them some food. You see, she’ll end by making us sleep with
+all her fowls and rabbits.’
+
+‘We should be all the warmer,’ pleasantly replied the young priest. ‘You
+are always grumbling, La Teuse. Do let our poor Desirée pet her animals.
+She has no other pleasure, poor innocent!’
+
+The servant took her stand in the centre of the room.
+
+‘I do believe you yourself wouldn’t mind a bit if the magpies actually
+built their nests in the church. You never can see anything, everything
+seems just what it ought to be to you. Your sister is precious lucky
+in having had you to take charge of her when you left the seminary. No
+father, no mother. I should like to know who would let her mess about as
+she does in a farmyard.’
+
+Then softening, she added in a gentler tone: ‘To be sure, it would be
+a pity to cross her. She hasn’t a touch of malice in her. She’s like
+a child of ten, although she’s one of the finest grown girls in the
+neighbourhood. And I have to put her to bed, as you know, every night,
+and send her to sleep with stories, just like a little child.’
+
+Abbé Mouret had remained standing, finishing the cup of milk he
+held between his fingers, which were slightly reddened by the chill
+atmosphere of the dining-room--a large room with painted grey walls, a
+floor of square tiles, and having no furniture beyond a table and a few
+chairs. La Teuse picked up a napkin which she had laid at a corner of
+the table in readiness for breakfast.
+
+‘It isn’t much linen you dirty,’ she muttered. ‘One would think you
+could never sit down, that you are always just about to start off. Ah!
+if you had known Monsieur Caffin, the poor dead priest whose place
+you have taken! What a man he was for comfort! Why, he couldn’t have
+digested his food, if he had eaten standing. A Norman he was, from
+Canteleu, like myself. I don’t thank him, I tell you, for having brought
+me to such a wild-beast country as this. When first we came, O, Lord!
+how bored we were! But the poor priest had had some uncomfortable tales
+going about him at home.... Why, sir, didn’t you sweeten your milk,
+then? Aren’t those the two lumps of sugar?’
+
+The priest put down his cup.
+
+‘Yes, I must have forgotten, I believe,’ he said.
+
+La Teuse stared at him and shrugged her shoulders. She folded up inside
+the napkin a slice of stale home-made bread which had also been left
+untouched on the table. Then just as the priest was about to go out,
+she ran after him and knelt down at his feet, exclaiming: ‘Stop, your
+shoe-laces are not even fastened. I cannot imagine how your feet can
+stand those peasant shoes, you’re such a little, tender man and look as
+if you had been preciously spoilt! Ah, the bishop must have known a deal
+about you, to go and give you the poorest living in the department.’
+
+‘But it was I who chose Les Artaud,’ said the priest, breaking into
+another smile. ‘You are very bad-tempered this morning, La Teuse. Are we
+not happy here? We have got all we want, and our life is as peaceful as
+if in paradise.’
+
+She then restrained herself and laughed in her turn, saying: ‘You are a
+holy man, Monsieur le Curé. But come and see what a splendid wash I have
+got. That will be better than squabbling with one another.’
+
+The priest was obliged to follow, for she might prevent him going out
+at all if he did not compliment her on her washing. As he left the
+dining-room he stumbled over a heap of rubbish in the passage.
+
+‘What is this?’ he asked.
+
+Oh, nothing,’ said La Teuse in her grimest tone. ‘It’s only the
+parsonage coming down. However, you are quite content, you’ve got all
+you want. Good heavens! there are holes and to spare. Just look at that
+ceiling, now. Isn’t it cracked all over? If we don’t get buried alive
+one of these days, we shall owe a precious big taper to our guardian
+angel. However, if it suits you--It’s like the church. Those broken
+panes ought to have been replaced these two years. In winter our Lord
+gets frozen with the cold. Besides, it would keep out those rascally
+sparrows. I shall paste paper over the holes. You see if I don’t.’
+
+‘A capital idea,’ murmured the priest, ‘they might very well be pasted
+over. As to the walls, they are stouter than we think. In my room, the
+floor has only given way slightly in front of the window. The house will
+see us all buried.’
+
+On reaching the little open shed near the kitchen, in order to please
+La Teuse he went into ecstasies over the washing; he even had to dip
+his fingers into it and feel it. This so pleased the old woman that
+her attentions became quite motherly. She no longer scolded, but ran
+to fetch a clothes-brush, saying: ‘You surely are not going out with
+yesterday’s mud on your cassock! If you had left it out on the banister,
+it would be clean now--it’s still a good one. But do lift it up well
+when you cross any field. The thistles tear everything.’
+
+While speaking she kept turning him round like a child, shaking him from
+head to foot with her energetic brushing.
+
+‘There, there, that will do,’ he said, escaping from her at last. ‘Take
+care of Desirée, won’t you? I will tell her I am going out.’
+
+But at this minute a fresh clear voice called to him: ‘Serge! Serge!’
+
+Desirée came flying up, her cheeks ruddy with glee, her head bare,
+her black locks twisted tightly upon her neck, and her hands and arms
+smothered up to the elbows with manure. She had been cleaning out her
+poultry house. When she caught sight of her brother just about to go out
+with his breviary under his arm, she laughed aloud, and kissed him on
+his mouth, with her arms thrown back behind her to avoid soiling him.
+
+‘No, no,’ she hurriedly exclaimed, ‘I should dirty you. Oh! I am having
+such fun! You must see the animals when you come back.’
+
+Thereupon she fled away again. Abbé Mouret then said that he would be
+back about eleven for luncheon, and as he started, La Teuse, who had
+followed him to the doorstep, shouted after him her last injunctions.
+
+‘Don’t forget to see Brother Archangias. And look in also at the
+Brichets’; the wife came again yesterday about that wedding. Just
+listen, Monsieur le Curé! I met their Rosalie. She’d ask nothing better
+than to marry big Fortune. Have a talk with old Bambousse; perhaps he
+will listen to you now. And don’t come back at twelve o’clock, like the
+other day. Come, say you’ll be back at eleven, won’t you?’
+
+But the priest turned round no more. So she went in again, growling
+between her teeth:
+
+‘When does he ever listen to me? Barely twenty-six years old and does
+just as he likes. To be sure, he’s an old man of sixty for holiness; but
+then he has never known life; he knows nothing, it’s no trouble to him
+to be as good as a cherub!’
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+When Abbé Mouret had got beyond all hearing of La Teuse he stopped,
+thankful to be alone at last. The church was built on a hillock, which
+sloped down gently to the village. With its large gaping windows and
+bright red tiles, it stretched out like a deserted sheep-cote. The
+priest turned round and glanced at the parsonage, a greyish building
+springing from the very side of the church; but as if fearful that
+he might again be overtaken by the interminable chatter that had been
+buzzing in his ears ever since morning, he turned up to the right again,
+and only felt safe when he at last stood before the great doorway, where
+he could not be seen from the parsonage. The front of the church, quite
+bare and worn by the sunshine and rain of years, was crowned by a narrow
+open stone belfry, in which a small bell showed its black silhouette,
+whilst its rope disappeared through the tiles. Six broken steps, on
+one side half buried in the earth, led up to the lofty arched door, now
+cracked, smothered with dust and rust and cobwebs, and so frailly hung
+upon its outwrenched hinges that it seemed as if the first slight puff
+would secure free entrance to the winds of heaven. Abbé Mouret, who had
+an affection for this dilapidated door, leaned against one of its leaves
+as he stood upon the steps. Thence he could survey the whole country
+round at a glance. And shading his eyes with his hands he scanned the
+horizon.
+
+In the month of May exuberant vegetation burst forth from that stony
+soil. Gigantic lavenders, juniper bushes, patches of rank herbage
+swarmed over the church threshold, and scattered clumps of dark greenery
+even to the very tiles. It seemed as if the first throb of shooting sap
+in the tough matted underwood might well topple the church over. At that
+early hour, amid all the travail of nature’s growth, there was a hum of
+vivifying warmth, and the very rocks quivered as with a long and silent
+effort. But the Abbé failed to comprehend the ardour of nature’s painful
+labour; he simply thought that the steps were tottering, and thereupon
+leant against the other side of the door.
+
+The countryside stretched away for a distance of six miles, bounded by
+a wall of tawny hills speckled with black pine-woods. It was a fearful
+landscape of arid wastes and rocky spurs rending the soil. The few
+patches of arable ground were like scattered pools of blood, red fields
+with rows of lean almond trees, grey-topped olive trees and long lines
+of vines, streaking the soil with their brown stems. It was as if some
+huge conflagration had swept by there, scattering the ashes of forests
+over the hill-tops, consuming all the grass of the meadow lands, and
+leaving its glare and furnace-like heat behind in the hollows. Only here
+and there was the softer note of a pale green patch of growing corn. The
+landscape generally was wild, lacking even a threadlet of water, dying
+of thirst, and flying away in clouds of dust at the least breath of
+wind. But at the farthest point where the crumbling hills on the horizon
+had left a breach one espied some distant fresh moist greenery, a
+stretch of the neighbouring valley fertilised by the Viorne, a river
+flowing down from the gorges of the Seille.
+
+The priest lowered his dazzled glance upon the village, whose few
+scattered houses straggled away below the church--wretched hovels they
+were of rubble and boards strewn along a narrow path without sign of
+streets. There were about thirty of them altogether, some squatting
+amidst muck-heaps, and black with woeful want; others roomier and more
+cheerful-looking with their roofs of pinkish tiles. Strips of garden,
+victoriously planted amidst stony soil, displayed plots of vegetables
+enclosed by quickset hedges. At this hour Les Artaud was empty, not a
+woman was at the windows, not a child was wallowing in the dust; parties
+of fowls alone went to and fro, ferreting among the straw, seeking food
+up to the very thresholds of the houses, whose open doors gaped in the
+sunlight. A big black dog seated on his haunches at the entrance to the
+village seemed to be mounting guard over it.
+
+Languor slowly stole over Abbé Mouret. The rising sun steeped him in
+such warmth that he leant back against the church door pervaded by a
+feeling of happy restfulness. His thoughts were dwelling on that hamlet
+of Les Artaud, which had sprung up there among the stones like one of
+the knotty growths of the valley. All its inhabitants were related,
+all bore the same name, so that from their very cradle they were
+distinguished among themselves by nicknames. An Artaud, their ancestor,
+had come hither and settled like a pariah in this waste. His family had
+grown with all the wild vitality of the herbage that sucked life from
+the rocky boulders. It had at last become a tribe, a rural community,
+in which cousin-ships were lost in the mists of centuries. They
+intermarried with shameless promiscuity. Not an instance could be cited
+of any Artaud taking himself a wife from any neighbouring village; only
+some of the girls occasionally went elsewhere. The others were born and
+died fixed to that spot, leisurely increasing and multiplying on their
+dunghills with the irreflectiveness of trees, and with no definite
+notion of the world that lay beyond the tawny rocks, in whose midst they
+vegetated. And yet there were already rich and poor among them; fowls
+having at times disappeared, the fowl-houses were now closed at night
+with stout padlocks; moreover one Artaud had killed another Artaud one
+evening behind the mill. These folk, begirt by that belt of desolate
+hills, were truly a people apart--a race sprung from the soil, a
+miniature replica of mankind, three hundred souls all told, beginning
+the centuries yet once again.
+
+Over the priest the sombre shadows of seminary life still hovered. For
+years he had never seen the sun. He perceived it not even now, his
+eyes closed and gazing inwards on his soul, and with no feeling for
+perishable nature, fated to damnation, save contempt. For a long time
+in his hours of devout thought he had dreamt of some hermit’s desert,
+of some mountain hole, where no living thing--neither being, plant,
+nor water--should distract him from the contemplation of God. It was an
+impulse springing from the purest love, from a loathing of all physical
+sensation. There, dying to self, and with his back turned to the light
+of day, he would have waited till he should cease to be, till nothing
+should remain of him but the sovereign whiteness of the soul. To him
+heaven seemed all white, with a luminous whiteness as if lilies there
+snowed down upon one, as if every form of purity, innocence, and
+chastity there blazed. But his confessor reproved him whenever he
+related his longings for solitude, his cravings for an existence of
+Godlike purity; and recalled him to the struggles of the Church, the
+necessary duties of the priesthood. Later on, after his ordination, the
+young priest had come to Les Artaud at his own request, there hoping to
+realise his dream of human annihilation. In that desolate spot, on that
+barren soil, he might shut his ears to all worldly sounds, and live the
+dreamy life of a saint. For some months past, in truth, his existence
+had been wholly undisturbed, rarely had any thrill of the village-life
+disturbed him; and even the sun’s heat scarcely brought him any glow
+of feeling as he walked the paths, his whole being wrapped in heaven,
+heedless of the unceasing travail of life amidst which he moved.
+
+The big black dog watching over Les Artaud had determined to come up to
+Abbé Mouret, and now sat upon its haunches at the priest’s feet; but the
+unconscious man remained absorbed amidst the sweetness of the morning.
+On the previous evening he had begun the exercises of the Rosary, and
+to the intercession of the Virgin with her Divine Son he attributed the
+great joy which filled his soul. How despicable appeared all the good
+things of the earth! How thankfully he recognised his poverty! When he
+entered into holy orders, after losing on the same day both his father
+and his mother through a tragedy the fearful details of which were even
+now unknown to him,* he had relinquished all his share of their property
+to an elder brother. His only remaining link with the world was
+his sister; he had undertaken the care of her, stirred by a kind of
+religious affection for her feeble intelligence. The dear innocent was
+so childish, such a very little girl, that she recalled to him the poor
+in spirit to whom the Gospel promises the kingdom of heaven. Of late,
+however, she had somewhat disturbed him; she was growing too lusty, too
+full of health and life. But his discomfort was yet of the slightest.
+His days were spent in that inner life he had created for himself, for
+which he had relinquished all else. He closed the portals of his senses,
+and sought to free himself from all bodily needs, so that he might be
+but a soul enrapt in contemplation. To him nature offered only snares
+and abominations; he gloried in maltreating her, in despising her, in
+releasing himself from his human slime. And as the just man must be
+a fool according to the world, he considered himself an exile on this
+earth; his thoughts were solely fixed upon the favours of Heaven,
+incapable as he was of understanding how an eternity of bliss could be
+weighed against a few hours of perishable enjoyment. His reason
+duped him and his senses lied; and if he advanced in virtue it was
+particularly by humility and obedience. His wish was to be the last of
+all, one subject to all, in order that the divine dew might fall upon
+his heart as upon arid sand; he considered himself overwhelmed with
+reproach and with confusion, unworthy of ever being saved from sin. He
+no longer belonged to himself--blind, deaf, dead to the world as he was.
+He was God’s thing. And from the depth of the abjectness to which he
+sought to plunge, Hosannahs suddenly bore him aloft, above the happy and
+the mighty into the splendour of never-ending bliss.
+
+  * This forms the subject of M. Zola’s novel, _The Conquest of
+    Plassans_. ED.
+
+Thus, at Les Artaud, Abbé Mouret had once more experienced, each time he
+read the ‘Imitation,’ the raptures of the cloistered life which he had
+longed for at one time so ardently. As yet he had not had to fight
+any battle. From the moment that he knelt down, he became perfect,
+absolutely oblivious of the flesh, unresisting, undisturbed, as if
+overpowered by the Divine grace. Such ecstasy at God’s approach is well
+known to some young priests: it is a blissful moment when all is hushed,
+and the only desire is but a boundless craving for purity. From no human
+creature had he sought his consolations. He who believes a certain thing
+to be all in all cannot be troubled: and he did believe that God was all
+in all, and that humility, obedience, and chastity were everything.
+He could remember having heard temptation spoken of as an abominable
+torture that tries the holiest. But he would only smile: God had
+never left him. He bore his faith about him thus like a breast-plate
+protecting him from the slightest breath of evil. He could recall how
+he had hidden himself and wept for very love; he knew not whom he loved,
+but he wept for love, for love of some one afar off. The recollection
+never failed to move him. Later on he had decided on becoming a priest
+in order to satisfy that craving for a superhuman affection which was
+his sole torment. He could not see where greater love could be. In that
+state of life he satisfied his being, his inherited predisposition, his
+youthful dreams, his first virile desires. If temptation must come, he
+awaited it with the calmness of the seminarist ignorant of the world. He
+felt that his manhood had been killed in him: it gladdened him to feel
+himself a creature set apart, unsexed, turned from the usual paths of
+life, and, as became a lamb of the Lord, marked with the tonsure.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+While the priest pondered the sun was heating the big church-door.
+Gilded flies buzzed round a large flower that was blooming between two
+of the church-door steps. Abbé Mouret, feeling slightly dazed, was
+at last about to move away, when the big black dog sprang, barking
+violently, towards the iron gate of the little graveyard on the left of
+the church. At the same time a harsh voice called out: ‘Ah! you young
+rascal! So you stop away from school, and I find you in the graveyard!
+Oh, don’t say no: I have been watching you this quarter of an hour.’
+
+As the priest stepped forward he saw Vincent, whom a Brother of
+the Christian Schools was clutching tightly by the ear. The lad was
+suspended, as it were, over a ravine skirting the graveyard, at the
+bottom of which flowed the Mascle, a mountain torrent whose crystal
+waters plunged into the Viorne, six miles away.
+
+‘Brother Archangias!’ softly called the priest, as if to appease the
+fearful man.
+
+The Brother, however, did not release the boy’s ear.
+
+‘Oh, it’s you, Monsieur le Curé?’ he growled. ‘Just fancy, this rascal
+is always poking his nose into the graveyard. I don’t know what he can
+be up to here. I ought to let go of him and let him smash his skull down
+there. It would be what he deserves.’
+
+The lad remained dumb, with his cunning eyes tight shut as he clung to
+the bushes.
+
+‘Take care, Brother Archangias,’ continued the priest, ‘he might slip.’
+
+And he himself helped Vincent to scramble up again.
+
+‘Come, my young friend, what were you doing there?’ he asked. ‘You must
+not go playing in graveyards.’
+
+The lad had opened his eyes, and crept away, fearfully, from the
+Brother, to place himself under the priest’s protection.
+
+‘I’ll tell you,’ he said in a low voice, as he raised his bushy head.
+‘There is a tomtit’s nest in the brambles there, under that rock.
+For over ten days I’ve been watching it, and now the little ones are
+hatched, so I came this morning after serving your mass.’
+
+‘A tomtit’s nest!’ exclaimed Brother Archangias. ‘Wait a bit! wait a
+bit!’
+
+Thereupon he stepped aside, picked a clod of earth off a grave and flung
+it into the brambles. But he missed the nest. Another clod, however,
+more skilfully thrown upset the frail cradle, and precipitated the
+fledglings into the torrent below.
+
+‘Now, perhaps,’ he continued, clapping his hands to shake off the earth
+that soiled them, ‘you won’t come roaming here any more, like a heathen;
+the dead will pull your feet at night if you go walking over them
+again.’
+
+Vincent, who had laughed at seeing the nest dive into the stream, looked
+round him and shrugged his shoulders like one of strong mind.
+
+‘Oh, I’m not afraid,’ he said. ‘Dead folk don’t stir.’
+
+The graveyard, in truth, was not a place to inspire fear. It was a
+barren piece of ground whose narrow paths were smothered by rank weeds.
+Here and there the soil was bossy with mounds. A single tombstone, that
+of Abbé Caffin, brand-new and upright, could be perceived in the centre
+of the ground. Save this, all around there were only broken fragments
+of crosses, withered tufts of box, and old slabs split and moss-eaten.
+There were not two burials a year. Death seemed to make no dwelling in
+that waste spot, whither La Teuse came every evening to fill her apron
+with grass for Desirée’s rabbits. A gigantic cypress tree, standing
+near the gate, alone cast shadow upon the desert field. This cypress,
+a landmark visible for nine miles around, was known to the whole
+countryside as the Solitaire.
+
+‘It’s full of lizards,’ added Vincent, looking at the cracks of the
+church-wall. ‘One could have a fine lark--’
+
+But he sprang out with a bound on seeing the Brother lift his foot. The
+latter proceeded to call the priest’s attention to the dilapidated state
+of the gate, which was not only eaten up with rust, but had one hinge
+off, and the lock broken.
+
+‘It ought to be repaired,’ said he.
+
+Abbé Mouret smiled, but made no reply. Addressing Vincent, who was
+romping with the dog: ‘I say, my boy,’ he asked, ‘do you know where old
+Bambousse is at work this morning?’
+
+The lad glanced towards the horizon. ‘He must be at his Olivettes field
+now,’ he answered, pointing towards the left. ‘But Voriau will show
+your reverence the way. He’s sure to know where his master is.’ And he
+clapped his hands and called: ‘Hie! Voriau! hie!’
+
+The big black dog paused a moment, wagging his tail, and seeking to read
+the urchin’s eyes. Then, barking joyfully, he set off down the slope to
+the village. Abbé Mouret and Brother Archangias followed him, chatting.
+A hundred yards further Vincent surreptitiously bolted, and again glided
+up towards the church, keeping a watchful eye upon them, and ready
+to dart behind a bush if they should look round. With adder-like
+suppleness, he once more glided into the graveyard, that paradise full
+of lizards, nests, and flowers.
+
+Meantime, while Voriau led the way before them along the dusty road,
+Brother Archangias was angrily saying to the priest: ‘Let be! Monsieur
+le Curé, they’re spawn of damnation, those toads are! They ought to
+have their backs broken, to make them pleasing to God. They grow up in
+irreligion, like their fathers. Fifteen years have I been here, and
+not one Christian have I been able to turn out. The minute they quit
+my hands, good-bye! They think of nothing but their land, their vines,
+their olive-trees. Not one ever sets foot in church. Brute beasts they
+are, struggling with their stony fields! Guide them with the stick,
+Monsieur le Curé, yes, the stick!’
+
+Then, after drawing breath, he added with a terrific wave of his hands:
+
+‘Those Artauds, look you, are like the brambles over-running these
+rocks. One stem has been enough to poison the whole district. They cling
+on, they multiply, they live in spite of everything. Nothing short of
+fire from heaven, as at Gomorrha, will clear it all away.’
+
+‘We should never despair of sinners,’ said Abbé Mouret, all inward
+peacefulness, as he leisurely walked on.
+
+‘But these are the devil’s own,’ broke in the Brother still more
+violently. ‘I’ve been a peasant, too. Up to eighteen I dug the earth;
+and later on, when I was at the Training College, I had to sweep, pare
+vegetables, do all the heavy work. It’s not their toilsome labour I find
+fault with. On the contrary, for God prefers the lowly. But the Artauds
+live like beasts! They are like their dogs, they never attend mass, and
+make a mock of the commandments of God and of the Church. They think of
+nothing but their plots of lands, so sweet they are on them!’
+
+Voriau, his tail wagging, kept stopping and moving on again as soon as
+he saw that they still followed him.
+
+‘There certainly are some grievous things going on,’ said Abbé Mouret.
+‘My predecessor, Abbé Caffin--’
+
+‘A poor specimen,’ interrupted the Brother. ‘He came here to us from
+Normandy owing to some disreputable affair. Once here, his sole thought
+was good living; he let everything go to rack and ruin.’
+
+‘Oh, no, Abbé Caffin certainly did what he could; but I must own
+that his efforts were all but barren in results. My own are mostly
+fruitless.’
+
+Brother Archangias shrugged his shoulders. He walked on for a minute
+in silence, swaying his tall bony frame, which looked as if it had
+been roughly fashioned with a hatchet. The sun beat down upon his neck,
+shadowing his hard, sword-edged peasant’s face.
+
+‘Listen to me, Monsieur le Curé,’ he said at last. ‘I am too much
+beneath you to lecture you; but still, I am almost double your age, I
+know this part, and therefore I feel justified in telling you that you
+will gain nothing by gentleness. The catechism, understand, is enough.
+God has no mercy on the wicked. He burns them. Stick to that.’
+
+Then, as Abbé Mouret, whose head remained bowed, did not open his mouth,
+he went on: ‘Religion is leaving the country districts because it
+is made over indulgent. It was respected when it spoke out like an
+unforgiving mistress. I really don’t know what they can teach you now
+in the seminaries. The new priests weep like children with their
+parishioners. God no longer seems the same. I dare say, Monsieur le
+Curé, that you don’t even know your catechism by heart now?’
+
+But the priest, wounded by the imperiousness with which the Brother so
+roughly sought to dominate him, looked up and dryly rejoined:
+
+‘That will do, your zeal is very praiseworthy. But haven’t you something
+to tell me? You came to the parsonage this morning, did you not?’
+
+Thereupon Brother Archangias plumply answered: ‘I had to tell you just
+what I have told you. The Artauds live like pigs. Only yesterday I
+learned that Rosalie, old Bambousse’s eldest daughter, is in the family
+way. It happens with all of them before they get married. And they
+simply laugh at reproaches, as you know.’
+
+‘Yes,’ murmured Abbé Mouret, ‘it is a great scandal. I am just on my way
+to see old Bambousse to speak to him about it; it is desirable that they
+should be married as soon as possible. The child’s father, it seems, is
+Fortune, the Brichets’ eldest son. Unfortunately the Brichets are poor.’
+
+‘That Rosalie, now,’ continued the Brother, ‘is just eighteen. Not four
+years since I still had her under me at school, and she was already a
+gadabout. I have now got her sister Catherine, a chit of eleven, who
+seems likely to become even worse than her elder. One comes across her
+in every corner with that little scamp, Vincent. It’s no good, you may
+pull their ears till they bleed, the woman always crops up in them.
+They carry perdition about with them and are only fit to be thrown on a
+muck-heap. What a splendid riddance if all girls were strangled at their
+birth!’
+
+His loathing, his hatred of woman made him swear like a carter. Abbé
+Mouret, who had been listening to him with unmoved countenance, smiled
+at last at his rabid utterances. He called Voriau, who had strayed into
+a field close by.
+
+‘There, look there!’ cried Brother Archangias, pointing to a group of
+children playing at the bottom of a ravine, ‘there are my young devils,
+who play the truant under pretence of going to help their parents among
+the vines! You may be certain that jade of a Catherine is among them....
+There, didn’t I tell you! Till to-night, Monsieur le Curé. Oh, just you
+wait, you rascals!’
+
+Off he went at a run, his dirty neckband flying over his shoulder, and
+his big greasy cassock tearing up the thistles. Abbé Mouret watched him
+swoop down into the midst of the children, who scattered like frightened
+sparrows. But he succeeded in seizing Catherine and one boy by the ears
+and led them back towards the village, clutching them tightly with his
+big hairy fingers, and overwhelming them with abuse.
+
+The priest walked on again. Brother Archangias sometimes aroused strange
+scruples in his mind. With his vulgarity and coarseness the Brother
+seemed to him the true man of God, free from earthly ties, submissive in
+all to Heaven’s will, humble, blunt, ready to shower abuse upon sin. He,
+the priest, would then feel despair at his inability to rid himself
+more completely of his body; he regretted that he was not ugly, unclean,
+covered with vermin like some of the saints. Whenever the Brother had
+wounded him by some words of excessive coarseness, or by some over-hasty
+churlishness, he would blame himself for his refinement, his innate
+shrinking, as if these were really faults. Ought he not to be dead to
+all the weaknesses of this world? And this time also he smiled sadly as
+he thought how near he had been to losing his temper at the Brother’s
+roughly put lesson. It was pride, it seemed to him, seeking to work his
+perdition by making him despise the lowly. However, in spite of himself,
+he felt relieved at being alone again, at being able to walk on gently,
+reading his breviary, free at last from the grating voice that had
+disturbed his dream of heavenly love.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+The road wound on between fallen rocks, among which the peasants had
+succeeded here and there in reclaiming six or seven yards of chalky
+soil, planted with old olive trees. Under the priest’s feet the dust in
+the deep ruts crackled lightly like snow. At times, as he felt a warmer
+puff upon his face, he would raise his eyes from his book, as if to seek
+whence came this soft caress; but his gaze was vacant, straying without
+perception over the glowing horizon, over the twisted outlines of that
+passion-breathing landscape as it stretched out in the sun before him,
+dry, barren, despairing of the fertilisation for which it longed. And
+he would lower his hat over his forehead to protect himself against
+the warm breeze and tranquilly resume his reading, his cassock raising
+behind him a cloudlet of dust which rolled along the surface of the
+road.
+
+‘Good morning, Monsieur le Curé,’ a passing peasant said to him.
+
+Sounds of digging alongside the cultivated strips of ground again
+roused him from his abstraction. He turned his head and perceived big
+knotty-limbed old men greeting him from among the vines. The Artauds
+were eagerly satisfying their passion for the soil, in the sun’s full
+blaze. Sweating brows appeared from behind the bushes, heaving chests
+were slowly raised, the whole scene was one of ardent fructification,
+through which he moved with the calm step born of ignorance. No
+discomfort came to him from the great travail of love that permeated
+that splendid morning.
+
+‘Steady! Voriau, you mustn’t eat people!’ some one gaily shouted in a
+powerful voice by way of silencing the dog’s loud barks.
+
+Abbé Mouret looked up.
+
+‘Oh! it’s you. Fortune?’ he said, approaching the edge of the field in
+which the young peasant was at work. ‘I was just on my way to speak to
+you.’
+
+Fortune was of the same age as the priest: a bigly built, bold-looking
+young fellow, with skin already hardened. He was clearing a small plot
+of stony heath.
+
+‘What about, Monsieur le Curé?’ he asked.
+
+‘About Rosalie and you,’ replied the priest.
+
+Fortune began to laugh. Perhaps he thought it droll that a priest should
+interest himself in such a matter.
+
+‘Well,’ he muttered, ‘I’m not to blame in it nor she either. So much the
+worse if old Bambousse refuses to let me have her. You saw yourself how
+his dog was trying to bite me just now; he sets him on me.’
+
+Then, as Abbé Mouret was about to continue, old Artaud, called Brichet,
+whom he had not previously perceived, emerged from the shadow of a bush
+behind which he and his wife were eating. He was a little man, withered
+by age, with a cringing face.
+
+‘Your reverence must have been told a pack of lies,’ he exclaimed.
+‘The youngster is quite ready to marry Rosalie. What’s happened isn’t
+anybody’s fault. It has happened to others who got on all right just the
+same. The matter doesn’t rest with us. You ought to speak to Bambousse.
+He’s the one who looks down on us because he’s got money.’
+
+‘Yes, we are very poor,’ whined his wife, a tall lachrymose woman, who
+also rose to her feet. ‘We’ve only this scrap of ground where the very
+devil seems to have been hailing stones. Not a bite of bread from it,
+even. Without you, your reverence, life would be impossible.’
+
+Brichet’s wife was the one solitary devotee of the village. Whenever she
+had been to communion, she would hang about the parsonage, well knowing
+that La Teuse always kept a couple of loaves for her from her last
+baking. At times she was even able to carry off a rabbit or a fowl given
+her by Desirée.
+
+‘There’s no end to the scandals,’ continued the priest. ‘The marriage
+must take place without delay.’
+
+‘Oh! at once! as soon as the others are agreeable,’ said the old woman,
+alarmed about her periodical presents. ‘What do you say, Brichet? we are
+not such bad Christians as to go against his reverence?’
+
+Fortune sniggered.
+
+‘Oh, I’m quite ready,’ he said, ‘and so is Rosalie. I saw her yesterday
+at the back of the mill. We haven’t quarrelled. We stopped there to have
+a bit of a laugh.’
+
+But Abbé Mouret interrupted him: ‘Very well, I am now going to speak to
+Bambousse. He is over there, at Les Olivettes, I believe.’
+
+The priest was going off when the mother asked him what had become of
+her younger son Vincent, who had left in the early morning to serve
+mass. There was a lad now who badly needed his reverence’s admonitions.
+And she walked by the priest’s side for another hundred yards, bemoaning
+her poverty, the failure of the potato crop, the frost which had nipped
+the olive trees, the hot weather which threatened to scorch up the
+scanty corn. Then, as she left him, she solemnly declared that her son
+Fortune always said his prayers, both morning and evening.
+
+Voriau now ran on in front, and suddenly, at a turn in the road, he
+bolted across the fields. The priest then struck into a small path
+leading up a low hill. He was now at Les Olivettes, the most fertile
+spot in the neighbourhood, where the mayor of the commune, Artaud,
+otherwise Bambousse, owned several fields of corn, olive plantations,
+and vines. The dog was now romping round the skirts of a tall brunette,
+who burst into a loud laugh as she caught sight of the priest.
+
+‘Is your father here, Rosalie?’ the latter asked.
+
+‘Yes, just across there,’ she said, pointing with her hand and still
+smiling.
+
+Leaving the part of the field she had been weeding, she walked on before
+him with the vigorous springiness of a hard-working woman, her head
+unshielded from the sun, her neck all sunburnt, her hair black and
+coarse like a horse’s mane. Her green-stained hands exhaled the odour of
+the weeds she had been pulling up.
+
+‘Father,’ she called out, ‘here’s Monsieur le Curé asking for you.’
+
+And there she remained, bold, unblushing, with a sly smile still
+hovering over her features. Bambousse, a stout, sweating, round-faced
+man, left his work and gaily came towards the priest.
+
+‘I’d take my oath you are going to speak to me about the repairs of
+the church,’ he exclaimed, as he clapped his earthy hands. ‘Well, then,
+Monsieur le Curé, I can only say no, it’s impossible. The commune hasn’t
+got the coin. If the Lord provides plaster and tiles, we’ll provide the
+workmen.’
+
+At this jest of his the unbelieving peasant burst into a loud guffaw,
+slapped his thighs, coughed, and almost choked himself.
+
+‘It was not for the church I came,’ replied the Abbé Mouret. ‘I wanted
+to speak to you about your daughter Rosalie.’
+
+‘Rosalie? What has she done to you, then?’ inquired Bambousse, his eyes
+blinking.
+
+The girl was boldly staring at the young priest, scrutinising his white
+hands and slender, feminine neck, as if trying to make him redden.
+He, however, bluntly and with unruffled countenance, as if speaking of
+something quite indifferent, continued:
+
+‘You know what I mean, Bambousse. She must get married.’
+
+‘Oh, that’s it, is it?’ muttered the old man, with a bantering look.
+‘Many thanks for the message. The Brichets sent you, didn’t they? Mother
+Brichet goes to mass, and so you give her a helping hand to marry her
+son--it’s all very fine. But, I’ve got nothing to do with that. It
+doesn’t suit me. That’s all.’
+
+Thereupon the astonished priest represented to him that the scandal
+must be stopped, and that he ought to forgive Fortune, as the latter was
+willing to make reparation for his transgression, and that, lastly, his
+daughter’s reputation demanded a speedy marriage.
+
+‘Ta, ta, ta,’ replied Bambousse, what a lot of words! I shall keep my
+daughter, please understand it. All that’s got nothing to do with me.
+That Fortune is a beggarly pauper, without a brass farthing. What an
+easy job, if one could marry a girl like that! At that rate we should
+have all the young things marrying off morning and night. Thank Heaven!
+I’m not worried about Rosalie: everybody knows what has happened; but
+it makes no difference. She can marry any one she chooses in the
+neighbourhood.’
+
+‘But the child?’ interrupted the priest.
+
+‘The child indeed! There’ll be time enough to think of that when it’s
+born.’
+
+Rosalie, perceiving the turn the priest’s application was taking, now
+thought it proper to ram her fists into her eyes and whimper. And she
+even let herself fall upon the ground.
+
+‘Shut up, will you, you hussy!’ howled her father in a rage. And he
+proceeded to revile her in the coarsest terms, which made her laugh
+silently behind her clenched fists.
+
+‘You won’t shut up? won’t you? Just wait a minute then, you jade!’
+continued old Bambousse. And thereupon he picked up a clod of earth and
+flung it at her. It burst upon her knot of hair, crumbling down her neck
+and smothering her in dust. Dizzy from the blow, she bounded to her feet
+and fled, sheltering her head between her hands. But Bambousse had time
+to fling two more clods at her, and if the first only grazed her left
+shoulder, the next caught her full on the base of the spine, with such
+force that she fell upon her knees.
+
+‘Bambousse!’ cried the priest, as he wrenched from the peasant’s hand a
+number of stones which he had just picked up.
+
+‘Let be, Monsieur le Curé,’ said the other. ‘It was only soft earth.
+I ought to have thrown these stones at her. It’s easy to see that you
+don’t know girls. Hard as nails, all of them. I might duck that one in
+the well, I might break all her bones with a cudgel, and she’d still be
+just the same. But I’ve got my eye on her, and if I catch her!... Ah!
+well, they are all like that.’
+
+He was already comforted. He took a good pull at a big flat bottle of
+wine, encased in wicker-work, which lay warming on the hot ground.
+And breaking once more into a laugh, he said: ‘If I only had a glass,
+Monsieur le Curé, I would offer you some with pleasure.’
+
+‘So then,’ again asked the priest, ‘this marriage?’
+
+‘No, it can’t be; I should get laughed at. Rosalie is a stout wench.
+She’s worth a man to me. I shall have to hire a lad the day she goes
+off.... We can have another talk about it after the vintage. Besides, I
+don’t want to be robbed. Give and take, say I. That’s fair. What do you
+think?’
+
+Nevertheless for another long half-hour did the priest remain there
+preaching to Bambousse, speaking to him of God, and plying him with all
+the reasons suited to the circumstances. But the old man had resumed
+his work; he shrugged his shoulders, jested, and grew more and more
+obstinate. At last, he broke out: ‘But if you asked me for a sack of
+corn, you would give me money, wouldn’t you? So why do you want me to
+let my daughter go for nothing?’
+
+Much discomfited, Abbé Mouret left him. As he went down the path he saw
+Rosalie rolling about under an olive tree with Voriau, who was licking
+her face. With her arms whirling, she kept on repeating: ‘You tickle me,
+you big stupid. Leave off!’
+
+When she perceived the priest, she made an attempt at a blush, settled
+her clothes, and once more raised her fists to her eyes. He, on his
+part, sought to console her by promising to attempt some fresh efforts
+with her father, adding that, in the meantime, she should do nothing
+to aggravate her sin. And then, as she impudently smiled at him, he
+pictured hell, where wicked women burn in torment. And afterwards he
+left her, his duty done, his soul once more full of the serenity which
+enabled him to pass undisturbed athwart the corruptions of the world.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+The morning was becoming terribly hot. In that huge rocky amphitheatre
+the sun kindled a furnace-like glare from the moment when the first
+fine weather began. By the planet’s height in the sky Abbé Mouret now
+perceived that he had only just time to return home if he wished to
+get there by eleven o’clock and escape a scolding from La Teuse. Having
+finished reading his breviary and made his application to Bambousse, he
+swiftly retraced his steps, gazing as he went at his church, now a grey
+spot in the distance, and at the black rigid silhouette which the
+big cypress-tree, the Solitaire, set against the blue sky. Amidst the
+drowsiness fostered by the heat, he thought of how richly that evening
+he might decorate the Lady chapel for the devotions of the month of
+Mary. Before him the road offered a carpet of dust, soft to the tread
+and of dazzling whiteness.
+
+At the Croix-Verte, as the Abbé was about to cross the highway leading
+from Plassans to La Palud, a gig coming down the hill compelled him
+to step behind a heap of stones. Then, as he crossed the open space, a
+voice called to him: ‘Hallo, Serge, my boy!’
+
+The gig had pulled up and from it a man leant over. The priest
+recognised him--he was an uncle of his, Doctor Pascal Rougon, or
+Monsieur Pascal, as the poor folk of Plassans, whom he attended for
+nothing, briefly styled him. Although barely over fifty, he was already
+snowy white, with a big beard and abundant hair, amidst which his
+handsome regular features took an expression of shrewdness and
+benevolence.*
+
+  * See M. Zola’s novels, _Dr. Pascal_ and _The Fortune of the
+    Rougons_.--ED.
+
+‘So you potter about in the dust at this hour of the day?’ he said
+gaily, as he stooped to grasp the Abbé’s hands. ‘You’re not afraid of
+sunstroke?’
+
+‘No more than you are, uncle,’ answered the priest, laughing.
+
+‘Oh, I have the hood of my trap to shield me. Besides, sick folks won’t
+wait. People die at all times, my boy.’ And he went on to relate that
+he was now on his way to old Jeanbernat, the steward of the Paradou, who
+had had an apoplectic stroke the night before. A neighbour, a peasant on
+his way to Plassans market, had summoned him.
+
+‘He must be dead by this time,’ the doctor continued. ‘However, we must
+make sure.... Those old demons are jolly tough, you know.’
+
+He was already raising his whip, when Abbé Mouret stopped him.
+
+‘Stay! what o’clock do you make it, uncle?’
+
+‘A quarter to eleven.’
+
+The Abbé hesitated; he already seemed to hear La Teuse’s terrible voice
+bawling in his ears that his luncheon was getting cold. But he plucked
+up courage and added swiftly: ‘I’ll go with you, uncle. The unhappy man
+may wish to reconcile himself to God in his last hour.’
+
+Doctor Pascal could not restrain a laugh.
+
+‘What, Jeanbernat!’ he said; ‘ah, well! if ever you convert him! Never
+mind, come all the same. The sight of you is enough to cure him.’
+
+The priest got in. The doctor, apparently regretting his jest, displayed
+an affectionate warmth of manner, whilst from time to time clucking his
+tongue by way of encouraging his horse. And out of the corner of his eye
+he inquisitively observed his nephew with the keenness of a scientist
+bent on taking notes. In short kindly sentences he inquired about his
+life, his habits, and the peaceful happiness he enjoyed at Les Artaud.
+And at each satisfactory reply he murmured, as if to himself in a tone
+of reassurance: ‘Come, so much the better; that’s just as it should be!’
+
+He displayed peculiar anxiety about the young priest’s state of health.
+And Serge, greatly surprised, assured him that he was in splendid
+trim, and had neither fits of giddiness or of nausea, nor headaches
+whatsoever.
+
+‘Capital, capital,’ reiterated his uncle Pascal. ‘In spring, you see,
+the blood is active. But you are sound enough. By-the-bye, I saw your
+brother Octave at Marseilles last month. He is off to Paris, where he
+will get a fine berth in a high-class business. The young beggar, a nice
+life he leads.’
+
+‘What life?’ innocently inquired the priest.
+
+To avoid replying the doctor chirruped to his horse, and then went on:
+‘Briefly, everybody is well--your aunt Felicite, your uncle Rougon, and
+the others. Still, that does not hinder our needing your prayers. You
+are the saint of the family, my lad; I rely upon you to save the whole
+lot.’
+
+He laughed, but in such a friendly, good-humoured way that Serge himself
+began to indulge in jocularity.
+
+‘You see,’ continued Pascal, ‘there are some among the lot whom it won’t
+be easy to lead to Paradise. Some nice confessions you’d hear if all
+came in turn. For my part, I can do without their confessions; I
+watch them from a distance; I have got their records at home among my
+botanical specimens and medical notes. Some day I shall be able to draw
+up a wondrously interesting diagram. We shall see; we shall see!’
+
+He was forgetting himself, carried away by his enthusiasm for science. A
+glance at his nephew’s cassock pulled him up short.
+
+‘As for you, you’re a parson,’ he muttered; ‘you did well; a parson’s a
+very happy man. The calling absorbs you, eh? And so you’ve taken to the
+good path. Well! you would never have been satisfied otherwise. Your
+relatives, starting like you, have done a deal of evil, and still they
+are unsatisfied. It’s all logically perfect, my lad. A priest completes
+the family. Besides, it was inevitable. Our blood was bound to run
+to that. So much the better for you; you have had the most luck.’
+Correcting himself, however, with a strange smile, he added: ‘No, it’s
+your sister Desirée who has had the best luck of all.’
+
+He whistled, whipped up his horse, and changed the conversation. The
+gig, after climbing a somewhat steep slope, was threading its way
+through desolate ravines; at last it reached a tableland, where the
+hollow road skirted an interminable and lofty wall. Les Artaud had
+disappeared; they found themselves in the heart of a desert.
+
+‘We are getting near, are we not?’ asked the priest.
+
+‘This is the Paradou,’ replied the doctor, pointing to the wall.
+‘Haven’t you been this way before, then? We are not three miles from Les
+Artaud. A splendid property it must have been, this Paradou. The park
+wall this side alone is quite a mile and a half long. But for over a
+hundred years it’s all been running wild.’
+
+‘There are some fine trees,’ observed the Abbé, as he looked up in
+astonishment at the luxuriant mass of foliage which jutted over.
+
+‘Yes, that part is very fertile. In fact, the park is a regular forest
+amidst the bare rocks which surround it. The Mascle, too, rises there; I
+have heard four or five springs mentioned, I fancy.’
+
+In short sentences, interspersed with irrelevant digressions, he then
+related the story of the Paradou, according to the current legend of
+the countryside. In the time of Louis XV., a great lord had erected
+a magnificent palace there, with vast gardens, fountains, trickling
+streams, and statues--a miniature Versailles hidden away among the
+stones, under the full blaze of the southern sun. But he had there spent
+but one season with a lady of bewitching beauty, who doubtless died
+there, as none had ever seen her leave. Next year the mansion was
+destroyed by fire, the park doors were nailed up, the very loopholes of
+the walls were filled with mould; and thus, since that remote time, not
+a glance had penetrated that vast enclosure which covered the whole of
+one of the plateaux of the Garrigue hills.
+
+‘There can be no lack of nettles there,’ laughingly said Abbé Mouret.
+‘Don’t you find that the whole wall reeks of damp, uncle?’
+
+A pause followed, and he asked:
+
+‘And whom does the Paradou belong to now?’
+
+‘Why, nobody knows,’ the doctor answered. ‘The owner did come here once,
+some twenty years ago. But he was so scared by the sight of this
+adders’ nest that he has never turned up since. The real master is the
+caretaker, that old oddity, Jeanbernat, who has managed to find quarters
+in a lodge where the stones still hang together. There it is, see--that
+grey building yonder, with its windows all smothered in ivy.’
+
+The gig passed by a lordly iron gate, ruddy with rust, and lined inside
+with a layer of boards. The wide dry throats were black with brambles. A
+hundred yards further on was the lodge inhabited by Jeanbernat. It stood
+within the park, which it overlooked. But the old keeper had apparently
+blocked up that side of his dwelling, and had cleared a little garden
+by the road. And there he lived, facing southwards, with his back
+turned upon the Paradou, as if unaware of the immensity of verdure that
+stretched away behind him.
+
+The young priest jumped down, looking inquisitively around him and
+questioning the doctor, who was hurriedly fastening the horse to a ring
+fixed in the wall.
+
+‘And the old man lives all alone in this out-of-the-way hole?’ he asked.
+
+‘Yes, quite alone,’ replied his uncle, adding, however, the next minute:
+‘Well, he has with him a niece whom he had to take in, a queer girl,
+a regular savage. But we must make haste. The whole place looks
+death-like.’
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+The house with its shutters closed seemed wrapped in slumber as it stood
+there in the midday sun, amidst the hum of the big flies that swarmed
+all up the ivy to the roof tiles. The sunlit ruin was steeped in happy
+quietude. When the doctor had opened the gate of the narrow garden,
+which was enclosed by a lofty quickset hedge, there, in the shadow cast
+by a wall, they found Jeanbernat, tall and erect, and calmly smoking his
+pipe, as in the deep silence he watched his vegetables grow.
+
+‘What, are you up then, you humbug?’ exclaimed the astonished doctor.
+
+‘So you were coming to bury me, were you?’ growled the old man harshly.
+‘I don’t want anybody. I bled myself.’
+
+He stopped short as he caught sight of the priest, and assumed so
+threatening an expression that the doctor hastened to intervene.
+
+‘This is my nephew,’ he said; ‘the new Curé of Les Artaud--a good
+fellow, too. Devil take it, we haven’t been bowling over the roads at
+this hour of the day to eat you, Jeanbernat.’
+
+The old man calmed down a little.
+
+‘I don’t want any shavelings here,’ he grumbled. ‘They’re enough to make
+one croak. Mind, doctor, no priests, and no physics when I go off, or we
+shall quarrel. Let him come in, however, as he is your nephew.’
+
+Abbé Mouret, struck dumb with amazement, could not speak a word. He
+stood there in the middle of the path scanning that strange solitaire,
+with scorched, brick-tinted face, and limbs all withered and twisted
+like a bundle of ropes, who seemed to bear the burden of his eighty
+years with a scornful contempt for life. When the doctor attempted to
+feel his pulse, his ill-humour broke out afresh.
+
+‘Do leave me in peace! I bled myself with my knife, I tell you. It’s all
+over, now. Who was the fool of a peasant who disturbed you? The doctor
+here, and the priest as well, why not the mutes too! Well, it can’t be
+helped, people will be fools. It won’t prevent us from having a drink,
+eh?’
+
+He fetched a bottle and three glasses, and stood them on an old table
+which he brought out into the shade. Then, having filled the glasses
+to the brim, he insisted on clinking them. His anger had given place to
+jeering cheerfulness.
+
+‘It won’t poison you, Monsieur le Curé,’ he said. ‘A glass of good
+wine isn’t a sin. Upon my word, however, this is the first time I ever
+clinked a glass with a cassock, but no offence to you. That poor Abbé
+Caffin, your predecessor, refused to argue with me. He was afraid.’
+
+Jeanbernat gave vent to a hearty laugh, and then went on: ‘Just fancy,
+he had pledged himself that he would prove to me that God exists.
+So, whenever I met him, I defied him to do it; and he sloped off
+crestfallen, I can tell you.’
+
+‘What, God does not exist!’ cried Abbé Mouret, roused from his silence.
+
+‘Oh! just as you please,’ mockingly replied Jeanbernat. ‘We’ll begin
+together all over again, if it’s any pleasure to you. But I warn you
+that I’m a tough hand at it. There are some thousands of books in one of
+the rooms upstairs, which were rescued from the fire at the Paradou: all
+the philosophers of the eighteenth century, a whole heap of old books
+on religion. I’ve learned some fine things from them. I’ve been reading
+them these twenty years. Marry! you’ll find you’ve got some one who can
+talk, Monsieur le Curé.’
+
+He had risen, slowly waving his hand towards the surrounding horizon,
+to the earth and to the sky, and repeating solemnly: ‘There’s nothing,
+nothing, nothing. When the sun is snuffed out, all will be at an end.’
+
+Doctor Pascal nudged Abbé Mouret with his elbow. With blinking eyes he
+was curiously observing the old man and nodding approvingly in order to
+induce him to talk. ‘So you are a materialist, Jeanbernat?’ he said.
+
+‘Oh, I am only a poor man,’ replied the old fellow, relighting his pipe.
+‘When Count de Corbiere, whose foster-brother I was, died from a fall
+from his horse, his children sent me here to look after this park of the
+Sleeping Beauty, in order to get rid of me. I was sixty years old then,
+and I thought I was about done. But death forgot me; and I had to make
+myself a burrow. If one lives all alone, look you, one gets to see
+things in rather a queer fashion. The trees are no longer trees, the
+earth puts on the ways of a living being, the stones seem to tell you
+tales. A parcel of rubbish, eh? But I know some secrets that would
+fairly stagger you. Besides, what do you think there is to do in
+this devilish desert? I read the old books; it was more amusing than
+shooting. The Count, who used to curse like a heathen, was always saying
+to me: “Jeanbernat, my boy, I fully expect to meet you again in the hot
+place, so that you will be able to serve me there as you have up here.”’
+
+Once more he waved his hand to the horizon and added: ‘You hear,
+nothing; there’s nothing. It’s all foolery.’
+
+Dr. Pascal began to laugh.
+
+‘A pleasant piece of foolery, at any rate,’ he said. ‘Jeanbernat, you
+are a deceiver. I suspect you are in love, in spite of your affectation
+of being _blasé_. You were speaking very tenderly of the trees and
+stones just now.’
+
+‘Oh, no, I assure you,’ murmured the old man, ‘I have done with that.
+At one time, it’s true, when I first knew you and used to go herborising
+with you, I was stupid enough to love all sorts of things I came across
+in that huge liar, the country. Fortunately, the old volumes have killed
+all that. I only wish my garden was smaller; I don’t go out into the
+road twice a year. You see that bench? That’s where I spend all my time,
+just watching my lettuces grow.’
+
+‘And what about your rounds in the park?’ broke in the doctor.
+
+‘In the park!’ repeated Jeanbernat, with a look of profound surprise.
+‘Why, it’s more than twelve years since I set foot in it! What do you
+suppose I could do inside that cemetery? It’s too big. It’s stupid, what
+with those endless trees and moss everywhere and broken statues, and
+holes in which one might break one’s neck at every step. The last time I
+went in there, it was so dark under the trees, there was such a stink of
+wild flowers, and such queer breezes blew along the paths, that I felt
+almost afraid. So I have shut myself up to prevent the park coming in
+here. A patch of sunlight, three feet of lettuce before me, and a
+big hedge shutting out all the view, why, that’s more than enough for
+happiness. Nothing, that’s what I’d like, nothing at all, something so
+tiny that nothing from outside could come to disturb me. Seven feet of
+earth, if you like, just to be able to croak on my back.’
+
+He struck the table with his fist, and suddenly raised his voice to call
+out to Abbé Mouret: ‘Come, just another glass, your reverence. The old
+gentleman isn’t at the bottom of the bottle, you know.’
+
+The priest felt ill at ease. To lead back to God that singular old man,
+whose reason seemed to him to be strangely disordered, appeared a task
+beyond his powers. He now remembered certain bits of gossip he had
+heard from La Teuse about the Philosopher, as the peasants of Les Artaud
+dubbed Jeanbernat. Scraps of scandalous stories vaguely floated in his
+memory. He rose, making a sign to the doctor that he wished to leave
+this house, where he seemed to inhale an odour of damnation. But, in
+spite of his covert fears, a strange feeling of curiosity made him
+linger. He simply walked to the end of the garden, throwing a searching
+glance into the vestibule, as if to see beyond it, behind the walls. All
+he could perceive, however, through the gaping doorway, was the black
+staircase. So he came back again, and sought for some hole, some glimpse
+of that sea of foliage which he knew was near by the mighty murmur that
+broke upon the house, like the sound of waves.
+
+‘And is the little one well?’ asked the doctor, taking up his hat.
+
+‘Pretty well,’ answered Jeanbernat. ‘She’s never here. She often
+disappears all day long--still, she may be in the upstair rooms.’
+
+He raised his head and called: ‘Albine! Albine!’ Then with a shrug of
+his shoulders, he added: ‘Yes, my word, she is a nice hussy.... Well,
+till next time, Monsieur le Curé. I’m always at your disposal.’
+
+Abbé Mouret, however, had no time to accept the Philosopher’s challenge.
+A door suddenly opened at the end of the vestibule; a dazzling breach
+was made in the black darkness of the wall, and through the breach came
+a vision of a virgin forest, a great depth of woodland, beneath a
+flood of sunbeams. In that sudden blaze of light the priest distinctly
+perceived certain far-away things: a large yellow flower in the middle
+of a lawn, a sheet of water falling from a lofty rock, a colossal tree
+filled with a swarm of birds; and all this steeped, lost, blazing in
+such a tangle of greenery, such riotous luxuriance of vegetation, that
+the whole horizon seemed one great burst of shooting foliage. The door
+banged to, and everything vanished.
+
+‘Ah! the jade!’ cried Jeanbernat, ‘she was in the Paradou again!’
+
+Albine was now laughing on the threshold of the vestibule. She wore
+an orange-coloured skirt, with a large red kerchief fastened round her
+waist, thus looking like some gipsy in holiday garb. And she went on
+laughing, her head thrown back, her bosom swelling with mirth, delighted
+with her flowers, wild flowers which she had plaited into her fair hair,
+fastened to her neck, her bodice, and her bare slender golden arms. She
+seemed like a huge nosegay, exhaling a powerful perfume.
+
+‘Ay, you are a beauty!’ growled the old man. ‘You smell of weeds enough
+to poison one--would any one think she was sixteen, that doll?’
+
+Albine remained unabashed, however, and laughed still more heartily.
+Doctor Pascal, who was her great friend, let her kiss him.
+
+‘So you are not frightened in the Paradou?’ he asked.
+
+‘Frightened? What of?’ she said, her eyes wide open with astonishment.
+‘The walls are too high, no one can get in. There’s only myself. It is
+my garden, all my very own. A fine big one, too. I haven’t found out
+where it ends yet.’
+
+‘And the animals?’ interrupted the doctor.
+
+‘The animals? Oh! they don’t hurt; they all know me well.’
+
+‘But it is very dark under the trees?’
+
+‘Course! there’s shade: if there were none, the sun would burn my face
+up. It is very pleasant in the shade among the leaves.’
+
+She flitted about, filling the little garden with the rustling sweep of
+her skirts, and scattering round the pungent odour of wild flowers which
+clung to her. She had smiled at Abbé Mouret without trace of shyness,
+without heed of the astonished look with which he observed her. The
+priest had stepped aside. That fair-haired maid, with long oval face,
+glowing with life, seemed to him to be the weird mysterious offspring of
+the forest of which he had caught a glimpse in a sheet of sunlight.
+
+‘I say, I have got some blackbird nestlings; would you like them?’
+Albine asked the doctor.
+
+‘No, thanks,’ he answered, laughing. ‘You should give them to the Curé’s
+sister; she is very fond of pets. Good day, Jeanbernat.’
+
+Albine, however, had fastened on the priest.
+
+‘You are the vicar of Les Artaud, aren’t you? You have a sister? I’ll go
+and see her. Only you must not speak to me about God. My uncle will not
+have it.’
+
+‘You bother us, be off,’ exclaimed Jeanbernat, shrugging his shoulders.
+Then bounding away like a goat, dropping a shower of flowers behind her,
+she disappeared. The slam of a door was heard, and from behind the
+house came bursts of laughter, which died away in the distance like the
+scampering rush of some mad animal let loose among the grass.
+
+‘You’ll see, she will end by sleeping in the Paradou,’ muttered the old
+man with indifference.
+
+And as he saw his visitors off, he added: ‘If you should find me dead
+one of these fine days, doctor, just do me the favour of pitching me
+into the muck-pit there, behind my lettuces. Good evening, gentlemen.’
+
+He let the wooden gate which closed the hedge fall to again, and the
+house assumed once more its aspect of happy peacefulness in the noonday
+sunlight, amidst the buzzing of the big flies that swarmed all up the
+ivy even to the roof tiles.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+The gig once more rolled along the road skirting the Paradou’s
+interminable wall. Abbé Mouret, still silent, scanned with upturned eyes
+the huge boughs which stretched over that wall, like the arms of giants
+hidden there. All sorts of sounds came from the park: rustling of wings,
+quivering of leaves, furtive bounds at which branches snapped, mighty
+sighs that bowed the young shoots--a vast breath of life sweeping over
+the crests of a nation of trees. At times, as he heard a birdlike note
+that seemed like a human laugh, the priest turned his head, as if he
+felt uneasy.
+
+‘A queer girl!’ said his uncle as he eased the reins a little. ‘She was
+nine years old when she took up her quarters with that old heathen. Some
+brother of his had ruined himself, though in what I can’t remember. The
+little one was at school somewhere when her father killed himself. She
+was even quite a little lady, up to reading, embroidery, chattering, and
+strumming on the piano. And such a coquette too! I saw her arrive with
+open-worked stockings, embroidered skirts, frills, cuffs, a heap of
+finery. Ah, well! the finery didn’t last long!’
+
+He laughed. A big stone nearly upset the gig.
+
+‘It will be lucky if I don’t leave a wheel in this cursed road!’ he
+muttered. ‘Hold on, my boy.’
+
+The wall still stretched beside them: the priest still listened.
+
+‘As you may well imagine,’ continued the doctor, ‘the Paradou, what with
+its sun, its stones, and its thistles, would wreck a whole outfit every
+day. Three or four mouthfuls, that’s all it made of all the little one’s
+beautiful dresses. She used to come back naked. Now she dresses like
+a savage. To-day she was rather presentable; but sometimes she has
+scarcely anything on beyond her shoes and chemise. Did you hear her? The
+Paradou is hers. The very day after she came she took possession of it.
+She lives in it; jumps out of the window when Jeanbernat locks the door,
+bolts off in spite of all, goes nobody knows whither, buries herself in
+some invisible burrows known only to herself. She must have a fine time
+in that wilderness.’
+
+‘Hark, uncle!’ interrupted Abbé Mouret. ‘Isn’t that some animal running
+behind the wall?’
+
+Uncle Pascal listened.
+
+‘No,’ he said after a minute’s silence, ‘it is the rattle of the trap on
+the stones. No, the child doesn’t play the piano now. I believe she has
+even forgotten how to read. Just picture to yourself a young lady gone
+back to a state of primevalness, turned out to play on a desert island.
+My word, if ever you get to know of a girl who needs proper bringing up,
+I advise you not to entrust her to Jeanbernat. He has a most primitive
+way of letting nature alone. When I ventured to speak to him about
+Albine he answered me that he must not prevent trees from growing
+as they pleased. He says he is for the normal development of
+temperaments.... All the same, they are very interesting, both of them.
+I never come this way without paying them a visit.’
+
+The gig was now emerging from the hollowed road. At this point the wall
+of the Paradou turned and wound along the crest of the hills as far
+as one could see. As Abbé Mouret turned to take a last look at that
+grey-hued barrier, whose impenetrable austerity had at last begun to
+annoy him, a rustling of shaken boughs was heard and a clump of young
+birch trees seemed to bow in greeting from above the wall.
+
+‘I knew some animal was running behind,’ said the priest.
+
+But, although nobody could be seen, though nothing was visible in the
+air above save the birches rocking more and more violently, they heard a
+clear, laughing voice call out: ‘Good-bye, doctor! good-bye, Monsieur le
+Curé! I am kissing the tree, and the tree is sending you my kisses.’
+
+‘Why! it is Albine,’ exclaimed Doctor Pascal. ‘She must have followed
+the trap at a run. Jumping over bushes is mere play to her, the little
+elf!’
+
+And he in his turn shouted out:
+
+‘Good-bye, my pet! How tall you must be to bow like that.’
+
+The laughter grew louder, the birches bowed still lower, scattering
+their leaves around even on the hood of the gig.
+
+‘I am as tall as the trees; all the leaves that fall are kisses,’
+replied the voice now mellowed by distance, so musical, so merged into
+the rippling whispers of the park, that the young priest was thrilled.
+
+The road grew better. On coming down the slope Les Artaud reappeared in
+the midst of the scorched plain. When the gig reached the turning to
+the village, Abbé Mouret would not let his uncle drive him back to the
+vicarage. He jumped down, saying:
+
+‘No, thanks, I prefer to walk: it will do me good.’
+
+‘Well, just as you like,’ at last answered the doctor. And with a clasp
+of the hand, he added: ‘Well, if you only had such parishioners as that
+old brute Jeanbernat, you wouldn’t often be disturbed. However, you
+yourself wanted to come. And mind you keep well. At the slightest ache,
+night or day, send for me. You know I attend all the family gratis....
+There, good-bye, my boy.’
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+Abbé Mouret felt more at ease when he found himself again alone, walking
+along the dusty road. The stony fields brought him back to his dream of
+austerity, of an inner life spent in a desert. From the trees all along
+the sunken road disturbing moisture had fallen on his neck, which now
+the burning sun was drying. The sight of the lean almond trees, the
+scanty corn crops, the weak vines, on either side of the way, soothed
+him, delivered him from the perturbation into which the lusty atmosphere
+of the Paradou had thrown him. Amid the blinding glare that flowed from
+heaven over the bare land, Jeanbernat’s blasphemies no longer cast even
+a shadow. A thrill of pleasure ran through the priest as he raised his
+head and caught sight of the solitaire’s motionless bar-like silhouette
+and the pink patch of tiles on the church.
+
+But, as he walked on, fresh anxiety beset the Abbé. La Teuse would give
+him a fine reception; for his luncheon must have been waiting nearly two
+hours for him. He pictured her terrible face, the flood of words with
+which she would greet him, the angry clatter of kitchen ware which he
+would hear the whole afternoon. When he had got through Les Artaud,
+his fear became so lively that he hesitated, full of trepidation, and
+wondered if it would not be better to go round and reach the parsonage
+by way of the church. But, while he deliberated, La Teuse herself
+appeared on the doorstep of the parsonage, her cap all awry, and her
+hands on her hips. With drooping head he had perforce to climb the
+slope under her storm-laden gaze, which he could feel weighing upon his
+shoulders.
+
+‘I believe I am rather late, my good Teuse,’ he stammered, as he turned
+the path’s last bend.
+
+La Teuse waited till he stood quite close before her. She then gave him
+a furious glance, and, without a word, turned and stalked before him
+into the dining-room, banging her big heels upon the floor-tiles and so
+rigid with ire that she hardly limped at all.
+
+‘I have had so many things to do,’ began the priest, scared by this dumb
+reception. ‘I have been running about all the morning.’
+
+But she cut him short with another look, so fixed, so full of anger,
+that he felt his legs give way under him. He sat down, and began to eat.
+She waited on him in the sharp, mechanical manner of an automaton, all
+but breaking the plates with the violence with which she set them down.
+The silence became so awful that, choking with emotion, he was unable to
+swallow his third mouthful.
+
+‘My sister has had her luncheon?’ he asked. ‘Quite right of her.
+Luncheon should always be served whenever I am kept out.’
+
+No answer came. La Teuse stood there waiting to remove his plate as
+soon as he should have emptied it. Thereupon, feeling that he could
+not possibly eat with those implacable eyes crushing him, he pushed his
+plate away. This angry gesture acted on La Teuse like a whip stroke,
+rousing her from her obstinate stiffness. She fairly jumped.
+
+‘Ah! that’s how it is!’ she exclaimed. ‘There you are again, losing your
+temper! Very well, I am off; you can pay my fare, so that I may go back
+home. I have had enough of Les Artaud, and your church, and everything
+else!’
+
+She took off her apron with trembling hands.
+
+‘You must have seen that I didn’t wish to say anything to you. A nice
+life, indeed! Only mountebanks do such things, Monsieur le Curé! This
+is eleven o’clock, ain’t it! Aren’t you ashamed of sitting at table when
+it’s almost two o’clock? It’s not like a Christian, no, it is not like a
+Christian!’
+
+And, taking her stand before him, she went on: ‘Well, where do you come
+from? whom have you seen? what business can have kept you? If only you
+were a child you would have the whip. It isn’t the place for a priest to
+be, on the roads in the blazing sun like a tramp without a roof to put
+over his head. A fine state you are in, with your shoes all white and
+your cassock smothered in dust! Who will brush your cassock for you?
+Who will buy you another one? Speak out, will you; tell me what you have
+been doing! My word! if everybody didn’t know you, they would end by
+thinking queer things about you. And shall I tell you? Why, I won’t say
+but what you may have been up to something wrong. When folks lunch at
+such hours they are capable of anything!’
+
+Abbé Mouret let the storm blow over him. At the old servant’s wrathful
+words he experienced a kind of relief.
+
+‘Come, my good Teuse,’ he said, ‘you will first put your apron on
+again.’
+
+‘No, no,’ she cried, ‘it’s all over, I am going.’
+
+But he got up and, laughing, tied her apron round her waist. She
+struggled against him and stuttered: ‘I tell you no! You are a wheedler.
+I can see through your game, I see you want to come it over me with your
+honeyed words. Where did you go? We’ll see afterwards.’
+
+He gaily sat down to table again like a man who has gained a victory.
+
+‘First, I must be allowed to eat. I am dying with hunger,’ said he.
+
+‘No doubt,’ she murmured, her pity moved. ‘Is there any common sense
+in it? Would you like me to fry you a couple of eggs? It would not take
+long. Well, if you have enough. But everything is cold! And I had taken
+such pains with your aubergines! Nice they are now! They look like old
+shoe-leather. Luckily you haven’t got a tender tooth like poor Monsieur
+Caffin. Yes, you have some good points, I don’t deny it.’
+
+Thus chattering, she waited on him with all a mother’s care. After he
+had finished she ran to the kitchen to see if the coffee was still warm.
+She frisked about and limped most outrageously in her delight at having
+made things up with him. As a rule Abbé Mouret fought shy of coffee,
+which always upset his nervous system; but on this occasion, to ratify
+the conclusion of peace, he took the cup she brought him. And as he
+lingered at table she sat down opposite him and repeated gently, like a
+woman tortured by curiosity:
+
+‘Where have you been, Monsieur le Curé?’
+
+‘Well,’ he answered with a smile, ‘I have seen the Brichets, I have
+spoken to Bambousse.’
+
+Thereupon he had to relate to her what the Brichets had said, what
+Bambousse had decided, and how they looked, and where they were at work.
+When he repeated to her the answer of Rosalie’s father, ‘Of course!’ she
+exclaimed, ‘if the child should die her mishap would go for nothing.’
+And clasping her hands with a look of envious admiration she added, ‘How
+you must have chattered, your reverence! More than half the day spent
+to obtain such a fine result! You took it easy coming home? It must have
+been very hot on the road?’
+
+The Abbé, who by this time had risen, made no answer. He had been on
+the point of speaking about the Paradou, and asking for some information
+concerning it. But a fear of being flooded with eager questions, and a
+kind of vague unavowed shame, made him keep silence respecting his visit
+to Jeanbernat. He cut all further questions short by asking:
+
+‘Where is my sister? I don’t hear her.’
+
+‘Come along, sir,’ said La Teuse, beginning to laugh, and raising her
+finger to her lips.
+
+They went into the next room, a country drawing-room, hung with faded
+wall-paper showing large grey flowers, and furnished with four armchairs
+and a sofa, covered with horse-hair. On the sofa now slept Desirée,
+stretched out at full length, with her head resting on her clenched
+hands. The pronounced curve of her bosom was raised somewhat by her
+upstretched arms, bare to the elbows. She was breathing somewhat
+heavily, her red lips parted, and thus showing her teeth.
+
+‘Lord! isn’t she sleeping sound!’ whispered La Teuse. ‘She didn’t even
+hear you pitching into me just now. Well, she must be precious tired.
+Just fancy, she was cleaning up her yard till nearly noon. And when she
+had eaten something, she came and dropped down there like a shot. She
+has not stirred since.’
+
+For a moment the priest gazed lovingly at her. ‘We must let her have as
+much rest as she wants,’ he said.
+
+‘Of course. Isn’t it a pity she’s such an innocent? Just look at those
+big arms! Whenever I dress her I always think what a fine woman she
+would have made. Ay, she would have brought you some splendid
+nephews, sir. Don’t you think she is like that stone lady in Plassans
+corn-market?’
+
+She spoke thus of a Cybele stretched upon sheaves of wheat, the work
+of one of Puget’s pupils, which was carved on the frontal of the market
+building. Without replying, however, Abbé Mouret gently pushed her out
+of the room, and begged her to make as little noise as possible. Till
+evening, therefore, perfect silence settled on the parsonage. La Teuse
+finished her washing in the shed. The priest, seated at the bottom of
+the little garden, his breviary fallen on his lap, remained absorbed
+in pious thoughts, while all around him rosy petals rained from the
+blossoming peach-trees.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+About six o’clock there came a sudden wakening. A noise of doors opening
+and closing, accompanied by bursts of laughter, shook the whole house.
+Desirée appeared, her hair all down and her arms still half bare.
+
+‘Serge! Serge!’ she called.
+
+And catching sight of her brother in the garden, she ran up to him and
+sat down for a minute on the ground at his feet, begging him to follow
+her:
+
+‘Do come and see the animals! You haven’t seen the animals yet, have
+you? If you only knew how beautiful they are now!’
+
+She had to beg very hard, for the yard rather scared him. But when he
+saw tears in Desirée’s eyes, he yielded. She threw herself on his neck
+in a sudden puppy-like burst of glee, laughing more than ever, without
+attempting to dry her cheeks.
+
+‘Oh! how nice you are!’ she stammered, as she dragged him off. ‘You
+shall see the hens, the rabbits, the pigeons, and my ducks which have
+got fresh water, and my goat, whose room is as clean as mine now. I have
+three geese and two turkeys, you know. Come quick. You shall see all.’
+
+Desirée was then twenty-two years old. Reared in the country by her
+nurse, a peasant woman of Saint-Eutrope, she had grown up anyhow. Her
+brain void of all serious thoughts, she had thriven on the fat soil
+and open air of the country, developing physically but never mentally,
+growing into a lovely animal--white, with rosy blood and firm skin. She
+was not unlike a high-bred donkey endowed with the power of laughter.
+Although she dabbled about from morning till night, her delicate hands
+and feet, the supple outlines of her hips, the bourgeois refinement of
+her maiden form remained unimpaired; so that she was in truth a creature
+apart--neither lady nor peasant--but a girl nourished by the soil, with
+the broad shoulders and narrow brow of a youthful goddess.
+
+Doubtless it was by reason of her weak intellect that she was drawn
+towards animals. She was never happy save with them; she understood
+their language far better than that of mankind, and looked after them
+with motherly affection. Her reasoning powers were deficient, but
+in lieu thereof she had an instinct which put her on a footing of
+intelligence with them. At their very first cry of pain she knew what
+ailed them; she would choose dainties upon which they would pounce
+greedily. A single gesture from her quelled their squabbles. She seemed
+to know their good or their evil character at a glance; and related
+such long tales about the tiniest chick, with such an abundance and
+minuteness of detail, as to astound those to whom one chicken was
+exactly like any other. Her farmyard had thus become a country, as it
+were, over which she reigned; a country complex in its organisation,
+disturbed by rebellions, peopled by the most diverse creatures whose
+records were known to her alone. So accurate was her instinct that she
+detected the unfertile eggs in a sitting, and foretold the number of a
+litter of rabbits.
+
+When, at sixteen, Desirée 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 Desirée 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
+Desirée 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 Abbé Mouret half choked. The dung was heaped against the
+graveyard wall in a huge smoking mound.
+
+‘What a pile, eh?’ continued Desirée, 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,’ Desirée 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 Desirée. ‘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 Desirée 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 Abbé 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, Desirée, 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. Desirée
+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 Abbé, 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. Desirée 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. Desirée called them by their names, and talked pettingly
+to them; while Abbé 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 Desirée 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 Desirée 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 Desirée, 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 Desirée 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 Desirée 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 Abbé 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
+Desirée 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,’ Desirée 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. Desirée, 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 Abbé 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 Abbé 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 Curé, 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 Abbé 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 Desirée’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. Abbé Mouret, hat in hand,
+delighted with the coolness, once more felt quietude descend upon him.
+
+‘Monsieur le Curé! 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 Curé?’ 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 Curé.’
+
+At this moment Desirée, who also had finished her soup, sedately and in
+silence, rose and followed La Teuse to the kitchen. The Brother, then
+left alone with Abbé 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 Abbé 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 Desirée 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. Desirée clapped her hands, enchanted, seized with strange
+emotion at the sight of these hitherto unknown creatures.
+
+‘It’s that Paradou girl!’ exclaimed the Abbé 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.’
+
+Abbé 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. Abbé 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 Desirée 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 curé 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 Curé,’ 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.
+
+Abbé 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.
+Desirée, 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 Abbé, 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 Abbé 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 Abbé 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
+Abbé 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.’
+
+Abbé 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 Abbé 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.
+
+Abbé 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 Desirée had laid the blackbird’s nest. You are not going to bed
+here, I suppose, mademoiselle,’ she said. ‘Do leave those nasty things.’
+
+Desirée, 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 Abbé
+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 Desirée, 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 Abbé 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 Abbé 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 Abbé made an apologetic gesture. He had only been at Les Artaud a
+little while, he must follow the customs.
+
+‘Whenever you like, Monsieur le Curé, 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 Abbé 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 Curé?’ 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.’
+
+Abbé 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 Curé,
+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 Abbé 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 Abbé 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 Curé,’ 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.
+Abbé 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.
+
+Abbé 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 Abbé 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 Abbé 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.
+
+Abbé 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,
+Abbé 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 Abbé 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 Abbé 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
+
+Abbé Mouret’s bedroom, which occupied a corner of the vicarage, was a
+spacious one, having two large square windows; one of which opened above
+Desirée’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.
+
+Abbé 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.
+
+Abbé 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 Abbé 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 Abbé 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
+Abbé 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 Desirée’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 Abbé
+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. Abbé 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 Desirée’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,
+Abbé 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 Desirée’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 Abbé Mouret remembered: The fever had struck him in
+Desirée’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 Abbé 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.’
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+And there, indeed, the sunlight was. When Albine had opened the
+shutters, behind the large curtains, the genial yellow glow once more
+warmed a patch of the white calico. But that which impelled Serge to sit
+up in bed was the sight of the shadowy bough, the branch that for him
+heralded the return of life. All the resuscitated earth, with its wealth
+of greenery, its waters, and its belts of hills, was in that greenish
+blur that quivered with the faintest breath of air. It no longer
+disturbed him; he greedily watched it rocking, and hungered for the
+fortified powers of the vivifying sap which to him it symbolised.
+Albine, happy once more, exclaimed, as she supported him in her arms:
+‘Ah! my dear Serge, the winter is over. Now we are saved.’
+
+He lay down again, his eyes already brighter, and his voice clearer.
+‘To-morrow I shall be very strong,’ he said. ‘You shall draw back the
+curtains. I want to see everything.’
+
+But on the morrow he was seized with childish fear. He would not hear of
+the windows being opened wide. ‘By-and-by,’ he muttered, ‘later on.’ He
+was fearful, he dreaded the first beam of light that would flash upon
+his eyes. Evening came on, and still he had been unable to make up
+his mind to look upon the sun. He remained thus all day long, his face
+turned towards the curtains, watching on their transparent tissue the
+pallor of morn, the glow of noon, the violet tint of twilight, all
+the hues, all the emotions of the sky. There were pictured even the
+quiverings of the warm air at the light stroke of a bird’s wing, even
+the delight of earth’s odours throbbing in a sunbeam. Behind that veil,
+behind that softened phantasm of the mighty life without, he could hear
+the rise of spring. He even felt stifled at times when in spite of the
+curtains’ barrier the rush of the earth’s new blood came upon him too
+strongly.
+
+The following morning he was still asleep when Albine, to hasten his
+recovery, cried out to him:
+
+‘Serge! Serge! here’s the sun!’
+
+She swiftly drew back the curtains and threw the windows wide open. He
+raised himself and knelt upon his bed, oppressed, swooning, his hands
+tightly pressed against his breast to keep his heart from breaking.
+Before him stretched the broad sky, all blue, a boundless blue; and
+in it he washed away his sufferings, surrendering himself to it, and
+drinking from it sweetness and purity and youth. The bough whose shadow
+he had noted jutted across the window and alone set against the azure
+sea its vigorous growth of green; but even this was too much for his
+sickly fastidiousness; it seemed to him that the very swallows flying
+past besmeared the purity of the azure. He was being born anew. He
+raised little involuntary cries, as he felt himself flooded with light,
+assailed by waves of warm air, while a whirling, whelming torrent of
+life flowed within him. As last with outstretched hands he sank back
+upon his pillow in a swoon of joy.
+
+What a happy, delicious day that was! The sun came in from the right,
+far away from the alcove. Throughout the morning Serge watched it
+creeping onward. He could see it coming towards him, yellow as gold,
+perching here and there on the old furniture, frolicking in corners,
+at times gliding along the ground like a strip of ribbon. It was a slow
+deliberate march, the approach of a fond mistress stretching her golden
+limbs, drawing nigh to the alcove with rhythmic motion, with voluptuous
+lingering, which roused intense desire. At length, towards two o’clock,
+the sheet of sunlight left the last armchair, climbed along the
+coverlet, and spread over the bed like loosened locks of hair. To its
+glowing fondling Serge surrendered his wasted hands: with his eyes
+half-closed, he could feel fiery kisses thrilling each of his fingers;
+he lay in a bath of light, in the embrace of a glowing orb. And when
+Albine leaned over smiling, ‘Let me be,’ he stammered, his eyes now
+shut; ‘don’t hold me so tightly. How do you manage to hold me like this
+in your arms?’
+
+But the sun crept down the bed again and slowly retreated to the left;
+and as Serge watched it bend once more and settle on chair after chair,
+he bitterly regretted that he had not kept it to his breast. Albine
+still sat upon the side of the bed, and the pair of them, an arm round
+each other’s neck, watched the slow paling of the sky. At times a mighty
+thrill seemed to make it blanch. Serge’s languid eyes now wandered over
+it more freely and detected in it exquisite tints of which he had never
+dreamed. It was not all blue, but rosy blue, lilac blue, tawny blue,
+living flesh, vast and spotless nudity heaving like a woman’s bosom
+in the breeze. At every glance into space he found a fresh
+surprise--unknown nooks, coy smiles, bewitching rounded outlines, gauzy
+veils which were cast over the mighty, glorious forms of goddesses
+in the depths of peeping paradises. And with his limbs lightened by
+suffering he winged his way amid that shimmering silk, that stainless
+down of azure. The sun sank lower and lower, the blue melted into purest
+gold, the sky’s living flesh gleamed fairer still, and then was slowly
+steeped in all the hues of gloom. Not a cloud--nought but gradual
+disappearance, a disrobing which left behind it but a gleam of modesty
+on the horizon. And at last the broad sky slumbered.
+
+‘Oh, the dear baby!’ exclaimed Albine, as she looked at Serge, who had
+fallen asleep upon her neck at the same time as the heavens.
+
+She laid him down in bed and shut the windows. Next morning, however,
+they were opened at break of day. Serge could no longer live without the
+sunlight. His strength was growing, he was becoming accustomed to the
+gusts of air which sent the alcove curtains flying. Even the azure, the
+everlasting azure, began to pall upon him. He grew weary of being white
+and swanlike, of ever swimming on heaven’s limpid lake. He came to wish
+for a pack of black clouds, some crumbling of the skies, that would
+break upon the monotony of all that purity. And as his health returned,
+he hungered for keener sensations. He now spent hours in gazing at the
+verdant bough: he would have liked to see it grow, expand, and throw
+out its branches to his very bed. It no longer satisfied him, but
+only roused desires, speaking to him as it did of all the trees whose
+deep-sounding call he could hear although their crests were hidden from
+his sight. An endless whispering of leaves, a chattering as of running
+water, a fluttering as of wings, all blended in one mighty, long-drawn,
+quivering voice, resounded in his ears.
+
+‘When you are able to get up,’ said Albine, ‘you shall sit at the
+window. You will see the lovely garden!’
+
+He closed his eyes and murmured gently:
+
+‘Oh! I can see it, I hear it; I know where the trees are, where the
+water runs, where the violets grow.’
+
+And then he added: ‘But I can’t see it clearly, I see it without any
+light. I must be very strong before I shall be able to get as far as the
+window.’
+
+At times when Albine thought him asleep, she would vanish for hours. And
+on coming in again, she would find him burning with impatience, his eyes
+gleaming with curiosity.
+
+‘Where have you been?’ he would call to her, taking hold of her arms,
+and feeling her skirts, her bodice, and her cheeks. ‘You smell of all
+sorts of nice things. Ah! you have been walking on the grass?’
+
+At this she would laugh and show him her shoes wet with dew.
+
+‘You have been in the garden! you have been in the garden!’ he then
+exclaimed delightedly. ‘I knew it. When you came in you seemed like a
+large flower. You have brought the whole garden in your skirt.’
+
+He would keep her by him, inhaling her like a nosegay. Sometimes she
+came back with briars, leaves, or bits of wood entangled in her clothes.
+These he would remove and hide under his pillow like relics. One day she
+brought him a bunch of roses. At the sight of them he was so affected
+that he wept. He kissed them and went to sleep with them in his arms.
+But when they faded, he felt so keenly grieved that he forbade Albine to
+gather any more. He preferred her, said he, for she was as fresh and as
+balmy; and she never faded, her hands, her hair, her cheeks were always
+fragrant. At last he himself would send her into the garden, telling her
+not to come back before an hour.
+
+‘In that way,’ he said, ‘I shall get sunlight, fresh air, and roses till
+to-morrow.’
+
+Often, when he saw her coming in out of breath, he would cross-examine
+her. Which path had she taken? Had she wandered among the trees, or had
+she gone round the meadow side? Had she seen any nests? Had she sat down
+behind a bush of sweetbriar, or under an oak, or in the shade of a clump
+of poplars? But when she answered him and tried to describe the garden
+to him, he would put his hand to her lips.
+
+‘No, no,’ he said gently. ‘It is wrong of me. I don’t want to know. I
+would rather see it myself.’
+
+Then he would relapse into his favourite dream of all the greenery which
+he could feel only a step away. For several days he lived on that
+dream alone. At first, he said, he had perceived the garden much more
+distinctly. As he gained strength, the surging blood that warmed
+his veins seemed to blur his dreamy imaginings. His uncertainties
+multiplied. He could no longer tell whether the trees were on the right,
+whether the water flowed at the bottom of the garden, or whether some
+great rocks were not piled below his windows. He talked softly of all
+this to himself. On the slightest indication he would rear wondrous
+plans, which the song of a bird, the creaking of a bough, the scent of a
+flower, would suddenly make him modify, impelling him to plant a thicket
+of lilac in one spot, and in another to place flower-beds where formerly
+there had been a lawn. Every hour he designed some new garden, much to
+the amusement of Albine, who, whenever she surprised him at it, would
+exclaim with a burst of laughter: ‘That’s not it, I assure you. You
+can’t have any idea of it. It’s more beautiful than all the beautiful
+things you ever saw. So don’t go racking your head about it. The
+garden’s mine, and I will give it to you. Be easy, it won’t run away.’
+
+Serge, who had already been so afraid of the light, felt considerable
+trepidation when he found himself strong enough to go and rest his
+elbows on the window-sill. Every evening he once more repeated,
+‘To-morrow,’ and ‘To-morrow.’ He would turn away in his bed with
+a shudder when Albine came in, and would cry out that she smelt of
+hawthorn, that she had scratched her hands in burrowing a hole through
+a hedge to bring him all its odour. One morning, however, she suddenly
+took him up in her arms, and almost carrying him to the window, held him
+there and forced him to look out and see.
+
+‘What a coward you are!’ she exclaimed with her fine ringing laugh.
+
+And waving one hand all round the landscape, she repeated with an air of
+triumph, full of tender promise: ‘The Paradou! The Paradou!’
+
+Serge looked out upon it, speechless.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+A sea of verdure, in front, to right, to left, everywhere. A sea rolling
+its surging billows of leaves as far as the horizon, unhindered by
+house, or screen of wall, or dusty road. A desert, virgin, hallowed
+sea, displaying its wild sweetness in the innocence of solitude. The
+sun alone came thither, weltering in the meadows in a sheet of gold,
+threading the paths with the frolicsome scamper of its beams, letting
+its fine-spun, flaming locks droop through the trees, sipping from the
+springs with amber lips that thrilled the water. Beneath that flaming
+dust the vast garden ran riot like some delighted beast let loose at
+the world’s very end, far from everything and free from everything.
+So prodigal was the luxuriance of foliage, so overflowing the tide of
+herbage, that from end to end it all seemed hidden, flooded, submerged.
+Nought could be seen but slopes of green, stems springing up like
+fountains, billowy masses, woodland curtains closely drawn, mantles of
+creepers trailing over the ground, and flights of giant boughs swooping
+down upon every side.
+
+Amidst that tremendous luxuriance of vegetation even lengthy scrutiny
+could barely make out the bygone plan of the Paradou. In the foreground,
+in a sort of immense amphitheatre, must have lain the flower garden,
+whose fountains were now sunken and dry, its stone balustrades
+shattered, its flight of steps all warped, and its statues overthrown,
+patches of their whiteness gleaming amidst the dusky stretches of turf.
+Farther back, behind the blue line of a sheet of water, stretched a maze
+of fruit-trees; farther still rose towering woodland, its dusky, violet
+depths streaked with bands of light. It was a forest which had regained
+virginity, an endless stretch of tree-tops rising one above the other,
+tinged with yellowish green and pale green and vivid green, according to
+the variety of the species.
+
+On the right, the forest scaled some hills, dotting them with little
+clumps of pine-trees, and dying away in straggling brushwood, while a
+huge barrier of barren rock, heaped together like the fallen wreckage of
+a mountain, shut out all view beyond. Flaming growths there cleaved the
+rugged soil, monstrous plants lay motionless in the heat, like drowsing
+reptiles; a silvery streak, a foamy splash that glistened in the
+distance like a cloud of pearls, revealed the presence of a waterfall,
+the source of those tranquil streams that lazily skirted the
+flower-garden. Lastly, on the left the river flowed through a vast
+stretch of meadowland, where it parted into four streamlets which winded
+fitfully beneath the rushes, between the willows, behind the taller
+trees. And far away into the distance grassy patches prolonged the
+lowland freshness, forming a landscape steeped in bluish haze, where
+a gleam of daylight slowly melted into the verdant blue of sunset. The
+Paradou--its flower-garden, forest, rocks, streams, and meadows--filled
+the whole breadth of sky.
+
+‘The Paradou!’ stammered Serge, stretching out his arms as if to clasp
+the entire garden to his breast.
+
+He tottered, and Albine had to seat him in an armchair. There he sat
+for two whole hours intently gazing, without opening his lips, his chin
+resting on his hands. At times his eyelids fluttered and a flush rose
+to his cheeks. Slowly he looked, profoundly amazed. It was all too vast,
+too complex, too overpowering.
+
+‘I cannot see, I cannot understand,’ he cried, stretching out his hands
+to Albine with a gesture of uttermost weariness.
+
+The girl came and leant over the back of his armchair. Taking his head
+between her hands, she compelled him to look again, and softly said:
+
+‘It’s all our own. Nobody will ever come in. When you are well again, we
+will go for walks there. We shall have room enough for walking all our
+lives. We’ll go wherever you like. Where would you like to go?’
+
+He smiled.
+
+‘Oh! not far,’ he murmured. ‘The first day only two steps or so beyond
+the door. I should surely fall---- See, I’ll go over there, under that
+tree close to the window.’
+
+But she resumed: ‘Would you like to go into the flower-garden, the
+parterre? You shall see the roses--they have over-run everything, even
+the old paths are all covered with them. Or would you like the orchard
+better? I can only crawl into it on my hands and knees, the boughs are
+so bowed down with fruit. But we’ll go even farther if you feel strong
+enough. We’ll go as far as the forest, right into the depths of shade,
+far, far away; so far that we’ll sleep out there when night steals over
+us. Or else, some morning, we can climb up yonder to the summit of
+those rocks. You’ll see the plants which make me quake; you’ll see the
+springs, such a shower of water! What fun it will be to feel the spray
+all over our faces!... But if you prefer to walk along the hedges,
+beside a brook, we must go round by the meadows. It is so nice under
+the willows in the evening, at sunset. One can lie down on the grass and
+watch the little green frogs hopping about on the rushes.’
+
+‘No, no,’ said Serge, ‘you weary me, I don’t want to go so far.... I
+will only go a couple of steps, that will be more than enough.’
+
+‘Even I,’ she still continued, ‘even I have not yet been able to go
+everywhere. There are many nooks I don’t know. I have walked and walked
+in it for years, and still I feel sure there are unknown spots around,
+places where the shade must be cooler and the turf softer. Listen, I
+have always fancied there must be one especially in which I should like
+to live for ever. I know it’s somewhere; I must have passed it by, or
+perhaps it’s hidden so far away that I have never even got as far, with
+all my rambles. But we’ll look for it together, Serge, won’t we? and
+live there.’
+
+‘No, no, be quiet,’ stammered the young man. ‘I don’t understand what
+you are saying. You’re killing me.’
+
+For a moment she let him sob in her arms. It troubled and grieved her
+that she could find no words to soothe him.
+
+‘Isn’t the Paradou as beautiful, then, as you fancied it?’ she asked at
+last.
+
+He raised his face and answered:
+
+‘I don’t know. It was quite little, and now it is ever growing bigger
+and bigger---- Take me away, hide me.’
+
+She led him back to bed, soothing him like a child, lulling him with a
+fib.
+
+‘There, there! it’s not true, there is no garden. It was only a story
+that I told you. Go, sleep in peace.’
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+Every day in this wise she made him sit at the window during the cool
+hours of morning. He would now attempt to take a few steps, leaning the
+while on the furniture. A rosy tint appeared upon his cheeks, and his
+hands began to lose their waxy transparency. But, while he thus regained
+health, his senses remained in a state of stupor which reduced him to
+the vegetative life of some poor creature born only the day before.
+Indeed, he was nothing but a plant; his sole perception was that of
+the air which floated round him. He lacked the blood necessary for
+the efforts of life, and remained, as it were, clinging to the soil,
+imbibing all the sap he could. It was like a slow hatching in the warm
+egg of springtide. Albine, remembering certain remarks of Doctor
+Pascal, felt terrified at seeing him remain in this state, ‘innocent,’
+dull-witted like a little boy. She had heard it said that certain
+maladies left insanity behind them. And she spent hours in gazing at him
+and trying her utmost, as mothers do, to make him smile. But as yet he
+had not laughed. When she passed her hand across his eyes, he never
+saw, he never followed the shadow. Even when she spoke to him, he barely
+turned his head in the direction whence the sound came. She had but one
+consolation: he thrived splendidly, he was quite a handsome child.
+
+For another whole week she lavished the tenderest care on him. She
+patiently waited for him to grow. And as she marked various symptoms
+of awakening perception, her fears subsided and she began to think
+that time might make a man of him. When she touched him now he started
+slightly. Another time, one night, he broke into a feeble laugh. On the
+morrow, when she had seated him at the window, she went down into the
+garden, and ran about in it, calling to him the while. She vanished
+under the trees, flitted across the sunny patches, and came back
+breathless and clapping her hands. At first his wavering eyes failed
+to perceive her. But as she started off again, perpetually playing at
+hide-and-seek, reappearing behind every other bush, he was at last
+able to follow the white gleam of her skirt; and when she suddenly came
+forward and stood with upraised face below his window, he stretched out
+his arms and seemed anxious to go down to her. But she came upstairs
+again, and embraced him proudly: ‘Ah! you saw me, you saw me!’ she
+cried. ‘You would like to come into the garden with me, would you
+not?---- If you only knew how wretched you have made me these last few
+days, with your stupid ways, never seeing me or hearing me!’
+
+He listened to her, but apparently with some slight sensation of pain
+that made him bend his neck in a shrinking way.
+
+‘You are better now, however,’ she went on. ‘Well enough to come down
+whenever you like---- Why don’t you say anything? Have you lost your
+tongue? Oh, what a baby! Why, I shall have to teach him how to talk!’
+
+And thereupon she really did amuse herself by telling him the names of
+the things he touched. He could only stammer, reiterating the syllables,
+and failing to utter a single word plainly. However, she began to walk
+him about the room, holding him up and leading him from the bed to the
+window--quite a long journey. Two or three times he almost fell on the
+way, at which she laughed. One day he fairly sat down on the floor, and
+she had all the trouble in the world to get him up on his feet again.
+Then she made him undertake the round of the room, letting him rest by
+the way on the sofa and the chairs--a tour round a little world which
+took up a good hour. At last he was able to venture on a few steps
+alone. She would stand before him with outstretched hands, and move
+backwards, calling him, so that he should cross the room in search of
+her supporting arms. If he sulked and refused to walk, she would take
+the comb from her hair and hold it out to him like a toy. Then he would
+come to her and sit still in a corner for hours, playing with her comb,
+and gently scratching his hands with its teeth.
+
+At last one morning she found him up. He had already succeeded in
+opening one of the shutters, and was attempting to walk about without
+leaning on the furniture.
+
+‘Good gracious, we are active this morning!’ she exclaimed gleefully.
+‘Why, he will be jumping out of the window to-morrow if he has his own
+way---- So you are quite strong now, eh?’
+
+Serge’s answer was a childish laugh. His limbs were regaining the
+strength of adolescence, but more perceptive sensations remained
+unroused. He spent whole afternoons in gazing out on the Paradou,
+pouting like a child that sees nought but whiteness and hears but the
+vibration of sounds. He still retained the ignorance of urchinhood--his
+sense of touch as yet so innocent that he failed to tell Albine’s gown
+from the covers of the old armchairs. His eyes still stared wonderingly;
+his movements still displayed the wavering hesitation of limbs which
+scarce knew how to reach their goal; his state was one of incipient,
+purely instinctive existence into which entered no knowledge of
+surroundings. The man was not yet born within him.
+
+‘That’s right, you’ll act the silly, will you?’ muttered Albine. ‘We’ll
+see.’
+
+She took off her comb, and held it out to him.
+
+‘Will you have my comb?’ she said. ‘Come and fetch it.’
+
+When she had got him out of the room, by retreating before him all the
+way, she put her arm round his waist and helped him down each stair,
+amusing him while she put her comb back, even tickling his neck with
+a lock of her hair, so that he remained unaware that he was going
+downstairs. But when he was in the hall, he became frightened at the
+darkness of the passage.
+
+‘Just look!’ she cried, throwing the door wide open.
+
+It was like a sudden dawn, a curtain of shadow snatched aside, revealing
+the joyousness of early day. The park spread out before them verdantly
+limpid, freshly cool and deep as a spring. Serge, entranced, lingered
+upon the threshold, with a hesitating desire to feel that luminous lake
+with his foot.
+
+‘One would think you were afraid of wetting yourself,’ said Albine.
+‘Don’t be frightened, the ground is safe enough.’
+
+He had ventured to take one step, and was astonished at encountering the
+soft resistance of the gravel. The first touch of the soil gave him a
+shock; life seemed to rebound within him and to set him for a moment
+erect, with expanding frame, while he drew long breaths.
+
+‘Come now, be brave,’ insisted Albine. ‘You know you promised me to
+take five steps. We’ll go as far as the mulberry tree there under the
+window---- There you can rest.’
+
+It took him a quarter of an hour to make those five steps. After each
+effort he stopped as if he had been obliged to tear up roots that held
+him to the ground.
+
+The girl, pushing him along, said with a laugh: ‘You look just like a
+walking tree.’
+
+Having placed him with his back leaning against the mulberry tree, in
+the rain of sunlight falling from its boughs, she bounded off and left
+him, calling out to him that he must not stir. Serge, standing
+there with drooping hands, slowly turned his head towards the park.
+Terrestrial childhood met his gaze. The pale greenery was steeped in the
+very milk of youth, flooded with golden brightness. The trees were still
+in infancy, the flowers were as tender-fleshed as babes, the streams
+were blue with the artless blue of lovely infantile eyes. Beneath every
+leaf was some token of a delightful awakening.
+
+Serge had fixed his eyes upon a yellow breach which a wide path made in
+front of him amidst a dense mass of foliage. At the very end, eastward,
+some meadows, steeped in gold, looked like the luminous field upon which
+the sun would descend, and he waited for the morn to take that path and
+flow towards him. He could feel it coming in a warm breeze, so faint
+at first that it barely brushed across his skin, but rising little by
+little, and growing ever brisker till he was thrilled all over. He could
+also taste it coming with a more and more pronounced savour, bringing
+the healthful acridity of the open air, holding to his lips a feast of
+sugary aromatics, sour fruits, and milky shoots. Further, he could smell
+it coming with the perfumes which it culled upon its way--the scent of
+earth, the scent of the shady woods, the scent of the warm plants, the
+scent of living animals, a whole posy of scents, powerful enough to
+bring on dizziness. He could likewise hear it coming with the rapid
+flight of a bird skimming over the grass, waking the whole garden from
+silence, giving voice to all it touched, and filling his ears with the
+music of things and beings. Finally, he could see it coming from the end
+of the path, from the meadows steeped in gold--yes, he could see that
+rosy air, so bright that it lighted the way it took with a gleaming
+smile, no bigger in the distance than a spot of daylight, but in a few
+swift bounds transformed into the very splendour of the sun. And the
+morn flowed up and beat against the mulberry tree against which Serge
+was leaning. And he himself resuscitated amidst the childhood of the
+morn.
+
+‘Serge! Serge!’ cried Albine, lost to sight behind the high shrubs of
+the flower garden. ‘Don’t be afraid, I am here.’
+
+But Serge no longer felt frightened. He was being born anew in the
+sunshine, in that pure bath of light which streamed upon him. He was
+being born anew at five-and-twenty, his senses hurriedly unclosing,
+enraptured with the mighty sky, the joyful earth, the prodigy of
+loveliness spread out around him. This garden, which he knew not only
+the day before, now afforded him boundless delight. Everything filled
+him with ecstasy, even the blades of grass, the pebbles in the paths,
+the invisible puffs of air that flitted over his cheeks. His whole body
+entered into possession of this stretch of nature; he embraced it
+with his limbs, he drank it in with his lips, he inhaled it with his
+nostrils, he carried it in his ears and hid it in the depths of his
+eyes. It was his own. The roses of the flower garden, the lofty boughs
+of the forest, the resounding rocks of the waterfall, the meadows which
+the sun planted with blades of light, were his. Then he closed his eyes
+and slowly reopened them that he might enjoy the dazzle of a second
+wakening.
+
+‘The birds have eaten all the strawberries,’ said Albine disconsolately,
+as she ran up to him. ‘See, I have only been able to find these two!’
+
+But she stopped short a few steps away, heart-struck and gazing at Serge
+with rapturous astonishment. ‘How handsome you are!’ she cried.
+
+She drew a little nearer; then stood there, absorbed in her
+contemplation, and murmuring: ‘I had never, never seen you before.’
+
+He had certainly grown taller. Clothed in a loose garment, he stood
+erect, still somewhat slender, with finely moulded limbs, square chest,
+and rounded shoulders. His head, slightly thrown back, was poised upon
+a flexible and snowy neck, rimmed with brown behind. Health and strength
+and power were on his face. He did not smile, his expression was that of
+repose, with grave and tender mouth, firm cheeks, large nose, and grey,
+clear, commanding eyes. The long locks that thickly covered his head
+fell upon his shoulders in jetty curls; while a slender growth of hair,
+through which gleamed his white skin, curled upon his upper lip and
+chin.
+
+‘Oh! how handsome, how handsome you are!’ lingeringly repeated Albine,
+crouching at his feet and gazing up at him with loving eyes. ‘But why
+are you sulking with me? Why don’t you speak to me?’
+
+Still he stood there and made no answer. His eyes were far away; he
+never even saw that child at his feet. He spoke to himself in the
+sunlight, and said: ‘How good the light is!’
+
+That utterance sounded like a vibration of the sunlight itself. It fell
+amid the silence in the faintest of whispers like a musical sigh, a
+quiver of warmth and of life. For several days Albine had never heard
+his voice, and now, like himself, it had altered. It seemed to her to
+course through the park more sweetly than the melody of birds, more
+imperiously than the wind that bends the boughs. It reigned, it ruled.
+The whole garden heard it, though it had been but a faint and passing
+breath, and the whole garden was thrilled with the joyousness it
+brought.
+
+‘Speak to me,’ implored Albine. ‘You have never spoken to me like that.
+When you were upstairs in your room, when you were not dumb, you talked
+the silly prattle of a child. How is it I no longer know your voice?
+Just now I thought it had come down from the trees, that it reached me
+from every part of the garden, that it was one of those deep sighs that
+used to worry me at night before you came. Listen, everything is keeping
+silence to hear you speak again.’
+
+But still he failed to recognise her presence. Tenderer grew her tones.
+‘No, don’t speak if it tires you. Sit down beside me, and we will
+remain here on the grass till the sun wanes. And look, I have found two
+strawberries. Such trouble I had too! The birds eat up everything. One’s
+for you, both if you like; or we can halve them, and taste each of them.
+You’ll thank me, and then I shall hear you.’
+
+But he would not sit down, he refused the strawberries, which Albine
+pettishly threw away. She did not open her lips again. She would rather
+have seen him ill, as in those earlier days when she had given him her
+hand for a pillow, and had felt him coming back to life beneath the
+cooling breath she blew upon his face. She cursed the returning health
+which now made him stand in the light like a young unheeding god. Would
+he be ever thus then, with never a glance for her? Would he never be
+further healed, and at last see her and love her? And she dreamed of
+once again being his healer, of accomplishing by the sole power of her
+little hands the cure of the second childhood in which he remained.
+She could clearly see that there was no spark in the depths of his grey
+eyes, that his was but a pallid beauty like that of the statues which
+had fallen among the nettles of the flower-garden. She rose and clasped
+him, breathing on his neck to rouse him. But that morning Serge never
+even felt the breath that lifted his silky beard. The sun got low, it
+was time to go indoors. On reaching his room, Albine burst into tears.
+
+From that morning forward the invalid took a short walk in the garden
+every day. He went past the mulberry tree, as far as the edge of the
+terrace, where a wide flight of broken steps descended to the flowery
+parterre. He grew accustomed to the open air, each bath of sunlight
+brought him fresh vigour. A young chestnut tree, which had sprung from
+some fallen nut between two stones of the balustrade, burst the resin
+of its buds, and unfolded its leafy fans with far less vigour than he
+progressed. One day, indeed, he even attempted to descend the steps,
+but in this his strength failed him, and he sat down among the dane-wort
+which had grown up between the cracks in the stone flags. Below, to the
+left, he could see a small wood of roses. It was thither that he dreamt
+of going.
+
+‘Wait a little longer,’ said Albine. ‘The scent of the roses is too
+strong for you yet. I have never been able to sit long under the
+rose-trees without feeling exhausted, light-headed, with a longing to
+cry. Don’t be afraid, I will some day lead you to the rose-trees, and I
+shall surely weep among them, for you make me very sad.’
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+One morning she at last succeeded in helping him to the foot of the
+steps, trampling down the grass before him with her feet, and clearing
+a way for him through the briars, whose supple arms barred the last few
+yards. Then they slowly entered the wood of roses. It was indeed a very
+wood, with thickets of tall standard roses throwing out leafy clumps as
+big as trees, and enormous rose bushes impenetrable as copses of young
+oaks. Here, formerly, there had been a most marvellous collection
+of plants. But since the flower garden had been left in abandonment,
+everything had run wild, and a virgin forest had arisen, a forest of
+roses over-running the paths, crowded with wild offshoots, so mingled,
+so blended, that roses of every scent and hue seemed to blossom on the
+same stem. Creeping roses formed mossy carpets on the ground, while
+climbing roses clung to others like greedy ivy plants, and ascended in
+spindles of verdure, letting a shower of their loosened petals fall
+at the lightest breeze. Natural paths coursed through the wood--narrow
+footways, broad avenues, enchanting covered walks in which one strolled
+in the shade and scent. These led to glades and clearings, under bowers
+of small red roses, and between walls hung with tiny yellow ones. Some
+sunny nooks gleamed like green silken stuff embroidered with bright
+patterns; other shadier corners offered the seclusion of alcoves and an
+aroma of love, the balmy warmth, as it were, of a posy languishing on a
+woman’s bosom. The rose bushes had whispering voices too. And the rose
+bushes were full of songbirds’ nests.
+
+‘We must take care not to lose ourselves,’ said Albine, as she entered
+the wood. ‘I did lose myself once, and the sun had set before I was
+able to free myself from the rose bushes which caught me by the skirt at
+every step.’
+
+They had barely walked a few minutes, however, before Serge, worn out
+with fatigue, wished to sit down. He stretched himself upon the ground,
+and fell into deep slumber. Albine sat musing by his side. They were on
+the edge of a glade, near a narrow path which stretched away through the
+wood, streaked with flashes of sunlight, and, through a small round blue
+gap at its far end, revealed the sky. Other little paths led from the
+clearing into leafy recesses. The glade was formed of tall rose bushes
+rising one above the other with such a wealth of branches, such a tangle
+of thorny shoots, that big patches of foliage were caught aloft, and
+hung there tent-like, stretching out from bush to bush. Through the tiny
+apertures in the patches of leaves, which were suggestive of fine lace,
+the light filtered like impalpable sunny dust. And from the vaulted roof
+hung stray branches, chandeliers, as it were, thick clusters suspended
+from green thread-like stems, armfuls of flowers that reached to the
+ground, athwart some rent in the leafy ceiling, which trailed around
+like a tattered curtain.
+
+Albine meanwhile was gazing at Serge asleep. She had never seen him so
+utterly prostrated in body as now, his hands lying open on the turf, his
+face deathly. So dead indeed he was to her that she thought she could
+kiss his face without his even feeling it. And sadly, absently, she
+busied her hands with shredding all the roses within her reach. Above
+her head drooped an enormous cluster which brushed against her hair, set
+roses on her twisted locks, her ears, her neck, and even threw a mantle
+of the fragrant flowers across her shoulders. Higher up, under
+her fingers, other roses rained down with large and tender petals
+exquisitely formed, which in hue suggested the faintly flushing purity
+of a maiden’s bosom. Like a living snowfall these roses already hid her
+feet in the grass. And they climbed her knees, covered her skirt,
+and smothered her to her waist; while three stray petals, which had
+fluttered on to her bodice, just above her bosom, there looked like
+three glimpses of her bewitching skin.
+
+‘Oh! the lazy fellow!’ she murmured, feeling bored and picking up two
+handfuls of roses, which she flung in Serge’s face to wake him.
+
+He did not stir, however, but still lay there with the roses on his eyes
+and mouth. This made Albine laugh. She stooped down, and with her whole
+heart kissed both his eyes and his mouth, blowing as she kissed to drive
+the rose petals away; but they remained upon his lips, and she broke
+into still louder laughter, intensely amused at this flowery caressing.
+
+Serge slowly raised himself. He gazed at her with amazement, as if
+startled at finding her there.
+
+‘Who are you? where do you come from? what are you doing here beside
+me?’ he asked her. And still she smiled, transported with delight
+at marking this awakening of his senses. Then he seemed to remember
+something, and continued with a gesture of happy confidence:
+
+‘I know, you are my love, flesh of my flesh, you are waiting for me that
+we may be one for ever. I was dreaming of you. You were in my breast,
+and I gave you my blood, my muscles, my bones. I felt no pain. You took
+half my heart so tenderly that I experienced keen inward delight at thus
+dividing myself. I sought all that was best and most beautiful within
+me to give it to you. You might have carried off everything, and still
+I should have thanked you. And I woke when you went out of me. You
+left through my eyes and mouth; ay, I felt it. You were all warm, all
+fragrant, so sweet that it was the thrill from you that has made me
+awake.’
+
+Albine listened to his words with ecstasy. At last he saw her; at last
+his birth was accomplished, his cure begun. With outstretched hands she
+begged him to go on.
+
+‘How have I managed to live without you?’ he murmured. ‘No, I did not
+live, I was like a slumbering animal. And now you are mine! and you are
+no one but myself! Listen, you must never leave me; for you are my very
+breath, and in leaving me you would rob me of my life. We will remain
+within ourselves. You will be mine even as I shall be yours. Should I
+ever forsake you, may I be accursed, may my body wither like a useless
+and noxious weed!’
+
+He caught hold of her hands, and exclaimed in a voice quivering with
+admiration: ‘How beautiful you are!’
+
+In the falling dust of sunshine Albine’s skin looked milky white, scarce
+gilded here and there by the sunny sheen. The shower of roses around and
+on her steeped her in pinkness.
+
+Her fair hair, loosely held together by her comb, decked her head as
+with a setting planet whose last bright sparks shone upon the nape of
+her neck. She wore a white gown; her arms, her throat, her stainless
+skin bloomed unabashed as a flower, musky with a goodly fragrance. Her
+figure was slender, not too tall, but supple as a snake’s, with softly
+rounded, voluptuously expanding outlines, in which the freshness of
+childhood mingled with womanhood’s nascent charms. Her oval face, with
+its narrow brow and rather full mouth, beamed with the tender living
+light of her blue eyes. And yet she was grave, too, her cheeks
+unruffled, her chin plump--as naturally lovely as are the trees.
+
+‘And how I love you!’ said Serge, drawing her to himself.
+
+They were wholly one another’s now, clasped in each other’s arms! They
+did not kiss, but held each other round the waist, cheek to cheek,
+united, dumb, delighted with their oneness. Around them bloomed the
+roses with a mad, amorous blossoming, full of crimson and rosy and white
+laughter. The living, opening flowers seemed to bare their very bosoms.
+Yellow roses were there showing the golden skin of barbarian maidens:
+straw-coloured roses, lemon-coloured roses, sun-coloured roses--every
+shade of the necks which are ambered by glowing skies. Then there was
+skin of softer hue: among the tea roses, bewitchingly moist and cool,
+one caught glimpses of modest, bashful charms, with skin as fine as silk
+tinged faintly with a blue network of veins. Farther on all the smiling
+life of the rose expanded: there was the blush white rose, barely
+tinged with a dash of carmine, snowy as the foot of a maid dabbling in a
+spring; there was the silvery pink, more subdued than even the glow
+with which a youthful arm irradiates a wide sleeve; there was the clear,
+fresh rose, in which blood seemed to gleam under satin as in the bare
+shoulders of a woman bathed in light; and there was the bright pink rose
+with its buds like the nipples of virgin bosoms, and its opening flowers
+that suggested parted lips, exhaling warm and perfumed breath. And
+the climbing roses, the tall cluster roses with their showers of white
+flowers, clothed all these others with the lacework of their bunches,
+the innocence of their flimsy muslin; while, here and there, roses dark
+as the lees of wine, sanguineous, almost black, showed amidst the bridal
+purity like passion’s wounds. Verily, it was like a bridal--the bridal
+of the fragrant wood, the virginity of May led to the fertility of
+July and August; the first unknowing kiss culled like a nosegay on
+the wedding morn. Even in the grass, moss roses, clad in close-fitting
+garments of green wool, seemed to be awaiting the advent of love.
+Flowers rambled all along the sun-streaked path, faces peeped out
+everywhere to court the passing breezes. Bright were the smiles under
+the spreading tent of the glade. Not a flower that bloomed the same: the
+roses differed in the fashion of their wooing. Some, shy and blushing,
+would show but a glimpse of bud, while others, panting and wide open,
+seemed consumed with infatuation for their persons. There were pert,
+gay little things that filed off, cockade in cap; there were huge ones,
+bursting with sensuous charms, like portly, fattened-up sultanas; there
+were impudent hussies, too, in coquettish disarray, on whose petals the
+white traces of the powder-puff could be espied; there were virtuous
+maids who had donned low-necked garb like demure _bourgeoises_; and
+aristocratic ladies, graceful and original, who contrived attractive
+deshabilles. And the cup-like roses offered their perfume as in precious
+crystal; the drooping, urn-shaped roses let it drip drop by drop; the
+round, cabbage-like roses exhaled it with the even breath of slumbering
+flowers; while the budding roses tightly locked their petals and only
+sent forth as yet the faint sigh of maidenhood.
+
+‘I love you, I love you,’ softly repeated Serge.
+
+Albine, too, was a large rose, a pallid rose that had opened since the
+morning. Her feet were white, her arms were rosy pink, her neck was fair
+of skin, her throat bewitchingly veined, pale and exquisite. She was
+fragrant, she proffered lips which offered as in a coral cup a perfume
+that was yet faint and cool. Serge inhaled that perfume, and pressed her
+to his breast. Albine laughed.
+
+The ring of that laugh, which sounded like a bird’s rhythmic notes,
+enraptured Serge.
+
+‘What, that lovely song is yours?’ he said. ‘It is the sweetest I ever
+heard. You are indeed my joy.’
+
+Then she laughed yet more sonorously, pouring forth rippling scales of
+high-pitched, flute-like notes that melted into deeper ones. It was an
+endless laugh, a long-drawn cooing, then a burst of triumphant music
+celebrating the delight of awakening love. And everything--the roses,
+the fragrant wood, the whole of the Paradou--laughed in that laugh of
+woman just born to beauty and to love. Till now the vast garden had
+lacked one charm--a winning voice which should prove the living mirth
+of the trees, the streams, and the sunlight. Now the vast garden was
+endowed with that charm of laughter.
+
+‘How old are you?’ asked Albine, when her song had ended in a faint
+expiring note.
+
+‘Nearly twenty-six,’ Serge answered.
+
+She was amazed. What! he was twenty-six! He, too, was astonished at
+having made that answer so glibly, for it seemed to him that he had not
+yet lived a day--an hour.
+
+‘And how old are you?’ he asked in his turn.
+
+‘Oh, I am sixteen.’
+
+Then she broke into laughter again, quivering from head to foot,
+repeating and singing her age. She laughed at her sixteen years with a
+fine-drawn laugh that flowed on with rhythmic trilling like a streamlet.
+Serge scanned her closely, amazed at the laughing life that transfigured
+her face. He scarcely knew her now with those dimples in her cheeks,
+those bow-shaped lips between which peeped the rosy moistness of her
+mouth, and those eyes blue like bits of sky kindling with the rising of
+the sun. As she threw back her head, she sent a glow of warmth through
+him.
+
+He put out his hand, and fumbled mechanically behind her neck.
+
+‘What do you want?’ she asked. And suddenly remembering, she exclaimed:
+‘My comb! my comb! that’s it.’
+
+She gave him her comb, and let fall her heavy tresses. A cloth of gold
+suddenly unrolled and clothed her to her hips. Some locks which flowed
+down upon her breast gave, as it were a finishing touch to her
+regal raiment. At the sight of that sudden blaze, Serge uttered an
+exclamation; he kissed each lock, and burned his lips amidst that
+sunset-like refulgence.
+
+But Albine now relieved herself of her long silence, and chatted and
+questioned unceasingly.
+
+‘Oh, how wretched you made me! You no longer took any notice of me, and
+day after day I found myself useless and powerless, worried out of my
+wits like a good-for-nothing.... And yet the first few days I had done
+you good. You saw me and spoke to me.... Do you remember when you were
+lying down, and went to sleep on my shoulder, and murmured that I did
+you good?’
+
+‘No!’ said Serge, ‘no, I don’t remember it. I had never seen you before.
+I have only just seen you for the first time--lovely, radiant, never to
+be forgotten.’
+
+She clapped her hands impatiently, exclaiming: ‘And my comb? You must
+remember how I used to give you my comb to keep you quiet when you were
+a little child? Why, you were looking for it just now.’
+
+‘No, I don’t remember. Your hair is like fine silk. I have never kissed
+your hair before.’
+
+At this, with some vexation, she recounted certain particulars of his
+convalescence in the room with the blue ceiling. But he only laughed
+at her, and at last closed her lips with his hand, saying with anxious
+weariness: ‘No, be quiet, I don’t know; I don’t want to know any
+more.... I have only just woke up, and found you there, covered with
+roses. That is enough.’
+
+And he drew her once more towards him and held her there, dreaming
+aloud, and murmuring: ‘Perhaps I have lived before. It must have been a
+long, long time ago.... I loved you in a painful dream. You had the same
+blue eyes, the same rather long face, the same youthful mien. But your
+hair was carefully hidden under a linen cloth, and I never dared to
+remove that cloth, because your locks seemed to me fearsome and
+would have made me die. But to-day your hair is the very sweetness of
+yourself. It preserves your scent, and when I kiss it, when I bury my
+face in it like this, I drink in your very life.’
+
+He kept on passing the long curls through his hands, and pressing them
+to his lips, as if to squeeze from them all Albine’s blood. And after
+an interval of silence, he continued: ‘It’s strange, before one’s birth,
+one dreams of being born.... I was buried somewhere. I was very cold.
+I could hear all the life of the world outside buzzing above me. But I
+shut my ears despairingly, for I was used to my gloomy den, and enjoyed
+some fearful delights in it, so that I never sought to free myself from
+all the earth weighing upon my chest. Where could I have been then? Who
+was it gave me light?’
+
+He struggled to remember, while Albine now waited in fear and trembling
+lest he should really do so. Smiling, she took a handful of her hair and
+wound it round the young man’s neck, thus fastening him to herself. This
+playful act roused him from his musings.
+
+‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘I am yours, what does the rest matter? It was
+you, was it not, who drew me out of the earth? I must have been under
+this garden. What I heard were your steps rattling the little pebbles
+in the path. You were looking for me, you brought down upon my head the
+songs of the birds, the scent of the pinks, the warmth of the sun. I
+fancied that you would find me at last. I waited a long time for you.
+But I never expected that you would give yourself to me without your
+veil, with your hair undone--the terrible hair which has become so
+soft.’
+
+He sat her on his lap, placing his face beside hers.
+
+‘Do not let us talk any more. We are alone for ever. We love each
+other.’
+
+And thus in all innocence they lingered in each other’s arms; for a
+long, long time did they remain there forgetfully. The sun rose higher;
+and the dust of light fell hotter from the lofty boughs. The yellow and
+white and crimson roses were now only a ray of their delight, a sign
+of their smiles to one another. They had certainly caused buds to open
+around them. The roses crowned their heads and threw garlands about
+their waists. And the scent of the roses became so penetrating, so
+strong with amorous emotion, that it seemed to be the scent of their own
+breath.
+
+At last Serge put up Albine’s hair. He raised it in handfuls with
+delightful awkwardness, and stuck her comb askew in the enormous
+knot that he had heaped upon her head. And as it happened she looked
+bewitching thus. Then, rising from the ground, he held out his hands to
+her, and supported her waist as she got up. They still smiled without
+speaking a word, and slowly they went down the path.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Albine and Serge entered the flower garden. She was watching him
+with tender anxiety, fearing lest he should overtire himself; but he
+reassured her with a light laugh. He felt strong enough indeed to carry
+her whithersoever she listed. When he found himself once more in the
+full sunlight, he drew a sigh of content. At last he lived; he was no
+longer a plant subject to the terrible sufferings of winter. And how he
+was moved with loving gratitude! Had it been within his power, he would
+have spared Albine’s tiny feet even the roughness of the paths; he
+dreamed of carrying her, clinging round his neck, like a child lulled
+to sleep by her mother. He already watched over her with a guardian’s
+watchful care, thrusting aside the stones and brambles, jealous lest the
+breeze should waft a fleeting kiss upon those darling locks which were
+his alone. She on her side nestled against his shoulder and serenely
+yielded to his guidance.
+
+Thus Albine and Serge strolled on together in the sunlight for the first
+time. A balmy fragrance floated in their wake, the very path on which
+the sun had unrolled a golden carpet thrilled with delight under their
+feet. Between the tall flowering shrubs they passed like a vision of
+such wondrous charm that the distant paths seemed to entreat their
+presence and hail them with a murmur of admiration, even as crowds hail
+long-expected sovereigns. They formed one sole, supremely lovely being.
+Albine’s snowy skin was but the whiteness of Serge’s browner skin.
+And slowly they passed along clothed with sunlight--nay, they were
+themselves the sun--worshipped by the low bending flowers.
+
+A tide of emotion now stirred the Paradou to its depths. The old flower
+garden escorted them--that vast field bearing a century’s untrammelled
+growth, that nook of Paradise sown by the breeze with the choicest
+flowers. The blissful peace of the Paradou, slumbering in the broad
+sunlight, prevented the degeneration of species. It could boast of a
+temperature ever equable, and a soil which every plant had long enriched
+to thrive therein in the silence of its vigour. Its vegetation was
+mighty, magnificent, luxuriantly untended, full of erratic growths
+decked with monstrous blossoming, unknown to the spade and watering-pot
+of gardeners. Nature left to herself, free to grow as she listed, in the
+depths of that solitude protected by natural shelters, threw restraint
+aside more heartily at each return of spring, indulged in mighty
+gambols, delighted in offering herself at all seasons strange nosegays
+not meant for any hand to pluck. A rabid fury seemed to impel her to
+overthrow whatever the effort of man had created; she rebelliously cast
+a straggling multitude of flowers over the paths, attacked the rockeries
+with an ever-rising tide of moss, and knotted round the necks of marble
+statues the flexible cords of creepers with which she threw them down;
+she shattered the stonework of the fountains, steps, and terraces with
+shrubs which burst through them; she slowly, creepingly, spread over the
+smallest cultivated plots, moulding them to her fancy, and planting on
+them, as ensign of rebellion, some wayside spore, some lowly weed which
+she transformed into a gigantic growth of verdure. In days gone by the
+parterre, tended by a master passionately fond of flowers, had displayed
+in its trim beds and borders a wondrous wealth of choice blossoms. And
+the same plants could still be found; but perpetuated, grown into such
+numberless families, and scampering in such mad fashion throughout the
+whole garden, that the place was now all helter-skelter riot to its very
+walls, a very den of debauchery, where intoxicated nature had hiccups of
+verbena and pinks.
+
+Though to outward seeming Albine had yielded her weaker self to the
+guidance of Serge, to whose shoulder she clung, it was she who really
+led him. She took him first to the grotto. Deep within a clump of
+poplars and willows gaped a cavern, formed by rugged bits of rocks which
+had fallen over a basin where tiny rills of water trickled between the
+stones. The grotto was completely lost to sight beneath the onslaught of
+vegetation. Below, row upon row of hollyhocks seemed to bar all entrance
+with a trellis-work of red, yellow, mauve, and white-hued flowers, whose
+stems were hidden among colossal bronze-green nettles, which calmly
+exuded blistering poison. Above them was a mighty swarm of creepers
+which leaped aloft in a few bounds; jasmines starred with balmy flowers;
+wistarias with delicate lacelike leaves; dense ivy, dentated and
+resembling varnished metal; lithe honeysuckle, laden with pale coral
+sprays; amorous clematideae, reaching out arms all tufted with white
+aigrettes. And among them twined yet slenderer plants, binding them
+more and more closely together, weaving them into a fragrant woof.
+Nasturtium, bare and green of skin, showed open mouths of ruddy gold;
+scarlet runners, tough as whipcord, kindled here and there a fire of
+gleaming sparks; convolvuli opened their heart-shaped leaves, and with
+thousands of little bells rang a silent peal of exquisite colours;
+sweetpeas, like swarms of settling butterflies, folded tawny or rosy
+wings, ready to be borne yet farther away by the first breeze. It
+was all a wealth of leafy locks, sprinkled with a shower of flowers,
+straying away in wild dishevelment, and suggesting the head of some
+giantess thrown back in a spasm of passion, with a streaming of
+magnificent hair, which spread into a pool of perfume.
+
+‘I have never dared to venture into all that darkness,’ Albine whispered
+to Serge.
+
+He urged her on, carried her over the nettles; and as a great boulder
+barred the way into the grotto, he held her up for a moment in his arms
+so that she might be able to peer through the opening that yawned at a
+few feet from the ground.
+
+‘A marble woman,’ she whispered, ‘has fallen full length into the
+stream. The water has eaten her face away.’
+
+Then he, too, in his turn wanted to look, and pulled himself up. A cold
+breeze played upon his cheeks. In the pale light that glided through the
+hole, he saw the marble woman lying amidst the reeds and the duckweed.
+She was naked to the waist. She must have been drowning there for the
+last hundred years. Some grief had probably flung her into that spring
+where she was slowly committing suicide. The clear water which flowed
+over her had worn her face into a smooth expanse of marble, a mere white
+surface without a feature; but her breasts, raised out of the water by
+what appeared an effort of her neck, were still perfect and lifelike,
+throbbing even yet with the joys of some old delight.
+
+‘She isn’t dead yet,’ said Serge, getting down again. ‘One day we will
+come and get her out of there.’
+
+But Albine shuddered and led him away. They passed out again into the
+sunlight and the rank luxuriance of beds and borders. They wandered
+through a field of flowers capriciously, at random. Their feet trod a
+carpet of lovely dwarf plants, which had once neatly fringed the walks,
+and now spread about in wild profusion. In succession they passed
+ankle-deep through the spotted silk of soft rose catchflies, through the
+tufted satin of feathered pinks, and the blue velvet of forget-me-nots,
+studded with melancholy little eyes. Further on they forced their way
+through giant mignonette, which rose to their knees like a bath of
+perfume; then they turned through a patch of lilies of the valley in
+order that they might spare an expanse of violets, so delicate-looking
+that they feared to hurt them. But soon they found themselves surrounded
+on all sides by violets, and so with wary, gentle steps they passed over
+their fresh fragrance inhaling the very breath of springtide. Beyond the
+violets, a mass of lobelias spread out like green wool gemmed with
+pale mauve. The softly shaded stars of globularia, the blue cups of
+nemophila, the yellow crosses of saponaria, the white and purple ones
+of sweet rocket, wove patches of rich tapestry, stretching onward and
+onward, a fabric of royal luxury, so that the young couple might enjoy
+the delights of that first walk together without fatigue. But the
+violets ever reappeared; real seas of violets that rolled all round
+them, shedding the sweetest perfumes beneath their feet and wafting in
+their wake the breath of their leaf-hidden flowerets.
+
+Albine and Serge quite lost themselves. Thousands of loftier plants
+towered up in hedges around them, enclosing narrow paths which they
+found it delightful to thread. These paths twisted and turned, wandered
+maze-like through dense thickets. There were ageratums with sky-blue
+tufts of bloom; woodruffs with soft musky perfume; brazen-throated
+mimuluses, blotched with bright vermilion; lofty phloxes, crimson and
+violet, throwing up distaffs of flowers for the breezes to spin; red
+flax with sprays as fine as hair; chrysanthemums like full golden moons,
+casting short faint rays, white and violet and rose, around them. The
+young couple surmounted all the obstacles that lay in their path and
+continued their way betwixt the walls of verdure. To the right of
+them sprang up the slim fraxinella, the centranthus draped with
+snowy blossoms, and the greyish hounds-tongue, in each of whose tiny
+flowercups gleamed a dewdrop. To their left was a long row of columbines
+of every variety; white ones, pale rose ones, and some of deep violet
+hues, almost black, that seemed to be in mourning, the blossoms that
+drooped from their lofty, branching stems being plaited and goffered
+like crape. Then, as they advanced further on, the character of the
+hedges changed. Giant larkspurs thrust up their flower-rods, between the
+dentated foliage of which gaped the mouths of tawny snapdragons, while
+the schizanthus reared its scanty leaves and fluttering blooms, that
+looked like butterflies’ wings of sulphur hue splashed with soft lake.
+The blue bells of campanulae swayed aloft, some of them even over the
+tall asphodels, whose golden stems served as their steeples. In one
+corner was a giant fennel that reminded one of a lace-dressed lady
+spreading out a sunshade of sea-green satin. Then the pair suddenly
+found their way blocked. It was impossible to advance any further;
+a mass of flowers, a huge sheaf of plants stopped all progress. Down
+below, a mass of brank-ursine formed as it were a pedestal, from the
+midst of which sprang scarlet geum, rhodanthe with stiff petals, and
+clarkia with great white carved crosses, that looked like the insignia
+of some barbarous order. Higher up still, bloomed the rosy viscaria,
+the yellow leptosiphon, the white colinsia, and the lagurus, whose dusty
+green bloom contrasted with the glowing colours around it. Towering over
+all these growths scarlet foxgloves and blue lupins, rising in slender
+columns, formed a sort of oriental rotunda gleaming vividly with crimson
+and azure; while at the very summit, like a surmounting dome of dusky
+copper, were the ruddy leaves of a colossal castor-bean.
+
+As Serge reached out his hands to try to force a passage, Albine stopped
+him and begged him not to injure the flowers. ‘You will break the stems
+and crush the leaves,’ she said. ‘Ever since I have been here, I have
+always taken care to hurt none of them. Come, and I will show you the
+pansies.’
+
+She made him turn and led him from the narrow paths to the centre of the
+parterre, where, once upon a time, great basins had been hollowed
+out. But these had now fallen into ruin, and were nothing but gigantic
+_jardinières_, fringed with stained and cracked marble. In one of the
+largest of them, the wind had sown a wonderful basketful of pansies.
+The velvety blooms seemed almost like living faces, with bands of violet
+hair, yellow eyes, paler tinted mouths, and chins of a delicate flesh
+colour.
+
+When I was younger they used to make me quite afraid,’ murmured Albine.
+‘Look at them. Wouldn’t you think that they were thousands of little
+faces looking up at you from the ground? And they turn, too, all in
+the same direction. They might be a lot of buried dolls thrusting their
+heads out of the ground.’
+
+She led him still further on. They went the round of all the other
+basins. In the next one a number of amaranthuses had sprung up, raising
+monstrous crests which Albine had always shrunk from touching, such was
+their resemblance to big bleeding caterpillars. Balsams of all colours,
+now straw-coloured, now the hue of peach-blossom, now blush-white, now
+grey like flax, filled another basin where their seed pods split with
+little snaps. Then in the midst of a ruined fountain, there flourished
+a colony of splendid carnations. White ones hung over the moss-covered
+rims, and flaked ones thrust a bright medley of blossom between the
+chinks of the marble; while from the mouth of the lion, whence formerly
+the water-jets had spurted, a huge crimson clove now shot out so
+vigorously that the decrepit beast seemed to be spouting blood. Near by,
+the principal piece of ornamental water, a lake, on whose surface swans
+had glided, had now become a thicket of lilacs, beneath whose shade
+stocks and verbenas and day-lilies screened their delicate tints, and
+dozed away, all redolent of perfume.
+
+‘But we haven’t seen half the flowers yet,’ said Albine, proudly. ‘Over
+yonder there are such huge ones that I can quite bury myself amongst
+them like a partridge in a corn-field.’
+
+They went thither. They tripped down some broad steps, from whose fallen
+urns still flickered the violet fires of the iris. All down the steps
+streamed gilliflowers, like liquid gold. The sides were flanked with
+thistles, that shot up like candelabra, of green bronze, twisted and
+curved into the semblance of birds’ heads, with all the fantastic
+elegance of Chinese incense-burners. Between the broken balustrades
+drooped tresses of stonecrop, light greenish locks, spotted as with
+mouldiness. Then at the foot of the steps another parterre spread out,
+dotted over with box-trees that were vigorous as oaks; box-trees which
+had once been carefully pruned and clipped into balls and pyramids and
+octagonal columns, but which were now revelling in unrestrained freedom
+of untidiness, breaking out into ragged masses of greenery, through
+which blue patches of sky were visible.
+
+And Albine led Serge straight on to a spot that seemed to be the
+graveyard of the flower-garden. There the scabious mourned, and
+processions of poppies stretched out in line, with deathly odour,
+unfolding heavy blooms of feverish brilliance. Sad anemones clustered in
+weary throngs, pallid as if infected by some epidemic. Thick-set daturas
+spread out purplish horns, from which insects, weary of life, sucked
+fatal poison. Marigolds buried with choking foliage their writhing
+starry flowers, that already reeked of putrefaction. And there were
+other melancholy flowers also: fleshy ranunculi with rusty tints,
+hyacinths and tuberoses that exhaled asphyxia and died from their own
+perfume. But the cinerarias were most conspicuous, crowding thickly in
+half-mourning robes of violet and white. In the middle of this gloomy
+spot a mutilated marble Cupid still remained standing, smiling beneath
+the lichens which overspread his youthful nakedness, while the arm with
+which he had once held his bow lay low amongst the nettles.
+
+Then Albine and Serge passed on through a rank growth of peonies,
+reaching to their waists. The white flowers fell to pieces as they
+passed, with a rain of snowy petals which was as refreshing to their
+hands as the heavy drops of a thunder shower. And the red ones grinned
+with apoplectical faces which perturbed them. Next they passed through
+a field of fuchsias, forming dense, vigorous shrubs that delighted them
+with their countless bells. Then they went on through fields of purple
+veronicas and others of geraniums, blazing with all the fiery tints of
+a brasier, which the wind seemed to be ever fanning into fresh heat. And
+they forced their way through a jungle of gladioli, tall as reeds, which
+threw up spikes of flowers that gleamed in the full daylight with all
+the brilliance of burning torches. They lost themselves too in a forest
+of sunflowers, with stalks as thick as Albine’s wrist, a forest darkened
+by rough leaves large enough to form an infant’s bed, and peopled with
+giant starry faces that shone like so many suns. And thence they passed
+into another forest, a forest of rhododendrons so teeming with blossom
+that the branches and leaves were completely hidden, and nothing but
+huge nosegays, masses of soft calyces, could be seen as far as the eye
+could reach.
+
+‘Come along; we have not got to the end yet,’ cried Albine. ‘Let us push
+on.’
+
+But Serge stopped. They were now in the midst of an old ruined
+colonnade. Some of the columns offered inviting seats as they lay
+prostrate amongst primroses and periwinkles. Further away, among the
+columns that still remained upright, other flowers were growing in
+profusion. There were expanses of tulips showing brilliant streaks like
+painted china; expanses of calceolarias dotted with crimson and gold;
+expanses of zinnias like great daisies; expanses of petunias with petals
+like soft cambric through which rosy flesh tints gleamed; and other
+fields, with flowers they could not recognise spreading in carpets
+beneath the sun, in a motley brilliance that was softened by the green
+of their leaves.
+
+‘We shall never be able to see it all,’ said Serge, smiling and waving
+his hand. ‘It would be very nice to sit down here, amongst all this
+perfume.’
+
+Near them there was a large patch of heliotropes, whose vanilla-like
+breath permeated the air with velvety softness. They sat down upon one
+of the fallen columns, in the midst of a cluster of magnificent lilies
+which had shot up there. They had been walking for more than an hour.
+They had wandered on through the flowers from the roses to the lilies.
+These offered them a calm, quiet haven after their lovers’ ramble amid
+the perfumed solicitations of luscious honeysuckle, musky violets,
+verbenas that breathed out the warm scent of kisses, and tuberoses that
+panted with voluptuous passion. The lilies, with their tall slim stems,
+shot up round them like a white pavilion and sheltered them with snowy
+cups, gleaming only with the gold of their slender pistils. And
+there they rested, like betrothed children in a tower of purity; an
+impregnable ivory tower, where all their love was yet perfect innocence.
+
+Albine and Serge lingered amongst the lilies till evening. They felt
+so happy there, and seemed to break out into a new life. Serge felt the
+last trace of fever leave his hands, while Albine grew quite white, with
+a milky whiteness untinted by any rosy hue. They were unconscious
+that their arms and necks and shoulders were bare, and their straying
+unconfined hair in nowise troubled them. They laughed merrily one at the
+other, with frank open laughter. The expression of their eyes retained
+the limpid calmness of clear spring water. When they quitted the lilies,
+their feelings were but those of children ten years old; it seemed to
+them that they had just met each other in that garden so that they might
+be friends for ever and amuse themselves with perpetual play. And as
+they returned through the parterre, the very flowers bore themselves
+discreetly, as though they were glad to see their childishness, and
+would do nothing that might corrupt them. The forests of peonies, the
+masses of carnations, the carpets of forget-me-nots, the curtains
+of clematis now steeped in the atmosphere of evening, slumbering in
+childlike purity akin to their own, no longer spread suggestions of
+voluptuousness around them. The pansies looked up at them with their
+little candid faces, like playfellows; and the languid mignonette, as
+Albine’s white skirt brushed by it, seemed full of compassion, and held
+its breath lest it should fan their love prematurely into life.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+At dawn the next day it was Serge who called Albine. She slept in a room
+on the upper floor. He looked up at her window and saw her throw open
+the shutters just as she had sprung out of bed. They laughed merrily as
+their eyes met.
+
+‘You must not go out to-day,’ said Albine, when she came down. ‘We must
+stay indoors and rest. To-morrow I will take you a long, long way off,
+to a spot where we can have a very jolly time.’
+
+‘But sha’n’t we grow tired of stopping here?’ muttered Serge.
+
+‘Oh, dear no! I will tell you stories.’
+
+They passed a delightful day. The windows were thrown wide open, and all
+the beauty of the Paradou came in and rejoiced with them in the room.
+Serge now really took possession of that delightful room, where he
+imagined he had been born. He insisted upon seeing everything, and upon
+having everything explained to him. The plaster Cupids who sported
+round the alcove amused him so much that he mounted upon a chair to tie
+Albine’s sash round the neck of the smallest of them, a little bit of a
+man who was turning somersaults with his head downward. Albine clapped
+her hands, and said that he looked like a cockchafer fastened by a
+string. Then, as though seized by an access of pity, she said, ‘No, no,
+unfasten him. It prevents him from flying.’
+
+But it was the Cupids painted over the doors that more particularly
+attracted Serge’s attention. He fidgeted at not being able to make out
+what they were playing at, for the paintings had grown very dim. Helped
+by Albine, he dragged a table to the wall, and when they both had
+climbed upon it, Albine began to explain things to him.
+
+‘Look, now, those are throwing flowers. Under the flowers you can only
+see some bare legs. It seems to me that when first I came here I could
+make out a lady reposing there. But she has been gone for a long time
+now.’
+
+They examined all the panels in turn; but they had faded to such a
+degree that little more could be distinguished than the knees and elbows
+of infants. The details which had doubtless delighted the eyes of
+those whose old-time passion seemed to linger round the alcove, had so
+completely disappeared under the influence of the fresh air, that the
+room, like the park, seemed restored to pristine virginity beneath the
+serene glory of the sun.
+
+‘Oh! they are only some little boys playing,’ said Serge, as he
+descended from the table. ‘Do you know how to play at “hot cockles”?’
+
+There was no game that Albine did not know how to play at. But, for
+‘hot cockles,’ at least three players are necessary, and that made them
+laugh. Serge protested, however, that they got on too well together ever
+to desire a third there, and they vowed that they would always remain by
+themselves.
+
+‘We are quite alone here; one cannot hear a sound,’ said the young
+man, lolling on the couch. ‘And all the furniture has such a pleasant
+old-time smell. The place is as snug as a nest. We ought to be very
+happy in this room.’
+
+The girl shook her head gravely.
+
+‘If I had been at all timid,’ she murmured, ‘I should have been very
+much frightened at first.... That is one of the stories I want to tell
+you. The people in the neighbourhood told it to me. Perhaps it isn’t
+true, but it will amuse us, at any rate.’
+
+Then she came and sat down by Serge’s side.
+
+‘It is years and years since it all happened. The Paradou belonged to
+a rich lord, who came and shut himself up in it with a very beautiful
+lady. The gates of the mansion were kept so tightly closed, and the
+garden walls were built so very high, that no one ever caught sight even
+of the lady’s skirts.’
+
+‘Ah! I know,’ Serge interrupted; ‘the lady was never seen again.’
+
+Then, as Albine looked at him in surprise, somewhat annoyed to find that
+he knew her story already, he added in a low voice, apparently a little
+astonished himself: ‘You told me the story before, you know.’
+
+She declared that she had never done so; but all at once she seemed to
+change her mind, and allowed herself to be convinced. However, that did
+not prevent her from finishing her tale in these words: ‘When the lord
+went away his hair was quite white. He had all the gates barricaded up,
+so that no one might get inside and disturb the lady. It was in this
+room that she died.’
+
+‘In this room!’ cried Serge. ‘You never told me that! Are you quite sure
+that it was really in this room she died?’
+
+Albine seemed put out. She repeated to him what every one in the
+neighbourhood knew. The lord had built the pavilion for the reception of
+this unknown lady, who looked like a princess. The servants employed at
+the mansion afterwards declared that he spent all his days and nights
+there. Often, too, they saw him in one of the walks, guiding the tiny
+feet of the mysterious lady towards the densest coppices. But for all
+the world they would never have ventured to spy upon the pair, who
+sometimes scoured the park for weeks together.
+
+‘And it was here she died?’ repeated Serge, who felt touched with
+sorrow. ‘And you have taken her room; you use her furniture, and you
+sleep in her bed.’
+
+Albine smiled.
+
+‘Ah! well, you know, I am not timid. Besides, it is so long since it all
+happened. You said what a delightful room it was.’
+
+Then they both dropped into silence, and glanced, for a moment, towards
+the alcove, the lofty ceiling, and the corners, steeped in grey gloom.
+The faded furniture seemed to speak of long past love. A gentle sigh, as
+of resignation, passed through the room.
+
+‘No, indeed,’ murmured Serge, ‘one could not feel afraid here. It is too
+peaceful.’
+
+But Albine came closer to him and said: ‘There is something else
+that only a few people know, and that is that the lord and the lady
+discovered in the garden a certain spot where perfect happiness was to
+be found, and where they afterwards spent all their time. I have been
+told that by a very good authority. It is a cool, shady spot, hidden
+away in the midst of an impenetrable jungle, and it is so marvellously
+beautiful that anyone who reaches it forgets all else in the world. The
+poor lady must have been buried there.’
+
+‘Is it anywhere about the parterre?’ asked Serge curiously.
+
+‘Ah! I cannot tell, I cannot tell,’ said the young girl with an
+expression of discouragement. ‘I know nothing about it. I have searched
+everywhere, but I have never been able to find the least sign of that
+lovely clearing. It is not amongst the roses, nor the lilies, nor the
+violets.’
+
+‘Perhaps it is hidden somewhere away amongst those mournful-looking
+flowers, where you showed me the figure of a boy standing with his arm
+broken off.’
+
+‘No, no, indeed.’
+
+‘Perhaps, then, it is in that grotto, near that clear stream, where the
+great marble woman, without a face, is lying.’
+
+‘No, no.’
+
+Albine seemed to reflect for a moment. Then, as though speaking to
+herself, she went on: ‘As soon as ever I came here, I began to hunt for
+it. I spent whole days in the Paradou, and ferreted about in all the
+out-of-the-way green corners, to have the pleasure of sitting for an
+hour in that happy spot. What mornings have I not wasted in groping
+under the brambles and peeping into the most distant nooks of the park!
+Oh! I should have known it at once, that enchanting retreat, with the
+mighty tree that must shelter it with a canopy of foliage, with its
+carpet of soft silky turf, and its walls of tangled greenery, which the
+very birds themselves cannot penetrate.
+
+She raised her voice, and threw one of her arms round Serge’s neck, as
+she continued: ‘Tell me, now; shall we search for it together? We shall
+surely find it. You, who are strong, will push aside the heavy branches,
+while I crawl underneath and search the brakes. When I grow weary, you
+can carry me; you can help me to cross the streams; and if we happen
+to lose ourselves, you can climb the trees and try to discover our way
+again. Ah! and how delightful it will be for us to sit, side by side,
+beneath the green canopy in the centre of the clearing! I have been told
+that in one minute one may there live the whole of life. Tell me, my
+dear Serge, shall we set off to-morrow and scour the park, from bush to
+bush, until we have found what we want?’
+
+Serge shrugged his shoulders, and smiled. ‘What would be the use?’ he
+said. ‘Is it not pleasant in the parterre? Don’t you think we ought to
+remain among the flowers, instead of seeking a greater happiness that
+lies so far away?’
+
+‘It is there that the dead lady lies buried,’ murmured Albine, falling
+back into her reverie. ‘It was the joy of being there that killed her.
+The tree casts a shade, whose charm is deathly.... I would willingly die
+so. We would clasp one another there, and we would die, and none would
+ever find us again.’
+
+‘Don’t talk like that,’ interrupted Serge. ‘You make me feel so unhappy.
+I would rather that we should live in the bright sunlight, far away from
+that fatal shade. Your words distress me, as though they urged us to
+some irreparable misfortune. It must be forbidden to sit beneath a tree
+whose shade can thus affect one.’
+
+‘Yes,’ Albine gravely declared, ‘it is forbidden. All the folks of the
+countryside have told me that it is forbidden.’
+
+Then silence fell. Serge rose from the couch where he had been lolling,
+and laughed, and pretended that he did not care about stories. The sun
+was setting, however, before Albine would consent to go into the garden
+for even a few minutes. She led Serge to the left, along the enclosing
+wall, to a spot strewn with fragments of stone, and woodwork, and
+ironwork, bristling too with briars and brambles. It was the site of the
+old mansion, still black with traces of the fire which had destroyed
+the building. Underneath the briars lay rotting timbers and fire-split
+masonry. The spot was like a little ravined, hillocky wilderness of
+sterile rocks, draped with rude vegetation, clinging creepers that
+twined and twisted through every crevice like green serpents. The young
+folks amused themselves by wandering across this chaos, groping about in
+the holes, turning over the debris, trying to reconstruct something
+of the past out of the ruins before them. They did not confess their
+curiosity as they chased one another through the midst of fallen
+floorings and overturned partitions; but they were indeed, all the time,
+secretly pondering over the legend of those ruins, and of that lady,
+lovelier than day, whose silken skirt had rustled down those steps,
+where now lizards alone were idly crawling.
+
+Serge ended by climbing the highest of the ruinous masses; and, looking
+round at the park which unfolded its vast expanse of greenery, he sought
+the grey form of the pavilion through the trees. Albine was standing
+silent by his side, serious once more.
+
+‘The pavilion is yonder, to the right,’ she said at last, without
+waiting for Serge to ask her. ‘It is the only one of the buildings
+that is left. You can see it quite plainly at the end of that grove of
+lime-trees.’
+
+They fell into silence again; and then Albine, as though pursuing aloud
+the reflections which were passing through their minds, exclaimed: ‘When
+he went to see her, he must have gone down yonder path, then past those
+big chestnut trees, and then under the limes. It wouldn’t take him a
+quarter of an hour.’
+
+Serge made no reply. But as they went home, they took the path which
+Albine had pointed out, past the chestnuts and under the limes. It was a
+path that love had consecrated. And as they walked over the grass, they
+seemed to be seeking footmarks, or a fallen knot of ribbon, or a whiff
+of ancient perfume--something that would clearly satisfy them that they
+were really travelling along the path that led to the joy of union.
+
+‘Wait out here,’ said Albine, when they once more stood before the
+pavilion; ‘don’t come up for three minutes.’
+
+Then she ran off merrily, and shut herself up in the room with the blue
+ceiling. And when she had let Serge knock at the door twice, she softly
+set it ajar, and received him with an old-fashioned courtesy.
+
+‘Good morrow, my dear lord,’ she said as she embraced him.
+
+This amused them extremely. They played at being lovers with childish
+glee. In stammering accents they would have revived the passion which
+had once throbbed and died there. But it was like a first effort at
+learning a lesson. They knew not how to kiss each other’s lips, but
+sought each other’s cheeks, and ended by dancing around each other,
+with shrieks of laughter, from ignorance of any other way of showing the
+pleasure they experienced from their mutual love.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+The next morning Albine was anxious to start at sunrise upon the grand
+expedition which she had planned the night before. She tapped her feet
+gleefully on the ground, and declared that they would not come back
+before nightfall.
+
+‘Where are you going to take me?’ asked Serge.
+
+‘You will see, you will see.’
+
+But he caught her by the hands and looked her very earnestly in the
+face. ‘You must not be foolish, you know. I won’t have you hunting for
+that glade of yours, or for the tree, or for the grassy couch where one
+droops and dies. You know that it is forbidden.’
+
+She blushed slightly, protesting that she had no such idea in her head.
+Then she added: ‘But if we should come across them, just by chance, you
+know, and without really seeking them, you wouldn’t mind sitting down,
+would you? Else you must love me very little.’
+
+They set off, going straight through the parterre without stopping to
+watch the awakening of the flowers which were all dripping after their
+dewy bath. The morning had a rosy hue, the smile of a beautiful child,
+just opening its eyes on its snowy pillow.
+
+‘Where are you taking me?’ repeated Serge.
+
+But Albine only laughed and would not answer. Then, on reaching the
+stream which ran through the garden at the end of the flower-beds, she
+halted in great distress. The water was swollen with the late rains.
+
+‘We shall never be able to get across,’ she murmured. ‘I can generally
+manage it by taking off my shoes and stockings, but, to-day, the water
+would reach to our waists.’
+
+They walked for a moment or two along the bank to find some fordable
+point; but the girl said it was hopeless; she knew the stream quite
+well. Once there had been a bridge across, but it had fallen in, and had
+strewn the river bed with great blocks of stone, between which the water
+rushed along in foaming eddies.
+
+‘Get on to my back, then,’ said Serge.
+
+‘No, no; I’d rather not. If you were to slip, we should both of us get a
+famous wetting. You don’t know how treacherous those stones are.’
+
+‘Get on to my back,’ repeated Serge.
+
+She was tempted to do so. She stepped back for a spring, and then jumped
+up, like a boy; but she felt that Serge was tottering; and crying out
+that she was not safely seated, she got down again. However, after two
+more attempts, she managed to settle herself securely on Serge’s back.
+
+‘When you are quite ready,’ said the young man, laughing, ‘we will
+start. Now, hold on tightly. We are off.’
+
+And, with three light strides, he crossed the stream, scarcely wetting
+even his toes. Midway, however, Albine thought that he was slipping. She
+broke out into a little scream, and hugged him tightly round his neck.
+But he sprang forward, and carried her at a gallop over the fine sand on
+the other side.
+
+‘Gee up!’ she cried, quite calm again, and delighted with this novel
+game.
+
+He ran along with her for some distance, she clucking her tongue, and
+guiding him to right or left by some locks of his hair.
+
+‘Here--here we are,’ she said at last, tapping him gently on the cheeks.
+
+Then she jumped to the ground; while he, hot and perspiring, leaned
+against a tree to draw breath. Albine thereupon began to scold him, and
+threatened that she would not nurse him if he made himself ill again.
+
+‘Stuff!’ he cried, ‘it’s done me good. When I have grown quite strong
+again, I will carry you about all day. But where are you taking me?’
+
+‘Here,’ she said, as she seated herself beneath a huge pear-tree.
+
+They were in the old orchard of the park. A hawthorn hedge, a real wall
+of greenery with here and there a gap, separated it from everything
+else. There was quite a forest of fruit trees, which no pruning knife
+had touched for a century past. Some of the trees had been strangely
+warped and twisted by the storms which had raged over them; while
+others, bossed all over with huge knots and full of deep holes, seemed
+only to hold on to the soil with their bark. The high branches, bent
+each year by weight of fruit, stretched out like big rackets; and each
+tree helped to keep its fellows erect. The trunks were like twisted
+pillars supporting a roof of greenery; and sometimes narrow cloisters,
+sometimes light halls were formed, while now and again the verdure swept
+almost to the ground and left scarcely room to pass. Round each colossus
+a crowd of wild and self-sown saplings had grown up, thicket-like with
+the entanglement of their young shoots. In the greenish light which
+filtered like tinted water through the foliage, in the deep silence
+of the mossy soil, one only heard the dull thud of the fruit as it was
+culled by the wind.
+
+And there were patriarchal apricot trees that bore their great age
+quite bravely. Though decayed on one side, where they showed a perfect
+scaffolding of dead wood, they were so youthful, so full of life, that,
+on the other, young shoots were ever bursting through their rough bark.
+There were cherry trees, that formed complete towns with houses of
+several stories, that threw out staircases and floors of branches, big
+enough for half a score of families. Then there were the apple trees,
+with their limbs twisted like old cripples, with bark gnarled and
+knotted, and all stained with lichen-growth. There were also smooth pear
+trees, that shot up mast-like with long slender spars. And there were
+rosy-blossomed peach-trees that won a place amid this teeming growth as
+pretty maids do amidst a human crowd by dint of bright smiles and gentle
+persistence. Some had been formerly trained as espaliers, but they had
+broken down the low walls which had once supported them, and now spread
+abroad in wild confusion, freed from the trammels of trellis work,
+broken fragments of which still adhered to some of their branches. They
+grew just as they listed, and resembled well-bred trees, once neat and
+prim, which, having gone astray, now flaunted but vestiges of whilom
+respectability. And from tree to tree, and from bough to bough, vine
+branches hung in confusion. They rose like wild laughter, twined for
+an instant round some lofty knot, then started off again with yet more
+sonorous mirth, splotching all the foliage with the merry ebriety of
+their tendrils. Their pale sun-gilt green set a glow of bacchanalianism
+about the weather-worn heads of the old orchard giants.
+
+Then towards the left were trees less thickly planted. Thin-foliaged
+almonds allowed the sun’s rays to pass and ripen the pumpkins, which
+looked like moons that had fallen to the earth. Near the edge of a
+stream which flowed through the orchard there also grew various kinds of
+melons, some rough with knotty warts, some smooth and shining, as oval
+as the eggs of ostriches. At every step, too, progress was barred by
+currant bushes, showing limpid bunches of fruit, rubies in one and all
+of which there sparkled liquid sunlight. And hedges of raspberry
+canes shot up like wild brambles, while the ground was but a carpet
+of strawberry plants, teeming with ripe berries which exhaled a slight
+odour of vanilla.
+
+But the enchanted corner of the orchard was still further to the left,
+near a tier of rocks which there began to soar upwards. There you found
+yourself in a veritable land of fire, in a natural hot-house, on which
+the sun fell freely. At first, you had to make your way through huge,
+ungainly fig trees, which stretched out grey branches like arms weary of
+lying still, and whose villose leather-like foliage was so dense that
+in order to pass one constantly had to snap off twigs that had sprouted
+from the old wood. Next you passed on through groves of strawberry trees
+with verdure like that of giant box-plants, and with scarlet berries
+which suggested maize plants decked out with crimson ribbon. Then
+there came a jungle of nettle-trees, medlars and jujube trees, which
+pomegranates skirted with never-fading verdure. The fruit of the latter,
+big as a child’s fist, was scarcely set as yet; and the purple blossoms,
+fluttering at the ends of the branches, looked like the palpitating
+wings of the humming birds, which do not even bend the shoots on which
+they perch. Lastly, there was a forest of orange and lemon trees growing
+vigorously in the open air. Their straight trunks stood like rows of
+brown columns, while their shiny leaves showed brightly against the
+blue of the sky, and cast upon the ground a network of light and shadow,
+figuring the palms of some Indian fabric. Here there was shade beside
+which that of the European orchard seemed colourless, insipid; the warm
+joy of sunlight, softened into flying gold-dust; the glad certainty
+of evergreen foliage; the penetrating perfume of blossom, and the more
+subdued fragrance of fruit; all helping to fill the body with the soft
+languor of tropical lands.
+
+‘And now let us breakfast,’ cried Albine, clapping her hands. ‘It must
+be at least nine o’clock, and I am very hungry.’
+
+She had risen from the ground. Serge confessed that he, too, would find
+some food acceptable.
+
+‘You goose!’ she said, ‘you didn’t understand, then, that I brought you
+here to breakfast. We sha’n’t die of hunger here. We can help ourselves
+to all there is.’
+
+They went along under the trees, pushing aside the branches and making
+their way to the thickest of the fruit. Albine, who went first, turned,
+and in her flute-like voice asked her companion: ‘What do you like best?
+Pears, apricots, cherries, or currants? I warn you that the pears are
+still green; but they are very nice all the same.’
+
+Serge decided upon having cherries, and Albine agreed it would be as
+well to start with them; but when she saw him foolishly beginning to
+scramble up the first cherry tree he found, she made him go on for
+another ten minutes through a frightful entanglement of branches. The
+cherries on this tree, she said, were small and good for nothing; those
+on that were sour; those on another would not be ripe for at least a
+week. She knew all the trees.
+
+‘Stop, climb this one,’ she said at last, as she stopped at the foot of
+a tree, so heavily laden with fruit that clusters of it hung down to the
+ground, like strings of coral beads.
+
+Serge settled himself comfortably between two branches and began his
+breakfast. He no longer paid attention to Albine. He imagined she was in
+another tree, a few yards away, when, happening to cast his eyes towards
+the ground, he saw her calmly lying on her back beneath him. She had
+thrown herself there, and, without troubling herself to use her hands,
+was plucking with her teeth the cherries which dangled over her mouth.
+
+When she saw she was discovered, she broke out into a peal of laughter,
+and twisted about on the grass like a fish taken from the water. And
+finally, crawling along on her elbows, she gradually made the circuit of
+the tree, snapping up the plumpest cherries as she went along.
+
+‘They tickle me so,’ she cried. ‘See, there’s a beauty just fallen on my
+neck. They are so deliciously fresh and juicy. They get into my ears,
+my eyes, my nose, everywhere. They are much sweeter down here than up
+there.’
+
+‘Ah!’ said Serge, laughing, ‘you say that because you daren’t climb up.’
+
+She remained for a moment silent with indignation. ‘Daren’t!--I!--’ she
+stammered.
+
+Then, having gathered up her skirts, she tightly grasped the tree and
+pulled herself up the trunk with a single effort of her strong wrists.
+And afterwards she stepped lightly along the branches, scarcely using
+her hands to steady herself. She had all the agile nimbleness of a
+squirrel, and made her way onward, maintaining her equilibrium only by
+the swaying poise of her body. When she was quite aloft at the end of
+a frail branch, which shook dangerously beneath her weight, she cried;
+‘Now you see whether I daren’t climb.’
+
+‘Come down at once,’ implored Serge, full of alarm for her. ‘I beg of
+you to come down. You will be injuring yourself.’
+
+But she, enjoying her triumph, began to mount still higher. She crawled
+along to the extreme end of a branch, grasping its leaves in her hands
+to maintain her hold.
+
+‘The branch will break!’ cried Serge, thoroughly frightened.
+
+‘Let it break,’ she answered, with a laugh; ‘it will save me the trouble
+of getting down.’
+
+And the branch did break, but only slowly, with such deliberation that,
+as it gradually settled towards the ground, it let Albine slip down in
+very gentle fashion. She did not appear in the least degree frightened;
+but gave herself a shake, and said: ‘That was really nice. It was quite
+like being in a carriage.’
+
+Serge had jumped down from the tree to catch her in his arms. As he
+stood there, quite pale from fright, she laughed at him. ‘One tumbles
+down from trees every day,’ she exclaimed, ‘but there is never any harm
+done. Look more cheerful, you great stupid! Stay, just wet your finger
+and rub it upon my neck. I have scratched it.’
+
+Serge wetted his finger and touched her neck with it.
+
+‘There, I am all right again now,’ she cried, as she bounded off. ‘Let
+us play at hide and seek, shall we?’
+
+She was the first to hide. She disappeared, and presently from the
+depths of the greenery, which she alone knew, and where Serge could not
+possibly find her, she called, ‘Cuckoo, cuckoo.’ But this game of hide
+and seek did not put a stop to the onslaught upon the fruit trees.
+Breakfasting went on in all the nooks and corners where the two big
+children sought each other. Albine, while gliding beneath the branches,
+would stretch out her hand to pluck a green pear or fill her skirt with
+apricots. Then in some of her lurking-places she would come upon such
+rich discoveries as would make her careless of the game, content to
+sit upon the ground and remain eating. Once, however, she lost sound of
+Serge’s movements. So, in her turn, she set about seeking him; and she
+was surprised, almost vexed, when she discovered him under a plum-tree,
+of whose existence she herself had been ignorant, and whose ripe fruit
+had a delicious musky perfume. She soundly rated him. Did he want to eat
+everything himself, that he hadn’t called to her to come? He pretended
+to know nothing about the trees, but he evidently had a very keen scent
+to be able to find all the good things. She was especially indignant
+with the poor tree itself--a stupid tree which no one had known of, and
+which must have sprung up in the night on purpose to put people out. As
+she stood there pouting, refusing to pluck a single plum, it occurred to
+Serge to shake the tree violently. And then a shower, a regular hail, of
+plums came down. Albine, standing in the midst of the downfall, received
+plums on her arms, plums on her neck, plums on the very tip of her nose.
+At this she could no longer restrain her laughter; she stood in the
+midst of the deluge, crying ‘More! more!’ amused as she was by the round
+bullet-like fruit which fell around her as she squatted there, with
+hands and mouth open, and eyes closed.
+
+It was a morning of childish play, of wild gambols in the Paradou.
+Albine and Serge spent hours, scampering up and down, shouting and
+sporting with each other, their thoughts still all innocence. And in
+what a delicious spot they found themselves! Depths of greenery, with
+undiscoverable hiding-places; paths, along whose windings it was never
+possible to be serious, such greedy laughter fell from the very hedges.
+In this happy orchard, there was such a playful straggling of bushes,
+such fresh and appetising shade, such a wealth of old trees laden like
+kindly grandfathers with sweet dainties. Even in the depths of the
+recesses green with moss, beneath the broken trunks which compelled them
+to creep the one behind the other, in the narrow leafy alleys, the young
+folks never succumbed to the perilous reveries of silence. No trouble
+touched them in that happy wood.
+
+And when they had grown weary of the apricot-trees and the plum-trees
+and the cherry-trees, they ran beneath the slender almond-trees; eating
+green almonds, scarcely yet as big as peas, hunting for strawberries in
+the grassy carpet, and regretting that the melons were not already ripe.
+Albine finished by running as fast as she could go, pursued by Serge,
+who was unable to overtake her. She rushed amongst the fig-trees,
+leaping over their heavy branches, and pulling off the leaves to throw
+them behind her in her companion’s face. In a few strides she had
+cleared the clumps of arbutus, whose red berries she tasted on her way;
+and it was in the jungle of nettle-trees, medlars, and jujube-trees that
+Serge lost her. At first he thought she was hiding behind a pomegranate;
+but found that he had mistaken two clustering blossoms for the rosy
+roundness of her wrists. Then he scoured the plantation of orange-trees,
+rejoicing in their beauty and perfume, and thinking that he must have
+reached the abode of the fairies of the sun. In the midst of them he
+caught sight of Albine, who, not believing him so near her, was peering
+inquisitively into the green depths.
+
+‘What are you looking for?’ he cried. ‘You know very well that is
+forbidden.’
+
+She sprang up hastily, and slightly blushed for the first time that day.
+Then sitting down by the side of Serge, she told him of the fine times
+there would be when the oranges should be ripe. The wood would then
+be all golden, all bright with those round stars, dotting with yellow
+sparks the arching green.
+
+When at last they really set off homeward she halted at every
+wild-growing fruit tree, and filled her pockets with sour pears and
+bitter plums, saying that they would be good to eat on their way. They
+would prove a hundred times more enjoyable than anything they had tasted
+before. Serge was obliged to swallow some of them, in spite of the
+grimaces he made at each bite. And eventually they found themselves
+indoors again, tired out but feeling very happy.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+A week later there was another expedition to the park. They had planned
+to extend their rambles beyond the orchard, striking out to the left
+through the meadows watered by the four streams. They would travel
+several miles over the thick grass, and they might live on fish, if they
+happened to lose themselves.
+
+‘I will take my knife,’ said Albine, holding up a broad-bladed peasant’s
+knife.
+
+She crammed all kinds of things into her pockets, string, bread,
+matches, a small bottle of wine, some rags, a comb, and some needles.
+Serge took a rug, but by the time they had passed the lime-trees and
+reached the ruins of the chateau, he found it such an encumbrance that
+he hid it beneath a piece of fallen wall.
+
+The sun was hotter than before, Albine had delayed their departure by
+her extensive preparations. Thus in the heat of the morning they stepped
+along side by side, almost quietly. They actually managed to take twenty
+paces at a time without pushing one another or laughing. They began to
+talk.
+
+‘I never can wake up,’ began Albine. ‘I slept so soundly last night. Did
+you?’
+
+‘Yes, indeed, very soundly,’ replied Serge.
+
+‘What does it mean when you dream of a bird that talks to you?’ the girl
+resumed.
+
+‘I don’t know. What did your bird say to you?’
+
+‘Oh, I have forgotten. But it said all kinds of things, and many of
+them sounded very comical. Stop, look at that big poppy over there. You
+sha’n’t get it, you sha’n’t get it!’
+
+And then she sprang forward; but Serge, thanks to his long legs,
+outstripped her and plucked the poppy, which he waved about
+victoriously. She stood there with lips compressed, saying nothing,
+but feeling a strong inclination to cry. Serge threw down the flower.
+Nothing else occurred to him. Then, to make his peace with her, he
+asked: ‘Would you like me to carry you as I did the other day?’
+
+‘No, no.’
+
+She pouted a little, but she had not gone another thirty steps, when she
+turned round smiling. A bramble had caught hold of her dress.
+
+‘I thought it was you who were treading on my dress purposely. It won’t
+let me go. Come and unfasten me.’
+
+When she was released, they walked on again, side by side, very quietly.
+Albine pretended that it was much more amusing to stroll along in this
+fashion, like steady grown-up folks. They had just reached the meadows.
+Far away, in front of them, stretched grassy expanses scarce broken here
+and there by the tender foliage of willows. The grass looked soft and
+downy, like velvet. It was a deep green, subsiding in the distance into
+lighter tints, and on the horizon assuming a bright yellow glow beneath
+the flaring sun. The clumps of willows right over yonder seemed like
+pure gold, bathed in the tremulous brilliance of the sunshine. Dancing
+dust tipped the blades of grass with quivering light, and as the gentle
+breezes swept over the free expanse, moire-like reflections appeared on
+the caressed and quivering herbage. In the nearer fields a multitude of
+little white daisies, now in swarms, now straggling, and now in groups,
+like holiday makers at some public rejoicing, brightly peopled the dark
+grass. Buttercups showed themselves, gay like little brass bells which
+the touch of a fly’s wing would set tinkling. Here and there big lonely
+poppies raised fiery cups, and others, gathered together further away,
+spread out like vats purple with lees of wine. Big cornflowers balanced
+aloft their light blue caps which looked as if they would fly away
+at every breath of air. Then under foot there were patches of woolly
+feather-grass and fragrant meadow-sweet, sheets of fescue, dog’s-tail,
+creeping-bent, and meadow grass. Sainfoin reared its long fine
+filaments; clover unfurled its clear green leaves, plantains brandished
+forests of spears, lucerne spread out in soft beds of green satin
+broidered with purple flowers. And all these were seen, to right, to
+left, in front, everywhere, rolling over the level soil, showing like
+the mossy surface of a stagnant sea, asleep beneath the sky which ever
+seemed to expand. Here and there, in the vast expanse, the vegetation
+was of a limpid blue, as though it reflected the colour of the heavens.
+
+Albine and Serge stepped along over the meadow-lands, with the grass
+reaching to their knees. It was like wading through a pool. Now and
+then, indeed, they found themselves caught by a current in which a
+stream of bending stalks seemed to flow away between their legs. Then
+there were placid-looking, slumbering lakes, basins of short grass,
+which scarcely reached their ankles. As they walked along together,
+their joy found expression not in wild gambols, as in the orchard a week
+before, but rather in loitering, with their feet caught among the supple
+arms of the herbage, tasting as it were the caresses of a pure stream
+which calmed the exuberance of their youth. Albine turned aside and
+slipped into a lofty patch of vegetation which reached to her chin. Only
+her head appeared. For a moment or two she stood there in silence. Then
+she called to Serge: ‘Come here, it is just like a bath. It is as if one
+had green water all over one.’
+
+Then she gave a jump and scampered off without waiting for him, and
+they both walked along the margin of the first stream which barred their
+onward course. It was a shallow tranquil brook between banks of wild
+cress. It flowed on so placidly and gently that its surface reflected
+like a mirror the smallest reed that grew beside it. Albine and Serge
+followed this stream, whose onward motion was slower than their own, for
+a long time before they came across a tree that flung a long shadow
+upon the idle waters. As far as their eyes could reach they saw the bare
+brook stretch out and slumber in the sunlight like a blue serpent half
+uncoiled. At last they reached a clump of three willows. Two had their
+roots in the stream; the third was set a little backward. Their trunks,
+rotten and crumbling with age, were crowned with the bright foliage of
+youth. The shadow they cast was so slight as scarcely to be perceptible
+upon the sunlit bank. Yet here the water, which, both above and below,
+was so unruffled, showed a transient quiver, a rippling of its surface,
+as though it were surprised to find even this light veil cast over it.
+Between the three willows the meadow-land sloped down to the stream, and
+some crimson poppies had sprung up in the crevices of the decaying old
+trunks. The foliage of the willows looked like a tent of greenery fixed
+upon three stakes by the water’s edge, beside a rolling prairie.
+
+‘This is the place,’ cried Albine, ‘this is the place;’ and she glided
+beneath the willows.
+
+Serge sat down by her side, his feet almost in the water. He glanced
+round him, and murmured: ‘You know everything, you know all the best
+spots. One might almost think this was an island, ten feet square, right
+in the middle of the sea.’
+
+‘Yes, indeed, we are quite at home,’ she replied, as she gleefully
+drummed the grass with her fists. ‘It is altogether our own, and we are
+going to do everything ourselves.’ Then, as if struck by a brilliant
+idea, she sprang towards him, and, with her face close to his, asked him
+joyously: ‘Will you be my husband? I will be your wife.’
+
+He was delighted at the notion, and replied that he would gladly be
+her husband, laughing even more loudly than she had done herself.
+Then Albine suddenly became grave, and assumed the anxious air of a
+housewife.
+
+‘You know,’ she said, ‘that it is I who will have to give the orders. We
+will have breakfast as soon as you have laid the table.’
+
+She gave him her orders in an imperious fashion. He had to stow all the
+various articles which she extracted from her pockets into a hole in one
+of the willows, which bole she called the cupboard. The rags
+supplied the household linen, while the comb represented the toilette
+necessaries. The needles and string were to be used for mending the
+explorers’ clothes. Provision for the inner man consisted of the little
+bottle of wine and a few crusts which she had saved from yesterday. She
+had, to be sure, some matches, by the aid of which she intended to cook
+the fish they were going to catch.
+
+When Serge had finished laying the table, the bottle of wine in the
+centre, and three crusts grouped round it, he hazarded the observation
+that the fare seemed to be scanty. But Albine shrugged her shoulders
+with feminine superiority. And wading into the water, she said in a
+severe tone, ‘I will catch the fish; you can watch me.’
+
+For half an hour she strenuously exerted herself in trying to catch some
+of the little fishes with her hands. She had gathered up her petticoats
+and fastened them together with a piece of string. And she advanced
+quietly into the water, taking the greatest care not to disturb it. When
+she was quite close to some tiny fish, that lay lurking between a couple
+of pebbles, she thrust down her bare arm, made a wild grasp, and brought
+her hand up again with nothing in it but sand and gravel. Serge then
+broke out into noisy laughter which brought her back to the bank,
+indignant. She told him that he had no business to laugh at her.
+
+‘But,’ he ended by asking, ‘how are we going to cook your fish when you
+have caught it? There is no wood about.’
+
+That put the finishing touch to her discouragement. However, the fish
+in that stream didn’t seem to be good for much; so she came out of the
+water and ran through the long grass to get her feet dry.
+
+‘See,’ she suddenly exclaimed, ‘here is some pimpernel. It is very nice.
+Now we shall have a feast.’
+
+Serge was ordered to gather a quantity of the pimpernel and place it on
+the table. They ate it with their crusts. Albine declared that it was
+much better than nuts. She assumed the position of mistress of the
+establishment, and cut Serge’s bread for him, for she would not trust
+him with the knife. At last she made him store away in the ‘cupboard’
+the few drops of wine that remained at the bottom of the bottle. He was
+also ordered to sweep the grass. Then Albine lay down at full length.
+
+‘We are going to sleep now, you know. You must lie down by my side.’
+
+He did as he was ordered. They lay there stiffly staring into the air,
+and saying that they were asleep, and that it was very nice. After a
+while, however, they drew slightly away from one another, averting their
+heads as if they felt some discomfort. And at last breaking the silence
+which had fallen between them, Serge exclaimed: ‘I love you very much.’
+
+It was love such as it is without any sensual feeling; that instinctive
+love which wakens in the bosom of a little man ten years old at the
+sight of some white-robed baby-girl. The meadow-lands, spreading around
+them all open and free, dissipated the slight fear each felt of the
+other. They knew that they lay there, seen of all the herbage, that the
+blue sky looked down upon them through the light foliage of the willows,
+and the thought was pleasant to them. The willow canopy over their heads
+was a mere open screen. The shade it cast was so imperceptible that
+it wafted to them none of the languor that some dim coppice might have
+done. From the far-off horizon came a healthy breeze fraught with all
+the freshness of the grassy sea, swelling here and there into waves
+of flowers; while, at their feet, the stream, childlike as they were,
+flowed idly along with a gentle babbling that sounded to them like the
+laughter of a companion. Ah! happy solitude, so tranquil and placid,
+immensity wherein the little patch of grass serving as their couch took
+the semblance of an infant’s cradle.
+
+‘There, that’s enough; said Albine, getting up; ‘we’ve rested long
+enough.’
+
+Serge seemed a little surprised at this speedy termination of their
+sleep. He stretched out his arm and caught hold of Albine, as though to
+draw her near him again; and when she, laughing, dropped upon her knees
+he grasped her elbows and gazed up at her. He knew not to what impulse
+he was yielding. But when she had freed herself, and again had risen to
+her feet, he buried his face amongst the grass where she had lain, and
+which still retained the warmth of her body.
+
+‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘it is time to get up,’ and then he rose from
+the ground.
+
+They scoured the meadow-lands until evening began to fall. They went on
+and on, inspecting their garden. Albine walked in front, sniffing like
+a young dog, and saying nothing, but she was ever in search of the happy
+glade, although where they found themselves there were none of the big
+trees of which her thoughts were full. Serge meanwhile indulged in all
+kinds of clumsy gallantry. He rushed forward so hastily to thrust the
+tall herbage aside, that he nearly tripped her up; and he almost tore
+her arm from her body as he tried to assist her over the brooks. Their
+joy was great when they came to the three other streams. The first
+flowed over a bed of pebbles, between two rows of willows, so closely
+planted that they had to grope between the branches with the risk of
+falling into some deep part of the water. It only rose to Serge’s knees,
+however, and having caught Albine in his arms he carried her to the
+opposite bank, to save her from a wetting. The next stream flowed black
+with shade beneath a lofty canopy of foliage, passing languidly onward
+with the gentle rustling and rippling of the satin train of some lady,
+dreamily sauntering through the woodland depths. It was a deep, cold,
+and rather dangerous-looking stream, but a fallen tree that stretched
+from bank to bank served them as a bridge. They crossed over, bestriding
+the tree with dangling feet, at first amusing themselves by stirring the
+water which looked like a mirror of burnished steel, but then suddenly
+hastening, frightened by the strange eyes which opened in the depths of
+the sleepy current at the slightest splash. But it was the last stream
+which delayed them the most. It was sportive like themselves, it flowed
+more slowly at certain bends, whence it started off again with merry
+ripples, past piles of big stones, into the shelter of some clump of
+trees, and grew calmer once more. It exhibited every humour as it sped
+along over soft sand or rocky boulders, over sparkling pebbles or greasy
+clay, where leaping frogs made yellow puddles. Albine and Serge dabbled
+about in delight, and even walked homewards through the stream in
+preference to remaining on the bank. At every little island that divided
+the current they landed. They conquered the savage spot or rested
+beneath the lofty canes and reeds, which seemed to grow there expressly
+as shelter for shipwrecked adventurers. Thus they made a delightful
+progress, amused by the changing scenery of the banks, enlivened by the
+merry humour of the living current.
+
+But when they were about to leave the river, Serge realised that Albine
+was still seeking something along the banks, on the island, even among
+the plants that slept on the surface of the water. He was obliged to
+go and pull her from the midst of a patch of water-lilies whose broad
+leaves set _collerettes_ around her limbs. He said nothing, but shook
+his finger at her. And at last they went home, walking along, arm in
+arm, like young people after a day’s outing. They looked at each other,
+and thought one another handsomer and stronger than before, and of a
+certainty their laughter had a different ring from that with which it
+had sounded in the morning.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+‘Are we never going out again?’ asked Serge some days later.
+
+And when he saw Albine shrug her shoulders with a weary air, he added,
+in a teasing kind of way, ‘You have got tired of looking for your tree,
+then?’
+
+They joked about the tree all day and made fun of it. It didn’t exist.
+It was only a nursery-story. Yet they both spoke of it with a slight
+feeling of awe. And on the morrow they settled that they would go to
+the far end of the park and pay a visit to the great forest-trees which
+Serge had not yet seen. Albine refused to take anything along with them.
+They breakfasted before starting and did not set off till late. The heat
+of the sun, which was then great, brought them a feeling of languor,
+and they sauntered along gently, side by side, seeking every patch of
+sheltering shade. They lingered neither in the garden nor the orchard,
+through which they had to pass. When they gained the shady coolness
+beneath the big trees, they dropped into a still slower pace; and,
+without a word, but with a deep sigh, as though it were welcome relief
+to escape from the glare of day, they pushed on into the forest’s
+depths. And when they had nothing but cool green leaves about them, when
+no glimpse of the sunlit expanse was afforded by any gap in the
+foliage, they looked at each other and smiled, with a feeling of vague
+uneasiness.
+
+‘How nice it is here!’ murmured Serge.
+
+Albine simply nodded her head. A choking sensation in her throat
+prevented her from speaking. Their arms were not passed as usual round
+each other’s waist, but swung loosely by their sides. They walked along
+without touching each other, and with their heads inclined towards the
+ground.
+
+But Serge suddenly stopped short on seeing tears trickle down Albine’s
+cheeks and mingle with the smile that played around her lips.
+
+‘What is the matter with you?’ he exclaimed; ‘are you in pain? Have you
+hurt yourself?’
+
+‘No, don’t you see I’m smiling? I don’t know how it is, but the scent of
+all these trees forces tears into my eyes.’ She glanced at him, and then
+resumed: ‘Why, you’re crying too! You see you can’t help it.’
+
+‘Yes,’ he murmured, ‘all this deep shade affects one. It seems so
+peaceful, so mournful here that one feels a little sad. But you must
+tell me, you know, if anything makes you really unhappy. I have not done
+anything to annoy you, have I? you are not vexed with me?’
+
+She assured him that she was not. She was quite happy, she said.
+
+‘Then why are you not enjoying yourself more? Shall we have a race?’
+
+‘Oh! no, we can’t race,’ she said, disdainfully, with a pout. And
+when he went on to suggest other amusements, such as bird-nesting or
+gathering strawberries or violets, she replied a little impatiently: ‘We
+are too big for that sort of thing. It is childish to be always playing.
+Doesn’t it please you better to walk on quietly by my side?’
+
+She stepped along so prettily, that it was, indeed, a pleasure to hear
+the pit-pat of her little boots on the hard soil of the path. Never
+before had he paid attention to the rhythmic motion of her figure, the
+sweep of her skirts that followed her with serpentine motion. It was
+happiness never to be exhausted, to see her thus walking sedately by
+his side, for he was ever discovering some new charm in the lissom
+suppleness of her limbs.
+
+‘You are right,’ he said, ‘this is really the best. I would walk by your
+side to the end of the world, if you wished it.’
+
+A little further on, however, he asked her if she were not tired, and
+hinted that he would not be sorry to have a rest himself.
+
+‘We might sit down for a few minutes,’ he suggested in a stammering
+voice.
+
+‘No,’ she replied, ‘I don’t want to.’
+
+‘But we might lie down, you know, as we did in the meadows the other
+day. We should be quite comfortable.’
+
+‘No, no; I don’t want to.’
+
+And she suddenly sprang aside, as if scared by the masculine arms
+outstretched towards her. Serge called her a big stupid, and tried to
+catch her. But at the light touch of his fingers she cried out with such
+an expression of pain that he drew back, trembling.
+
+‘I have hurt you?’ he said.
+
+She did not reply for a moment, surprised, herself, at her cry of fear,
+and already smiling at her own alarm.
+
+‘No; leave me, don’t worry me;’ and she added in a grave tone, though
+she tried to feign jocularity: ‘you know that I have my tree to look
+for.’
+
+Then Serge began to laugh, and offered to help her in her search. He
+conducted himself very gently in order that he might not again alarm
+her, for he saw that she was even yet trembling, though she had resumed
+her slow walk beside him. What they were contemplating was forbidden,
+and could bring them no luck; and he, like her, felt a delightful
+awe, which thrilled him at each repeated sigh of the forest trees. The
+perfume of the foliage, the soft green light which filtered through
+the leaves, the soughing silence of the undergrowth, filled them with
+tremulous excitement, as though the next turn of the path might lead
+them to some perilous happiness.
+
+And for hours they walked on under the cool trees. They retained their
+reserved attitude towards each other, and scarcely exchanged a word,
+though they never left each other’s side, but went together through the
+darkest greenery of the forest. At first their way lay through a jungle
+of saplings with trunks no thicker than a child’s wrist. They had to
+push them aside, and open a path for themselves through the tender
+shoots which threw a wavy lacework of foliage before their eyes. The
+saplings closed up again behind them, leaving no trace of their passage,
+and they struggled on and on at random, ignorant of where they might be,
+and leaving nothing behind them to mark their progress, save a momentary
+waving of shaken boughs. Albine, weary of being unable to see more
+than three steps in front of her, was delighted when they at last
+found themselves free of this jungle, whose end they had long tried to
+discover. They had now reached a little clearing, whence several narrow
+paths, fringed with green hedges, struck out in various directions,
+twisting hither and thither, intersecting one another, bending and
+stretching in the most capricious fashion. Albine and Serge rose on
+tip-toes to peep over the hedges; but they were in no haste, and would
+willingly have stayed where they were, lost in the mazy windings,
+without ever getting anywhere, if they had not seen before them the
+proud lines of the lofty forest trees. They passed at last beneath their
+shade, solemnly and with a touch of sacred awe, as when one enters some
+vaulted cathedral. The straight lichen-stained trunks of the mighty
+trees, of a dingy grey, like discoloured stone, towered loftily, line
+by line, like a far-reaching infinity of columns. Naves opened far away,
+with lower, narrower aisles; naves strangely bold in their proportions,
+whose supporting pillars were very slender, richly caned, so finely
+chiselled that everywhere they allowed a glimpse of the blue heavens. A
+religious silence reigned beneath the giant arches, the ground below lay
+hard as stone in its austere nakedness; not a blade of green was there,
+nought but a ruddy dust of dead leaves. And Serge and Albine listened
+to their ringing footsteps as they went on, thrilled by the majestic
+solitude of this temple.
+
+Here, indeed, if anywhere, must be the much-sought tree, beneath whose
+shade perfect happiness had made its home. They felt that it was nigh,
+such was the delight which stole through them amidst the dimness of
+those mighty arches. The trees seemed to be creatures of kindliness,
+full of strength and silence and happy restfulness. They looked at
+them one by one, and they loved them all; and they awaited from their
+majestic tranquillity some revelation whereby they themselves might
+grow, expand into the bliss of strong and perfect life. The maples,
+the ashes, the hornbeams, the cornels, formed a nation of giants, a
+multitude full of proud gentleness, who lived in peace, knowing that the
+fall of any one of them would have sufficed to wreck a whole corner of
+the forest. The elms displayed colossal bodies and limbs full of sap,
+scarce veiled by light clusters of little leaves. The birches and the
+alders, delicate as sylphs, swayed their slim figures in the breeze to
+which they surrendered the foliage that streamed around them like the
+locks of goddesses already half metamorphosed into trees. The planes
+shot up regularly with glossy tattooed bark, whence scaly fragments
+fell. Down a gentle slope descended the larches, resembling a band of
+barbarians, draped in _sayons_ of woven greenery. But the oaks were
+the monarchs of all--the mighty oaks, whose sturdy trunks thrust out
+conquering arms that barred the sun’s approach from all around them;
+Titan-like trees, oft lightning-struck, thrown back in postures like
+those of unconquered wrestlers, with scattered limbs that alone gave
+birth to a whole forest.
+
+Could the tree which Serge and Albine sought be one of those colossal
+oaks? or was it one of those lovely planes, or one of those pale,
+maidenly birches, or one of those creaking elms? Albine and Serge still
+plodded on, unable to tell, completely lost amongst the crowding trees.
+For a moment they thought they had found the object of their quest in
+the midst of a group of walnut trees from whose thick foliage fell
+so cold a shadow that they shivered beneath it. Further on they felt
+another thrill of emotion as they came upon a little wood of chestnut
+trees, green with moss and thrusting out big strange-shaped branches, on
+which one might have built an aerial village. But further still Albine
+caught sight of a clearing, whither they both ran hastily. Here, in the
+midst of a carpet of fine turf, a locust tree had set a very toppling of
+greenery, a foliaged Babel, whose ruins were covered with the strangest
+vegetation. Stones, sucked up from the ground by the mounting sap, still
+remained adhering to the trunk. High branches bent down to earth again,
+and, taking root, surrounded the parent tree with lofty arches, a nation
+of new trunks which ever increased and multiplied. Upon the bark, seared
+with bleeding wounds, were ripening fruit-pods; the mere effort of
+bearing fruit strained the old monster’s skin until it split. The young
+folks walked slowly round it, passing under the arched branches which
+formed as it were the streets of a city, and stared at the gaping cracks
+of the naked roots. Then they went off, for they had not felt there the
+supernatural happiness they sought.
+
+‘Where are we?’ asked Serge.
+
+Albine did not know. She had never before come to this part of the park.
+They were now in a grove of cytisus and acacias, from whose clustering
+blossoms fell a soft, almost sugary perfume. ‘We are quite lost,’ she
+laughed. ‘I don’t know these trees at all.’
+
+‘But the garden must come to an end somewhere,’ said Serge. ‘When we get
+to the end, you will know where you are, won’t you?’
+
+‘No,’ she answered, waving her hands afar.
+
+They fell into silence; never yet had the vastness of the park filled
+them with such pleasure. They joyed at knowing that they were alone in
+so far-spreading a domain that even they themselves could not reach its
+limits.
+
+‘Well, we are lost,’ said Serge, gaily; then humbly drawing near her he
+inquired: ‘You are not afraid, are you?’
+
+‘Oh! no. There’s no one except you and me in the garden. What could I
+be afraid of? The walls are very high. We can’t see them, but they guard
+us, you know.’
+
+Serge was now quite close to her, and he murmured, ‘But a little time
+ago you were afraid of me.’
+
+She looked him straight in the face, perfectly calm, without the least
+faltering in her glance. ‘You hurt me,’ she replied, ‘but you are
+different now. Why should I be afraid of you?’
+
+‘Then you will let me hold you like this. We will go back under the
+trees.’
+
+‘Yes, you may put your arm around me, it makes me feel happy. And we’ll
+walk slowly, eh? so that we may not find our way again too soon.’
+
+He had passed his arm round her waist, and it was thus that they
+sauntered back to the shade of the great forest trees, under whose
+arching vaults they slowly went, with love awakening within them.
+Albine said that she felt a little tired, and rested her head on Serge’s
+shoulder. The fabulous tree was now forgotten. They only sought to draw
+their faces nearer together that they might smile in one another’s eyes.
+And it was the trees, the maples, the elms, the oaks, with their soft
+green shade, that whisperingly suggested to them the first words of
+love.
+
+‘I love you!’ said Serge, while his breath stirred the golden hair that
+clustered round Albine’s temples. He tried to think of other words, but
+he could only repeat, ‘I love you! I love you!’
+
+Albine listened with a delightful smile upon her face. The music of her
+heart was in accord with his.
+
+‘I love you! I love you!’ she sighed, with all the sweetness of her soft
+young voice.
+
+Then, lifting up her blue eyes, in which the light of love was dawning,
+she asked, ‘How do you love me?’
+
+Serge reflected for a moment. The forest was wrapped in solemn quietude,
+the lofty naves quivered only with the soft footsteps of the young pair.
+
+‘I love you beyond everything,’ he answered. ‘You are more beautiful
+than all else that I see when I open my window in the morning. When I
+look at you, I want nothing more. If I could have you only, I should be
+perfectly happy.’
+
+She lowered her eyes, and swayed her head as if accompanying a strain of
+music. ‘I love you,’ he went on. ‘I know nothing about you. I know
+not who you are, nor whence you came. You are neither my mother nor my
+sister; and yet I love you to a point that I have given you my whole
+heart and kept nought of it for others. Listen, I love those cheeks of
+yours, so soft and satiny; I love your mouth with its rose-sweet breath;
+I love your eyes, in which I see my own love reflected; I love even
+your eyelashes, even those little veins which blue the whiteness of your
+temples. Ah! yes, I love you, I love you, Albine.’
+
+‘And I love you, too,’ she answered. ‘You are strong, and tall, and
+handsome. I love you, Serge.’
+
+For a moment or two they remained silent, enraptured. It seemed to them
+that soft, flute-like music went before them, that their own words came
+from some dulcet orchestra which they could not see. Shorter and shorter
+became their steps as they leaned one towards the other, ever threading
+their way amidst the mighty trees. Afar off through the long vista
+of the colonnades were glimpses of waning sunlight, showing like a
+procession of white-robed maidens entering church for a betrothal
+ceremony amid the low strains of an organ.
+
+‘And why do you love me?’ asked Albine again.
+
+He only smiled, and did not answer her immediately; then he said, ‘I
+love you because you came to me. That expresses all.... Now we are
+together and we love one another. It seems to me that I could not go on
+living if I did not love you. You are the very breath of my life.’
+
+He bent his head, speaking almost as though he were in a dream.
+
+‘One does not know all that at first. It grows up in one as one’s heart
+grows. One has to grow, one has to get strong.... Do you remember how
+we loved one another though we didn’t speak of it? One is childish and
+silly at first. Then, one fine day, it all becomes clear, and bursts
+out. You see, we have nothing to trouble about; we love one another
+because our love and our life are one.’
+
+Albine’s head was cast back, her eyes were tightly closed, and she
+scarce drew her breath. Serge’s caressing words enraptured her: ‘Do you
+really, really love me?’ she murmured, without opening her eyes.
+
+Serge remained silent, sorely troubled that he could find nothing
+further to say to prove to her the force of his love. His eyes wandered
+over her rosy face, which lay upon his shoulder with the restfulness of
+sleep. Her eyelids were soft as silk. Her moist lips were curved into a
+bewitching smile, her brow was pure white, with just a rim of gold below
+her hair. He would have liked to give his whole being with the word
+which seemed to be upon his tongue but which he could not utter. Again
+he bent over her, and seemed to consider on what sweet spot of that fair
+face he should whisper the supreme syllables. But he said nothing, he
+only breathed a little sigh. Then he kissed Albine’s lips.
+
+‘Albine, I love you!’
+
+‘I love you, Serge!’
+
+Then they stopped short, thrilled, quivering with that first love kiss.
+She had opened her eyes quite widely. He was standing with his lips
+protruding slightly towards hers. They looked at each other without a
+blush. They felt they were under the influence of some sovereign power.
+It was like the realisation of a long dreamt-of meeting, in which they
+beheld themselves grown, made one for the other, for ever joined. For a
+moment they remained wondering, raising their eyes to the solemn vault
+of greenery above them, questioning the tranquil nation of trees as if
+seeking an echo of their kiss. But, beneath the serene complacence of
+the forest, they yielded to prolonged, ringing lovers’ gaiety, full of
+all the tenderness now born.
+
+‘Tell me how long you have loved me. Tell me everything. Did you love me
+that day when you lay sleeping upon my hand? Did you love me when I fell
+out of the cherry tree, and you stood beneath it, stretching out your
+arms to catch me, and looking so pale? Did you love me when you took
+hold of me round the waist in the meadows to help me over the streams?’
+
+‘Hush, let me speak. I have always loved you. And you, did you love me;
+did you?’
+
+Until the evening closed round them they lived upon that one word
+‘love,’ in which they ever seemed to find some new sweetness. They
+brought it into every sentence, ejaculated it inconsequentially, merely
+for the pleasure they found in pronouncing it. Serge, however, did not
+think of pressing a second kiss to Albine’s lips. The perfume of the
+first sufficed them in their purity. They had found their way again, or
+rather had stumbled upon it, for they had paid no attention to the paths
+they took. As they left the forest, twilight had fallen, and the moon
+was rising, round and yellow, between the black foliage. It was a
+delightful walk home through the park, with that discreet luminary
+peering at them through the gaps in the big trees. Albine said that
+the moon was surely following them. The night was balmy, warm too with
+stars. Far away a long murmur rose from the forest trees, and Serge
+listened, thinking: ‘They are talking of us.’
+
+When they reached the parterre, they passed through an atmosphere of
+sweetest perfumes; the perfume of flowers at night, which is richer,
+more caressing than by day, and seems like the very breath of slumber.
+
+‘Good night, Serge.’
+
+‘Good night, Albine.’
+
+They clasped each other by the hand on the landing of the first floor,
+without entering the room where they usually wished each other good
+night. They did not kiss. But Serge, when he was alone, remained seated
+on the edge of his bed, listening to Albine’s every movement in the room
+above. He was weary with happiness, a happiness that benumbed his limbs.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+For the next few days Albine and Serge experienced a feeling of
+embarrassment. They avoided all allusion to their walk beneath
+the trees. They had not again kissed each other, or repeated their
+confession of love. It was not any feeling of shame which had sealed
+their lips, but rather a fear of in any way spoiling their happiness.
+When they were apart, they lived upon the dear recollection of love’s
+awakening, plunged into it, passed once more through the happy hours
+which they had spent, with their arms around each other’s waist, and
+their faces close together. It all ended by throwing them both into a
+feverish state. They looked at each other with heavy eyes, and talked,
+in a melancholy mood, of things that did not interest them in the least.
+Then, after a long interval of silence, Serge would say to Albine in a
+tone full of anxiety: ‘You are ill?’
+
+But she shook her head as she answered, ‘No, no. It is you who are not
+well; your hands are burning.’
+
+The thought of the park filled them with vague uneasiness which they
+could not understand. They felt that danger lurked for them in some
+by-path, and would seize them and do them hurt. They never spoke about
+these disquieting thoughts, but certain timid glances revealed to them
+the mutual anguish which held them apart as though they were foes. One
+morning, however, Albine ventured, after much hesitation, to say to
+Serge: ‘It is wrong of you to keep always indoors. You will fall ill
+again.’
+
+Serge laughed in rather an embarrassed way. ‘Bah!’ he muttered, ‘we have
+been everywhere, we know all the garden by heart.’
+
+But Albine shook her head, and in a whisper replied, ‘No, no, we don’t
+know the rocks, we have never been to the springs. It was there that I
+warmed myself last winter. There are some nooks where the stones seem to
+be actually alive.’
+
+The next morning, without having said another word on the subject, they
+set out together. They climbed up to the left behind the grotto where
+the marble woman lay slumbering; and as they set foot on the lowest
+stones, Serge remarked: ‘We must see everything. Perhaps we shall feel
+quieter afterwards.’
+
+The day was very hot, there was thunder in the air. They had not
+ventured to clasp each other’s waist; but stepped along, one behind the
+other, glowing beneath the sunlight. Albine took advantage of a widening
+of the path to let Serge go on in front; for the warmth of his breath
+upon her neck troubled her. All around them the rocks arose in broad
+tiers, storeys of huge flags, bristling with coarse vegetation. They
+first came upon golden gorse, clumps of sage, thyme, lavender, and other
+balsamic plants, with sour-berried juniper trees and bitter rosemary,
+whose strong scent made them dizzy. Here and there the path was hemmed
+in by holly, that grew in quaint forms like cunningly wrought metal
+work, gratings of blackened bronze, wrought iron, and polished copper,
+elaborately ornamented, covered with prickly _rosaces_. And before
+reaching the springs, they had to pass through a pine-wood. Its shadow
+seemed to weigh upon their shoulders like lead. The dry needles crackled
+beneath their feet, throwing up a light resinous dust which burned their
+lips.
+
+‘Your garden doesn’t make itself very agreeable just here,’ said Serge,
+turning towards Albine.
+
+They smiled at each other. They were now near the edge of the springs.
+The sight of the clear waters brought them relief. Yet these springs did
+not hide beneath a covering of verdure, like those that bubble up on the
+plains and set thick foliage growing around them that they may slumber
+idly in the shade. They shot up in the full light of day from a cavity
+in the rock, without a blade of grass near by to tinge the clear water
+with green. Steeped in the sunshine they looked silvery. In their depths
+the sun beat against the sand in a breathing living dust of light. And
+they darted out of their basin like arms of purest white, they rebounded
+like nude infants at play, and then suddenly leapt down in a waterfall
+whose curve suggested a woman’s breast.
+
+‘Dip your hands in,’ cried Albine; ‘the water is icy cold at the
+bottom.’
+
+They were indeed able to refresh their hot hands. They threw water over
+their faces too, and lingered there amidst the spray which rose up from
+the streaming springs.
+
+‘Look,’ cried Albine; ‘look, there is the garden, and there are the
+meadows and the forest.’
+
+For a moment they looked at the Paradou spread out beneath their feet.
+
+‘And you see,’ she added, ‘there isn’t the least sign of any wall. The
+whole country belongs to us, right up to the sky.’
+
+By this time, almost unawares, they had slipped their arms round each
+other’s waist. The coolness of the springs had soothed their feverish
+disquietude. But just as they were going away, Albine seemed to recall
+something and led Serge back again, saying:
+
+‘Down there, below the rocks, a long time ago, I once saw the wall.’
+
+‘But there is nothing to be seen,’ replied Serge, turning a little pale.
+
+‘Yes, yes; it must be behind that avenue of chestnut trees on the other
+side of those bushes.’
+
+Then, on feeling Serge’s arm tremble, she added: ‘But perhaps I am
+mistaken.... Yet I seem to remember that I suddenly came upon it as I
+left the avenue. It stopped my way, and was so high that I felt a little
+afraid. And a few steps farther on, I came upon another surprise. There
+was a huge hole in it, through which I could see the whole country
+outside.’
+
+Serge looked at her with entreaty in his eyes. She gave a little shrug
+of her shoulders to reassure him, and went on: ‘But I stopped the hole
+up; I have told you that we are quite alone, and we are. I stopped it up
+at once. I had my knife with me, and I cut down some brambles and
+rolled up some big stones. I would defy even a sparrow to force its way
+through. If you like, we will go and look at it one of these days, and
+then you will be satisfied.’
+
+But he shook his head. Then they went away together, still holding each
+other by the waist; but they had grown anxious once more. Serge gazed
+down askance at Albine’s face, and she felt perturbed beneath his
+glance. They would have liked to go down again at once, and thus escape
+the uneasiness of a longer walk. But, in spite of themselves, as though
+impelled by some stronger power, they skirted a rocky cliff and reached
+a table-land, where once more they found the intoxication of the full
+sunlight. They no longer inhaled the soft languid perfumes of aromatic
+plants, the musky scent of thyme, and the incense of lavender. Now they
+were treading a foul-smelling growth under foot; wormwood with bitter,
+penetrating smell; rue that reeked like putrid flesh; and hot valerian,
+clammy with aphrodisiacal exudations. Mandragoras, hemlocks, hellebores,
+dwales, poured forth their odours, and made their heads swim till they
+reeled and tottered one against the other.
+
+‘Shall I hold you up?’ Serge asked Albine, as he felt her leaning
+heavily upon him.
+
+He was already pressing her in his arms, but she struggled out of his
+grasp, and drew a long breath.
+
+‘No; you stifle me,’ she said. ‘Leave me alone. I don’t know what is the
+matter with me. The ground seems to give way under my feet. It is there
+I feel the pain.’
+
+She took hold of his hand and laid it upon her breast. Then Serge turned
+quite pale. He was even more overcome than she. And both had tears in
+their eyes as they saw each other thus ill and troubled, unable to think
+of a remedy for the evil which had fallen upon them. Were they going to
+die here of that mysterious, suffocating faintness?
+
+‘Come and sit down in the shade,’ said Serge. ‘It is these plants which
+are poisoning us with their noxious odours.’
+
+He led her gently along by her finger-tips, for she shivered and
+trembled when he but touched her wrist. It was beneath a fine cedar,
+whose level roof-like branches spread nearly a dozen yards around, that
+she seated herself. Behind grew various quaint conifers; cypresses, with
+soft flat foliage that looked like heavy lace; spruce firs, erect and
+solemn, like ancient druidical pillars, still black with the blood of
+sacrificed victims; yews, whose dark robes were fringed with silver;
+evergreen trees of all kinds, with thick-set foliage, dark leathery
+verdure, splashed here and there with yellow and red. There was a
+weird-looking araucaria that stood out strangely with large regular
+arms resembling reptiles grafted one on the other, and bristling with
+imbricated leaves that suggested the scales of an excited serpent. In
+this heavy shade, the warm air lulled one to voluptuous drowsiness. The
+atmosphere slept, breathless; and a perfume of Eastern love, the perfume
+that came from the painted lips of the Shunamite, was exhaled by the
+odorous trees.
+
+‘Are you not going to sit down?’ said Albine.
+
+And she slipped a little aside to make room for him; but Serge stepped
+back and remained standing. Then, as she renewed her request, he dropped
+upon his knees, a little distance away, and said, softly: ‘No, I am more
+feverish even than you are; I should make you hot. If I wasn’t afraid of
+hurting you, I would take you in my arms, and clasp you so tightly that
+we should no longer feel any pain.’
+
+He dragged himself nearer to her on his knees.
+
+‘Oh! to have you in my arms! In the night I awake from dreams in which
+I see you near me; but, alas! you are ever far away. There seems to be
+some wall built up between us which I can never beat down. And yet I am
+now quite strong again; I could catch you up in my arms and swing you
+over my shoulder, and carry you off as though you belonged to me.’
+
+He had let himself sink upon his elbows, in an attitude of deep
+adoration. And he breathed a kiss upon the hem of Albine’s skirt. But at
+this the girl sprang up, as though it was she herself that had received
+the kiss. She hid her brow with her hands, perturbed, quivering, and
+stammering forth: ‘Don’t! don’t! I beg of you. Let us go on.’
+
+She did not hurry away, but let Serge follow her as she walked slowly
+on, stumbling against the roots of the plants, and with her hands still
+clasped round her head, as though to check the excitement that thrilled
+her. When they came out of the little wood, they took a few steps over
+ledges of rocks, on which a whole nation of ardent fleshy plants was
+squatting. It was like a crawling, writhing assemblage of hideous
+nameless monsters such as people a nightmare; monsters akin to spiders,
+caterpillars, and wood-lice, grown to gigantic proportions, some with
+bare glaucous skins, others tufted with filthy matted hairs, whilst many
+had sickly limbs--dwarf legs, and shrivelled, palsied arms--sprawling
+around them. And some displayed horrid dropsical bellies; some had
+spines bossy with hideous humps, and others looked like dislocated
+skeletons. Mamillaria threw up living pustules, a crawling swarm of
+greenish tortoises, bristling hideously with long hairs that were
+stiffer than iron. The echinocacti, which showed more flesh, suggested
+nests of young writhing, knotted vipers. The echinopses were mere
+excrescent red-haired growths that made one think of huge insects rolled
+into balls. The prickly-pears spread out fleshy leaves spotted with
+ruddy spikes that resembled swarms of microscopic bees. The gasterias
+sprawled about like big shepherd-spiders turned over on their backs,
+with long-speckled and striated legs. The cacti of the cereus family
+showed a horrid vegetation, huge polyps, the diseases of an overheated
+soil, the maladies of poisoned sap. But the aloes, languidly unfolding
+their hearts, were particularly numerous and conspicuous. Among them
+one found every possible tint of green, pale green and vivid, yellowish
+green and greyish, browny green, dashed with a ruddy tone, and deep
+green, fringed with pale gold. And the shapes of their leaves were as
+varied as their tints. Some were broad and heart-shaped, others were
+long and narrow like sword-blades; some bristled with spikey thorns,
+while yet others looked as though they had been cunningly hemmed at the
+edges. There were giant ones, in lonely majesty, with flower stalks that
+towered up aloft like poles wreathed with rosy coral; and there were
+tiny ones clustering thickly together on one and the same stem, and
+throwing forth on all sides leaves that gleamed and quivered like
+adders’ tongues.
+
+‘Let us go back to the shade,’ begged Serge. ‘You can sit down there as
+you did just now, and I will lie at your feet and talk to you.’
+
+Where they stood the sun rays fell like torrential rain. It was as if
+the triumphant orb seized upon the shadowless ground, and strained it
+to his blazing breast. Albine grew faint, staggered, and turned to Serge
+for support.
+
+But the moment they felt each other’s touch, they fell together without
+even a word. It was as though the very rock beneath them had opened, as
+though they were ever going down and down. Their hands sought each other
+caressingly, embracingly, but such keen anguish did they experience
+that they suddenly tore themselves apart, and fled, each in a different
+direction. Serge did not cease running till he had reached the pavilion,
+and had thrown himself upon his bed, his brain on fire, and despair in
+his heart. Albine did not return till nightfall, after hours of weeping
+in a corner of the garden. It was the first time that they had not
+returned home together, tired after their long wanderings. For three
+days they kept apart, feeling terribly unhappy.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+Yet now the park was entirely their own. They had taken sovereign
+possession of it. There was not a corner of it that was not theirs to
+use as they willed. For them alone the thickets of roses put forth their
+blossoms, and the parterre exhaled its soft perfume, which lulled them
+to sleep as they lay at night with their windows open. The orchard
+provided them with food, filling Albine’s skirts with fruits, and
+spread over them the shade of its perfumed boughs, under which it was
+so pleasant to breakfast in the early morning. Away in the meadows the
+grass and the streams were all theirs; the grass, which extended their
+kingdom to such boundless distance, spreading an endless silky carpet
+before them; and the streams, which were the best of their joys,
+emblematic of their own purity and innocence, ever offering them
+coolness and freshness in which they delighted to bathe their youth. The
+forest, too, was entirely theirs, from the mighty oaks, which ten men
+could not have spanned, to the slim birches which a child might have
+snapped; the forest, with all its trees, all its shade, all its avenues
+and clearings, its cavities of greenery, of which the very birds
+themselves were ignorant; the forest which they used as they listed,
+as if it were a giant canopy, beneath which they might shelter from the
+noontide heat their new-born love. They reigned everywhere, even among
+the rocks and the springs, even over that gruesome stretch of ground
+that teemed with such hideous growth, and which had seemed to sink and
+give way beneath their feet, but which they loved yet even more than
+the soft grassy couches of the garden, for the strange thrill of passion
+they had felt there.
+
+Thus, now, in front of them, behind them, to the right of them and
+to the left, all was theirs. They had gained possession of the whole
+domain, and they walked through a friendly expanse which knew them, and
+smiled kindly greetings to them as they passed, devoting itself to their
+pleasure, like a faithful and submissive servitor. The sky, with its
+vast canopy of blue overhead, was also theirs to enjoy. The park walls
+could not enclose it, their eyes could ever revel in its beauty, and it
+entered into the joy of their life, at daytime with its triumphal sun,
+at night with its golden rain of stars. At every moment of the day it
+delighted them afresh, its expression ever varying. In the early morning
+it was pale as a maiden just risen from her slumber; at noon, it was
+flushed, radiant as with a longing for fruitfulness, and in the
+evening it became languid and breathless, as after keen enjoyment. Its
+countenance was constantly changing. Particularly in the evenings, at
+the hour of parting, did it delight them. The sun, hastening towards the
+horizon, ever found a fresh smile. Sometimes he disappeared in the
+midst of serene calmness, unflecked by a single cloud, sinking gradually
+beneath a golden sea. At other times he threw out crimson glories, tore
+his vaporous robe to shreds, and set amidst wavy flames that streaked
+the skies like the tails of gigantic comets, whose radiant heads lit up
+the crests of the forest trees. Then, again, extinguishing his rays
+one by one, he would softly sink to rest on shores of ruddy sand,
+far-reaching banks of blushing coral; and then, some other night, he
+would glide away demurely behind a heavy cloud that figured the grey
+hangings of some alcove, through which the eye could only detect a spark
+like that of a night-light. Or else he would rush to his couch in
+a tumult of passion, rolled round with white forms which gradually
+crimsoned beneath his fiery embraces, and finally disappeared with him
+below the horizon in a confused chaos of gleaming, struggling limbs.
+
+It was only the plants which had not made their submission. Albine and
+Serge passed like monarchs through the kingdom of animals, who rendered
+them humble and loyal obeisance. When they crossed the parterre, flights
+of butterflies arose to delight their eyes, to fan them with quivering
+wings, and to follow in their train like living sunbeams or flying
+blossoms. In the orchard, they were greeted by the birds that banqueted
+in the fruit-trees. The sparrows, the chaffinches, the golden orioles,
+the bullfinches, showed them the ripest fruit scarred by their hungry
+beaks; and while they sat astride the branches and breakfasted, birds
+twittered and sported round them like children at play, and even
+purloined the fruit beneath their very feet. Albine found even more
+amusement in the meadows, where she caught the little green frogs
+with eyes of gold, that lay squatting amongst the reeds, absorbed in
+contemplation; while Serge, with a piece of straw, poked the crickets
+out of their hiding-places, or tickled the grasshoppers to make them
+sing. He picked up insects of all colours, blue ones, red ones, yellow
+ones, and set them creeping upon his sleeve, where they gleamed and
+glittered like buttons of sapphire and ruby and topaz.
+
+Then there was all the mysterious life of the streams; the grey-backed
+fishes that threaded the dim waters, the eels whose presence was
+betrayed by a slight quivering of the water-plants, the young fry, which
+dispersed like blackish sand at the slightest sound, the long-legged
+flies and the water-beetles that ruffled into circling silvery ripples
+the stagnant surface of the pools; all that silent teeming life which
+drew them to the water and impelled them to dabble and stand in it, so
+that they might feel those millions of existences ever and ever gliding
+past their limbs. At other times, when the day was hot and languid, they
+would betake themselves beneath the voiceful shade of the forest and
+listen to the serenades of their musicians, the clear fluting of the
+nightingales, the silvery bugle-notes of the tomtits, and the far-off
+accompaniment of the cuckoos. They gazed with delight upon the swift
+flight of the pheasants, whose plumes gleamed like sudden sun rays
+amidst the branches, and with a smile they stayed their steps to let a
+troop of young roebucks bound past, or else a couple of grave stags that
+slackened their pace to look at them. Again, on other days they would
+climb up amongst the rocks, when the sun was blazing in the heavens,
+and find a pleasure in watching the swarms of grasshoppers which at the
+sound of their footsteps arose with a great crepitation of wings from
+the beds of thyme. The snakes that lay uncoiled beneath the parched
+bushes, or the lizards that sprawled over the red-hot stones, watched
+them with friendly eyes.
+
+Of all the life that thus teemed round them in the park, Albine and
+Serge had only become really conscious since the day when a kiss had
+awakened them to life themselves. Now it deafened them at times, and
+spoke to them in a language which they did not understand. It was that
+life--all the voices of the animal creation, all the perfumes and soft
+shadows of the flowers and trees--which perturbed them to such a point
+as to make them angry with one another. And yet throughout the whole
+park they found nothing but loving familiarity. Every plant and every
+creature was their friend. All the Paradou was one great caress.
+
+Before they had come thither, the sun had for a whole century reigned
+over it in lonely majesty. The garden, then, had known no other master;
+it had beheld him, every morning, scaling the boundary wall with his
+slanting rays, at noontide it had seen him pour his vertical heat upon
+the panting soil; and at evening it had seen him go off, on the other
+side, with a kiss of farewell upon its foliage. And so the garden had
+no shyness; it welcomed Albine and Serge, as it had so long welcomed
+the sun, as pleasant companions, with whom one puts on no ceremony.
+The animals, the trees, the streams, the rocks, all continued in an
+unrestrained state of nature, speaking aloud, living openly, without a
+secret, displaying the innocent shamelessness, the hearty tenderness of
+the world’s first days. Serge and Albine, however, suffered from these
+voluptuous surroundings, and at times felt minded to curse the garden.
+On the afternoon when Albine had wept so bitterly after their saunter
+amongst the rocks, she had called out to the Paradou, whose intensity of
+life and passion filled her with distress:
+
+‘If you really be our friend, why, why do you make us so wretched?’
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+The next morning Serge barricaded himself in his room. The perfume from
+the garden irritated him. He drew the calico curtains closely across the
+window to shut out the sight of the park. Perhaps he thought he might
+recover all his old serenity and calm if he shut himself off from that
+greenery, whose shade sent such passionate thrills quivering through
+him.
+
+During the long hours they spent together, Albine and he never now spoke
+of the rocks or the streams, the trees or the sky. The Paradou might no
+longer have been in existence. They strove to forget it. And yet they
+were all the time conscious of its presence on the other side of
+those slight curtains. Scented breezes forced their way in through the
+interstices of the window frame, the many voices of nature made
+the panes resound. All the life of the park laughed, chattered, and
+whispered in ambush beneath their window. As it reached them their
+cheeks would pale and they would raise their voices, seeking some
+occupation which might prevent them from hearing it.
+
+‘Have you noticed,’ said Serge one morning during these uneasy
+intervals, ‘there is a painting of a woman over the door there? She is
+like you.’
+
+He laughed noisily as he finished speaking. They both turned to the
+paintings and dragged the table once more alongside the wall, with a
+nervous desire to occupy themselves.
+
+‘Oh! no,’ murmured Albine. ‘She is much fatter than I am. But one can’t
+see her very well; her position is so queer.’
+
+They relapsed into silence. From the decayed, faded painting a scene,
+which they had never before noticed, now showed forth. It was as if the
+picture had taken shape and substance again beneath the influence of
+the summer heat. You could sea a nymph with arms thrown back and pliant
+figure on a bed of flowers which had been strewn for her by young
+cupids, who, sickle in hand, ever added fresh blossoms to her rosy
+couch. And nearer, you could also see a cloven-hoofed faun who had
+surprised her thus. But Albine repeated, ‘No, she is not like me, she is
+very plain.’
+
+Serge said nothing. He looked at the girl and then at Albine, as though
+he were comparing them one with the other. Albine pulled up one of her
+sleeves, as if to show that her arm was whiter than that of the pictured
+girl. Then they subsided into silence again, and gazed at the painting;
+and for a moment Albine’s large blue eyes turned to Serge’s grey ones,
+which were glowing.
+
+‘You have got all the room painted again, then?’ she cried, as she
+sprang from the table. ‘These people look as though they were all coming
+to life again.’
+
+They began to laugh, but there was a nervous ring about their merriment
+as they glanced at the nude and frisking cupids which started to
+life again on all the panels. They no longer took those survivals of
+voluptuous eighteenth century art to represent mere children at play.
+They were disturbed by the sight of them, and as Albine felt Serge’s hot
+breath on her neck she started and left his side to seat herself on the
+sofa. ‘They frighten me,’ she murmured. ‘The men are like robbers,
+and the women, with their dying eyes, look like people who are being
+murdered.’
+
+Serge sat down in a chair, a little distance away, and began to talk of
+other matters. But they remained uneasy. They seemed to think that all
+those painted figures were gazing at them. It was as if the trooping
+cupids were springing out of the panelling, casting the flowers they
+held around them, and threatening to bind them together with the blue
+ribbons which already enchained two lovers in one corner of the ceiling.
+And the whole story of the nymph and her faun lover, from his first peep
+at her to his triumph among the flowers, seemed to burst into warm life.
+Were all those lovers, all those impudent shameless cupids about to step
+down from their panels and crowd around them? They already seemed to
+hear their panting sighs, and to feel their breath filling the spacious
+room with the perfume of voluptuousness.
+
+‘It’s quite suffocating, isn’t it?’ sighed Albine. ‘In spite of every
+airing I have given it, the room has always seemed close to me!
+
+‘The other night,’ said Serge, ‘I was awakened by such a penetrating
+perfume, that I called out to you, thinking you had come into the room.
+It was just like the soft warmth of your hair when you have decked it
+with heliotropes.... In the earlier times it seemed to be wafted to me
+from a distance, it was like the lingering memory of a perfume; but now
+I can’t sleep for it, and it is so strong and penetrating that it quite
+stupefies me. The alcove grows so hot, too, at night that I shall be
+obliged to lie on the couch.’
+
+Albine laid her fingers on her lips, and whispered, ‘It is the dead
+girl--she who once lived here.’
+
+They sniffed the odorous air with forced gaiety, but in reality feeling
+very troubled. Certainly never before had the room exhaled such a
+disquieting aroma. The very walls seemed to be still echoing the faint
+rustling of perfumed skirts; and the floor had retained the fragrance
+of satin slippers dropped by the bedside, and near the head of the bed
+itself Serge thought he could trace the imprint of a little hand, which
+had left behind it a clinging scent of violets. Over all the furniture
+the phantom presence of the dead girl still lingered fragrantly.
+
+‘See, this is the armchair where she used to sit,’ cried Albine; ‘there
+is the scent of her shoulders at the back of it yet.’
+
+She sat down in it herself, and bade Serge drop upon his knees and kiss
+her hand.
+
+‘You remember the day when I first let you in and said, “Good morrow,
+my dear lord!” But that wasn’t all, was it? He kissed her hands when the
+door was closed. There they are, my hands. They are yours.’
+
+Then they tried to resume their old frolics in order that they might
+forget the Paradou, whose joyous murmur they heard ever rising outside,
+and that they might no longer think of the pictures nor yield to the
+languor-breathing influence of the room. Albine put on an affected
+manner, leant back in her chair, and finally laughed at the foolish
+figure which Serge made at her feet.
+
+‘You stupid!’ she said, ‘take me round the waist, and say pretty things
+to me, since you are supposed to be in love with me. Don’t you know how
+to make love then?’
+
+But as soon as she felt him clasp her with eager impetuosity, she began
+to struggle, and freed herself from his embrace.
+
+‘No, no; leave me alone. I can’t bear it. I feel as though I were
+choking in this room.’
+
+From that day forward they felt the same kind of fear for the room as
+they already felt for the garden. Their one remaining harbour of refuge
+was now a place to be shunned and dreaded, a spot where they could no
+longer find themselves together without watching each other furtively.
+Albine now scarcely ventured to enter it, but remained near the
+threshold, with the door wide open behind her so as to afford her an
+immediate retreat. Serge lived there in solitude, a prey to sickening
+restlessness, half-stifling, lying on the couch and vainly trying to
+close his ears to the sighs of the soughing park and his nostrils to
+the haunting fragrance of the old furniture. At night he dreamt wild
+passionate dreams, which left him in the morning nervous and disquieted.
+He believed that he was falling ill again, that he would never recover
+plenitude of health. For days and days he remained there in silence,
+with dark rings round his sleepy eyes, only starting into wakefulness
+when Albine came to visit him. They would remain face to face, gazing
+at one another sadly, and uttering but a few soft words, which seemed to
+choke them. Albine’s eyes were even darker than Serge’s, and were filled
+with an imploring gaze.
+
+Then, after a week had gone by, Albine’s visit never lasted more than
+a few minutes. She seemed to shun him. When she came to the room, she
+appeared thoughtful, remained standing, and hurried off as soon as
+possible. When he questioned her about this change in her demeanour
+towards him, and reproached her for no longer being friendly, she turned
+her head away and avoided replying. He never could get her to tell him
+how she spent the mornings that she passed alone. She would only
+shake her head, and talk about being very idle. If he pressed her
+more closely, she bounded out of the room, just wishing him a hasty
+good-night as she disappeared through the doorway. He often noticed,
+however, that she had been crying. He observed, too, in her expression
+the phases of a hope that was never fulfilled, the perpetual struggling
+of a desire eager to be satisfied. Sometimes she seemed quite
+overwhelmed with melancholy, dragging herself about with an air of utter
+discouragement, like one who no longer had any pleasure in living. At
+other times she laughed lightly, her face shone with an expression of
+triumphant hope, of which, however, she would not yet speak, and her
+feet could not remain still, so eager was she to dart away to what
+seemed to her some last certainty. But on the following day, she would
+sink again into desperation, to soar afresh on the morrow on the pinions
+of renewed hope. One thing which she could not conceal from Serge was
+that she suffered from extreme lassitude. Even during the few moments
+they spent together she could not prevent her head from nodding, or keep
+herself from dozing off.
+
+Serge, recognising that she was unwilling to reply, had ceased to
+question her; and, when she now entered his room, he contented himself
+with casting an anxious glance at her, fearful lest some evening she
+should no longer have strength enough to come to him. Where could she
+thus reduce herself to such exhaustion? What perpetual struggle was it
+that brought about those alternations of joy and despair? One morning
+he started at the sound of a light footfall beneath his window. It
+could not be a roe venturing abroad in that manner. Moreover he could
+recognise that light footfall. Albine was wandering about the Paradou
+without him. It was from the Paradou that she returned to him with all
+those hopes and fears and inward wrestlings, all that lassitude which
+was killing her. And he could well guess what she was seeking out there,
+alone in the woody depths, with all the silent obstinacy of a woman who
+has vowed to effect her purpose. After that he used to listen for her
+steps. He dared not draw aside the curtain and watch her as she hurried
+along through the trees; but he experienced strange, almost painful
+emotion, in listening to ascertain what direction she took, whether she
+turned to right or to left, whether she went straight on through the
+flower-beds, and how far her ramble extended. Amidst all the noisy life
+of the Paradou, amidst the soughing chorus of the trees, the rustling of
+the streams, and the ceaseless songs of the birds, he could distinguish
+the gentle pit-pat of her shoes so plainly that he could have told
+whether she was stepping over the gravel near the rivers, the crumbling
+mould of the forest, or the bare ledges of the rocks. In time he even
+learned to tell, from the sound of her nervous footfall, whether she
+came back hopeful or depressed. As soon as he heard her step on the
+staircase, he hurried from the window, and he never let her know that
+he had thus followed her from afar in her wanderings. But she must have
+guessed it, for with a glance she always afterwards told him where she
+had been.
+
+‘Stay indoors, and don’t go out,’ he begged her, with clasped hands,
+one morning when he saw her still unrecovered from the fatigue of the
+previous day. ‘You drive me to despair.’
+
+But she hastened away in irritation. The garden, now that it rang with
+Albine’s footfalls, seemed to have a more depressing influence than ever
+upon Serge. The pit-pat of her feet was yet another voice that called
+him; an imperious voice that echoed ever more and more loudly within
+him. He closed his ears and tried to shut out the sound, but the distant
+footsteps still echoed to him in the throbbings of his heart. And when
+she came back, in the evening, it was the whole park that came back with
+her, with the memories of their walks together, and of the slow dawn of
+their love, in the midst of conniving nature. She seemed to have grown
+taller and graver, mellowed, matured by her solitary rambles. There
+was nothing left in her of the frolicsome child, and his teeth would
+suddenly set at times when he looked at her and beheld her so desirable.
+
+One day, about noon, Serge heard Albine returning in hot haste. He had
+restrained himself from listening for her steps when she went away.
+Usually, she did not return till late, and he was amazed at her
+impetuosity as she sped along, forcing her way through the branches that
+barred her path. As she passed beneath his window, he heard her laugh;
+and as she mounted the stairway, she panted so heavily that he almost
+thought he could feel her hot breath streaming against his face. She
+threw the door wide open, and cried out: ‘I have found it!’
+
+Then she sat down and repeated softly, breathlessly: ‘I have found it! I
+have found it!’
+
+Serge, distracted, laid his fingers on her lips, and stammered: ‘Don’t
+tell me anything, I beg you. I want to know nothing of it. It will kill
+me, if you speak.’
+
+Then she sank into silence with gleaming eyes and lips tightly pressed
+lest the words she kept back should spring out in spite of her. And
+she stayed in the room till evening, trying to meet Serge’s glance, and
+imparting to him, each time that their eyes met, something of that which
+she had discovered. Her whole face beamed with radiance, she exhaled a
+delicious odour, she was full of life; and Serge felt that she permeated
+him through all his senses. Despairingly did he struggle against this
+gradual invasion of his being.
+
+On the morrow she returned to his room as soon as she was up.
+
+‘Aren’t you going out?’ he asked, conscious that he would be vanquished
+should she remain there.
+
+‘No,’ she said; she wasn’t going out any more. As by degrees she
+recovered from her fatigue he felt her becoming stronger, more
+triumphant. She would soon be able to take him by the hand and drag him
+to that spot, whose charm her silence proclaimed so loudly. That day,
+however, she did not speak; she contented herself with keeping him
+seated on a cushion at her feet. It was not till the next morning
+that she ventured to say: ‘Why do you shut yourself up here? It is so
+pleasant under the trees.’
+
+He rose from her feet, and stretched out his arms entreatingly. But she
+laughed at him.
+
+‘Well, well, then, we won’t go out, since you would rather not....
+But this room has such a strange scent, and we should be much more
+comfortable in the garden. It is very wrong of you to have taken such a
+dislike to it.’
+
+He had again settled himself at her feet in silence, his eyelids
+lowered, his features quivering with passionate emotion.
+
+‘We won’t go out,’ she repeated, ‘so don’t worry. But do you really
+prefer these pictures to the grass and flowers in the park? Do you
+remember all we saw together? It is these paintings which make us feel
+so unhappy. They are a nuisance, always looking and watching us as they
+do.’
+
+As Serge gradually leant more closely against her, she passed her arm
+round his neck and laid his head upon her lap, while murmuring in yet a
+lower tone: ‘There is a little corner there I know, where we might be
+so very happy. Nothing would trouble us there; the fresh air would cool
+your feverishness.’
+
+Then she stopped, as she felt him quivering. She was afraid lest she
+might again revive his old fears. But she gradually conquered him merely
+by the caressing gaze of her blue eyes. His eyelids were now raised, and
+he rested there quietly, wholly hers, his tremor past.
+
+‘Ah! if you only knew!’ she softly breathed; and seeing that he
+continued to smile, she went on boldly: ‘It is all a lie; it is not
+forbidden. You are a man now and ought not to be afraid. If we went
+there, and any danger threatened me, you would protect me, you would
+defend me, would you not? You could carry me off on your back, couldn’t
+you? I am never the least afraid when I have you with me. Look how
+strong your arms have grown. What is there for any one with such strong
+arms as yours to be afraid of?’
+
+She caressed him beguilingly as she spoke, stroking his hair and neck
+and shoulders with her hand.
+
+‘No, it is not forbidden,’ she resumed. ‘That is only a story for
+stupids, and was invented, long ago, by some one who didn’t want to be
+disturbed in the most charming spot in the whole garden. As soon as
+you sat down on that grassy carpet, you would be happy and well again.
+Listen, then, come with me.’
+
+He shook his head but without any sign of vexation, as though indeed he
+liked thus being teased. Then after a short silence, grieved to see her
+pouting, and longing for a renewal of her caresses, he opened his lips
+and asked: ‘Where is it?’
+
+She did not answer him immediately. Her eyes seemed to be wandering far
+away: ‘It is over yonder,’ she murmured at last. ‘I cannot explain to
+you clearly. One has to go down the long avenue, and then to turn to
+the left, and then again to the left. We must have passed it at least a
+score of times. You might look for it for ever without finding it, if
+I didn’t go with you to show you. I could find my way to it quite
+straight, though I could never explain it to you.’
+
+‘And who took you there?’
+
+‘I don’t know. That morning the trees and plants seemed to drive me
+there. The long branches pushed me on, the grass bent down before me
+invitingly, the paths seemed to open expressly for me to take them. And
+I believe the animals themselves helped to lead me there, for I saw a
+stag trotting on before me as though he wanted me to follow; while a
+company of bullfinches flitted on from tree to tree, and warned me with
+their cries whenever I was about to take a wrong direction.’
+
+‘And is it very beautiful?’
+
+Again she did not reply. Deep ecstasy filled her eyes; at last, when she
+was able to speak again, she said: ‘Ah! so beautiful, that I could
+never tell you of it. I was so charmed that I was conscious only of
+some supreme joy, which I could not name, falling from the leaves and
+slumbering amid the grass. And I ran back here to take you along with me
+that I might not be without you.’
+
+Then she clasped her arms round his neck again, and entreated him
+passionately, her lips almost pressed to his own.
+
+‘Oh! you will come!’ she stammered; ‘you must come; you will make me so
+miserable if you don’t. You can’t want me to be miserable.... And even
+if you knew that you would die there, even if that shade should be fatal
+to both of us, would you hesitate or cast a regretful look behind? We
+should remain there, at the foot of the tree, and sleep on quietly for
+ever, in one anther’s arms. Ah! would it not be bliss indeed?’
+
+‘Yes, yes!’ he stammered, transported by her passionate entreaties.
+
+‘But we shall not die,’ she continued, raising her voice, and laughing
+with the laugh which proclaims woman’s victory; ‘we shall live to love
+each other. It is a tree of life, a tree whose shadow will make us
+stronger, more perfect, more complete. You will see that all will now go
+happily. Some blessed joy will assuredly descend on us from heaven! Will
+you come?’
+
+His face paled, and his eyelids quivered, as though too powerful a light
+were suddenly beating against them.
+
+‘Will you come? will you come?’ she cried again, yet more passionately,
+and already half rising to her feet.
+
+He sprang up and followed her, at first with tottering steps and then
+with his arm thrown round her waist, as if he could endure no separation
+from her. He went where she went, carried along in the warm fragrance
+that streamed from her hair. And as he thus remained slightly in the
+rear, she turned upon him a face so radiant with love, such tempting
+lips and eyes, which so imperiously bade him follow, that he would have
+gone with her anywhere, trusting and unquestioning, like a dog.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+They went down and out into the garden without the smile fading from
+Serge’s face. All that he saw of the greenery around him was such as was
+reflected in the clear depths of Albine’s eyes. As they approached, the
+garden smiled and smiled again, a murmur of content sped from leaf to
+leaf and from bough to bough to the furthest depths of the avenues. For
+days and days the garden must have been hoping and expecting to see them
+thus, clinging to one another, making their peace again with the trees
+and searching for their lost love on the grassy banks. A solemn warning
+breath sighed through the branches; the afternoon sky was drowsy with
+heat; the plants raised their bowing heads to watch them pass.
+
+‘Listen,’ whispered Albine. ‘They drop into silence as we come near
+them; but over yonder they are expecting us, they are telling each other
+the way they must lead us.... I told you we should have no trouble about
+the paths, the trees themselves will direct us with their spreading
+arms.’
+
+The whole park did, indeed, appear to be impelling them gently onward.
+In their rear it seemed as if a barrier of brush-wood had bristled up
+to prevent them from retracing their steps; while, in front of them, the
+grassy lawns spread out so invitingly, that they glided along the soft
+slopes, without thought of choosing their way.
+
+‘And the birds are coming with us, too,’ said Albine. ‘It is the tomtits
+this time. Don’t you see them? They are skimming over the hedges, and
+they stop at each turning to see that we don’t lose our way.’ Then she
+added: ‘All the living things of the park are with us. Can’t you hear
+them? There is a deep rustling close behind us. It is the birds in
+the trees, the insects in the grass, the roebucks and the stags in the
+coppices, and even the little fishes splashing the quiet water with
+their beating fins. Don’t turn round, or you will frighten them. Ah! I
+am sure we have a rare train behind us.’
+
+They still walked on, unfatigued. Albine spoke only to charm Serge with
+the music of her voice, while Serge obeyed the slightest pressure of her
+hand. They knew not what they passed, but they were certain that they
+were going straight towards their goal. And as they went along, the
+garden became gradually graver, more discreet; the soughing of the
+branches died away, the streams hushed their plashing waters, the birds,
+the beasts, and the insects fell into silence. All around them reigned
+solemn stillness.
+
+Then Albine and Serge instinctively raised their heads. In front of them
+they beheld a colossal mass of foliage; and, as they hesitated for a
+moment, a roe, after gazing at them with its sweet soft eyes, bounded
+into the thickets.
+
+‘It is there,’ said Albine.
+
+She led the way, her face again turned towards Serge, whom she drew with
+her, and they disappeared amid the quivering leaves, and all grew quiet
+again. They were entering into delicious peace.
+
+In the centre there stood a tree covered with so dense a foliage that
+one could not recognise its species. It was of giant girth, with a trunk
+that seemed to breathe like a living breast, and far-reaching boughs
+that stretched like protecting arms around it. It towered up there
+beautiful, strong, virile, and fruitful. It was the king of the garden,
+the father of the forest, the pride of the plants, the beloved of the
+sun, whose earliest and latest beams smiled daily on its crest. From its
+green vault poured all the joys of creation: fragrance of flowers, music
+of birds, gleams of golden light, wakeful freshness of dawn, slumbrous
+warmth of evening twilight. So strong was the sap that it burst through
+the very bark, bathing the tree with the powers of fruitfulness, making
+it the symbol of earth’s virility. Its presence sufficed to give the
+clearing an enchanting charm. The other trees built up around it an
+impenetrable wall, which isolated it as in a sanctuary of silence
+and twilight. There was but greenery there, not a scrap of sky, not a
+glimpse of horizon; nothing but a swelling rotunda, draped with green
+silkiness of leaves, adorned below with mossy velvet. And one entered,
+as into the liquid crystal of a source, a greenish limpidity, a sheet
+of silver reposing beneath reflected reeds. Colours, perfumes, sounds,
+quivers, all were vague, indeterminate, transparent, steeped in a
+felicity amidst which everything seemed to faint away. Languorous
+warmth, the glimmer of a summer’s night, as it fades on the bare
+shoulder of some fair girl, a scarce perceptible murmur of love sinking
+into silence, lingered beneath the motionless branches, unstirred by the
+slightest zephyr. It was hymeneal solitude, a chamber where Nature lay
+hidden in the embraces of the sun.
+
+Albine and Serge stood there in an ecstasy of joy. As soon as the tree
+had received them beneath its shade, they felt eased of all the anxious
+disquiet which had so long distressed them. The fears which had made
+them avoid each other, the fierce wrestling of spirit which had torn
+and wounded them, without consciousness on their part of what they were
+really contending against, vanished, and left them in perfect peace.
+Absolute confidence, supreme serenity, now pervaded them, they yielded
+unhesitatingly to the joy of being together in that lonely nook,
+so completely hidden from the outside world. They had surrendered
+themselves to the garden, they awaited in all calmness the behests of
+that tree of life. It enveloped them in such ecstasy of love that the
+whole clearing seemed to disappear from before their eyes, and to leave
+them wrapped in an atmosphere of perfume.
+
+‘The air is like ripe fruit,’ murmured Albine.
+
+And Serge whispered in his turn: ‘The grass seems so full of life and
+motion, that I could almost think I was treading on your dress.’
+
+It was a kind of religious feeling which made them lower their voices.
+No sentiment of curiosity impelled them to raise their heads and scan
+the tree. The consciousness of its majesty weighed heavily upon them.
+With a glance Albine asked whether she had overrated the enchantment of
+the greenery, and Serge answered her with two tears that trickled
+down his cheeks. The joy that filled them at being there could not be
+expressed in words.
+
+‘Come,’ she whispered in his ear, in a voice that was softer than a
+sigh.
+
+And she glided on in front of him, and seated herself at the very foot
+of the tree. Then, with a fond smile, she stretched out her hands to
+him; while he, standing before her, grasped them in his own with a
+responsive smile. Then she drew him slowly towards her and he sank down
+by her side.
+
+‘Ah! do you remember,’ he said, ‘that wall which seemed to have grown up
+between us? Now there is nothing to keep us apart--you are not unhappy
+now?’
+
+‘No, no,’ she answered; ‘very happy.’
+
+For a moment they relapsed into silence whilst soft emotion stole over
+them. Then Serge, caressing Albine, exclaimed: ‘Your face is mine; your
+eyes, your mouth, your cheeks are mine. Your arms are mine, from your
+shoulders to the tips of your nails. You are wholly mine.’ And as he
+spoke he kissed her lips, her eyes, her cheeks. He kissed her arms, with
+quick short kisses, from her fingers to her shoulders. He poured upon
+her a rain of kisses hot as a summer shower, deluging her cheeks, her
+forehead, her lips, and her neck.
+
+‘But if you are mine, I am yours,’ said he; ‘yours for ever; for I now
+well know that you are my queen, my sovereign, whom I must worship
+on bended knee. I am here only to obey you, to lie at your feet, to
+anticipate your wishes, to shelter you with my arms, to drive away
+whatever might trouble your tranquillity. And you are my life’s goal.
+Since I first awoke in this garden, you have ever been before me; I have
+grown up that I might be yours. Ever, as my end, my reward, have I
+gazed upon your grace. You passed in the sunshine with the sheen of
+your golden hair; you were a promise that I should some day know all the
+mysteries and necessities of creation, of this earth, of these trees,
+these waters, these skies, whose last secret is yet unrevealed. I belong
+to you; I am your slave; I will listen to you and obey you, with my lips
+upon your feet.’
+
+He said this, bowed to the ground, adoring Woman. And Albine, full of
+pride, allowed herself to be adored. She yielded her hands, her cheeks,
+her lips, to Serge’s rapturous kisses. She felt herself indeed a queen
+as she saw him, who was so strong, bending so humbly before her. She had
+conquered him, and held him there at her mercy. With a single word
+she could dispose of him. And that which helped her to recognise
+her omnipotence was that she heard the whole garden rejoicing at her
+triumph, with gradually swelling paeans of approval.
+
+‘Ah! if we could fly off together, if we could but die even, in one
+another’s arms,’ faltered Serge, scarce able to articulate. But Albine
+had strength enough to raise her finger as though to bid him listen.
+
+It was the garden that had planned and willed it all. For weeks and
+weeks it had been favouring and encouraging their passion, and at last,
+on that supreme day, it had lured them to that spot, and now it became
+the Tempter whose every voice spoke of love. From the flower-beds, amid
+the fragrance of the languid blossoms, was wafted a soft sighing, which
+told of the weddings of the roses, the love-joys of the violets; and
+never before had the heliotropes sent forth so voluptuous a perfume.
+Mingled with the soft air which arose from the orchard were all the
+exhalations of ripe fruit, the vanilla of apricots, the musk of oranges,
+all the luscious aroma of fruitfulness. From the meadows came fuller
+notes, the million sighs of the sun-kissed grass, the multitudinous
+love-plaints of legions of living things, here and there softened by
+the refreshing caresses of the rivulets, on whose banks the very willows
+palpitated with desire. And the forest proclaimed the mighty passion of
+the oaks. Through the high branches sounded solemn music, organ strains
+like the nuptial marches of the ashes and the birches, the hornbeams
+and the planes, while from the bushes and the young coppices arose noisy
+mirth like that of youthful lovers chasing one another over banks and
+into hollows amid much crackling and snapping of branches. From afar,
+too, the faint breeze wafted the sounds of the rocks splitting in their
+passion beneath the burning heat, while near them the spiky plants
+loved in a tragic fashion of their own, unrefreshed by the neighbouring
+springs, which themselves glowed with the love of the passionate sun.
+
+‘What do they say?’ asked Serge, half swooning, as Albine pressed him to
+her bosom. The voices of the Paradou were growing yet more distinct.
+The animals, in their turn, joined in the universal song of nature.
+The grasshoppers grew faint with the passion of their chants; the
+butterflies scattered kisses with their beating wings. The amorous
+sparrows flew to their mates; the rivers rippled over the loves of the
+fishes; whilst in the depths of the forest the nightingales sent forth
+pearly, voluptuous notes, and the stags bellowed their love aloud.
+Reptiles and insects, every species of invisible life, every atom of
+matter, the earth itself joined in the great chorus. It was the chorus
+of love and of nature--the chorus of the whole wide world; and in the
+very sky the clouds were radiant with rapture, as to those two children
+Love revealed the Eternity of Life.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+Albine and Serge smiled at one another.
+
+‘I love you, Albine,’ said Serge.
+
+‘Serge, I love you,’ Albine answered.
+
+And never before had those syllables ‘I love you’ had for them so
+supreme a meaning. They expressed everything. Joy pervaded those young
+lovers, who had attained to the fulness of life. They felt that they
+were now on a footing of equality with the forces of the world; and with
+their happiness mingled the placid conviction that they had obeyed the
+universal law. And Serge seemed to have awakened to life, lion-like,
+to rule the whole far expanse under the free heavens. His feet planted
+themselves more firmly on the ground, his chest expanded, there was
+pride and confidence in his gait and demeanour. He took Albine by the
+hands, she was trembling, and he was obliged to support her.
+
+‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said; ‘you are she whom I love.’
+
+It was Albine now who had become the submissive one. She drooped her
+head upon his shoulder, glancing up at him with anxious scrutiny. Would
+he never bear her spite for that hour of adoration in which he had
+called himself her slave? But he smiled, and stroked her hair, while
+she said to him: ‘Let me stay like this, in your arms, for I cannot
+walk without you. I will make myself so small and light, that you will
+scarcely know I am there.’ Then becoming very serious she added, ‘You
+must always love me; and I will be very obedient and do whatever you
+wish. I will yield to you in all things if you but love me.’
+
+Serge felt more powerful and virile on seeing her so humble. ‘Why are
+you trembling so?’ he asked her; ‘I can have no cause to reproach you.’
+
+But she did not answer him, she gazed almost sadly upon the tree and the
+foliage and the grass around them.
+
+‘Foolish child!’ he said, laughing; ‘are you afraid that I shall be
+angry with you for your love? We have loved as we were meant to love.
+Let me kiss you.’
+
+But, dropping her eyelids so that she might not see the tree, she said,
+in a low whisper, ‘Take me away!’
+
+Serge led her thence, pacing slowly and giving one last glance at the
+spot which love had hallowed. The shadows in the clearing were growing
+darker, and a gentle quiver coursed through the foliage. When they
+emerged from the wood and caught sight of the sun, still shining
+brightly in the horizon, they felt easier. Everything around Serge now
+seemed to bend down before him and pay homage to his love. The garden
+was now nothing but an appanage of Albine’s beauty, and seemed to have
+grown larger and fairer amid the love-kisses of its rulers.
+
+But Albine’s joy was still tinged with disquietude. She would suddenly
+pause amid her laughter and listen anxiously.
+
+‘What is the matter?’ asked Serge.
+
+‘Nothing,’ she replied, casting furtive glances behind her.
+
+They did not know in what out-of-the-way corner of the park they were.
+To lose themselves in their capricious wanderings only served to amuse
+them as a rule; but that day they experienced anxious embarrassment. By
+degrees they quickened their pace, plunging more and more deeply into a
+labyrinth of bushes.
+
+‘Don’t you hear?’ asked Albine, nervously, as she suddenly stopped
+short, almost breathless.
+
+Serge listened, a prey, in his turn, to the anxiety which the girl could
+no longer conceal.
+
+‘All the coppice seems full of voices,’ she continued. ‘It sounds as
+though there were people deriding us. Listen! Wasn’t that a laugh
+that sounded from that tree? And over yonder did not the grass murmur
+something as my dress brushed against it?’
+
+‘No, no,’ he said, anxious to reassure her, ‘the garden loves us; and,
+if it said anything, it would not be to vex or annoy us. Don’t you
+remember all the sweet words which sounded through the leaves? You are
+nervous and fancy things.’
+
+But she shook her head and faltered: ‘I know very well that the garden
+is our friend.... So it must be some one who has broken into it. I am
+certain I hear some one. I am trembling all over. Oh! take me away and
+hide me somewhere, I beseech you.’
+
+Then they went on again, scanning every tree and bush, and imagining
+that they could see faces peering at them from behind every trunk.
+Albine was certain, she said, that there were steps pursuing them in the
+distance. ‘Let us hide ourselves,’ she begged.
+
+She had turned quite scarlet. It was new-born modesty, a sense of
+shame which had laid hold of her like a fever, mantling over the snowy
+whiteness of her skin, which never previously had known that flush.
+Serge was alarmed at seeing her thus crimson, her face full of distress,
+her eyes brimming with tears. He tried to clasp her in his arms again
+and to soothe her with a caress; but she slipped away from him, and,
+with a despairing gesture, made sign that they were not alone. And her
+blushes grew deeper as her eyes fell upon her bare arms. She shuddered
+when her loose hanging hair stirred against her neck and shoulders.
+The slightest touch of a waving bough or a passing insect, the softest
+breath of air, now made her tremble as if some invisible hand were
+grasping at her.
+
+‘Calm yourself,’ begged Serge, ‘there is no one. You are as crimson as
+though you had a fever. Let us rest here for a moment. Do; I beg you.’
+
+She had no fever at all, she said, but she wanted to get back as quickly
+as possible, so that no one might laugh at her. And, ever increasing her
+pace, she plucked handfuls of leaves and tendrils from the hedges, which
+she entwined about her. She fastened a branch of mulberry over her hair,
+twisted bindweed round her arms, and tied it to her wrists, and circled
+her neck with such long sprays of laurustinus, that her bosom was hidden
+as by a veil of leaves.
+
+And that shame of hers proved contagious. Serge, who first had jested,
+asking her if she were going to a ball, glanced at himself, and likewise
+felt alarmed and ashamed, to a point that he also wound foliage about
+his person.
+
+Meantime, they could discover no way out of the labyrinth of bushes, but
+all at once, at the end of the path, they found themselves face to face
+with an obstacle, a tall, grey, grave mass of stone. It was the wall of
+the Paradou.
+
+‘Come away! come away!’ cried Albine.
+
+And she sought to drag him thence; but they had not taken another twenty
+steps before they again came upon the wall. They then skirted it at a
+ran, panic-stricken. It stretched along, gloomy and stern, without
+a break in its surface. But suddenly, at a point where it fringed a
+meadow, it seemed to fall away. A great breach gaped in it, like a huge
+window of light opening on to the neighbouring valley. It must have been
+the very hole that Albine had one day spoken of, which she said she had
+blocked up with brambles and stones. But the brambles now lay scattered
+around like severed bits of rope, the stones had been thrown some
+distance away, and the breach itself seemed to have been enlarged by
+some furious hand.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+‘Ah! I felt sure of it,’ cried Albine, in accents of supreme despair.
+‘I begged you to take me away--Serge, I beseech you, don’t look through
+it.’
+
+But Serge, in spite of himself, stood rooted to the ground, on the
+threshold of the breach through which he gazed. Down below, in the
+depths of the valley, the setting sun cast a sheet of gold upon the
+village of Les Artaud, which showed vision-like amidst the twilight in
+which the neighbouring fields were already steeped. One could plainly
+distinguish the houses that straggled along the high road; the little
+yards with their dunghills, and the narrow gardens planted with
+vegetables. Higher up, the tall cypress in the graveyard reared its
+dusky silhouette, and the red tiles on the church glowed brazier-like,
+the dark bell looking down on them like a human face, while the old
+parsonage at the side threw its doors and windows open to the evening
+air.
+
+‘For pity’s sake,’ sobbed Albine, ‘don’t look out, Serge. Remember that
+you promised you would always love me. Ah! will you ever love me enough,
+now? Stay, let me cover your eyes with my hands. You know it was my
+hands that cured you. You won’t push me away.’
+
+But he put her from him gently. Then, while she fell down and clung to
+his legs, he passed his hands across his face, as though he were wiping
+from his brow and eyes some last lingering traces of sleep. It was
+yonder, then, that lay the unknown world, the strange land of which he
+had never dreamed without vague fear. Where had he seen that country?
+From what dream was he awakening, that he felt such keen anguish
+swelling up in his breast till it almost choked him? The village was
+breaking out into life at the close of the day’s work. The men were
+coming home from the fields with weary gait, their jackets thrown over
+their shoulders; the women, standing by their doors, were beckoning to
+them to hasten on; while the children, in noisy bands, chased the
+fowls about and pelted them with stones. In the churchyard a couple of
+scapegraces, a lad and a girl, were creeping along under the shelter of
+the wall in order to escape notice. Swarms of sparrows were retiring
+to roost beneath the eaves of the church; and, on the steps of the
+parsonage, a blue calico skirt had just appeared, of such spreading
+dimensions as to quite block the doorway.
+
+‘Oh! he is looking out! he is looking out!’ sobbed Albine. ‘Listen to
+me. It was only just now that you promised to obey me. I beg of you to
+turn round and to look upon the garden. Haven’t you been very happy in
+the garden? It was the garden which gave me to you. Think of the happy
+days it has in store for us, what lasting bliss and enjoyment. Instead
+of which it will be death that will force its way through that hole,
+if you don’t quickly flee and take me with you. See, all those people
+yonder will come and thrust themselves between us. We were so quite
+alone, so secluded, so well guarded by the trees! Oh! the garden is our
+love! Look on the garden, I beg it of you on my knees!’
+
+But Serge was quivering. He had began to recollect. The past was
+re-awakening. He could distinctly hear the stir of the village life.
+Those peasants, those women and children, he knew them. There was the
+mayor, Bambousse, returning from Les Olivettes, calculating how much
+the approaching vintage would yield him; there were the Brichets, the
+husband crawling along, and the wife moaning with misery. There was
+Rosalie flirting with big Fortune behind a wall. He recognised also the
+pair in the churchyard, that mischievous Vincent and that bold hussy
+Catherine, who were catching big grasshoppers amongst the tombstones.
+Yes, and they had Voriau, the black dog, with them, helping them and
+ferreting about in the dry grass, and sniffing at every crack in the old
+stones. Under the eaves of the church the sparrows were twittering
+and bickering before going to roost. The boldest of them flew down and
+entered the church through the broken windows, and, as Serge followed
+them with his eyes, he recollected all the noise they had formerly made
+below the pulpit and on the step by the altar rails, where crumbs were
+always put for them. And that was La Teuse yonder, on the parsonage
+doorstep, looking fatter than ever in her blue calico dress. She was
+turning her head to smile at Desirée, who was coming up from the yard,
+laughing noisily. Then they both vanished indoors, and Serge, distracted
+with all these revived memories, stretched out his arms.
+
+‘It is all over now,’ faltered Albine, as she sank down amongst the
+broken brambles. ‘You will never love me enough again.’
+
+She wept, while Serge stood rooted by the breach, straining his ears
+to catch the slightest sound that might be wafted from the village,
+waiting, as it were, for some voice that might fully awaken him. The
+bell in the church-tower had begun to sway, and slowly through the quiet
+evening air the three chimes of the _Angelus_ floated up to the Paradou.
+It was a soft and silvery summons. The bell now seemed to be alive.
+
+‘O God!’ cried Serge, falling on his knees, quite overcome by the
+emotion which the soft notes of the bell had excited in him.
+
+He bent down towards the ground, and he felt the three peals of the
+_Angelus_ pass over his neck and echo through his heart. The voice of
+the bell seemed to grow louder. It was raised again sternly, pitilessly,
+for a few moments which seemed to him to be years. It summoned up
+before him all his old life, his pious childhood, his happy days at the
+seminary, and his first Masses in that burning valley of Les Artaud,
+where he had dreamt of a solitary, saintly life. He had always heard it
+speaking to him as it was doing now. He recognised every inflection of
+that sacred voice, which had so constantly fallen upon his ears, like
+the grave and gentle voice of a mother. Why had he so long ceased to
+hear it? In former times it had promised him the coming of Mary. Had
+Mary come then and taken him and carried him off into those happy green
+fastnesses, which the sound of the bell could not reach? He would never
+have lapsed into forgetfulness if the bell had not ceased to ring. And
+as he bent his head still lower towards the earth, the contact of his
+beard with his hands made him start. He could not recognise his own self
+with that long silky beard. He twisted it and fumbled about in his hair
+seeking for the bare circle of the tonsure, but a heavy growth of curls
+now covered his whole head from his brow to the nape of his neck.
+
+‘Ah! you were right,’ he said, casting a look of despair at Albine.
+‘It was forbidden. We have sinned, and we have merited some terrible
+punishment.... But I, indeed, I tried to reassure you, I did not hear
+the threats which sounded in your ears through the branches.’
+
+Albine tried to clasp him in her arms again as she sobbed out, ‘Get up,
+and let us escape together. Perhaps even yet there is time for us to
+love each other.’
+
+‘No, no; I haven’t the strength. I should stumble and fall over the
+smallest pebble in the path. Listen to me. I am afraid of myself. I know
+not what man dwells in me. I have murdered myself, and my hands are red
+with blood. If you took me away, you would never see aught in my eyes
+save tears.’
+
+She kissed his wet eyes, as she answered passionately, ‘No matter! Do
+you love me?’
+
+He was too terrified to answer her. A heavy step set the pebbles rolling
+on the other side of the wall. A growl of anger seemed to draw nigh.
+Albine had not been mistaken. Some one was, indeed, there, disturbing
+the woodland quiet with jealous inquisition. Then both Albine and Serge,
+as if overwhelmed with shame, sought to bide themselves behind a bush.
+But Brother Archangias, standing in front of the breach, could already
+see them.
+
+The Brother remained for a moment silent, clenching his fists and
+looking at Albine clinging round Serge’s neck, with the disgust of a man
+who has espied some filth by the roadside.
+
+‘I suspected it,’ he mumbled between his teeth. ‘It was virtually
+certain that they had hidden him here.’
+
+Then he took a few steps, and cried out: ‘I see you. It is an
+abomination. Are you a brute beast to go coursing through the woods with
+that female? She has led you far astray, has she not? She has besmeared
+you with filth, and now you are hairy like a goat.... Pluck a branch
+from the trees wherewith to smite her on the back.’
+
+Again Albine whispered in an ardent, prayerful voice: ‘Do you love me?
+Do you love me?’
+
+But Serge, with bowed head, kept silence, though he did not yet drive
+her from him.
+
+‘Fortunately, I have found you,’ continued Brother Archangias. ‘I
+discovered this hole.... You have disobeyed God, and have slain your own
+peace. Henceforward, for ever, temptation will gnaw you with its fiery
+tooth, and you will no longer have ignorance of evil to help you to
+fight it. It was that creature who tempted you to your fall, was it not?
+Do you not see the serpent’s tail writhing amongst her hair? The mere
+sight of her shoulders is sufficient to make one vomit with disgust....
+Leave her. Touch her not, for she is the beginning of hell. In the name
+of God, come forth from that garden.’
+
+‘Do you love me? Oh! do you love me?’ reiterated Albine.
+
+But Serge hastily drew away from her as though her bare arms and
+shoulders really scorched him.
+
+‘In the name of God! In the name of God!’ cried the Brother, in a voice
+of thunder.
+
+Serge unresistingly stepped towards the breach. As soon as Brother
+Archangias, with rough violence, had dragged him out of the Paradou,
+Albine, who had fallen half fainting to the ground, with hands wildly
+stretched towards the love which was deserting her, rose up again,
+choking with sobs. And she fled, vanished into the midst of the trees,
+whose trunks she lashed with her streaming hair.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+When Abbé Mouret had said the _Pater_, he bowed to the altar, and went
+to the Epistle side. Then he came down, and made the sign of the cross
+over big Fortune and Rosalie, who were kneeling, side by side, before
+the altar-rails.
+
+‘_Ego conjungo vos in matrimonium, in nomine Patris, et Filii, et
+Spiritus Sancti_.’
+
+‘_Amen_,’ responded Vincent, who was serving the mass, and glancing
+curiously at his big brother out of the corner of his eye.
+
+Fortune and Rosalie bent their heads, affected by some slight emotion,
+although they had nudged each other with their elbows when they knelt
+down, by way of making one another laugh. But Vincent went to get the
+basin and the sprinkler. Fortune placed the ring in the basin, a thick
+ring of solid silver. When the priest had blessed it, sprinkling it
+crosswise, he returned it to Fortune, who slipped it upon Rosalie’s
+finger. Her hand was still discoloured with grass-stains, which soap had
+not been able to remove.
+
+‘_In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti_,’ Abbé Mouret murmured
+again, giving them a final benediction.
+
+‘_Amen_,’ responded Vincent.
+
+It was early morning. The sun was not yet shining through the big
+windows of the church. Outside one could hear the noisy twittering of
+the sparrows in the branches of the service tree, whose foliage shot
+through the broken panes. La Teuse, who had not previously had time to
+clean the church, was now dusting the altar, craning up on her sound leg
+to wipe the feet of the ochre and lake-bedaubed Christ, and arranging
+the chairs as quietly as possible; all the while bowing and crossing
+herself, and following the service, but not omitting a single sweep of
+her feather broom. Quite alone, at the foot of the pulpit, was mother
+Brichet, praying in a very demonstrative fashion. She kept on her knees,
+and repeated the prayers in so loud a whisper that it seemed as if a
+swarm of bluebottles had taken possession of the nave.
+
+At the other end of the church near the confessional, Catherine held
+an infant in swaddling clothes. As it began to cry, she turned her back
+upon the altar, and tossed it up, and amused it with the bell-rope,
+which dangled just over its nose.
+
+‘_Dominus vobiscum_,’ said the priest, turning round, and spreading out
+his hands.
+
+‘_Et cum spiritu tuo_,’ responded Vincent.
+
+At that moment three big girls came into the church. They were too shy
+to go far up, though they jostled one another to get a better view of
+what was going on. They were three friends of Rosalie, who had dropped
+in for a minute or two on their way to the fields, curious as they were
+to hear what his reverence would say to the bride and bridegroom. They
+had big scissors hanging at their waists. At last they hid themselves
+behind the font, where they pinched each other and twisted themselves
+about, while trying to choke their bursts of laughter with their
+clenched fists.
+
+‘Well,’ whispered La Rousse, a finely built girl, with copper-coloured
+skin and hair, ‘there won’t be any scrimmage to get out of church when
+it’s all over.’
+
+‘Oh! old Bambousse is quite right,’ murmured Lisa, a short dark girl,
+with gleaming eyes; ‘when one has vines, one looks after them. Since his
+reverence so particularly desired to marry Rosalie, he can very well do
+it all alone.’
+
+The other girl, Babet, who was humpbacked, tittered. ‘There’s mother
+Brichet,’ she said; ‘she is always here. She prays for the whole family.
+Listen, do you hear how she’s buzzing? All that will mean something in
+her pocket. She knows very well what she is about, I can tell you.’
+
+‘She is playing the organ for them,’ retorted La Rousse.
+
+At this all three burst into a laugh. La Teuse, in the distance,
+threatened them with her broom. At the altar, Abbé Mouret was taking the
+sacrament. As he went from the Epistle side towards Vincent, so that the
+water of ablution might be poured upon his thumb and fore-finger, Lisa
+said more softly: ‘It’s nearly over. He will begin to talk to them
+directly.’
+
+‘Yes,’ said La Rousse, ‘and so big Fortune will still be able to go to
+his work, and Rosalie won’t lose her day’s pay at the vintage. It is
+very convenient to be married so early in the morning. He looks very
+sheepish, that big Fortune.’
+
+‘Of course,’ murmured Babet. ‘It tires him, keeping so long on his
+knees. You may be sure that he has never knelt so long since his first
+communion.’
+
+But the girls’ attention was suddenly distracted by the baby which
+Catherine was dangling in her arms. It wanted to get hold of the
+bell-rope, and was quite blue with rage, frantically stretching out its
+little hands and almost choking itself with crying.
+
+‘Ah! so the youngster is there,’ said La Rousse.
+
+The baby now burst into still louder wailing, and struggled like a
+little Imp.
+
+‘Turn it over on its stomach, and let it suck,’ said Babet to Catherine.
+
+Catherine lifted up her head, and began to laugh, with the shamelessness
+of a little minx. ‘It’s not at all amusing,’ she said, giving the baby a
+shake. ‘Be quiet, will you, little pig! My sister plumped it down on my
+knees.’
+
+‘Naturally,’ said Babet, mischievously. ‘You could scarcely have
+expected her to give the brat to Monsieur le Curé to nurse.’
+
+At this sally, La Rousse almost fell over in a fit of laughter. She
+leaned against the wall, holding her sides with her hands. Lisa threw
+herself against her, and attempted to soothe her by pinching her back
+and shoulders; while Babet laughed with a hunchback’s laugh, which
+grated on the ear like the sound of a saw.
+
+‘If it hadn’t been for the little one,’ she continued, ‘Monsieur le Curé
+would have lost all use for his holy water. Old Bambousse had made up
+his mind to marry Rosalie to young Laurent, of Figuieres.’
+
+However, the girls’ merriment and their chatter now came to an end, for
+they saw La Teuse limping furiously towards them. At this the three big
+hussies felt alarmed, stepped back, and subsided into sedateness.
+
+‘You worthless things!’ hissed La Teuse. ‘You come to talk a lot of
+filth here, do you? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, La Rousse? You ought
+to be there, on your knees, before the altar, like Rosalie. I will throw
+you outside if you stir again. Do you hear?’
+
+La Rousse’s copper cheeks were tinged with a rising blush, and Babet
+glanced at her and tittered.
+
+‘And you,’ continued La Teuse, turning towards Catherine, ‘just you
+leave that baby alone. You are pinching it on purpose to make it scream.
+Don’t tell me you are not. Give it to me.’
+
+She took the child, hushed it in her arms for a moment, and then laid
+it upon a chair, where it went to sleep, peacefully like a cherub.
+The church then subsided into solemn quietness, disturbed only by the
+chattering of the sparrows on the rowan tree outside. At the altar,
+Vincent had carried the missal to the right again, and Abbé Mouret had
+just folded the corporal and slipped it within the burse. He was now
+saying the concluding prayers with a solemn earnestness, which neither
+the screams of the baby nor the giggling of the three girls had been
+able to disturb. He seemed to hear nothing of them, but to be wholly
+absorbed in the prayers which he was offering up to Heaven for the
+happiness of the pair whose union he had just blessed. The sky that
+morning was grey with a hazy heat, which veiled the sun. Through the
+broken windows a russet vapour streamed into the church, betokening
+a stormy day. Along the walls the gaudily coloured pictures of the
+Stations of the Cross displayed their red, blue, and yellow patches;
+at the bottom of the nave the dry woodwork of the gallery creaked and
+strained; and under the doorway the tall grass by the steps thrust
+ripening straw, all alive with little brown grasshoppers. The clock,
+in its wooden case, made a whirring noise, as though it were some
+consumptive trying to clear his throat, and then huskily struck
+half-past six.
+
+‘_Ite, missa est_,’ said the priest, turning round to the congregation.
+
+‘_Deo gratias_,’ responded Vincent.
+
+Then, having kissed the altar, Abbé Mouret once more turned round,
+and murmured over the bent heads of the newly married pair the final
+benediction: ‘_Deus Abraham, Deus Isaac, et Deus Jacob vobiscum
+sit_’--his voice dying away into a gentle whisper.
+
+‘Now, he’s going to address them,’ said Babet to her friends.
+
+‘He is very pale,’ observed Lisa. ‘He isn’t a bit like Monsieur Caffin,
+whose fat face always seemed to be on the laugh. My little sister Rose
+says that she daren’t tell him anything when she goes to confess.’
+
+‘All the same,’ murmured La Rousse, ‘he’s not ugly. His illness has aged
+him a little, but it seems to suit him. He has bigger eyes, and lines at
+the corners of his mouth which make him look like a man. Before he had
+the fever, he was too much like a girl.’
+
+‘I believe he’s got some great trouble,’ said Babet. ‘He looks as though
+he were pining away. His face is deadly pale, but how his eyes glitter!
+When he drops his eyelids, it is just as though he were doing it to
+extinguish the fire in his eyes.’
+
+La Teuse again shook her broom at them. ‘Hush!’ she hissed out, so
+energetically that it seemed as if a blast of wind had burst into the
+church.
+
+Meantime Abbé Mouret had collected himself, and he began, in a rather
+low voice:
+
+‘My dear brother, my dear sister, you are joined together in Jesus. The
+institution of marriage symbolises the sacred union between Jesus and
+His Church. It is a bond which nothing can break; which God wills shall
+be eternal, so that man may not sever those whom Heaven has joined. In
+making you flesh of each other’s flesh, and bone of each other’s bone,
+God teaches you that it is your duty to walk side by side through
+life, a faithful couple, along the paths which He, in His omnipotence,
+appoints for you. And you must love each other with God-like love. The
+slightest ill-feeling between you will be disobedience to the Creator,
+Who has joined you together as a single body. Remain, then, for ever
+united, after the likeness of the Church, which Jesus has espoused, in
+giving to us all His body and blood.’
+
+Big Fortune and Rosalie sat listening, with their noses peaked up
+inquisitively.
+
+‘What does he say?’ asked Lisa, who was a little deaf.
+
+‘Oh! he says what they all say,’ answered La Rousse. ‘He has a glib
+tongue, like all the priests have.’
+
+Abbé Mouret went on with his address, his eyes wandering over the heads
+of the newly wedded couple towards a shadowy corner of the church. And
+by degrees his voice became more flexible, and he put emotion into the
+words he spoke, words which he had formerly learned by heart from a
+manual intended for the use of young priests. He had turned slightly
+towards Rosalie, and whenever his memory failed him, he added sentences
+of his own:
+
+‘My dear sister, submit yourself to your husband, as the Church submits
+itself to Jesus. Remember that you must leave everything to follow him,
+like a faithful handmaiden. You must give up father and mother, you must
+cleave only to your husband, and you must obey him that you may obey God
+also. And your yoke will be a yoke of love and peace. Be his comfort,
+his happiness, the perfume of his days of strength, the support of his
+days of weakness. Let him find you, as a grace, ever by his side. Let
+him have but to reach out his hand to find yours grasping it. It is thus
+that you will step along together, never losing your way, and that you
+will meet with happiness in the carrying out of the divine laws. Oh! my
+dear sister, my dear daughter, your humility will hear sweet fruit; it
+will give birth to all the domestic virtues, to the joys of the hearth,
+and the prosperity that attends a God-fearing family. Have for your
+husband the love of Rachel, the wisdom of Rebecca, the constant fidelity
+of Sarah. Tell yourself that a pure life is the source of all happiness.
+Pray to God each morning that He may give you strength to live as a
+woman who respects her responsibilities and duties; for the punishment
+you would otherwise incur is terrible: you would lose your love. Oh! to
+live loveless, to tear flesh from flesh, to belong no more to the one
+who is half of your very self, to live on in pain and agony, bereft of
+the one you have loved! In vain would you stretch out your arms to him;
+he would turn away from you. You would yearn for happiness, but you
+would find in your heart nothing but shame and bitterness. Hear me, my
+daughter, it is in your own conduct, in your obedience, in your purity,
+in your love, that God has established the strength of your union.’
+
+As Abbé Mouret spoke these words, there was a burst of laughter at the
+other end of the church. The baby had just woke up on the chair where La
+Teuse had laid it. But it was no longer in a bad temper. Having kicked
+itself free of its swaddling clothes, it was laughing merrily, and
+shaking its rosy little feet in the air. It was the sight of these
+little feet that made it laugh.
+
+Rosalie, who was beginning to find the priest’s address rather tedious,
+turned her head to smile at the child. But, when she saw it kicking
+about on the chair, she grew alarmed, and cast an angry look at
+Catherine.
+
+‘Oh! you can look at me as much as you like,’ said Catherine. ‘I’m not
+going to take it any more. It would only begin to cry again.’
+
+And she turned aside to ferret in an ant-hole at a corner of one of the
+stone flags under the gallery.
+
+‘Monsieur Caffin didn’t talk so long,’ now remarked La Rousse. ‘When he
+married Miette, he just gave her two taps on the cheek and told her to
+be good.’
+
+My dear brother,’ resumed Abbé Mouret, turning towards big Fortune, ‘it
+is God who, to-day, gives you a companion, for He does not wish that man
+should live alone. But, if He ordains that she shall be your servant,
+He demands from you that you shall be to her a master full of gentleness
+and love. You will love her, because she is part of your own flesh, of
+your own blood, and your own bone. You will protect her, because God has
+given you strong arms only that you may stretch them over her head in
+the hour of danger. Remember that she is entrusted to you, and that
+you cannot abuse her submission and weakness without sin. Oh! my dear
+brother, what proud happiness should be yours! Henceforth, you will no
+longer live in the selfish egotism of solitude. At all hours you will
+have a lovable duty before you. There is nothing better than to love,
+unless it be to protect those whom we love. Your heart will expand;
+your manly strength will increase a hundredfold. Oh! to be a support and
+stay, to have a love given into your keeping, to see a being sink her
+existence in yours and say, “Take me and do with me what you will! I
+trust myself wholly to you!” And may you be accursed if you ever abandon
+her! It would be a cowardly desertion which God would assuredly punish.
+From the moment she gives herself to you, she becomes yours for ever.
+Carry her rather in your arms, and set her not upon the ground until it
+be certain that she will be there in safety. Give up everything, my dear
+brother--’
+
+But here the Abbé’s voice faltered, and only an indistinct murmur came
+from his lips. He had quite closed his eyes, his face was deathly white,
+and his voice betokened such deep distress that big Fortune himself shed
+tears without knowing why.
+
+‘He hasn’t recovered yet,’ said Lisa. ‘It is wrong of him to fatigue
+himself. See, there’s Fortune crying!’
+
+‘Men are softer-hearted than women,’ murmured Babet.
+
+‘He spoke very well, all the same,’ remarked La Rousse. ‘Those priests
+think of a lot of things that wouldn’t occur to anybody else.’
+
+‘Hush!’ cried La Teuse, who was already making ready to extinguish the
+candles.
+
+But Abbé Mouret still stammered on, trying to utter a few more
+sentences. ‘It is for this reason, my dear brother, my dear sister, that
+you must live in the Catholic Faith, which alone can ensure the peace of
+your hearth. Your families have taught you to love God, to pray to Him
+every morning and evening, to look only for the gifts of His mercy--’
+
+He was unable to finish. He turned round, took the chalice off the
+altar, and retired, with bowed head, into the vestry, preceded by
+Vincent, who almost let the cruets and napkin fall, in trying to see
+what Catherine might be doing at the end of the church.
+
+‘Oh! the heartless creature!’ said Rosalie, who left her husband to go
+and take her baby in her arms. The child laughed. She kissed it, and
+rearranged its swaddling clothes, while threatening Catherine with her
+fist. ‘If it had fallen,’ she cried out, ‘I would have boxed your ears
+for you, nicely.’
+
+Big Fortune now came slouching along. The three girls stepped towards
+him, with compressed lips.
+
+‘See how proud he is,’ murmured Babet to the others. ‘He is sure of
+inheriting old Bambousse’s money now. I used to see him creeping along
+every night under the little wall with Rosalie.’
+
+Then they giggled, and big Fortune, standing there in front of them,
+laughed even louder than they did. He pinched La Rousse, and let Lisa
+jeer at him. He was a sturdy young blood, and cared nothing for anybody.
+The priest’s address had annoyed him.
+
+‘Hallo! mother, come on!’ he called in his loud voice. But mother
+Brichet was begging at the vestry door. She stood there, tearful and
+wizen, before La Teuse, who was slipping some eggs into the pocket of
+her apron. Fortune didn’t seem to feel the least sense of shame. He just
+winked and remarked: ‘She is a knowing old card, my mother is. But then
+the Curé likes to see people at mass.’
+
+Meanwhile, Rosalie had grown calm again. Before leaving the church, she
+asked Fortune if he had begged the priest to come and bless their
+room, according to the custom of the country. So Fortune ran off to the
+vestry, striding heavily through the church, as if it were a field. He
+soon reappeared, shouting that his reverence would come. La Teuse, who
+was scandalised at the noise made by all these people, who seemed to
+think themselves in a public street, gently clapped her hands, and
+pushed them towards the door.
+
+‘It is all over,’ said she; ‘go away and get to your work.’
+
+She thought they had all gone, when her eye caught sight of Catherine,
+whom Vincent had joined. They were bending anxiously over the ants’
+nest. Catherine was poking a long straw into the hole so roughly, that
+a swarm of frightened ants had rushed out upon the floor. Vincent
+declared, however, that she must get her straw right to the bottom if
+she wished to find the queen.
+
+‘Ah! you young imps!’ cried La Teuse, ‘what are you after there? Can’t
+you leave the poor little things alone? That is Mademoiselle Desirée’s
+ants’ nest. She would be nicely pleased if she saw you!’
+
+At this the children promptly took to their heels.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Abbé Mouret, now wearing his cassock but still bareheaded, had come
+back to kneel at the foot of the altar. In the grey light that streamed
+through the window, his tonsure showed like a large livid spot amidst
+his hair; and a slight quiver, as if from cold, sped down his neck. With
+his hands tightly clasped he was praying earnestly, so absorbed in his
+devotions that he did not hear the heavy footsteps of La Teuse, who
+hovered around without daring to disturb him. She seemed to be grieved
+at seeing him bowed down there on his knees. For a moment, she thought
+that he was in tears, and thereupon she went behind the altar to watch
+him. Since his return, she had never liked to leave him in the church
+alone, for one evening she had found him lying in a dead faint upon the
+flagstones, with icy lips and clenched teeth, like a corpse.
+
+‘Come in, mademoiselle!’ she said to Desirée, who was peeping through
+the vestry-doorway. ‘He is still here, and he will lay himself up. You
+know you are the only person that he will listen to.’
+
+‘It is breakfast-time,’ she replied softly, ‘and I am very hungry.’
+
+Then she gently sidled up to the priest, passed an arm round his neck,
+and kissed him.
+
+‘Good morning, brother,’ she said. ‘Do you want to make me die of hunger
+this morning?’
+
+The face he turned upon her was so intensely sad, that she kissed
+him again on both his cheeks. He was emerging from agony. Then, on
+recognising her, he tried to put her from him, but she kept hold of one
+of his hands and would not release it. She would scarcely allow him to
+cross himself, but insisted upon leading him away.
+
+‘Come! Come! for I am very hungry. You must be hungry too.’
+
+La Teuse had laid out the breakfast beneath two big mulberry trees,
+whose spreading branches formed a sheltering roof at the bottom of the
+little garden. The sun, which had at last succeeded in dissipating
+the stormy-looking vapours of early morning, was warming the beds
+of vegetables, while the mulberry-trees cast a broad shadow over the
+rickety table, on which were laid two cups of milk and some thick slices
+of bread.
+
+‘You see how nice it looks,’ said Desirée, delighted at breakfasting in
+the fresh air.
+
+She was already cutting some of the bread into strips, which she ate
+with eager appetite. And as she saw La Teuse still standing in front of
+them, she said, ‘Why don’t you eat something?’
+
+‘I shall, presently,’ the old servant answered. ‘My soup is warming.’
+
+Then, after a moment’s silence, looking with admiration at the girl’s
+big bites, she said to the priest: ‘It is quite a pleasure to see her.
+Doesn’t she make you feel hungry, Monsieur le Curé? You should force
+yourself.’
+
+Abbé Mouret smiled as he glanced at his sister. ‘Yes, yes,’ he murmured;
+‘she gets on famously, she grows fatter every day.’
+
+‘That’s because I eat,’ said Desirée. ‘If you would eat you would get
+fat, too. Are you ill again? You look very melancholy. I don’t want to
+have it all over again, you know. I was so very lonely when they took
+you away to cure you.’
+
+‘She is right,’ said La Teuse. ‘You don’t behave reasonably, Monsieur le
+Curé. You can’t expect to be strong, living, as you do, on two or three
+crumbs a day, as though you were a bird. You don’t make blood; and
+that’s why you are so pale. Don’t you feel ashamed of keeping as thin as
+a lath when we are so fat; we who are only women? People will begin to
+think that we gobble up everything and leave you nothing but the empty
+plates.’
+
+Then both La Teuse and Desirée, brimful of health and strength, scolded
+him affectionately. His eyes seemed very large and bright, but empty,
+expressionless. He was still gently smiling.
+
+‘I am not ill,’ he said; ‘I have nearly finished my milk.’ He had
+swallowed two mouthfuls of it, but had not touched the bread.
+
+‘The animals, now,’ said Desirée, thoughtfully, ‘seem to get on much
+more comfortably than we do. The fowls never have headaches, have they?
+The rabbits grow as fat as ever one wants them to be. And you never saw
+my pig looking sad.’
+
+Then, turning towards her brother, she went on with an air of rapture:
+
+‘I have named it Matthew, because it is so like that fat man who brings
+the letters. It is growing so big and strong. It is very unkind of you
+to refuse to come and look at it as you always do. You will come to see
+it some day, won’t you?’
+
+While she was thus talking she had laid hold of her brother’s share of
+bread, and was eating away at it. She had already finished one piece,
+and was beginning the second, when La Teuse became aware of what she was
+doing.
+
+‘That doesn’t belong to you, that bread! You are actually stealing his
+food from him now!’
+
+‘Let her have it,’ said Abbé Mouret, gently. ‘I shouldn’t have touched
+it myself. Eat it all, my dear, eat it all.’
+
+For a moment Desirée fell into confusion, with her eyes fixed upon the
+bread, whilst she struggled to check her rising tears. Then she began to
+laugh, and finished the slice.
+
+‘My cow,’ said she, continuing her remarks, ‘is never as sad as you are.
+You were not here when uncle Pascal gave her to me, on the promise that
+I would be a good girl, or you would have seen how pleased she was when
+I kissed her for the first time.’
+
+She paused to listen. A cock crowed in the yard, and a great uproar
+followed, with flapping of wings and cackling, grunting, and hoarse
+cries as if the whole yard were in a state of commotion.
+
+‘Ah! you know,’ resumed Desirée, clapping her hands, ‘she must be in
+calf now. I took her to the bull at Beage, three leagues from here.
+There are very few bulls hereabouts, you know.’
+
+La Teuse shrugged her shoulders, and glanced at the priest with an
+expression of annoyance.
+
+‘It would be much better, mademoiselle,’ said she, ‘if you were to go
+and quiet your fowls. They all seem to be murdering one another.’
+
+Indeed, the uproar in the yard had now become so great that the girl was
+already hurrying off with a great rustling of her petticoats, when the
+priest called her back. ‘The milk, my dear; you have not finished the
+milk.’
+
+He held out his cup to her, which he had scarcely touched. And she came
+back and drank the milk without the slightest scruple, in spite of La
+Teuse’s angry look. Then she again set off for the poultry-yard, where
+they soon heard her reducing the fowls to peace and order. She had,
+perhaps, sat down in the midst of them, for she could be heard gently
+humming as though she were trying to lull them to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+‘Now my soup is too hot!’ grumbled La Teuse, as she returned from the
+kitchen with a basin, from which a wooden spoon was projecting.
+
+She placed herself just in front of Abbé Mouret, and began to eat very
+cautiously from the edge of the spoon. She wanted to enliven the Abbé
+and to draw him out of his melancholy moodiness. Ever since he had
+returned from the Paradou, he had declared himself well again, and
+had never complained. Often, indeed, he smiled in so soft and sweet a
+fashion, that his fever seemed to have increased his saintliness, at
+least so thought the villagers. But, at intervals, he had fits of gloomy
+silence, and appeared to be suffering torture which he strove to bear
+uncomplainingly. It was a mute agony which bore down upon him, and,
+for hours at a time, left him stupefied, a prey to a frightful inward
+struggle, the violence of which could only be guessed by the sweat of
+anguish that streamed down his face.
+
+At such times La Teuse refused to leave him, and overwhelmed him with
+a torrent of gossip, until he had gradually recovered tranquillity by
+crushing the rebellion of his blood. On that particular morning, the old
+servant foresaw a more grievous attack than usual, and poured forth an
+amazing flood of talk, while continuing her wary manoeuvres with the
+spoon, which threatened to burn her tongue.
+
+‘Well, well,’ said she, ‘one has to live among a lot of wild beasts
+to see such goings-on. Would any one ever think in a decent village of
+being married by candlelight? It shows what a poor sort these Artauds
+are. When I was in Normandy, I used to see weddings that threw every one
+into commotion for a couple of leagues round. They would feast for three
+whole days. The priest would be there, and the mayor, too; and at the
+marriage of one of my cousins, all the firemen came as well. And didn’t
+they have a fine time of it! But to make a priest get up before sunrise
+and marry people before even the chickens have left their roost, why,
+there’s no sense in it! If I had been your reverence, I should have
+refused to do it. You haven’t had your proper sleep, and you may have
+caught cold in the church. It is that which has upset you. Besides which
+it would be better to marry brute beasts than that Rosalie and her ugly
+lout. That brat of theirs dirtied one of the chairs.--But you ought to
+tell me when you feel poorly, and I could make you something warm.--Eh!
+Monsieur le Curé, speak to me!’
+
+He answered, in a feeble voice, that he was quite well, and only needed
+a little fresh air. He had just leant against one of the mulberry-trees,
+and was breathing rather quickly, as if faint.
+
+‘Oh! all right,’ went on La Teuse, ‘do just as you like. Go on marrying
+people when you haven’t the strength for it, and when you know very
+well that it’s bound to upset you. I knew how it would be; I told you so
+yesterday. And if you took my advice, you wouldn’t stay where you are.
+The smell of the yard is bad for you. It is frightful just now. I can’t
+imagine what Mademoiselle Desirée can be stirring about there. She’s
+singing away, and doesn’t seem to mind it at all. Ah! that reminds me
+of something I want to tell you. You know that I did all I could to keep
+her from taking the cow to Beage; but she’s like you, obstinate, and
+will go her own way. Fortunately, however, for her, she’s none the worse
+for it. She delights to be amongst the animals and their young ones.
+But come now, your reverence, do be reasonable. Let me take you to your
+room. You must lie down and rest a little. What, you don’t want to!
+Well, then, so much the worse for you, if you suffer! Besides, it’s
+absurd to keep one’s worries locked up in one’s heart till they stifle
+one.’
+
+Then, in her indignation, she hastily swallowed a big spoonful of soup
+at the risk of burning her throat. She rattled the handle of the spoon
+against the bowl, muttering and grumbling to herself.
+
+‘There never was such a man,’ said she. ‘He would die rather than say
+a word. But it’s all very well for him to keep silent. I know quite
+enough, and it doesn’t require much cleverness to guess the rest. Well!
+well! let him keep it to himself. I dare say it is better.’
+
+La Teuse was jealous. Dr. Pascal had had a tremendous fight with her
+in order to get her patient away at the time when he had come to the
+conclusion that the young priest’s case would be quite hopeless if he
+should remain at the parsonage. He had then explained to her that the
+sound of the bell would aggravate and intensify Serge’s fever, that the
+religious pictures and statuettes scattered about his room would fill
+his brain with hallucinations, and that entirely new surroundings
+were necessary if he was to be restored to health and strength and
+peacefulness of mind. She, however, had vigorously shaken her head, and
+declared that her ‘dear child’ would nowhere find a better nurse than
+herself. Still, she had ended by yielding. She had even resigned
+herself to seeing him go to the Paradou, though protesting against this
+selection of the doctor’s, which astonished her. But she retained
+a strong feeling of hatred for the Paradou; and she was hurt by the
+silence which Abbé Mouret maintained as to the time he had spent there.
+She had frequently laid all sorts of unsuccessful traps to induce him
+to talk of it. That morning, exasperated by his ghastly pallor, and his
+obstinacy in suffering in silence, she ended by waving her spoon about
+and crying:
+
+‘You should go back yonder again, Monsieur le Curé, if you were so happy
+there--I dare say there is some one there who would nurse you better
+than I do.’
+
+It was the first time she had ventured upon a direct allusion to her
+suspicions. The blow was so painful to the priest that he could not
+check a slight cry, as he raised his grief-racked countenance. At this
+La Teuse’s kindly heart was filled with regret.
+
+‘Ah!’ she murmured, ‘it is all the fault of your uncle Pascal. I told
+him what it would be. But those clever men cling so obstinately to their
+own ideas. Some of them would kill you, just for the sake of rummaging
+in your body afterwards--It made me so angry that I would never speak of
+it to any one. Yes, Monsieur le Curé, you have me to thank that nobody
+knew where you were; I was so angry about it. I thought it abominable!
+When Abbé Guyot, from Saint-Eutrope, who took your place during your
+absence, came to say mass here on Sundays, I told him all sorts of
+stories. I said you had gone to Switzerland. I don’t even know where
+Switzerland is.--Well! well! I surely don’t want to say anything to pain
+you, but it was certainly over yonder that you got your trouble. Very
+finely they’ve cured you indeed! It would have been very much better if
+they had left you with me. I shouldn’t have thought of trying to turn
+your head.’
+
+Abbé Mouret, whose brow was again lowered, made no attempt to interrupt
+her. La Teuse had seated herself upon the ground a few yards away from
+him, in order if possible to catch his eye. And she went on again in her
+motherly way, delighted at his seeming complacency in listening to her.
+
+‘You would never let me tell you about Abbé Caffin. As soon as I began
+to speak of him, you always made me stop. Well, well; Abbé Caffin had
+had his troubles in my part of the world, at Canteleu. And yet he was a
+very holy man, with an irreproachable character. But, you see, he was
+a man of very delicate taste, and liked soft pretty things. Well, there
+was a young party who was always prowling round him, the daughter of a
+miller, whom her parents had sent to a boarding-school. Well, to put it
+shortly, what was likely to happen did happen. When the story got about,
+all the neighbourhood was very indignant with the Abbé. But he managed
+to escape to Rouen, and poured out his grief to the Archbishop there.
+Then he was sent here. The poor man was punished quite enough by being
+made to live in this hole of a place. I heard of the girl afterwards.
+She had married a cattle-dealer, and was very happy.’
+
+La Teuse, delighted at having been allowed to tell her story,
+interpreted the priest’s silence as an encouragement to continue her
+gossiping. So she drew a little nearer to him and said:
+
+‘He was very friendly with me, was good Monsieur Caffin, and often spoke
+to me of his sin. It won’t keep him out of heaven, I’m sure. He can rest
+quite peacefully out there under the turf, for he never harmed any one.
+For my part, I can’t understand why people should get so angry with a
+priest when such a thing unhappily befalls him. Of course it’s wrong,
+and likely to anger God; but then one can confess and repent, and get
+absolution. Isn’t it so, your reverence, that when one truly repents,
+one is saved in spite of one’s sins?’
+
+Abbé Mouret slowly raised his head. By a supreme effort he had overcome
+his agony, and though his face was still very pale, he exclaimed in a
+firm voice, ‘One should never sin; never! never!’
+
+‘Ah! sir,’ cried the old servant, ‘you are too proud and reserved. It is
+not a nice thing, that pride of yours.--If I were in your place, I would
+not harden myself like that. I would talk of what was troubling me, and
+not try to rend my heart in pieces. You should reconcile yourself to the
+separation gradually. The worry wears off little by little. But, instead
+of that, you won’t even allow people’s names to be uttered. You forbid
+them to be mentioned. It is as though they were dead. Since you came
+back, I have not dared to tell you the least bit of news. Well, well,
+I am going to speak now, and I shall tell you all I know; because I see
+quite well that it is all this silence that is preying upon your heart.’
+
+He looked at her sternly, and lifted his finger to silence her.
+
+‘Yes, yes,’ she went on, ‘I get news from over yonder, very often
+indeed, and I am going to tell it to you. To begin with, there is some
+one there who is no happier than you are.’
+
+‘Silence! Silence!’ said Abbé Mouret, summoning all his strength to rise
+and move away.
+
+But La Teuse also rose and barred his way with her bulky figure. She was
+angry, and cried out:
+
+‘There, you see, you want to be off already! But you are going to listen
+to me. You know quite well that I am not over fond of the people yonder,
+don’t you? If I talk to you about them, it is for your own good. Some
+people say that I am jealous. Well, one day I mean to take you over
+there. You would be with me, and you wouldn’t be afraid of any harm
+happening. Will you go?’
+
+He motioned her away from him with his hands, and his face was calm
+again as he said:
+
+‘I desire nothing. I wish to know nothing. There is high mass to-morrow.
+You must see that the altar is made ready.’
+
+Then, as he walked away, he added, smiling:
+
+‘Don’t be uneasy, my good Teuse. I am stronger than you imagine. I shall
+be able to cure myself without any one’s assistance.’
+
+With these words he went off, bearing himself sturdily, with his head
+erect, for he had vanquished his feelings. His cassock rustled very
+gently against the borders of thyme. La Teuse, who for a moment had
+remained rooted to the spot where she was standing, sulkily picked up
+her basin and wooden spoon. Then, shrugging her big shoulders again and
+again, she mumbled between her teeth:
+
+‘That’s all bravado of his. He imagines that he is differently made from
+other men, just because he is a priest. Well, as a matter of fact, he is
+very firm and determined. I have known some who wouldn’t have had to be
+wheedled so long. And he is quite capable of crushing his heart, just
+as one might crush a flea. It must be the Almighty who gives him his
+strength.’
+
+As she returned to the kitchen she saw Abbé Mouret standing by the gate
+of the farmyard. Desirée had stopped him there to make him feel a capon
+which she had been fattening for some weeks past. He told her pleasantly
+that it was very heavy, and the big child chuckled with glee.
+
+‘Ah! well,’ said La Teuse in a fury, ‘that bird has got to crush its
+heart too. But then it can’t help itself.’
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+Abbé Mouret spent his days at the parsonage. He shunned the long walks
+which he had been wont to take before his illness. The scorched soil of
+Les Artaud, the ardent heat of that valley where the vines could never
+even grow straight, distressed him. On two occasions, in the morning, he
+had attempted to go out and read his breviary as he strolled along the
+road; but he had not gone beyond the village. He had returned home,
+overcome by the perfumes, the heat, the breadth of the landscape. It
+was only in the evening, in the cool twilight air, that he ventured to
+saunter a little in front of the church, on the terrace which led to
+the graveyard. In the afternoons, to fill up his time, and satisfy his
+craving for some kind of occupation, he had imposed upon himself the
+task of pasting paper over the broken panes of the church windows, This
+had kept him for a week mounted on a ladder, arranging his paper panes
+with great exactness, and laying on the paste with the most scrupulous
+care in order to avoid any mess.
+
+La Teuse stood at the foot of the ladder and watched him. And Desirée
+urged that he must not fill up all the windows, or else the sparrows
+would no longer be able to get through. To please her, the priest left
+a pane or two in each window unfilled. Then, having completed these
+repairs, he was seized with the ambition of decorating the church,
+without summoning to his aid either mason or carpenter or painter. He
+would do it all himself. This sort of handiwork would amuse him, he
+said, and help to bring back his strength. Uncle Pascal encouraged him
+every time he called at the parsonage, assuring him that such exercise
+and fatigue were better than all the drugs in the world. And so Abbé
+Mouret began to stop up the holes in the walls with plaster, to drive
+fresh nails into the disjoined altars, and to crush and mix paints,
+in order that he might put a new coating on the pulpit and
+confessional-box. It was quite an event in the district, and folks
+talked of it for a couple of leagues round. Peasants would come and
+stand gazing, with their hands behind their backs, at his reverence’s
+work. The Abbé himself, with a blue apron tied round his waist, and his
+hands all soiled with his labour, became absorbed in it, and used it as
+an excuse for no longer going out. He spent his days in the midst of his
+repairs, and was more tranquil than he had been before; almost cheerful,
+indeed, as he forgot the outer world, the trees and the sunshine and the
+warm breezes, which had formerly disturbed him so much.
+
+‘Monsieur le Curé is free to do as he pleases, since the parish hasn’t
+got to find the money,’ said old Bambousse, who came round every evening
+to see how the work was progressing.
+
+Abbé Mouret spent all his savings on it. Some of his decorations,
+indeed, were so awkward that they would have excited many people’s
+smiles. The replastering of the stonework soon tired him: so he
+contented himself with patching up the church walls all round to a
+height of some six feet from the ground. La Teuse mixed the plaster.
+When she talked of repairing the parsonage as well, for she was
+continually fearing that it would topple down on their heads, he told
+her that he did not think he could manage it, that a regular workman
+would be necessary; a reply which led to a terrible quarrel between
+them. La Teuse said it was quite ridiculous to go on ornamenting the
+church, where nobody slept, while their bedrooms were in such a crazy
+condition, for she was quite sure they would all be found, one morning,
+crushed to death by the fallen ceilings.
+
+‘I shall end by bringing my bed here, and placing it behind the altar,’
+she grumbled. ‘I feel quite terrified sometimes at night.’
+
+However, when the plaster was all used up, she said no more about
+repairing the parsonage. The painting which the priest executed quite
+delighted her. It was the chief charm of the improvements. The Abbé,
+who had repaired the woodwork everywhere with bits of boards, took
+particular pleasure in spreading his big brush, dipped in bright yellow
+paint, over all this woodwork. The gentle, up-and-down motion of the
+brush lulled him, left him thoughtless for hours whilst he gazed on the
+oily streaks of paint. When everything was quite yellow, the pulpit,
+the confessional-box, the altar rails, even the clock-case itself, he
+ventured to try his hand at imitation marble work by way of touching up
+the high altar. Then, growing bolder, he painted it all over. Glistening
+with white and yellow and blue, it was pronounced superb. People who had
+not been to mass for fifty years streamed into the church to see it.
+
+And now the paint was dry. All that remained for Abbé Mouret to do was
+to edge the panels with brown beading. So, that afternoon, he set to
+work at it, wishing to get it done by evening; for on the following day,
+as he had reminded La Teuse, there would be high mass. She was there
+ready to arrange the altar. She had already placed on the credence
+the candlesticks and the silver cross, the porcelain vases filled with
+artificial roses, and the laced cloth which was only used on great
+festivals. The beading, however, proved so difficult of execution, that
+it was not completed till late in the evening. It was growing quite dark
+as the Abbé finished his last panel.
+
+‘It will be really too beautiful,’ said a rough voice from amidst the
+greyish gloom of twilight which was filling the church.
+
+La Teuse, who had knelt down to get a better view of the Abbé’s brush as
+it glided along his rule, started with alarm.
+
+‘Ah! it’s Brother Archangias,’ she said, turning round. ‘You came in by
+the sacristy then? You gave me quite a turn. Your voice seemed to sound
+from under the floor.’
+
+Abbé Mouret had resumed his work, after greeting the Brother with a
+slight nod. The Brother remained standing there in silence, with his fat
+hands clasped in front of his cassock. Then, shrugging his shoulders,
+as he observed with what scrupulous care the priest sought to make his
+beading perfectly straight, he repeated:
+
+‘It will be really too beautiful.’
+
+La Teuse, who knelt near by in ecstasy, started again.
+
+‘Dear me!’ she said, ‘I had quite forgotten you were there. You really
+ought to cough before you speak. You have a voice that comes on one so
+suddenly that one might think it was a voice from the grave.’
+
+She rose up and drew back a little the better to admire the Abbé’s work.
+
+‘Why too beautiful?’ she asked. ‘Nothing can be too beautiful when it is
+done for the Almighty. If his reverence had only had some gold, he would
+have done it with gold, I’m sure.’
+
+When the priest had finished, she hastened to change the altar-cloth,
+taking the greatest care not to smudge the beading. Then she arranged
+the cross, the candlesticks, and the vases symmetrically. Abbé Mouret
+had gone to lean against the wooden screen which separated the choir
+from the nave, by the side of Brother Archangias. Not a word passed
+between them. Their eyes were fixed upon the silver crucifix, which, in
+the increasing gloom, still cast some glimmer of light on the feet and
+the left side and the right temple of the big Christ. When La Teuse had
+finished, she came down towards them, triumphantly.
+
+‘Doesn’t it look lovely?’ she asked. ‘Just you see what a crowd there
+will be at mass to-morrow! Those heathens will only come to God’s house
+when they think He is well-to-do. Now, Monsieur le Curé, we must do as
+much for the Blessed Virgin’s altar.’
+
+‘Waste of money!’ growled Brother Archangias.
+
+But La Teuse flew into a tantrum; and, as Abbé Mouret remained silent,
+she led them both before the altar of the Virgin, pushing them and
+dragging them by their cassocks.
+
+‘Just look at it,’ said she; ‘it is too shabby for anything, now that
+the high altar is so smart. It looks as though it had never been painted
+at all. However much I may rub it of a morning, the dust sticks to it.
+It is quite black; it is filthy. Do you know what people will say about
+you, your reverence? They will say that you care nothing for the Blessed
+Virgin; that’s what they’ll say.’
+
+‘Well, what of it?’ queried Brother Archangias.
+
+La Teuse looked at him, half suffocated by indignation.
+
+‘What of it? It would be sinful, of course,’ she muttered. ‘This altar
+is like a neglected tomb in a graveyard. If it were not for me, the
+spiders would spin their webs across it, and moss would soon grow over
+it. From time to time, when I can spare a bunch of flowers, I give it to
+the Virgin. All the flowers in our garden used to be for her once.’
+
+She had mounted the altar steps, and she took up two withered bunches of
+flowers, which had been left there, forgotten.
+
+‘See! it is just as it is in the graveyards,’ she said, throwing the
+flowers at Abbé Mouret’s feet.
+
+He picked them up, without replying. It was quite dark now, and Brother
+Archangias stumbled about amongst the chairs and nearly fell. He growled
+and muttered some angry words, in which the names of Jesus and Mary
+recurred. When La Teuse, who had gone for a lamp, returned into the
+church, she asked the priest:
+
+‘So I can put the brushes and pots away in the attic, then?’
+
+‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘I have finished. We will see about the rest later
+on.’
+
+She walked away in front of them, carrying all the things with her, and
+keeping silence, lest she should say too much. And as Abbé Mouret had
+kept the withered bunches of flowers in his hand, Brother Archangias
+said to him, as they passed the farmyard: ‘Throw those things away.’
+
+The Abbé took a few steps more, with downcast head; and then over the
+palings he flung the flowers upon a manure-heap.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+The Brother, who had already had his own meal, seated himself astride a
+chair, while the priest dined. Since Serge’s return to Les Artaud, the
+Brother had thus spent most of his evenings at the parsonage; but never
+before had he imposed his presence upon the other in so rough a fashion.
+He stamped on the tiled floor with his heavy boots, his voice thundered
+and he smote the furniture, whilst he related how he had whipped some of
+his pupils that morning, or expounded his moral principles in terms
+as stern, as uncompromising as bludgeon-blows. Then feeling bored, he
+suggested that he and La Teuse should have a game at cards. They had
+endless bouts of ‘Beggar-my-neighbour’ together, that being the only
+game which La Teuse had ever been able to learn. Abbé Mouret would
+smilingly glance at the first few cards flung on the table and would
+then gradually sink into reverie, remaining for hours forgetful of his
+self-restraint, oblivious of his surroundings, beneath the suspicious
+glances of Brother Archangias.
+
+That evening La Teuse felt so cross that she had talked of going to bed
+as soon as the cloth was removed. The Brother, however, wanted his
+game of cards. So he caught hold of her shoulders and sat her down, so
+roughly that the chair creaked beneath her. And forthwith he began to
+shuffle the cards. Desirée, who hated him, had gone off carrying her
+dessert, which she generally took upstairs with her every evening to eat
+in bed.
+
+‘I want the red cards,’ said La Teuse.
+
+Then the struggle began. The old woman at first won some of the
+Brother’s best cards. But before long two aces fell together on the
+table.
+
+‘Here’s a battle!’ she cried, wild with excitement.
+
+She threw down a nine, which rather alarmed her, but as the Brother,
+in his turn, only put down a seven, she picked up the cards with a
+triumphant air. At the end of half an hour, however, she had only gained
+two aces, so that the chances remained fairly equal. And a quarter of
+an hour later she lost an ace. The knaves and kings and queens were
+perpetually coming and going as the battle furiously progressed.
+
+‘It’s a splendid game, eh?’ said Brother Archangias, turning towards
+Abbé Mouret.
+
+But when he saw him sitting there, so absorbed in his reverie, with such
+a gentle smile playing unconsciously round his lips, he roughly raised
+his voice:
+
+‘Why, Monsieur le Curé, you are not paying any attention to us! It isn’t
+polite of you. We are only playing on your account. We were trying
+to amuse you. Come and watch the game. It would do you more good than
+dozing and dreaming away there. Where were you just now?’
+
+The priest started. He said nothing, but with quivering eyelids tried to
+force himself to look at the game. The play went on vigorously. La Teuse
+won her ace back, and then lost it again. On some evenings they would
+fight in this way over the aces for quite four hours, and often they
+would go off to bed, angry at having failed to bring the contest to a
+decisive issue.
+
+‘But, dear me! I’ve only just remembered it!’ suddenly cried La Teuse,
+who greatly feared that she was going to be beaten. ‘His reverence has
+to go out to-night. He promised Fortune and Rosalie that he would go to
+bless their room, according to the custom. Make haste, Monsieur le Curé!
+The Brother will go with you.’
+
+Abbé Mouret had already risen from his chair, and was looking for
+his hat. But Brother Archangias, still holding his cards, flew into a
+tantrum: ‘Oh! don’t bother about it,’ said he. ‘What does it want to
+be blessed for that pigsty of theirs? It is a custom that you should do
+away with. I can’t see any sense in it. Stay here and let us finish the
+game. That is much the best thing to do.’
+
+‘No,’ said the priest, ‘I promised to go. Those good people might feel
+hurt if I didn’t. You stay here and play your game out while you are
+waiting for me.’
+
+La Teuse glanced uneasily at Brother Archangias.
+
+‘Well, yes, I will stay here,’ cried the Brother. ‘It is really too
+absurd.’
+
+But before Abbé Mouret could open the door, he flung his cards on the
+table and rose to follow him. Then half turning back he called to La
+Teuse:
+
+‘I should have won. Leave the cards as they are, and we will play the
+game out to-morrow.’
+
+‘Oh! they are all mixed now,’ answered the old servant, who had lost no
+time in shuffling them together. ‘Did you suppose that I was going to
+put your hand away under a glass case? And, besides, I might very well
+have won, for I still had an ace left.’
+
+A few strides brought Brother Archangias up with Abbé Mouret, who was
+walking down the narrow path that led to the village. The Brother had
+undertaken the task of keeping watch over the Abbé’s movements. He
+incessantly played the spy upon him, accompanying him everywhere, or,
+if he could not go in person, sending some school urchin to follow
+him. With that terrible laugh of his, he was wont to remark that he was
+‘God’s gendarme.’
+
+And, in truth, the Abbé seemed like a culprit ever guarded by the black
+shadow of the Brother’s cassock; a culprit to be treated distrustfully,
+since in his weakness he might well lapse into fresh crime were he left
+free from surveillance for a single moment. Thus he was watched and
+guarded with all the spiteful eagerness that some jealous old maid
+might have displayed, the overreaching zeal of a gaoler who might carry
+precautions so far as to exclude even such rays of light as might creep
+through the chinks of the prison-house. Brother Archangias was always on
+the watch to keep out the sunlight, to prevent even a whiff of air from
+entering, to shut up his prison so completely that nothing from outside
+could gain access to it. He noted the Abbé’s slightest fits of weakness,
+and by his glance divined his tender thoughts, which with a word he
+pitilessly crushed, as though they were poisonous vermin. The priest’s
+intervals of silence, his smiles, the paling of his brow, the faint
+quivering of his limbs, were all noted by the Brother. But he never
+spoke openly of the transgression. His presence alone was a sufficient
+reproach. The manner in which he uttered certain words imparted to them
+all the sting of a whip stroke. With a mere gesture he expressed his
+utter disgust for the priest’s sin. Like one of those betrayed husbands
+who enjoy torturing their wives with cruel allusions, he contented
+himself with recalling the scene at the Paradou, in an indirect fashion,
+by some word or phrase which sufficed to annihilate the Abbé, whenever
+the latter’s flesh rebelled.
+
+It was nearly ten o’clock and most of the villagers of Les Artaud had
+retired to rest. But from a brightly lighted house at the far end, near
+the mill, there still came sounds of merriment. While keeping the best
+rooms for his own use, old Bambousse had given a corner of his house to
+his daughter and son-in-law. They were all assembled there, drinking a
+last glass, while waiting for the priest.
+
+‘They are drunk,’ growled Brother Archangias. ‘Don’t you hear the row
+they are making?’
+
+Abbé Mouret made no reply. It was a lovely night and all looked bluish
+in the moonlight, which lent to the distant part of the valley the
+aspect of a sleeping lake. The priest slackened his pace that he might
+the more fully enjoy the charm of that soft radiance, and now and then
+he even stopped as he came upon some expanse of light, experiencing the
+delightful quiver which the proximity of fresh water brings one on a
+hot day. But the Brother continued striding along, grumbling and calling
+him.
+
+‘Come along; come along! It isn’t good to loiter out of doors at this
+time of night. You would be much better in bed.’
+
+All at once, however, just as they were entering the village, Archangias
+himself stopped short in the middle of the road. He was looking towards
+the heights, where the white lines of the roads vanished amidst black
+patches of pine-woods, and he growled to himself, like a dog that scents
+danger.
+
+‘Who can be coming down so late?’ he muttered.
+
+But the priest, who neither saw nor heard anything, was now, in his
+turn, anxious to press on.
+
+‘Stay! stay! there he is,’ eagerly added Brother Archangias. ‘He has
+just turned the corner. See! he is in the moonlight now. One can see him
+plainly. It is a tall man, with a stick.’
+
+Then, after a moment’s silence, he resumed, in a voice husky with fury:
+‘It is he, that beggar! I felt sure it was!’
+
+Thereupon, the new-comer having now reached the bottom of the hill, Abbé
+Mouret saw that it was Jeanbernat. In spite of his eighty years, the old
+man set his feet down with such force, that his heavy, nailed boots
+sent sparks flying from the flints on the road. And he walked along as
+upright as an oak, without the aid of his stick, which he carried across
+his shoulder like a musket.
+
+‘Ah! the villain!’ stammered the Brother, still standing motionless.
+‘May the fiend light all the blazes of hell under his feet!’
+
+The priest, who felt greatly disturbed, and despaired of inducing his
+companion to come on, turned round to continue his journey, hoping that,
+by a quick walk to the Bambousses’ house, he might yet manage to avoid
+Jeanbernat. But he had not taken five strides before he heard the
+bantering voice of the old man close behind him.
+
+‘Hie! Curé! wait for me. Are you afraid of me?’
+
+And as Abbé Mouret stopped, he came up and continued: ‘Ah! those
+cassocks of yours are tiresome things, aren’t they? They prevent your
+getting along too quickly. It’s such a fine clear night, too, that one
+can recognise you by your gown a long way off. When I was right at the
+top of the hill, I said to myself, “Surely that is the little priest
+down yonder.” Oh! yes, I still have very good eyes.... Well, so you
+never come to see us now?’
+
+‘I have had so much to do,’ murmured the priest, who had turned very
+pale.
+
+‘Well, well, every one’s free to please himself. If I’ve mentioned the
+matter, it’s only because I want you to know that I don’t bear you any
+grudge for being a priest. We wouldn’t even talk about your religion,
+it’s all one and the same to me. But the little one thinks that it’s I
+who prevents your coming. I said to her, “The priest is an idiot,” and
+I think so, indeed. Did I try to eat you during your illness? Why, I
+didn’t even go upstairs to see you. Every one’s free, you know.’
+
+He spoke on in the most unconcerned manner, pretending that he did not
+notice the presence of Brother Archangias; but as the latter suddenly
+broke into an angry grunt, he added, ‘Why, Curé, so you bring your pig
+out with you?’
+
+‘Take care, you bandit!’ hissed the Brother, clenching his fists.
+
+Jeanbernat, whose stick was still raised, then pretended to recognise
+him.
+
+‘Hands off!’ he cried. ‘Ah! it’s you, you soul-saver! I ought to have
+known you by your smell. We have a little account to settle together,
+remember. I have sworn to cut off your ears in the middle of your
+school. It will amuse the children you are poisoning.’
+
+The Brother fell back before the raised staff, a flood of abuse rising
+to his lips; but he began to stammer and went on disjointedly:
+
+‘I will set the gendarmes after you, scoundrel! You spat on the church;
+I saw you. You give the plague to the poor people who merely pass your
+door. At Saint-Eutrope you made a girl die by forcing her to chew a
+consecrated wafer which you had stolen. At Beage you went and dug up the
+bodies of little dead children and carried them away on your back. You
+are an old sorcerer! Everybody knows it, you scoundrel! You are the
+disgrace of the district. Whoever strangles you will gain heaven for the
+deed.’
+
+The old man listened with a sneer, twirling the while his staff between
+his fingers. And between the Brother’s successive insults he ejaculated
+in an undertone:
+
+‘Go on, go on; relieve yourself, you viper. I’ll break your back for you
+by-and-by.’
+
+Abbé Mouret tried to interfere, but Brother Archangias pushed him away,
+exclaiming: ‘You are led by him yourself! Didn’t he make you trample
+upon the cross? Deny it, if you dare!’ Then again, turning to
+Jeanbernat, he yelled: ‘Ah! Satan, you must have chuckled and no mistake
+when you held a priest in your grasp! May Heaven curse those who abetted
+you in that sacrilege! What was it you did, at night, while he slept?
+You came and moistened his tonsure with your saliva, eh? so that his
+hair might grow more quickly. And then you breathed upon his chin and
+his cheeks that his beard might grow a hand’s breadth in a single night.
+And you rubbed all your philters into his body, and breathed into his
+mouth the lasciviousness of a dog. You turned him into a brute-beast,
+Satan.’
+
+‘He’s idiotic,’ said Jeanbernat, resting his stick on his shoulder. ‘He
+quite bores me.’
+
+The Brother, however, growing bolder, thrust his fists under the old
+man’s nose.
+
+‘And that drab of yours!’ he cried, ‘you can’t deny that you set her on
+to damn the priest.’
+
+Then he suddenly sprang backwards, with a shriek, for the old man,
+swinging his stick with all his strength, had just broken it over his
+back. Retreating yet a little further, Archangias picked from a heap of
+stones beside the road a piece of flint twice the size of a man’s fist,
+and threw it at Jeanbernat. It would surely have split the other’s
+forehead open if he had not bent down. He, however, now likewise crossed
+over to a heap of stones, sheltered himself behind it, and provided
+himself with missiles; and from one heap to the other a terrible combat
+began, with a perfect hail of flints. The moon now shone very brightly,
+and their dark shadows fell distinctly on the ground.
+
+‘Yes, yes, you set that hussy on to ruin him!’ repeated the Brother,
+wild with rage. ‘Ah! you are astonished that I know all about it! You
+hope for some monstrous result from it all. Every morning you make the
+thirteen signs of hell over that minx of yours! You would like her to
+become the mother of Antichrist. You long for Antichrist, you villain!
+But may this stone blind you!’
+
+‘And may this one bung your mouth up!’ retorted Jeanbernat, who was
+now quite calm again. ‘Is he cracked, the silly fellow, with all those
+stories of his?... Shall I have to break your head for you, before I can
+get on my way? Is it your catechism that has turned your brain?’
+
+‘Catechism, indeed! Do you know what catechism is taught to accursed
+ones like you? Ah! I will show you how to make the sign of the
+cross.--This stone is for the Father, and this for the Son, and this
+for the Holy Ghost. Ah! you are still standing. Wait a bit, wait a
+bit. Amen!’ Then he threw a handful of small pebbles like a volley of
+grape-shot. Jeanbernat, who was struck upon the shoulder, dropped the
+stones he was holding, and quietly stepped forwards, while Brother
+Archangias picked two fresh handfuls from the heap, blurting out:
+
+I am going to exterminate you. It is God who wills it. God is acting
+through my arm.’
+
+‘Will you be quiet!’ said the old man, grasping him by the nape of the
+neck.
+
+Then came a short struggle amidst the dust of the road, all bluish with
+moonlight. The Brother, finding himself the weaker of the two, tried
+to bite. But Jeanbernat’s sinewy limbs were like coils of rope which
+pinioned him so tightly that he could almost feel them cutting into
+his flesh. He panted and ceased to struggle, meditating some act of
+treachery.
+
+The old man, having got the other under him, scoffingly exclaimed: ‘I
+have a good mind to break one of your arms. You see that it isn’t you
+who are the stronger, but that it is I who am exterminating you.... Now
+I’m going to cut your ears off. You have tried my endurance too far.’
+
+Jeanbernat calmly drew his knife from his pocket. But Abbé Mouret, who
+had several times attempted to part the combatants, now raised such
+strenuous opposition to the old man’s design that he consented to defer
+the operation till another time.
+
+‘You are acting foolishly, Curé,’ said he. ‘It would do this scoundrel
+good to be well bled; but, since it seems to displease you, I’ll wait a
+little longer; I shall be meeting him again in some quiet corner.’
+
+And as the Brother broke out into a growl, Jeanbernat cried
+threateningly: ‘If you don’t keep still I will cut your ears off at
+once!’
+
+‘But you are sitting on his chest,’ said the priest, ‘get up and let him
+breathe.’
+
+‘No, no; he would begin his tomfoolery again. I will give him his
+liberty when I go away, but not before.... Well, I was telling you,
+Curé, when this good-for-nothing interrupted us, that you would be very
+welcome yonder. The little one is mistress, you know; I don’t attempt
+to interfere with her any more than I do with my salad-plants. There are
+only fools like this croaker here who see any harm in it. Where did you
+see anything wrong, scoundrel? It was yourself who imagined it, villain
+that you are!’
+
+And thereupon he gave the Brother another shaking. ‘Let him get up,’
+begged Abbé Mouret.
+
+‘By-and-by. The little one has not been well for a long time. I did not
+notice anything myself, but she told me; and now I am on my way to tell
+your uncle Pascal, at Plassans. I like the night for walking; it is
+quiet, and, as a rule, one isn’t delayed by meeting people.... Yes, yes,
+the little one is quite ailing.’
+
+The priest could not find a word to say. He staggered, and his head
+sank.
+
+‘It made her so happy to look after you,’ continued the old man. ‘While
+I smoked my pipe I used to hear her laugh. That was quite sufficient for
+me. Girls are like the hawthorns; when they break out into blossom, they
+do all they can. Well, now, you will come, if your heart prompts you to
+it. I am sure it would please the little one. Good night, Curé.’
+
+He got up slowly, keeping a firm grasp of the Brother’s wrists, to
+guard against any treacherous attack. Then he proceeded on his way, with
+swinging strides, without once turning his head. The Brother silently
+crept to the heap of stones, and waited till the old man was some
+distance off. Then, with both hands, and with mad violence, he again
+began flinging stones, but they fell harmlessly upon the dusty road.
+Jeanbernat did not condescend to notice them, but went his way, upright
+like a tree, through the clear night.
+
+‘The accursed one!--Satan carries him on!’ shrieked Brother Archangias,
+as he hurled his last stone. ‘An old scoundrel, that the least touch
+ought to upset! But he is baked in hell’s fire. I smelt his claws.’
+
+The Brother stamped with impotent rage on the scattered flints. Then he
+suddenly attacked Abbé Mouret. ‘It was all your fault,’ he cried; ‘you
+ought to have helped me, and, between us, we could have strangled him.’
+
+Meantime, at the other end of the village, the uproar in the Bambousses’
+house had become greater than ever. The rhythmic tapping of glasses on
+a table could be distinctly heard. The priest resumed his walk without
+raising his head, making his way towards the flood of bright light that
+streamed out of the window like the flare of a fire of vine-cuttings.
+The Brother followed him gloomily; his cassock soiled with dust, and one
+of his cheeks bleeding from a stone-cut. And, after a short interval of
+silence, he asked, in his harsh voice: ‘Shall you go?’
+
+Then as Abbé Mouret did not answer, he went on: ‘Take care! You are
+lapsing into sin again. It was sufficient for that man to pass by to
+send a thrill through your whole body. I saw you by the light of the
+moon looking as pale as a girl. Take care! take care! Do you hear me?
+Another time God will not pardon you--you will sink into the lowest
+abyss! Ah! wretched piece of clay that you are, filth is mastering you!’
+
+Thereupon, the priest at last raised his head. Big tears were streaming
+from his eyes, and it was in gentle heartbroken accents that he spoke:
+‘Why do you speak to me like that?--You are always with me, and you know
+my ceaseless struggles. Do not doubt me, leave me strength to master
+myself.’
+
+Those simple words, bathed with silent tears, fell on the night air
+with such an expression of superhuman suffering, that even Brother
+Archangias, in spite of all his harshness, felt touched. He made no
+reply, but shook his dusty cassock, and wiped his bleeding cheek. When
+they reached the Bambousses’ house, he refused to go inside. He seated
+himself, a few yards away, on the body of an overturned cart, where he
+waited for the Abbé with dog-like patience.
+
+‘Ah! here is Monsieur le Curé!’ cried all the company of Bambousses and
+Brichets as Serge entered.
+
+They filled their glasses once more. Abbé Mouret was compelled to take
+one, too. There had been no regular wedding-feast; but, in the evening,
+after dinner, a ten-gallon ‘Dame Jane’ had been placed upon the table,
+and they were making it their business to empty it before going to bed.
+There were ten of them, and old Bambousse was already with one hand
+tilting over the jar whence only a thread of red liquor now flowed.
+Rosalie, in a very sportive frame of mind, was dipping her baby’s chin
+into her glass, while big Fortune showed off his strength by lifting
+up the chairs with his teeth. All the company passed into the bedroom.
+Custom required that the priest should there drink the glass of wine
+which had been poured out for him. It brought good luck, and prevented
+quarrels in the household. In Monsieur Caffin’s time, it had always
+been a very merry ceremony, for the old priest loved a joke. He had
+even gained a reputation for the skilful way in which he could drain his
+glass, without leaving a single drop at the bottom of it; and the Artaud
+women pretended that every drop undrunk meant a year’s less love for the
+newly married pair. But with Abbé Mouret they dare not joke so freely.
+However, he drank his wine at one gulp, which seemed to greatly please
+old Bambousse. Mother Brichet looked at the bottom of the glass and
+saw but a drop or two of the liquid remaining there. Then, after a few
+jokes, they all returned to the living room, where Vincent and Catherine
+had remained by themselves. Vincent, standing upon a chair, was clasping
+the huge jar in his arms, and draining the last drops of wine into
+Catherine’s open mouth.
+
+‘We are much obliged to you, Monsieur le Curé,’ said old Bambousse, as
+he escorted the priest to the door. ‘Well, they’re married now, so I
+suppose you are satisfied. And they are not likely to complain, I’m
+sure.... Good night, sleep well, your reverence.’
+
+Brother Archangias had slowly risen from his seat on the old cart.
+
+‘May the devil pile hot coals over them, and roast them!’ he murmured.
+
+Then without again opening his lips he accompanied Abbé Mouret to the
+parsonage. And he waited outside till the door was closed. Even then he
+did not go off without twice looking round to make sure that the
+Abbé was not coming out again. As for the priest, when he reached his
+bedroom, he threw himself in his clothes upon his bed, clasping his
+hands to his ears, and pressing his face to the pillow, in order that he
+might shut out all sound and sight. And thus stilling his senses he fell
+into death-like slumber.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+The next day was Sunday. As the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy
+Cross fell on a high mass day, Abbé Mouret desired to celebrate the
+festival with especial solemnity. He was now full of extraordinary
+devotion for the Cross, and had replaced the image of the Immaculate
+Conception in his bedroom by a large crucifix of black wood, before
+which he spent long hours in worship. To exalt the Cross, to plant it
+before him, above all else, in a halo of glory, as the one object of
+his life, gave him the strength he needed to suffer and to struggle. He
+sometimes dreamed of hanging there himself, in Jesus’s place, his head
+crowned with thorns, nails driven through his hands and feet, and
+his side rent by spears. What a coward he must be to complain of an
+imaginary wound, when God bled there from His whole body, and yet
+preserved on His lips the blessed smile of the Redemption! And however
+unworthy it might be, he offered up his wound as a sacrifice, ended by
+falling into ecstasy, and believing that blood did really stream from
+his brow and side and limbs. Those were hours of relief, for he fancied
+that all the impurity within him flowed forth from his wounds. And he
+then usually drew himself up with the heroism of a martyr, and longed to
+be called upon to suffer the most frightful tortures, in order that he
+might bear them without a quiver of the flesh.
+
+At early dawn that day he knelt before the crucifix, and grace came upon
+him abundantly as dew. He made no effort, he simply fell upon his knees,
+to receive it in his heart, to be permeated with it to the marrow of his
+bones in sweetest and most refreshing fulness. On the previous day he
+had prayed for grace in agony, and it had not come. At times it long
+remained deaf to his entreaties, and then, when he simply clasped his
+hands, in quite childlike fashion, it flowed down to succour him.
+It came upon him that morning like a benediction, bringing perfect
+serenity, absolute trusting faith. He forgot his anguish of the previous
+days, and surrendered himself wholly to the triumphant joy of the Cross.
+He seemed to be cased in such impenetrable armour that the world’s most
+deadly blows would glide off from it harmlessly. When he came down from
+his bedroom, he stepped along with an air of serenity and victory. La
+Teuse was astonished, and went to find Desirée, that he might kiss her;
+and both of them clapped their hands, and said that they had not seen
+him looking so well for the last six months.
+
+But it was in the church, at high mass, that the priest felt that he
+had really recovered divine grace. It was a long time since he had
+approached the altar with such loving emotion; and he had to make a
+great effort to restrain himself from weeping whilst he remained with
+his lips pressed to the altar-cloth. It was a solemn high mass. The
+local rural guard, an uncle of Rosalie, chanted in a deep bass voice
+which rumbled through the low nave like a hoarse organ. Vincent, robed
+in a surplice much too large for him, which had formerly belonged to
+Abbé Caffin, carried an old silver censer, and was vastly amused by the
+tinkling of its chains; he swung it to a great height, so as to produce
+copious clouds of smoke, and glanced behind him every now and then to
+see if he had succeeded in making any one cough. The church was almost
+full, for everybody wanted to see his reverence’s painting. Peasant
+women laughed with pleasure because the place smelt so nice, while the
+men, standing under the gallery, jerked their heads approvingly at each
+deeper and deeper note that came from the rural guard. Filtering through
+the paper window panes the full morning sun lighted up the brightly
+painted walls, on which the women’s caps cast shadows resembling huge
+butterflies. The artificial flowers, with which the altar was decorated,
+almost seemed to possess the moist freshness of natural ones newly
+gathered; and when the priest turned round to bless the congregation, he
+felt even stronger emotion than before, as he saw his church so clean,
+so full, and so steeped in music and incense and light.
+
+After the offertory, however, a buzzing murmur sped through the peasant
+women. Vincent inquisitively turned his head, and in doing so, almost
+let the charcoal in his censer fall upon the priest’s chasuble. And,
+wishing to excuse himself, as he saw the Abbé looking at him with an
+expression of reproof, he murmured: ‘It is your reverence’s uncle, who
+has just come in.’
+
+At the end of the church, standing beside one of the slender wooden
+pillars that supported the gallery, Abbé Mouret then perceived Doctor
+Pascal. The doctor was not wearing his usual cheerful and slightly
+scoffing expression. Hat in hand, he stood there looking very grave, and
+followed the service with evident impatience. The sight of the priest
+at the altar, his solemn demeanour, his slow gestures, and the perfect
+serenity of his countenance, appeared to gradually increase his
+irritation. He could not stay there till the end of the mass, but left
+the church, and walked up and down beside his horse and gig, which he
+had secured to one of the parsonage shutters.
+
+‘Will that nephew of mine never have finished censing himself?’ he asked
+of La Teuse, who was just coming out of the vestry.
+
+‘It is all over,’ she replied. ‘Won’t you come into the drawing-room?
+His reverence is unrobing. He knows you are here.’
+
+‘Well, unless he were blind, he couldn’t very well help it,’ growled the
+doctor, as he followed La Teuse into the cold-looking, stiffly furnished
+chamber, which she pompously called the drawing-room. Here for a few
+minutes he paced up and down. The gloomy coldness of his surroundings
+seemed to increase his irritation. As he strode about, flourishing
+a stick he carried, he kept on striking the well-worn chair-seats of
+horsehair which sounded hard and dead as stone. Then, tired of walking,
+he took his stand in front of the mantelpiece, in the centre of which a
+gaudily painted image of Saint Joseph occupied the place of a clock.
+
+‘Ah! here he comes at last,’ he said, as he heard the door opening.
+And stepping towards the Abbé he went on: ‘Do you know that you made me
+listen to half a mass? It is a very long time since that happened to me.
+But I was bent on seeing you to-day. I have something to say to you.’
+
+Then he stopped, and looked at the priest with an expression of
+surprise. Silence fell. ‘You at all events are quite well,’ he resumed,
+in a different voice.
+
+‘Yes, I am very much better than I was,’ replied Abbé Mouret, with a
+smile. ‘I did not expect you before Thursday. Sunday isn’t your day for
+coming. Is there something you want to tell me?’
+
+Uncle Pascal did not give an immediate answer. He went on looking at the
+Abbé. The latter was still fresh from the influence of the church and
+the mass. His hair was fragrant with the perfume of the incense, and in
+his eyes shone all the joy of the Cross. His uncle jogged his head, as
+he noticed that expression of triumphant peace.
+
+‘I have come from the Paradou,’ he said, abruptly. ‘Jeanbernat came to
+fetch me there. I have seen Albine, and she disquiets me. She needs much
+careful treatment.’
+
+He kept his eyes fixed upon the priest as he spoke, but he did not
+detect so much as a quiver of Serge’s eyelids.
+
+‘She took great care of you, you know,’ he added, more roughly. ‘Without
+her, my boy, you might now be in one of the cells at Les Tulettes, with
+a strait waistcoat on.... Well, I promised that you would go to see her.
+I will take you with me. It will be a farewell meeting. She is anxious
+to go away.’
+
+‘I can do nothing more than pray for the person of whom you speak,’ said
+Abbé Mouret, softly.
+
+And as the doctor, losing his temper, brought his stick down heavily
+upon the couch, he added calmly, but in a firm voice:
+
+‘I am a priest, and can only help with prayers.’
+
+‘Ah, well! Yes, you are right,’ said Uncle Pascal, dropping down into
+an armchair, ‘it is I who am an old fool. Yes, I wept like a child, as
+I came here alone in my gig. That is what comes of living amongst books.
+One learns a lot from them, but one makes a fool of oneself in the
+world. How could I guess that it would all turn out so badly?’
+
+He rose from his chair and began to walk about again, looking
+exceedingly troubled.
+
+‘But yes, but yes, I ought to have guessed. It was all quite natural.
+Though with one in your position, it was bound to be abominable! You
+are not as other men. But listen to me, I assure you that otherwise you
+would never have recovered. It was she alone, with the atmosphere she
+set round you, who saved you from madness. There is no need for me to
+tell you what a state you were in. It is one of my most wonderful cures.
+But I can’t take any pride, any pleasure in it, for now the poor girl is
+dying of it!’
+
+Abbé Mouret remained there erect, perfectly calm, his face reflecting
+all the quiet serenity of a martyr whom nothing that man might do could
+disturb.
+
+‘God will take mercy upon her,’ he said.
+
+‘God! God!’ muttered the doctor below his breath. ‘Ah! He would do
+better not to interfere. We might manage matters if we were left
+to ourselves.’ Then, raising his voice, he added: ‘I thought I had
+considered everything carefully, that is the most wonderful part of it.
+Oh! what a fool I was! You would stay there, I thought, for a month to
+recover your strength. The shade of the trees, the cheerful chatter of
+the girl, all the youthfulness about you would quickly bring you round.
+And then you, on your side, it seemed to me, would do something to
+reclaim the poor child from her wild ways; you would civilise her, and,
+between us, we should turn her into a young lady, for whom we should,
+by-and-by, find a suitable husband. It seemed such a perfect scheme. And
+then how was I to guess that old philosophising Jeanbernat would never
+stir an inch from his lettuce-beds? Well! well! I myself never left
+my own laboratory. I had such pressing work there.... And it is all my
+fault! Ah! I am a stupid bungler!’
+
+He was choking, and wished to go off. And he began to look about him for
+his hat, though, all the while, he had it on his head.
+
+‘Good-bye!’ he stammered; ‘I am going. So you won’t come? Do, now--for
+my sake! You see how miserable, how upset I am. I swear to you that she
+shall go away immediately afterwards. That is all settled. My gig is
+here; you might be back in an hour. Come, do come, I beg you.’
+
+The priest made a sweeping gesture; such a gesture as the doctor had
+seen him make before the altar.
+
+‘No,’ he said, ‘I cannot.’
+
+Then, as he accompanied his uncle out of the room, he added:
+
+‘Tell her to fall on her knees and pray to God. God will hear her as He
+heard me, and He will comfort her as He has comforted me. There is no
+other means of salvation.’
+
+The doctor looked him full in the face, and shrugged his shoulders.
+
+‘Good-bye, then,’ he repeated. ‘You are quite well now, and have no
+further need of me.’
+
+But, as he was unfastening his horse, Desirée, who had heard his voice,
+came running up. She was extremely attached to her uncle. When she had
+been younger he had been wont to listen to her childish prattle for
+hours without showing the least sign of weariness. And, even now, he
+did his best to spoil her, and manifested the greatest interest in her
+farmyard, often spending a whole afternoon with her amongst her fowls
+and ducks, and smiling at her with his bright eyes. He seemed to
+consider her superior to other girls. And so she now flung herself round
+his neck, in an impulse of affection, and cried:
+
+‘Aren’t you going to stay and have some lunch with us?’
+
+But having kissed her, he said he could not remain, and unfastened her
+arms from his neck with a somewhat pettish air. She laughed however, and
+again clasped her arms round him.
+
+‘Oh! but you must,’ she persisted. ‘I have some eggs that have only just
+been laid. I have been looking in the nests, and there are fourteen eggs
+this morning. And, if you will stay, we can have a fowl, the white
+one, that is always quarrelling with the others. When you were here on
+Thursday, you know, it pecked the big spotted hen’s eye out.’
+
+But her uncle persisted in his refusal. He was irritated to find that he
+could not unfasten the knot in which he had tied his reins. And then she
+began to skip round him, clapping her hands and repeating in a sing-song
+voice: ‘Yes! yes! you’ll stay, and we will eat it up, we’ll eat it up!’
+
+Her uncle could no longer resist her blandishments; he raised his head
+and smiled at her. She seemed so full of life and health and sincerity;
+her gaiety was as frank and natural as the sheet of sunlight which was
+gilding her bare arms.
+
+‘You big silly!’ he said; and clasping her by the wrists as she
+continued skipping gleefully about him, he went on: ‘No, dear; not
+to-day. I have to go to see a poor girl who is ill. But I will come some
+other morning. I promise you faithfully.’
+
+‘When? when?’ she persisted. ‘On Thursday? The cow is in calf, you know,
+and she hasn’t seemed at all well these last two days. You are a doctor,
+and you ought to be able to give her something to do her good.’
+
+Abbé Mouret, who had calmly remained there, could not restrain a slight
+laugh.
+
+The doctor gaily got into his gig and exclaimed: ‘All right, my dear,
+I will attend to your cow. Come and let me kiss you. Ah! how nice
+and healthy you are! And you are worth more than all the others put
+together. Ah! if every one was like my big silly, this earth would be
+too beautiful!’
+
+He set his horse off with a cluck of his tongue, and continued talking
+to himself as the gig rattled down the hill.
+
+‘Yes, yes! there should be nothing but animals. Ah! if they were mere
+animals, how happy and gay and strong they would all be! It has gone
+well with the girl, who is as happy as her cow; but it has gone badly
+with the lad, who is in torture beneath his cassock. A drop too much
+blood, a little too much nerve, and one’s whole life is wrecked! ...
+They are true Rougons and true Macquarts those children there! The
+tail-end of the stock--its final degeneracy.’
+
+Then, urging on his horse, he drove at a trot up the hill that led to
+the Paradou.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Sunday was a busy day for Abbé Mouret. He had to think of vespers, which
+he generally said to empty seats, for even mother Brichet did not carry
+her piety so far as to go back to church in the afternoon. Then, at four
+o’clock, Brother Archangias brought the little rogues from his school
+to repeat their catechism to his reverence. This lesson sometimes lasted
+until late. When the children showed themselves quite intractable, La
+Teuse was summoned to frighten them with her broom.
+
+On that particular Sunday, about four o’clock, Desirée found herself
+quite alone in the parsonage. As she felt a little bored, she went to
+gather some food for her rabbits in the churchyard, where there were
+some magnificent poppies, of which rabbits are extremely fond. Dragging
+herself about on her knees between the grave-stones, she gathered
+apronfuls of juicy verdure on which her pets fell greedily.
+
+‘Oh! what lovely plantains!’ she muttered, stooping before Abbé Caffin’s
+tombstone, and delighted with the discovery she had made.
+
+There were, indeed, some magnificent plantains spreading out their broad
+leaves beside the stone. Desirée had just finished filling her apron
+with them when she fancied she heard a strange noise behind her. A
+rustling of branches and a rolling of small pebbles came from the ravine
+which skirted one side of the graveyard, and at the bottom of which
+flowed the Mascle, a stream which descended from the high lands of
+the Paradou. But the ascent here was so rough, so impracticable, that
+Desirée imagined that the noise could only have been made by some lost
+dog or straying goat. She stepped quickly to the edge, and, as she
+looked over, she was amazed to see amidst the brambles a girl who was
+climbing up the rocks with extraordinary agility.
+
+‘I will give you a hand,’ she said. ‘You might easily break your neck
+there.’
+
+The girl, directly she saw she was discovered, started back, as though
+she would rather go down again, but after a moment’s hesitation she
+ventured to take the hand that was held out to her.
+
+‘Oh! I know who you are,’ said Desirée, with a beaming smile, and
+letting her apron fall that she might grasp the girl by the waist. ‘You
+once gave me some blackbirds, but they all died, poor little dears. I
+was so sorry about it.--Wait a bit, I know your name, I have heard it
+before. La Teuse often mentions it when Serge isn’t there; but she
+told me that I was not to repeat it. Wait a moment, I shall remember it
+directly!’
+
+She tried to recall the name, and grew quite grave in the attempt. Then,
+having succeeded in remembering it, she became gay again, and seemingly
+found great pleasure in dwelling upon its musical sound.
+
+‘Albine! Albine!---- What a sweet name it is! At first I used to think
+you must be a tomtit, because I once had a tomtit with a name very like
+yours, though I don’t remember exactly what it was.’
+
+Albine did not smile. Her face was very pale, and there was a feverish
+gleam in her eyes. A few drops of blood trickled from her hands. When
+she had recovered her breath, she hastily exclaimed:
+
+No! no! leave it alone. You will only stain your handkerchief. It is
+nothing but a scratch. I didn’t want to come by the road, as I should
+have been seen--so I preferred coming along the bed of the torrent----
+Is Serge there?’
+
+Desirée did not feel at all shocked at hearing the girl pronounce
+her brother’s name thus familiarly and with an expression of subdued
+passion. She simply replied that he was in the church hearing the
+children say their catechism.
+
+‘You must not speak at all loudly,’ she added, raising her finger to
+her lips. ‘Serge forbade me to talk loudly when he is catechising the
+children, and we shall get into trouble if we don’t keep quiet. Let us
+go into the stable--shall we? We can talk better there.’
+
+‘I want to see Serge,’ said Albine, simply.
+
+Desirée cast a hasty glance at the church, and then whispered, ‘Yes,
+yes; Serge will be finely caught. Come with me. We will hide ourselves,
+and keep quite quiet. We shall have some fine fun!’
+
+She had picked up the herbage which had fallen from her apron, and
+quitting the graveyard she stole back to the parsonage, telling Albine
+to hide herself behind her and make herself as little as possible. As
+they stealthily glided through the farmyard, they caught sight of La
+Teuse, who was crossing over to the vestry, but she did not appear to
+notice them.
+
+‘There! There!’ said Desirée, quite delighted, as they stowed themselves
+away in the stable; ‘keep quiet, and no one will know that we are here.
+There is some straw there for you to lie down upon.’
+
+Albine seated herself on a truss of straw.
+
+‘And Serge?’ she asked, persisting in her one fixed idea.
+
+‘Listen! You can hear his voice. When he claps his hands, it will be all
+over, and the children will go away--Listen! he is telling them a tale.’
+
+They could indeed just hear Abbé Mouret’s voice, which was wafted to
+them through the vestry doorway which La Teuse had doubtless left open.
+It came to them like a solemn murmur, in which they could distinguish
+the name of Jesus thrice repeated. Albine trembled. She sprang up as
+though to hasten to that beloved voice whose caressing accents she knew
+so well, but all sound of it suddenly died away, shut off by the
+closing of the door. Then she sat down again, to wait, her hands tightly
+clasped, and her clear eyes gleaming with the intensity of her thoughts.
+Desirée, who was lying at her feet, gazed up at her with innocent
+admiration.
+
+‘How beautiful you are!’ she whispered. ‘You are like an image that
+Serge used to have in his bedroom. It was quite white like you are, with
+great curls floating about the neck; and the heart was quite bare and
+uncovered, just in the place where I can feel yours beating---- But
+you are not listening to me. You are looking quite sad. Let us play at
+something? Will you?’
+
+Then she stopped short, holding her breath and saying between her teeth:
+‘Ah! the wretches! they will get us caught!’ She still had her apron
+full of herbage with her, and her pets were taking it by assault. A
+troop of fowls had surrounded her, clucking and calling each other, and
+pecking at the hanging green stuff. The goat pushed its head slyly under
+her arm, and began to eat the longer leaves. Even the cow, which was
+tethered to the wall, strained at its cord and poked out its nose,
+kissing her with its warm breath.
+
+‘Oh! you thieves!’ cried Desirée. ‘But this is for the rabbits, not for
+you! Leave me alone, won’t you! You, there, will get your ears boxed, if
+you don’t go away! And you too will have your tail pulled if I catch you
+at it again. The wretches! they will be eating my hands soon!’
+
+She drove the goat off, dispersed the fowls with her feet, and tapped
+the cow’s nose with her fists. But the creatures just shook themselves,
+and then came back more greedily than ever, surrounding her, jumping
+on her, and tearing open her apron. At this she whispered to Albine, as
+though she were afraid the animals might hear her.
+
+‘Aren’t they amusing, the dears? Watch them eat.’
+
+Albine looked on with a grave expression.
+
+‘Now, now, be good,’ resumed Desirée; ‘you shall all have some, but you
+must wait your turns. Now, big Lisa, you first. Eh! how fond you are of
+plantain, aren’t you?’
+
+Big Lisa was the cow. She slowly munched a handful of the juicy leaves
+which had grown beside Abbé Caffin’s tomb. A thread of saliva hung down
+from her mouth, and her great brown eyes shone with quiet enjoyment.
+
+‘There! now it’s your turn,’ continued Desirée, turning towards the
+goat. ‘You are fond of poppies, I know; and you like the flowers best,
+don’t you? The buds that shine in your teeth like red-hot butterflies!
+See, here are some splendid ones; they came from the left-hand corner,
+where there was a burial last year.’
+
+As she spoke, she gave the goat a bunch of scarlet flowers, which the
+animal ate from her hand. When there was nothing left in her grasp
+but the stalks, she pushed these between its teeth. Behind her, in the
+meanwhile, the fowls were desperately pecking away at her petticoats.
+She threw them some wild chicory and dandelions which she had gathered
+amongst the old slabs that were ranged alongside the church walls.
+It was particularly over the dandelions that the fowls quarrelled, so
+voraciously indeed, with such scratchings and flapping of wings,
+that the other fowls in the yard heard them. And then came a general
+invasion. The big yellow cock, Alexander, was the first to appear;
+having seized a dandelion and torn it in halves, without attempting to
+eat it, he called to the hens who were still outside to come and peck.
+Then a white hen strutted in, then a black one, and then a whole crowd
+of hens, who hustled one another, and trod on one another’s tails, and
+ended by forming a wild flood of feathers. Behind the fowls came the
+pigeons, and the ducks, and the geese, and, last of all, the turkeys.
+Desirée laughed at seeing herself thus surrounded by this noisy,
+squabbling mob.
+
+‘This is what always happens,’ said she, ‘every time that I bring any
+green stuff from the graveyard. They nearly kill each other to get at
+it; they must find it very nice.’
+
+Then she made a fight to keep a few handfuls of the leaves from the
+greedy beaks which rose all round her, saying that something must really
+be saved for the rabbits. She would surely get angry with them if
+they went on like that, and give them nothing but dry bread in future.
+However, she was obliged to give way. The geese tugged at her apron
+so violently that she was almost pulled down upon her knees; the ducks
+gobbled away at her ankles; two of the pigeons flew upon her head, and
+some of the fowls fluttered about her shoulders. It was the ferocity of
+creatures who smell flesh: the fat plantains, the crimson poppies,
+the milky dandelions, in which remained some of the life of the dead.
+Desirée laughed loudly, and felt that she was on the point of slipping
+down, and letting go of her last two handfuls, when the fowls were
+panic-stricken by a terrible grunting.
+
+‘Ah! it’s you, my fatty,’ she exclaimed, quite delighted; ‘eat them up,
+and set me at liberty.’
+
+The pig waddled in; he was no longer the little pig of former days--pink
+as a newly painted toy, with a tiny little tail, like a bit of string;
+but a fat wobbling creature, fit to be killed, with a belly as round
+as a monk’s, and a back all bristling with rough hairs, that reeked of
+fatness. His stomach had grown quite yellow from his habit of sleeping
+on the manure heap. Waddling along on his shaky feet, he charged with
+lowered snout at the scared fowls, and so left Desirée at liberty to
+escape, and take the rabbits the few scraps of green stuff which she had
+so strenuously defended. When she came back, all was peace again. The
+stupid, ecstatic-looking geese were lazily swaying their long necks
+about, the ducks and turkeys were waddling in ungainly fashion alongside
+the wall; the fowls were quietly clucking and peaking at invisible
+grains on the hard ground of the stable; while the pig, the goat, and
+the big cow, were drowsily blinking their eyes, as though they were
+falling asleep. Outside it had just begun to rain.
+
+‘Ah! well, there’s a shower coming on!’ cried Desirée, throwing herself
+down on the straw. ‘You had better stay where you are, my dears, if you
+don’t want to get soaked.’
+
+Then she turned to Albine and added: ‘How stupid they all look, don’t
+they? They only wake up just to eat!’
+
+Albine still remained silent. The merry laughter of that buxom girl
+as she struggled amidst those greedy necks and gluttonous beaks, which
+tickled and kissed her, and seemed bent on devouring her very flesh, had
+rendered the unhappy daughter of the Paradou yet paler than she had been
+before. So much gaiety, so much vitality, so much boisterous health made
+her despair. She strained her feverish arms to her desolate bosom, which
+desertion had parched.
+
+‘And Serge?’ she asked again, in the same clear, stubborn voice.
+
+‘Hush!’ said Desirée. ‘I heard him just now. He hasn’t finished yet----
+We have been making a pretty disturbance; La Teuse must surely have
+grown deaf this afternoon---- Let us keep quiet now. I like to hear the
+rain fall.’
+
+The shower beat in at the open doorway, casting big drops upon the
+threshold. The restless fowls, after venturing out for a moment, had
+quickly retreated to the far end of the stable; where, indeed, with the
+exception of three ducks who remained quietly walking in the rain, all
+the pets had now taken refuge, clustering round the girl’s skirts. It
+was growing very warm amongst the straw. Desirée pulled two big trusses
+together, made a bed of them, and lay down at full length. She felt
+extremely comfortable there.
+
+‘It is so nice,’ she murmured. ‘Come and lie down like me. It is so
+springy and soft, all this straw; and it tickles one so funnily in the
+neck. Do you roll about in the straw at home? There is nothing I am
+fonder of---- Sometimes I tickle the soles of my feet with it. That is
+very funny, too----’
+
+But at that moment, the big yellow cock, who had been gravely stalking
+towards her, jumped upon her breast.
+
+‘Get away with you, Alexander! get away!’ she cried. ‘What a tiresome
+creature he is! The idea of his perching himself on me---- You are too
+rough, sir, and you scratch me with your claws. Do you hear me? I don’t
+want you to go away, but you must be good, and mustn’t peck at my hair.’
+
+Then she troubled herself no further about him. The cock still
+maintained his position, every now and then glancing inquisitively at
+the girl’s chin with his gleaming eye. The other birds all began to
+cluster round her. After rolling amongst the straw, she was now lying
+lazily on her back with her arms stretched out.
+
+‘Ah! how pleasant it is,’ she said; ‘but then it makes me feel so
+sleepy. Straw always makes one drowsy, doesn’t it? Serge doesn’t like
+it. Perhaps you don’t either. What do you like? Tell me, so that I may
+know.’
+
+She was gradually dozing off. For a moment she opened her eyes widely,
+as though she were looking for something, and then her eyelids fell with
+a tranquil smile of content. She seemed to be asleep, but after a few
+minutes she opened her eyes again, and said:
+
+‘The cow is going to have a calf---- That will be so nice, and will
+please me more than anything.’
+
+Then she sank into deep slumber. The fowls had ended by perching on
+her body; she was buried beneath a wave of living plumage. Hens were
+brooding over her feet; geese stretched their soft downy necks over her
+legs. The pig lay against her left side, while on the right, the goat
+poked its bearded head under her arm. The pigeons were roosting and
+nestling all over her, on her hands, her waist, and her shoulders. And
+there she lay asleep, in all her rosy freshness, caressed by the cow’s
+warm breath, while the big cock still squatted just below her bosom with
+gleaming comb and quivering wings.
+
+Outside, the rain was falling less heavily. A sunbeam, escaping from
+beneath a cloud, gilded the fine drops of water. Albine, who had
+remained perfectly still, watched the slumber of Desirée, that big,
+plump girl who found her great delight in rolling about in the straw.
+She wished that she, too, could slumber away so peacefully, and feel
+such pleasure, because a few straws had tickled her neck. And she felt
+jealous of those strong arms, that firm bosom, all that vitality, all
+that purely animal development which made the other like a tranquil
+easy-minded sister of the big red and white cow.
+
+However, the rain had now quite ceased. The three cats of the parsonage
+filed out into the yard one after the other, keeping close to the wall,
+and taking the greatest precautions to avoid wetting their paws. They
+peeped into the stable, and then stalked up to the sleeping girl, and
+lay down, purring, close by her. Moumou, the big black cat, curled
+itself up close to her cheek, and gently licked her chin.
+
+‘And Serge?’ murmured Albine, quite mechanically.
+
+What was it that kept them apart? Who was it that prevented them from
+being happy together? Why might she not love him, and why might she
+not be loved, freely and in the broad sunlight, as the trees lived and
+loved? She knew not, but she felt that she had been forsaken, and had
+received a mortal wound. Yet she was possessed by a stubborn, determined
+longing, a very necessity, indeed, of once more clasping her love in
+her arms, of concealing him somewhere, that he might be hers in all
+felicity. She rose to her feet. The vestry door had just been opened
+again. A clapping of hands sounded, followed by the uproar of a swarm
+of children clattering in wooden shoes over the stone flags. The
+catechising was over. Then Albine gently glided out of the stable, where
+she had been waiting for an hour amidst the reeking warmth that emanated
+from Desirée’s pets.
+
+As she quietly slipped through the passage that led to the vestry,
+she caught sight of La Teuse, who was going to her kitchen, and who
+fortunately did not turn her head. Certain, now, of not being seen and
+stopped, Albine softly pushed the door which was before her, keeping
+hold of it in order that it might make no noise as it closed again.
+
+And she found herself in the church.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+At first she could see nobody. Outside, the rain had again begun to fall
+in fine close drops. The church looked very grey and gloomy. She passed
+behind the high altar, and walked on towards the pulpit. In the middle
+of the nave, there were only a number of empty benches, left there in
+disorder by the urchins of the catechism class. Amidst all this void
+came a low tic-tac from the swaying pendulum. She went down the church
+to knock at the confessional-box, which she saw standing at the other
+end. But, just as she passed the Chapel of the Dead, she caught sight
+of Abbé Mouret prostrated before the great bleeding Christ. He did not
+stir; he must have thought that it was only La Teuse putting the seats
+in order behind him.
+
+But Albine laid her hand upon his shoulder.
+
+‘Serge,’ she said, ‘I have come for you.’
+
+The priest raised his head with a start. His face was very pale. He
+remained on his knees and crossed himself, while his lips still quivered
+with the words of his prayer.
+
+‘I have been waiting for you,’ she continued. ‘Every morning and every
+evening I looked to see if you were not coming. I have counted the days
+till I could keep the reckoning no longer. Ah! for weeks and weeks----
+Then, when I grew sure that you were not coming, I set out myself, and
+came here. I said to myself: “I will fetch him away with me.” Give me
+your hand and let us go.’
+
+She stretched out her hands, as though to help him to rise. But he only
+crossed himself, afresh. He still continued his prayers as he looked at
+her. He had succeeded in calming the first quiver of his flesh. From
+the Divine grace which had been streaming around him since the early
+morning, like a celestial bath, he derived a superhuman strength.
+
+‘It is not right for you to be here,’ he said, gravely. ‘Go away. You
+are aggravating your sufferings.’
+
+‘I suffer no longer,’ she said, with a smile. ‘I am well again; I am
+cured, now that I see you once more---- Listen! I made myself out
+worse than I really was, to induce them to go and fetch you. I am quite
+willing to confess it now. And that promise of going away, of leaving
+the neighbourhood, you didn’t suppose I should have kept it, did you?
+No, indeed, unless I had carried you away with me on my shoulders. The
+others don’t know it, but you must know that I cannot now live anywhere
+but at your side.’
+
+She grew quite cheerful again, and drew close to the priest with the
+caressing ways of a child of nature, never noticing his cold and rigid
+demeanour. And she became impatient, clapped her hands, and exclaimed:
+
+‘Come, Serge; make up your mind and come. We are only losing time. There
+is no necessity to think so much about it. It is quite simple; I am
+going to take you with me. If you don’t want any one to see you, we will
+go along by the Mascle. It is not very easy walking, but I managed it
+all by myself; and, when we are together, we can help each other. You
+know the way, don’t you? We cross the churchyard, we descend to the
+torrent, and then we shall only have to follow its course right up to
+the garden. And one is quite at home down there. Nobody can see us,
+there is nothing but brambles and big round stones. The bed of the
+stream is nearly dry. As I came along, I thought: “By-and-by, when he is
+with me, we will walk along gently together and kiss one another.” Come,
+Serge, be quick; I am waiting for you.’
+
+The priest no longer appeared to hear her. He had betaken himself to
+his prayers again, and was asking Heaven to grant him the courage of the
+saints. Before entering upon the supreme struggle, he was arming himself
+with the flaming sword of faith. For a moment he had feared he was
+wavering. He had required all a martyr’s courage and endurance to remain
+firmly kneeling there on the flagstones, while Albine was calling
+him: his heart had leapt out towards her, all his blood had surged
+passionately through his veins, filling him with an intense yearning to
+clasp her in his arms and kiss her hair. Her mere breath had awakened
+all the memory of their love; the vast garden, their saunters beneath
+the trees, and all the joy of their companionship.
+
+But Divine grace was poured down upon him more abundantly, and the
+torturing strife, during which all his blood seemed to quit his veins,
+lasted but a moment. Nothing human then remained within him. He had
+become wholly God’s.
+
+Albine, however, again touched him on the shoulder. She was growing
+uneasy and angry.
+
+‘Why do you not speak to me?’ she asked. ‘You can’t refuse; you will
+come with me? Remember that I shall die if you refuse. But no! you
+can’t; it is impossible. We lived together once; it was vowed that we
+should never separate. Twenty times, at least, did you give yourself to
+me. You bade me take you wholly, your limbs, your breath, your very life
+itself. I did not dream it all. There is nothing of you that you have
+not given to me; not a hair in your head which is not mine. Your hands
+are mine. For days and days have I held them clasped in mine. Your face,
+your lips, your eyes, your brow, all, all are mine, and I have lavished
+my love upon them. Do you hear me, Serge?’
+
+She stood erect before him, full of proud assertion, with outstretched
+arms. And, in a louder voice, she repeated:
+
+‘Do you hear me, Serge? You belong to me.’
+
+Then Abbé Mouret slowly rose to his feet. He leant against the altar,
+and replied:
+
+‘No. You are mistaken. I belong to God.’
+
+He was full of serenity. His shorn face seemed like that of some stone
+saint, whom no impulse of the flesh can disturb. His cassock fell around
+him in straight folds like a black winding-sheet, concealing all the
+outlines of his body. Albine dropped back at the sight of that sombre
+phantom of her former love. She missed his freely flowing beard, his
+freely flowing curls. And in the midst of his shorn locks she saw the
+pallid circle of his tonsure, which disquieted her as if it had been
+some mysterious evil, some malignant sore which had grown there, and
+would eat away all memory of the happy days they had spent together. She
+could recognise neither his hands, once so warm with caresses, nor his
+lissom neck, once so sonorous with laughter; nor his agile feet, which
+had carried her into the recesses of the woodlands. Could this, indeed,
+be the strong youth with whom she had lived one whole season--the youth
+with soft down gleaming on his bare breast, with skin browned by the
+sun’s rays, with every limb full of vibrating life? At this present
+hour he seemed fleshless; his hair had fallen away from him, and all his
+virility had withered within that womanish gown, which left him sexless.
+
+‘Oh! you frighten me,’ she murmured. ‘Did you think then that I was
+dead, that you put on mourning? Take off that black thing; put on a
+blouse. You can tuck up the sleeves, and we will catch crayfishes again.
+Your arms used to be as white as mine.’
+
+She laid her hand on his cassock, as though to tear it off him; but he
+repulsed her with a gesture, without touching her. He looked at her now
+and strengthened himself against temptation by never allowing his eyes
+to leave her. She seemed to him to have grown taller. She was no longer
+the playful damsel adorned with bunches of wild-flowers, and casting to
+the winds gay, gipsy laughter, nor was she the amorosa in white skirts,
+gracefully bending her slender form as she sauntered lingeringly beside
+the hedges. Now, there was a velvety bloom upon her lips; her hips were
+gracefully rounded; her bosom was in full bloom. She had become a woman,
+with a long oval face that seemed expressive of fruitfulness. Life
+slumbered within her. And her cheeks glowed with luscious maturity.
+
+The priest, bathed in the voluptuous atmosphere that seemed to emanate
+from all that feminine ripeness, took a bitter pleasure in defying the
+caresses of her coral lips, the tempting smile of her eyes, the witching
+charm of her bosom, and all the intoxication which seemed to pour from
+her at every movement. He even carried his temerity so far as to search
+with his gaze for the spots that he had once so hotly kissed, the
+corners of her eyes and lips, her narrow temples, soft as satin, and the
+ambery nape of her neck, which was like velvet. And never, even in
+her embrace, had he tasted such felicity as he now felt in martyring
+himself, by boldly looking in the face the love that he refused. At
+last, fearing lest he might there yield to some new allurement of the
+flesh, he dropped his eyes, and said, very gently:
+
+‘I cannot hear you here. Let us go out, if you, indeed, persist in
+adding to the pain of both of us. Our presence in this place is a
+scandal. We are in God’s house.’
+
+‘God!’ cried Albine, excitedly, suddenly becoming a child of nature
+once more. ‘God! Who is He? I know nothing of your God! I want to know
+nothing of Him if He has stolen you away from me, who have never harmed
+Him. My uncle Jeanbernat was right then when he said that your God was
+only an invention to frighten people, and make them weep! You are lying;
+you love me no longer, and that God of yours does not exist.’
+
+‘You are in His house now,’ said Abbé Mouret, sternly. ‘You blaspheme.
+With a breath He might turn you into dust.’
+
+She laughed with proud disdain, and raised her hands as if to defy
+Heaven.
+
+‘Ah! then,’ said she, ‘you prefer your God to me. You think He is
+stronger than I am, and you imagine that He will love you better than
+I did. Oh! but you are a child, a foolish child. Come, leave all this
+folly. We will return to the garden together, and love each other, and
+be happy and free. That, that is life!’
+
+This time she succeeded in throwing an arm round his waist, and she
+tried to drag him away. But he, quivering all over, freed himself from
+her embrace, and again took his stand against the altar.
+
+‘Go away!’ he faltered. ‘If you still love me, go away.... O Lord,
+pardon her, and pardon me too, for thus defiling this Thy house. Should
+I go with her beyond the door, I might, perhaps, follow her. Here, in
+Thy presence, I am strong. Suffer that I may remain here, to protect
+Thee from insult.’
+
+Albine remained silent for a moment. Then, in a calm voice, she said:
+
+‘Well, let us stay here, then. I wish to speak to you. You cannot,
+surely, be cruel. You will understand me. You will not let me go away
+alone. Oh! do not begin to excuse yourself. I will not lay my hands upon
+you again, since it distresses you. I am quite calm now as you can see.
+We will talk quietly, as we used to do in the old days when we lost our
+way, and did not hurry to find it again, that we might have the more
+time to talk together.’
+
+She smiled at that memory, and continued:
+
+‘I don’t know about these things myself. My uncle Jeanbernat used to
+forbid me to go to church. “Silly girl,” he’d say to me, “why do you
+want to go to a stuffy building when you have got a garden to run about
+in?” I grew up quite happy and contented. I used to look in the birds’
+nests without even taking the eggs. I did not even pluck the flowers,
+for fear of hurting the plants; and you know that I could never torture
+an insect. Why, then, should God be angry with me?’
+
+‘You should learn to know Him, pray to Him, and render Him the constant
+worship which is His due,’ answered the priest.
+
+‘Ah! it would please you if I did, would it not?’ she said. ‘You would
+forgive me, and love me again? Well, I will do all that you wish me.
+Tell me about God, and I will believe in Him, and worship Him. All that
+you tell me shall be a truth to which I will listen on my knees. Have I
+ever had a thought that was not your own? We will begin our long walks
+again; and you shall teach me, and make of me whatever you will. Say
+“yes,” I beg of you.’
+
+Abbé Mouret pointed to his cassock.
+
+‘I cannot,’ he simply said. ‘I am a priest.’
+
+‘A priest!’ she repeated after him, the smile dying out of her eyes. ‘My
+uncle says that priests have neither wife, nor sister, nor mother. So
+that is true, then. But why did you ever come? It was you who took me
+for your sister, for your wife. Were you then lying?’
+
+The priest raised his pale face, moist with the sweat of agony. ‘I have
+sinned,’ he murmured.
+
+‘When I saw you so free,’ the girl went on, ‘I thought that you were
+no longer a priest. I believed that all that was over, that you would
+always remain there with me, and for my sake.---- And now, what would
+you have me do, if you rob me of my whole life?’
+
+‘What I do,’ he answered; ‘kneel down, suffer on your knees, and never
+rise until God pardons you.’
+
+‘Are you a coward, then?’ she exclaimed, her anger roused once more, her
+lips curving scornfully.
+
+He staggered, and kept silence. Agony held him by the throat; but he
+proved stronger than pain. He held his head erect, and a smile almost
+played about his trembling lips. Albine for a moment defied him with
+her fixed glance; then, carried away by a fresh burst of passion, she
+exclaimed:
+
+‘Well, answer me. Accuse me! Say it was I who came to tempt you! That
+will be the climax! Speak, and say what you can for yourself. Strike me
+if you like. I should prefer your blows to that corpse-like stiffness
+you put on. Is there no blood left in your veins? Have you no spirit?
+Don’t you hear me calling you a coward? Yes, indeed, you are a coward.
+You should never have loved me, since you may not be a man. Is it that
+black robe of yours which holds you back? Tear it off! When you are
+naked, perhaps you will remember yourself again.’
+
+The priest slowly repeated his former words:
+
+‘I have sinned. I had no excuse for my sin. I do penitence for my sin
+without hope of pardon. If I tore off my cassock, I should tear away my
+very flesh, for I have given myself wholly to God, soul and body. I am a
+priest.’
+
+‘And I! what is to become of me?’ cried Albine.
+
+He looked unflinchingly at her.
+
+‘May your sufferings be reckoned against me as so many crimes! May I be
+eternally punished for the desertion in which I am forced to leave you!
+That will be only just. All unworthy though I be, I pray for you each
+night.’
+
+She shrugged her shoulders with an air of great discouragement. Her
+anger was subsiding. She almost felt inclined to pity him.
+
+‘You are mad,’ she murmured. ‘Keep your prayers. It is you yourself that
+I want. But you will never understand me. There were so many things
+I wanted to tell you! Yet you stand there and irritate me with your
+chatter of another world. Come, let us try to talk sensibly. Let us wait
+for a moment till we are calmer. You cannot dismiss me in this way,
+I cannot leave you here. It is because you are here that you are so
+corpse-like, so cold that I dare not touch you. We won’t talk any more
+just now. We will wait a little.’
+
+She ceased speaking, and took a few steps, examining the little church.
+The rain was still gently pattering against the windows; and the cold
+damp light seemed to moisten the walls. Not a sound came from outside
+save the monotonous plashing of the rain. The sparrows were doubtless
+crouching for shelter under the tiles, and the rowan-tree’s deserted
+branches showed but indistinctly in the veiling, drenching downpour.
+Five o’clock struck, grated out, stroke by stroke, from the wheezy chest
+of the old clock; and then the silence fell again, seeming to grow yet
+deeper, dimmer, and more despairing. The priest’s painting work, as yet
+scarcely dry, gave to the high altar and the wainscoting an appearance
+of gloomy cleanliness, like that of some convent chapel where the sun
+never shines. Grievous anguish seemed to fill the nave, splashed with
+the blood that flowed from the limbs of the huge Christ; while, along
+the walls, the fourteen scenes of the Passion displayed their awful
+story in red and yellow daubs, reeking with horror. It was life that was
+suffering the last agonies there, amidst that deathlike quiver of the
+atmosphere, upon those altars which resembled tombs, in that bare vault
+which looked like a sepulchre. The surroundings all spoke of slaughter
+and gloom, terror and anguish and nothingness. A faint scent of incense
+still lingered there, like the last expiring breath of some dead girl,
+who had been hurriedly stifled beneath the flagstones.
+
+‘Ah,’ said Albine at last, ‘how sweet it used to be in the sunshine!
+Don’t you remember? One morning we walked past a hedge of tall rose
+bushes, to the left of the flower-garden. I recollect the very colour of
+the grass; it was almost blue, shot with green. When we reached the end
+of the hedge we turned and walked back again, so sweet was the perfume
+of the sunny air. And we did nothing else, that morning; we took just
+twenty paces forward and then twenty paces back. It was so sweet a spot
+you would not leave it. The bees buzzed all around; and there was a
+tomtit that never left us, but skipped along by our side from branch to
+branch. You whispered to me, “How delightful is life!” Ah! life! it was
+the green grass, the trees, the running waters, the sky, and the sun,
+amongst which we seemed all fair and golden.’
+
+She mused for another moment and then continued: ‘Life ‘twas the
+Paradou. How vast it used to seem to us! Never were we able to find the
+end of it. The sea of foliage rolled freely with rustling waves as far
+as the eye could reach. And all that glorious blue overhead! we were
+free to grow, and soar, and roam, like the clouds without meeting more
+obstacles than they. The very air was ours!’
+
+She stopped and pointed to the low walls of the church.
+
+‘But, here, you are in a grave. You cannot stretch out your hand without
+hurting it against the stones. The roof hides the sky from you and blots
+out the sun. It is all so small and confined that your limbs grow stiff
+and cramped as though you were buried alive.’
+
+‘No,’ answered the priest. ‘The church is wide as the world.’
+
+But she waved her hands towards the crosses, and the dying Christ, and
+the pictures of the Passion.
+
+‘And you live in the very midst of death. The grass, the trees, the
+springs, the sun, the sky, all are in the death throes around you.’
+
+‘No, no; all revives, all grows purified and reascends to the source of
+light.’
+
+He had now drawn himself quite erect, with flashing eyes. And feeling
+that he was now invincible, so permeated with faith as to disdain
+temptation, he quitted the altar, took Albine’s hand, and led her, as
+though she had been his sister, to the ghastly pictures of the Stations
+of the Cross.
+
+‘See,’ he said, ‘this is what God suffered! Jesus is cruelly scourged.
+Look! His shoulders are naked; His flesh is torn; His blood flows down
+His back.... And Jesus is crowned with thorns. Tears of blood trickle
+down His gashed brow. On His temple is a jagged wound.... Again Jesus is
+insulted by the soldiers. His murderers have scoffingly thrown a purple
+robe around His shoulders, and they spit upon His face and strike Him,
+and press the thorny crown deep into His flesh.’
+
+Albine turned away her head, that she might not see the crudely painted
+pictures, in which the ochreous flesh of Christ had been plentifully
+bedaubed with carmine wounds. The purple robe round His shoulders seemed
+like a shred of His skin torn away.
+
+‘Why suffer? why die?’ she said. ‘O Serge, if you would only
+remember!... You told me, that morning, that you were tired. But I knew
+that you were only pretending, for the air was quite cool and we had
+only been walking for a quarter of an hour. But you wanted to sit down
+that you might hold me in your arms. Right down in the orchard, by
+the edge of a stream, there was a cherry tree--you remember it, don’t
+you?--which you never could pass without wishing to kiss my hands. And
+your kisses ran all up my arms and shoulders to my lips. Cherry time was
+over, and so you devoured my lips.... It used to make us feel so sad to
+see the flowers fading, and one day, when you found a dead bird in the
+grass, you turned quite pale, and caught me to your breast, as if to
+forbid the earth to take me.’
+
+But the priest drew her towards the other Stations of the Cross.
+
+‘Hush! hush!’ he cried, ‘look here, and here! Bow down in grief and
+pity---- Jesus falls beneath the weight of His cross. The ascent of
+Calvary is very tiring. He has dropped down on His knees. But He does
+not stay to wipe even the sweat from His brow, He rises up again and
+continues His journey.... And again Jesus falls beneath the weight of
+His cross. At each step He staggers. This time He has fallen on His
+side, so heavily that for a moment He lies there quite breathless. His
+lacerated hands have relaxed their hold upon the cross. His bruised and
+aching feet leave blood-stained prints behind them. Agonising weariness
+overwhelms Him, for He carries upon His shoulders the sins of the whole
+world.’
+
+Albine gazed at the pictured Jesus, lying in a blue shirt prostrate
+beneath the cross, the blackness of which bedimmed the gold of His
+aureole. Then, with her glance wandering far away, she said:
+
+‘Oh! those meadow-paths! Have you no memory left, Serge? Have you
+forgotten those soft grassy walks through the meadows, amidst very seas
+of greenery? On the afternoon I am telling you of, we had only meant
+to stay out of doors an hour; but we went wandering on and were still
+wandering when the stars came out above us. Ah! how velvety it was, that
+endless carpet, soft as finest silk! It was just like a green sea whose
+gentle waters lapped us round. And well we knew whither those beguiling
+paths that led nowhere, were taking us! They were taking us to our love,
+to the joy of living together, to the certainty of happiness.’
+
+With his hands trembling with anguish, Abbé Mouret pointed to the
+remaining pictures.
+
+‘Jesus,’ he stammered, ‘Jesus is nailed to the cross. The nails are
+hammered through His outspread hands. A single nail suffices for his
+feet, whose bones split asunder. He, Himself, while His flesh quivers
+with pain, fixes His eyes upon heaven and smiles.... Jesus is crucified
+between two thieves. The weight of His body terribly aggravates His
+wounds. From His brow, from His limbs, does a bloody sweat stream down.
+The two thieves insult Him, the passers-by mock at Him, the soldiers
+cast lots for His raiment. And the shadowy darkness grows deeper and the
+sun hides himself.... Jesus dies upon the cross. He utters a piercing
+cry and gives up the ghost. Oh! most terrible of deaths! The veil of the
+temple is rent in twain from top to bottom. The earth quakes, the stones
+are broken, and the very graves open.’
+
+The priest had fallen on his knees, his voice choked by sobs, his eyes
+fixed upon the three crosses of Calvary, where writhed the gaunt pallid
+bodies of the crucified. Albine placed herself in front of the paintings
+in order that he might no longer see them.
+
+‘One evening,’ she said, ‘I lay through the long gloaming with my head
+upon your lap. It was in the forest, at the end of that great avenue of
+chestnut-trees, through which the setting sun shot a parting ray. Ah!
+what a caressing farewell He bade us! He lingered awhile by our feet
+with a kindly smile, as if saying “Till to-morrow.” The sky slowly grew
+paler. I told you merrily that it was taking off its blue gown, and
+donning its gold-flowered robe of black to go out for the evening.
+And it was not night that fell, but a soft dimness, a veil of love and
+mystery, reminding us of those dusky paths, where the foliage arches
+overhead, one of those paths in which one hides for a moment with the
+certainty of finding the joyousness of daylight at the other end.
+
+‘That evening the calm clearness of the twilight gave promise of a
+splendid morrow. When I saw that it did not grow dark as quickly as you
+wished, I pretended to fall asleep. I may confess it to you now, but
+I was not really sleeping while you kissed me on the eyes. I felt your
+kisses and tried to keep from laughing. And then, when the darkness
+really came, it was like one long caress. The trees slept no more than
+I did. At night, don’t you remember, the flowers always breathed a
+stronger perfume.’
+
+Then, as he still remained on his knees, while tears streamed down his
+face, she caught him by the wrists, and pulled him to his feet, resuming
+passionately:
+
+‘Oh! if you knew you would bid me carry you off; you would fasten your
+arms about my neck, lest I should go away without you.... Yesterday I
+had a longing to see the garden once more. It seems larger, deeper,
+more unfathomable than ever. I discovered there new scents, so sweetly
+aromatic that they brought tears into my eyes. In the avenues I found a
+rain of sunbeams that thrilled me with desire. The roses spoke to me
+of you. The bullfinches were amazed at seeing me alone. All the garden
+broke out into sighs. Oh! come! Never has the grass spread itself out
+more softly. I have marked with a flower the hidden nook whither I
+long to take you. It is a nest of greenery in the midst of a tangle of
+brushwood. And there one can hear all the teeming life of the garden, of
+the trees and the streams and the sky. The earth’s very breathing
+will softly lull us to rest there. Oh! come! come! and let us love one
+another amidst that universal loving!’
+
+But he pushed her from him. He had returned to the Chapel of the
+Dead and stood in front of the painted papier-mache Christ, big as a
+ten-year-old boy, that writhed in such horridly realistic agony. There
+were real iron nails driven into the figure’s limbs, and the wounds
+gaped in the torn and bleeding flesh.
+
+‘O Jesus, Who hast died for us!’ cried the priest, ‘convince her of our
+nothingness! Tell her that we are but dust, rottenness, and damnation!
+Ah! suffer that I may hide my head in a hair-cloth and rest it against
+Thy feet and stay there, motionless, until I rot away in death. The
+earth will no longer exist for me. The sun will no longer shine. I
+shall see nothing more, feel nothing, hear nothing. Nought of all this
+wretched world will come to turn my soul from its adoration of Thee.’
+
+He was gradually becoming more and more excited, and he stepped towards
+Albine with upraised hands.
+
+‘You said rightly. It is Death that is present here; Death that is
+before my eyes; Death that delivers and saves one from all rottenness.
+Hear me! I renounce, I deny life, I wholly refuse it, I spit upon it.
+Those flowers of yours stink; your sun dazzles and blinds; your
+grass makes lepers of those that lie upon it; your garden is but
+a charnel-place where all rots and putrefies. The earth reeks with
+abomination. You lie when you talk of love and light and gladsome life
+in the depths of your palace of greenery. There is nought but darkness
+there. Those trees of yours exhale a poison which transforms men into
+beasts; your thickets are charged with the venom of vipers; your streams
+carry pestilence in their blue waters. If I could snatch away from that
+world of nature, which you extol, its kirtle of sunshine and its girdle
+of greenery, you would see it hideous like a very fury, a skeleton,
+rotting away with disease and vice.
+
+‘And even if you spoke the truth, even if your hands were really filled
+with pleasures, even if you should carry me to a couch of roses and
+offer me the dreams of Paradise, I would defend myself yet the more
+desperately from your embraces. There is war between us; war eternal and
+implacable. See! the church is very small; it is poverty-stricken; it is
+ugly; its confessional-box and pulpit are made of common deal, its font
+is merely of plaster, its altars are formed of four boards which I have
+painted myself. But what of that? It is yet vaster than your garden,
+greater than the valley, greater, even, than the whole earth. It is an
+impregnable fortress which nothing can ever break down. The winds, the
+sun, the forests, the ocean, all that is, may combine to assault it; yet
+it will stand erect and unshaken for ever!
+
+‘Yes, let all the jungles tower aloft and assail the walls with their
+thorny arms, let all the legions of insects swarm out of their holes
+in the ground and gnaw at the walls; the church, ruinous though it may
+seem, will never fall before the invasion of life. It is Death, Death
+the inexpugnable!... And do you know what will one day happen? The
+tiny church will grow and spread to such a colossal size, and will cast
+around such a mighty shadow, that all that nature, you speak of, will
+give up the ghost. Ah! Death, the Death of everything, with the skies
+gaping to receive our souls, above the curse-stricken ruins of the
+world!’
+
+As he shouted those last words, he pushed Albine forcibly towards the
+door. She, extremely pale, retreated step by step. When he had finished
+in a gasping voice she very gravely answered:
+
+‘It is all over, then? You drive me away? Yet, I am your wife. It is you
+who made me so. And God, since He permitted it, cannot punish us to such
+a point as this.’
+
+She was now on the threshold, and she added:
+
+‘Listen! Every day, at sunset, I go to the end of the garden, to the
+spot where the wall has fallen in. I shall wait for you there.’
+
+And then she disappeared. The vestry door fell back with a sound like a
+deep sigh.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+The church was perfectly silent, except for the murmuring sound of the
+rain, which was falling heavily once more. In that sudden change to
+quietude the priest’s anger subsided, and he even felt moved. It was
+with his face streaming with tears, his frame shaken by sobs, that he
+went back to throw himself on his knees before the great crucifix. A
+torrent of ardent thanksgiving burst from his lips.
+
+‘Thanks be to Thee, O God, for the help which Thou hast graciously
+bestowed upon me. Without Thy grace I should have hearkened unto the
+promptings of my flesh, and should have miserably returned to my sin. It
+was Thy grace that girded my loins as with armour for battle; Thy grace
+was indeed my armour, my courage, the support of my soul, that kept me
+erect, beyond weakness. Oh! my God, Thou wert in me; it was Thy voice
+that spoke in me, for I no longer felt the cowardice of the flesh, I
+could have cut asunder my very heart-strings. And now, O God, I offer
+Thee my bleeding heart. It no longer belongs to any creature of this
+world; it is Thine alone. To give it to Thee I have wrenched it from all
+worldly affection. But think not, O God, that I take any pride to myself
+for this victory. I know that without Thee I am nothing; and I humbly
+cast myself at Thy feet.’
+
+He sank down upon the altar steps, unable to utter another word, while
+his breath panted incense-like from his parted lips. The divine grace
+bathed him in ineffable ecstasy. He sought Jesus in the recesses of his
+being, in that sanctuary of love which he was ever preparing for His
+worthy reception. And Jesus was now present there. The Abbé knew it by
+the sweet influences which permeated him. And thereupon he joined with
+Jesus in that spiritual converse which at times bore him away from earth
+to companionship with God. He sighed out the verse from the ‘Song of
+Solomon,’ ‘My beloved is mine, and I am his; He feedeth his flock
+among the lilies, until the day be cool, and the shadows flee away.’ He
+pondered over the words of the ‘Imitation:’ ‘It is a great art to know
+how to talk with Jesus, and it requires much prudence to keep Him near
+one.’ And then, with adorable condescension, Jesus came down to him,
+and spoke with him for hours of his needs, his happiness, and his hopes.
+Their confidences were not less affectionate and touching than those
+of two friends, who meet after long separation and quietly retire to
+converse on the bank of some lonely stream; for during those hours of
+divine condescension Jesus deigned to be his friend, his best, most
+faithful friend, one who never forsook him, and who in return for a
+little love gave him all the treasures of eternal life. That day the
+priest was eager to prolong the sweet converse, and indeed, when six
+o’clock sounded through the quiet church, he was still listening to the
+words which echoed through his soul.
+
+On his side there was unreserved confession, unimpeded by the restraints
+of language, natural effusion of the heart which spoke even more quickly
+than the mind. Abbé Mouret told everything to Jesus, as to a God who
+had come down in all the intimacy of the most loving tenderness, and who
+would listen to everything. He confessed that he still loved Albine; and
+he was surprised that he had been able to speak sternly to her and drive
+her away, without his whole being breaking out into revolt. He marvelled
+at it, and smiled as though it were some wonderful miracle performed by
+another. And Jesus told him that he must not be astonished, and that the
+greatest saints were often but unconscious instruments in the hands of
+God. Then the Abbé gave expression to a doubt. Had he not lost merit in
+seeking refuge in the Cross and even in the Passion of his Saviour? Had
+he not shown that he possessed as yet but little courage, since he had
+not dared to fight unaided? But Jesus evinced kindly tolerance, and
+answered that man’s weakness was God’s continual care, and that He
+especially loved those suffering souls, to whose assistance He went,
+like a friend to the bedside of a sick companion.
+
+But was it a sin to love Albine, a sin for which he, Serge, would
+be damned? No; if his love was clean of all fleshly taint, and added
+another hope to his desire for eternal life. But, then, how was he to
+love her? In silence; without speaking a word to her, without taking a
+step towards her; simply allowing his pure affection to breathe forth,
+like a sweet perfume, pleasing unto heaven. And Jesus smiled with
+increasing kindliness, drawing nearer as if to encourage confession, in
+such wise that the priest grew bolder and began to recapitulate Albine’s
+charms. She had hair that was fair and golden as an angel’s; she was
+very white, with big soft eyes, like those of the aureoled saints. Jesus
+seemed to listen to this in silence, though a smile still played upon
+His face. And the priest continued: She had grown much taller. She was
+now like a queen, with rounded form and splendid shoulders. Oh! to clasp
+her waist, were it only for a second, and to feel her shoulders drawn
+close by his embrace! But the smile on the divine countenance then
+paled and died away, as a star sinks and falls beneath the horizon.
+Abbé Mouret now spoke all alone. Ah! had he not shown himself too
+hard-hearted? Why had he driven her away without one single word of
+affection, since Heaven allowed him to love her?
+
+‘I do love her! I do love her!’ he cried aloud, in a distracted voice,
+that rang through the church.
+
+He thought he saw her still standing there. She was stretching out her
+arms to him; she was beautiful enough to make him break all his vows. He
+threw himself upon her bosom without thought of the reverence due to
+his surroundings, he clasped her and rained kisses upon her face. It was
+before her that he now knelt, imploring her mercy, and beseeching her to
+forgive him his unkindness. He told her that, at times a voice which was
+not his own spoke through his lips. Could he himself ever have treated
+her harshly? It was the strange voice that had repulsed her. It could
+not, surely, be he himself, for he would have been unable to touch a
+hair of her head without loving emotion. And yet he had driven her away.
+The church was really empty! Whither should he hasten to find her again,
+to bring her back, and wipe her tears away with kisses? The rain was
+streaming down more violently than ever. The roads must be rivers
+of mud. He pictured her to himself lashed by the downpour, tottering
+alongside the ditches, her clothes soaked and clinging to her skin. No!
+no! it could not have been himself; it was that other voice, the jealous
+voice that had so cruelly sought to slay his love.
+
+‘O Jesus!’ he cried in desperation, ‘be merciful and give her back to
+me!’
+
+But his Lord was no longer there. Then Abbé Mouret, awaking with a
+start, turned horribly pale. He understood it all. He had not known
+how to keep Jesus with him. He had lost his friend, and had been left
+defenceless against the powers of evil. Instead of that inward light,
+which had shone so brightly within him as he received his God, he now
+found utter darkness, a foul vapour that irritated his senses. Jesus had
+withdrawn His grace on leaving him; and he, who since early morning
+had been so strong with heaven-sent help, now felt utterly miserable,
+forsaken, weak and helpless as an infant. How frightful was his fall!
+How galling its bitterness! To have straggled so heroically, to have
+remained unshaken, invincible, implacable, while the temptress actually
+stood before him, with all her warm life, her swelling bosom and
+superb shoulders, her perfume of love and passion; and then to fall
+so shamefully, to throb with desire, when she had disappeared, leaving
+behind her but the echo of her skirts, and the fragrance diffused from
+her white neck! Now, these mere recollections sufficed to make her all
+powerful, her influence permeated the church.
+
+‘Jesus! Jesus!’ cried the priest, once more, ‘return, come back to me;
+speak to me once again!’
+
+But Jesus remained deaf to his cry. For a moment Abbé Mouret raised his
+arms to heaven in desperate entreaty. His shoulders cracked and strained
+beneath the wild violence of his supplications. But soon his hands fell
+down again in discouragement. Heaven preserved that hopeless silence
+which suppliants at times encounter. Then he once more sat down on the
+altar steps, heart-crushed and with ashen face, pressing his elbows to
+his sides, as though he were trying to reduce his flesh to the smallest
+proportions possible.
+
+‘My God! Thou deserted me!’ he murmured. ‘Nevertheless, Thy will be
+done!’
+
+He spoke not another word, but sat there, panting breathlessly, like a
+hunted beast that cowers motionless in fear of the hounds. Ever since
+his sin, he had thus seemed to be the sport of the divine grace. It
+denied itself to his most ardent prayers; it poured down upon him,
+unexpectedly and refreshingly, when he had lost all hope of winning it
+for long years to come.
+
+At first he had been inclined to rebel against this dispensation of
+Heaven, complaining like a betrayed lover, and demanding the immediate
+return of that consoling grace, whose kiss made him so strong. But
+afterwards, after unavailing outbursts of anger, he had learned to
+understand that humility profited him most and could alone enable him to
+endure the withdrawal of the divine assistance. Then, for hours and for
+days, he would humble himself and wait for comfort which came not. In
+vain he cast himself unreservedly into the hands of God, annihilated
+himself before the Divinity, wearied himself with the incessant
+repetition of prayers. He could not perceive God’s presence with him;
+and his flesh, breaking free from all restraint, rose up in rebellious
+desire. It was a slow agony of temptation, in which the weapons of faith
+fell, one by one, from his faltering hands, in which he lay inert in
+the clutch of passion, in which he beheld with horror his own ignominy,
+without having the courage to raise his little finger to free himself
+from the thraldom of sin.
+
+Such was now his life. He had felt sin’s attacks in every form. Not
+a day passed that he was not tried. Sin assumed a thousand guises,
+assailed him through his eyes and ears, flew boldly at his throat,
+leaped treacherously upon his shoulders, or stole torturingly into
+his bones. His transgression was ever present, he almost always beheld
+Albine dazzling as the sunshine, lighting up the greenery of the
+Paradou. He only ceased to see her in those rare moments when the divine
+grace deigned to close his eyes with its cool caresses. And he strove to
+hide his sufferings as one hides those of some disgraceful disease. He
+wrapped himself in the endless silence, which no one knew how to make
+him break, filling the parsonage with his martyrdom and resignation, and
+exasperating La Teuse, who, at times, when his back was turned, would
+shake her fist at heaven.
+
+This time he was alone now, and need take no care to hide his torment.
+Sin had just struck him such an overwhelming blow, that he had not
+strength left to move from the altar steps, where he had fallen. He
+remained there, sighing, and groaning, parched with agony, incapable of
+a single tear. And he thought of the calm unruffled life that had once
+been his. Ah! the perfect peace, the full confidence of his first days
+at Les Artaud! The path of salvation had seemed so straight and easy
+then! He had smiled at the very mention of temptation. He had lived in
+the midst of wickedness, without knowledge of it, without fear of it,
+certain of being able to withstand it. He had been a model priest, so
+pure and chaste, so inexperienced and innocent in God’s sight, that God
+had led him by the hand like a little child.
+
+But now, all that childlike innocence was dead, God visited him in the
+morning, and forthwith tried him. A state of temptation became his life
+on earth. Now that full manhood and sin had come upon him, he entered
+into the everlasting struggle. Could it be that God really loved him
+more now than before? The great saints have all left fragments of their
+torn flesh upon the thorns of the way of sorrow. He tried to gather some
+consolation from this circumstance. At each laceration of his flesh,
+each racking of his bones, he tried to assure himself of some exceeding
+great reward. And then, no infliction that Heaven might now cast upon
+him could be too heavy. He even looked back with scorn on his former
+serenity, his easy fervour, which had set him on his knees with mere
+girlish enthusiasm, and left him unconscious even of the bruising of the
+hard stones. He strove also to discover pleasure in pain, in plunging
+into it, annihilating himself in it. But, even while he poured out
+thanks to God, his teeth chattered with growing terror, and the voice of
+his rebellious blood cried out to him that this was all falsehood, and
+that the only happiness worth desiring was in Albine’s arms, amongst the
+flowers of the Paradou.
+
+Yet he had put aside Mary for Jesus, sacrificing his heart that he might
+subdue his flesh, and hoping to implant some virility in his faith.
+Mary disquieted him too much, with her smoothly braided hair, her
+outstretched hands, and her womanly smile. He could never kneel before
+her without dropping his eyes, for fear of catching sight of the hem of
+her dress. Then, too, he accused her of having treated him too tenderly
+in former times. She had kept him sheltered so long within the folds of
+her robe, that he had let himself slip from her arms to those of a human
+creature without being conscious even of the change of his affection.
+He thought of all the roughness of Brother Archangias, of his refusal
+to worship Mary, of the distrustful glances with which he had seemed
+to watch her. He himself despaired of ever rising to such a height of
+roughness, and so he simply left her, hiding her images and deserting
+her altar. Yet she remained in his heart, like some love which, though
+unavowed, is ever present. Sin, with sacrilege whose very horror made
+him shudder, made use of her to tempt him.
+
+Whenever he still invoked her, as he did at times of irrepressible
+emotion, it was Albine who showed herself beneath the white veil, with
+the blue scarf knotted round her waist and the golden roses blooming on
+her bare feet. All the representations of the Virgin, the Virgin with
+the royal mantle of cloth-of-gold, the Virgin crowned with stars, the
+Virgin visited by the Angel of the Annunciation, the peaceful Virgin
+poised between a lily and a distaff, all brought him some memory of
+Albine, her smiling eyes or her delicately curved mouth or her softly
+rounded cheeks.
+
+Thereupon, by a supreme effort, he drove the female element from his
+worship, and sought refuge in Jesus, though even His gentle mildness
+sometimes proved a source of disquietude to him. What he needed was a
+jealous God, an implacable God, the Jehovah of the Old Testament, girded
+with thunder and manifesting Himself only to chastise the terrified
+world. He had done with the saints and the angels and the Divine Mother;
+he bowed down before God Himself alone, the omnipotent Master, who
+demanded from him his every breath. And he felt the hand of this God
+laid heavily upon him, holding him helpless at His mercy through space
+and time, like a guilty atom. Ah! to be nothing, to be damned, to dream
+of hell, to wrestle vainly against hideous temptations, all that was
+surely good.
+
+From Jesus he took but the cross. He was seized with that passion for
+the cross which has made so many lips press themselves again and again
+to the crucifix till they were worn away with kissing. He took up the
+cross and followed Jesus. He sought to make it heavier, the mightiest of
+burdens; it was great joy to him to fall beneath its weight, to drag it
+on his knees, his back half broken. In it he beheld the only source
+of strength for the soul, of joy for the mind, of the consummation of
+virtue and the perfection of holiness. In it lay all that was good; all
+ended in death upon it. To suffer and to die, those words ever sounded
+in his ears, as the end and goal of mortal wisdom. And, when he had
+fastened himself to the cross, he enjoyed the boundless consolation of
+God’s love. It was no longer, now, upon Mary that he lavished filial
+tenderness or lover’s passion. He loved for love’s mere sake, with an
+absolute abstract love. He loved God with a love that lifted him out of
+himself, out of all else, and wrapped him round with a dazzling radiance
+of glory. He was like a torch that burns away with blazing light. And
+death seemed to him to be only a great impulse of love.
+
+But what had he omitted to do that he was thus so sorely tried? With
+his hand he wiped away the perspiration that streamed down his brow,
+and reflected that, that very morning, he had made his usual
+self-examination without finding any great guilt within him. Was he not
+leading a life of great austerity and mortification of the flesh? Did he
+not love God solely and blindly? Ah! how he would have blessed His Holy
+Name had He only restored him his peace, deeming him now sufficiently
+punished for his transgression! But, perhaps, that sin of his could
+never be expiated. And then, in spite of himself, his mind reverted to
+Albine and the Paradou, and all their memories.
+
+At first he tried to make excuses for himself. He had fallen, one
+evening, senseless upon the tiled floor of his bedroom, stricken with
+brain fever. For three weeks he had remained unconscious. His blood
+surged furiously through his veins and raged within him like a torrent
+that had burst its banks. His whole body, from the crown of his head to
+the soles of his feet, was so scoured and renewed and wrought afresh
+by the mighty labouring of his ailment, that in his delirium he had
+sometimes thought he could hear the very hammer blows of workmen that
+nailed his bones together again. Then, one morning, he had awakened,
+feeling like a new being. He was born a second time, freed of all that
+his five-and-twenty years of life had successively implanted in him. His
+childish piety, his education at the seminary, the faith of his early
+priesthood, had all vanished, had been carried off, and their place was
+bare and empty. In truth, it could be hell alone that had thus prepared
+him for the reception of evil, disarming him of all his former weapons,
+and reducing his body to languor and softness, through which sin might
+readily enter.
+
+He, perfectly unconscious of it all, unknowingly surrendered himself
+to the gradual approach of evil. When he had reopened his eyes in the
+Paradou, he had felt himself an infant once more, with no memory of the
+past, no knowledge of his priesthood. He experienced a gentle pleasure,
+a glad feeling of surprise at thus beginning life afresh, as though it
+were all new and strange to him and would be delightful to learn. Oh!
+the sweet apprenticeship, the charming observations, the delicious
+discoveries! That Paradou was a vast abode of felicity; and hell, in
+placing him there, had known full well that he would be defenceless.
+Never, in his first youth, had he known such enjoyment in growing. That
+first youth of his, when he now thought of it, seemed quite black and
+gloomy, graceless, wan and inactive, as if it had been spent far away
+from the sunlight.
+
+But at the Paradou, how joyfully had he hailed the sun! How admiringly
+had he gazed at the first tree, at the first flower, at the tiniest
+insect he had seen, at the most insignificant pebble he had picked up!
+The very stones charmed him. The horizon was a source of never-ending
+amazement. One clear morning, the memory of which still filled his eyes,
+bringing back a perfume of jasmine, a lark’s clear song, he had been so
+affected by emotion that he felt all power desert his limbs. He had long
+found pleasure in learning the sensations of life. And, ah! the morning
+when Albine had been born beside him amidst the roses! As he thought of
+it, an ecstatic smile broke out upon his face. She rose up like a
+star that was necessary to the very sun’s existence. She illumined
+everything, she made everything clear. She made his life complete.
+
+Then in fancy he once again walked with her through the Paradou. He
+remembered the little curls that waved behind her neck as she ran on
+before him. She exhaled delicious scent, and the touch of her warm
+swaying skirts seemed like a caress. And when she clasped him with her
+supple curving arms, he half expected to see her, so slight and slender
+she was, twine herself around him. It was she who went foremost. She led
+him through winding paths, where they loitered, that their walk might
+last the longer. It was she who instilled into him love for nature; and
+it was by watching the loves of the plants that he had learned to love
+her, with a love that was long, indeed, in bursting into life, but whose
+sweetness had been theirs at last. Beneath the shade of the giant tree
+they had reached their journey’s goal. Oh! to clasp her once again--yet
+once again!
+
+A low groan suddenly came from the priest. He hastily sprang up and then
+flung himself down again. Temptation had just assailed him afresh. Into
+what paths were his recollections leading him? Did he not know, only
+too well, that Satan avails himself of every wile to insinuate
+his serpent-head into the soul, even when it is absorbed in
+self-examination? No! no! he had no excuse. His illness had in no wise
+authorised him to sin. He should have set strict guard upon himself,
+and have sought God anew upon recovering from his fever. And what a
+frightful proof he now had of his vileness: he was not even able to
+make calm confession of his sin. Would he never be able to silence his
+nature? He wildly thought of scooping his brains out of his skull that
+he might be able to think no more, and of opening his veins that his
+blood might no longer torment him. For a moment he buried his face
+within his hands, shuddering as though the beasts that he felt prowling
+around him might infect him with the hot breath of temptation.
+
+But his thoughts strayed on in spite of himself, and his blood throbbed
+wildly in his very heart. Though he held his clenched fists to his eyes,
+he still saw Albine, dazzling like a sun. Every effort that he made to
+press the vision from his sight only made her shine out before him with
+increased brilliancy. Was God, then, utterly forsaking him, that he
+could find no refuge from temptation? And, in spite of all his efforts
+to control his thoughts, he espied every tiny blade of grass that thrust
+itself up by Albine’s skirts; he saw a little thistle-flower fastened in
+her hair, against which he remembered that he had pricked his lips.
+Even the perfumed atmosphere of the Paradou floated round him, and
+well-remembered sounds came back, the repeated call of a bird, then an
+interval of hushed silence, then a sigh floating through the trees.
+
+Why did not Heaven at once strike him dead with its lightning? That
+would have been less cruel. It was with a voluptuous pang, like the
+pangs which assail the damned, that he recalled his transgression. He
+shuddered when he again heard in his heart the abominable words that he
+had spoken at Albine’s feet. Their echoes were now accusing him before
+the throne of God. He had acknowledged Woman as his sovereign. He had
+yielded to her as a slave, kissing her feet, longing to be the water she
+drank and the bread she ate. He began to understand now why he could
+no longer recover self-control. God had given him over to Woman. But he
+would chastise her, scourge her, break her very limbs to force her to
+let him go! It was she who was the slave; she, the creature of impurity,
+to whom the Church should have denied a soul. Then he braced himself,
+and shook his fists at the vision of Albine; but his fists opened and
+his hands glided along her shoulders in a loving caress, while his lips,
+just now breathing out anger and insult, pressed themselves to her hair,
+stammering forth words of adoration.
+
+Abbé Mouret opened his eyes again. The burning apparition of Albine
+vanished. It was sudden and unexpected solace. He was able to weep.
+Tears flowed slowly and refreshingly down his cheeks, and he drew a long
+breath, still fearing to move, lest the Evil One should again grip
+him by the neck, for he yet thought that he heard the snarl of a beast
+behind him. And then he found such pleasure in the cessation of his
+sufferings that his one thought was to prolong the enjoyment of it.
+
+Outside the rain had ceased falling. The sun was setting in a vast
+crimson glow, which spread across the windows like curtains of
+rose-coloured satin. The church was quite warm and bright in the parting
+breath of the sinking luminary. The priest thanked God for the respite
+He had been pleased to vouchsafe to him. A broad ray of light, like a
+beam of gold-dust, streamed through the nave and illumined the far end
+of the building, the clock, the pulpit, and the high altar. Perhaps the
+Divine grace was returning to him from heaven along that radiant path.
+He watched with interest the atoms that came and went with prodigious
+speed through the ray, like a swarm of busy messengers ever hastening
+with news from the sun to the earth. A thousand lighted candles
+would not have filled the church with such splendour. Curtains of
+cloth-of-gold seemed to hang behind the high altar; treasures of the
+goldsmith’s art covered all the ledges; candle-holders arose in dazzling
+sheaves; censers glowed full of burning gems; sacred vases gleamed
+like fiery comets; and around all there seemed to be a rain of luminous
+flowers amidst waving lacework--beds, bouquets, and garlands of roses,
+from whose expanding petals dropped showers of stars.
+
+Never had Abbé Mouret desired such magnificence for his poor church. He
+smiled, and dreamt of how he might retain all that splendour there, and
+then arrange it most effectively. He would have preferred to see the
+curtains of cloth-of-gold hung rather higher; the vases, too, needed
+more careful arrangement; and he thought that the bouquets of flowers
+might be tied up more neatly, and the garlands be more regularly shaped.
+Yet how wondrously magnificent it all was! He was the pontiff of a
+church of gold. Bishops, princes, princesses, arrayed in royal mantles,
+multitudes of believers, bending to the ground, were coming to visit it,
+encamping in the valley, waiting for weeks at the door until they should
+be able to enter. They kissed his feet, for even his feet had turned
+to gold, and worked miracles. The bath of gold mounted to his knees.
+A golden heart was beating within his golden breast, with so clear a
+musical pulsation that the waiting crowds could hear it from outside.
+Then a feeling of overweening pride seized upon him. He was an idol.
+The golden beam mounted still higher, the high altar was all ablaze
+with glory, and the priest grew certain that the Divine grace must be
+returning to him, such was his inward satisfaction. The fierce snarl
+behind him had now grown gentle and coaxing, and he only felt on his
+shoulder a soft velvety pressure, as though some giant cat were lightly
+caressing him.
+
+He still pursued his reverie. Never before had he seen things under such
+a favourable light. Everything seemed quite easy to him now that he once
+more felt full of strength. Since Albine was waiting for him, he would
+go and join her. It was only natural. On the previous morning he had
+married Fortune and Rosalie. The Church did not forbid marriages. He saw
+that young couple again as they knelt before him, smiling and nudging
+each other while his hands were held over them in benediction. Then, in
+the evening, they had shown him their room. Each word that he had spoken
+to them echoed loudly in his ear. He had told Fortune that God had sent
+him a companion, because He did not wish man to live alone; and he had
+told Rosalie that she must cleave to her husband, never leaving him,
+but always acting as his obedient helpmate. But he had said these things
+also for Albine and himself. Was she not his companion, his obedient
+helpmate, whom God had sent to him that his manhood might not wither up
+in solitude? Besides, they had been joined the one to the other. He felt
+surprised that he had not understood and recognised it at once; that he
+had not gone away with her, as his duty plainly required that he should
+have done. But he had quite made up his mind now; he would certainly
+join her in the morning. He could be with her in half an hour. He would
+go through the village, and take the road up the hill; it was much the
+shortest way. He could do what he pleased; he was the master, and no one
+would presume to say anything to him. If any one looked at him, a wave
+of his hand would force them to bend their heads. He would live with
+Albine. He would call her his wife. They would be very happy together.
+
+The golden stream mounted still higher, and played amongst his fingers.
+Again did he seem to be immersed in a bath of gold. He would take
+the altar-vases away to ornament his house, he would keep up a fine
+establishment, he would pay his servants with fragments of chalices
+which he could easily break with his fingers. He would hang his
+bridal-bed with the cloth-of-gold that draped the altar; and he would
+give his wife for jewels the golden hearts and chaplets and crosses that
+hung from the necks of the Virgin and the saints. The church itself, if
+another storey were added to it, would supply them with a palace. God
+would have no objection to make since He had allowed them to love each
+other. And, besides, was it not he who was now God, with the people
+kissing his golden miracle-working feet?
+
+Abbé Mouret rose. He made that sweeping gesture of Jeanbernat’s, that
+wide gesture of negation, that took in everything as far as the horizon.
+
+‘There is nothing, nothing, nothing!’ he said. ‘God does not exist.’
+
+A mighty shudder seemed to sweep through the church. The terrified
+priest turned deadly pale and listened. Who had spoken? Who was it that
+had blasphemed? Suddenly the velvety caress, whose gentle pressure
+he had felt upon his shoulder, turned fierce and savage: sharp talons
+seemed to be rending his flesh, and once more he felt his blood
+streaming forth. Yet he remained on his feet, struggling against the
+sudden attack. He cursed and reviled the triumphant sin that sniggered
+and grinned round his temples, whilst all the hammers of the Evil One
+battered at them. Why had he not been on his guard against Satan’s
+wiles? Did he not know full well that it was his habit to glide up
+softly with gentle paws that he might drive them like blades into the
+very vitals of his victim?
+
+His anger increased as he thought how he had been entrapped, like a mere
+child. Was he destined, then, to be ever hurled to the ground, with sin
+crouching victoriously on his breast? This time he had actually denied
+his God. It was all one fatal descent. His transgression had destroyed
+his faith, and then dogma had tottered. One single doubt of the
+flesh, pleading abomination, sufficed to sweep heaven away. The divine
+ordinances irritated one; the divine mysteries made one smile. Then came
+other temptations and allurements; gold, power, unrestrained liberty,
+an irresistible longing for enjoyment, culminating in luxuriousness,
+sprawling on a bed of wealth and pride. And then God was robbed. His
+vessels were broken to adorn woman’s impurity. Ah! well, then, he was
+damned. Nothing could make any difference to him now. Sin might speak
+aloud. It was useless to struggle further. The monsters who had hovered
+about his neck were battening on his vitals now. He yielded to them with
+hideous satisfaction. He shook his fists at the church. No; he believed
+no longer in the divinity of Christ; he believed no longer in the Holy
+Trinity; he believed in naught but himself, and his muscles and the
+appetites of his body. He wanted to live. He felt the necessity of being
+a man. Oh! to speed along through the open air, to be lusty and strong,
+to owe obedience to no jealous master, to fell one’s enemies with
+stones, to carry off the fair maidens that passed upon one’s shoulders.
+He would break out from that living tomb where cruel hands had thrust
+him. He would awaken his manhood, which had only been slumbering. And
+might he die of shame if he should find that it were really dead! And
+might the Divinity be accursed if, by the touch of His finger, He had
+made him different from the rest of mankind.
+
+The priest stood erect, his mind all dazed and scared. He fancied that,
+at this fresh outburst of blasphemy, the church was falling down upon
+him. The sunlight, which had poured over the high altar, had gradually
+spread and mounted the walls like ruddy fire. Flames soared and licked
+the rafters, then died away in a sanguineous, ember-like glow. And all
+at once the church became quite black. It was as though the fires of the
+setting sun had burst the roof asunder, pierced the walls, thrown open
+wide breaches on every side to some exterior foe. The gloomy framework
+seemed to shake beneath some violent assault. Night was coming on
+quickly.
+
+Then, in the far distance, the priest heard a gentle murmur rising from
+the valley of Les Artaud. The time had been when he had not understood
+the impassioned language of those burning lands, where writhed but
+knotted vine-stocks, withered almond-trees, and decrepit olives
+sprawling with crippled limbs. Protected by his ignorance, he had passed
+undisturbed through all that world of passion. But, to-day, his ear
+detected the slightest sigh of the leaves that lay panting in the heat.
+Afar off, on the edge of the horizon, the hills, still hot with the
+sinking luminary’s farewell, seemed to set themselves in motion with the
+tramp of an army on the march. Nearer at hand, the scattered rocks,
+the stones along the road, all the pebbles in the valley, throbbed and
+rolled as if possessed by a craving for motion. Then the tracts of ruddy
+soil, the few fields that had been reduced to cultivation, seemed to
+heave and growl like rivers that had burst their banks, bearing along in
+a blood-like flood the engenderings of seeds, the births of roots, the
+embraces of plants. Soon everything was in motion. The vine-branches
+appeared to crawl along like huge insects; the parched corn and the dry
+grass formed into dense, lance-waving battalions; the trees stretched
+out their boughs like wrestlers making ready for a contest; the fallen
+leaves skipped forward; the very dust on the road rolled on. It was a
+moving multitude reinforced by fresh recruits at every step; a legion,
+the sound of whose coming went on in front of it; an outburst of
+passionate life, sweeping everything along in a mighty whirlwind of
+fruitfulness. And all at once the assault began. From the limits of
+the horizon, the whole countryside, the hills and stones and fields and
+trees, rushed upon the church. At the first shock, the building quivered
+and cracked. The walls were pierced and the tiles on the roof were
+thrown down. But the great Christ, although shaken, did not fall.
+
+A short respite followed. Outside, the voices sounded more angrily, and
+the priest could now distinguish human ones amongst them. The Artauds,
+those bastards who sprang up out of the rocky soil with the persistence
+of brambles, were now in their turn blowing a blast that reeked of
+teeming life. They had planted everywhere forests of humanity that
+swallowed up all around them. They came up to the church, they shattered
+the door with a push, and threatened to block up the very nave with the
+invading scions of their race. Behind them came the beasts; the oxen
+that tried to batter down the walls with their horns, the flocks of
+asses, goats, and sheep, that dashed against the ruined church like
+living waves, while swarms of wood-lice and crickets attacked the
+foundations and reduced them to dust with their sawlike teeth. Yet
+again, on the other side, there was Desirée’s poultry-yard, where the
+dunghill reeked with suffocating fumes. Here the big cock, Alexander,
+sounded the assault, and the hens loosened the stones with their beaks,
+and the rabbits burrowed under the very altars; whilst the pig, too
+fat to stir, grunted and waited till all the sacred ornaments should be
+reduced to warm ashes in which he might wallow at his ease.
+
+A great roar ascended, and a second assault was delivered. The
+villagers, the animals, all that overflowing sea of life assailed the
+church with such impetuosity that the rafters bent and curved. This
+time a part of the walls tottered and fell down, the ceiling shook,
+the woodwork of the windows was carried away, and the grey mist of the
+evening streamed in through the frightful gaping breaches. The great
+Christ now only clung to His cross by the nail that pierced His left
+hand.
+
+A mighty shout hailed the downfall of the block of wall. Yet the church
+still stood there firmly, in spite of the injuries it had received. It
+offered a stern, silent, unflinching resistance, clutching desperately
+to the tiniest stones of its foundations. It seemed as though, to keep
+itself from falling, it required only the support of its slenderest
+pillar, which, by some miracle of equilibration, held up the gaping
+roof. Then Abbé Mouret beheld the rude plants of the plateau, the
+dreadful-looking growths that had become hard as iron amidst the
+arid rocks, that were knotted like snakes and bossy with muscles, set
+themselves to work. The rust-hued lichens gnawed away at the rough
+plasterwork like fiery leprosy. Then the thyme-plants thrust their roots
+between the bricks like so many iron wedges. The lavenders insinuated
+hooked fingers into the loosened stonework, and by slow persistent
+efforts tore the blocks asunder. The junipers, the rosemaries, the
+prickly holly bushes, climbed higher and battered the walls with
+irresistible blows; and even the grass, the grass whose dry blades
+slipped beneath the great door, stiffened itself into steel-like spears
+and made its way down the nave, where it forced up the flagstones with
+powerful levers. It was a victorious revolt, it was revolutionary nature
+constructing barricades out of the overturned altars, and wrecking the
+church which had for centuries cast too deep a shadow over it. The
+other combatants had fallen back, and let the plants, the thyme and the
+lavender and the lichens, complete the overthrow of the building with
+their ceaseless little blows, their constant gnawing, which proved more
+destructive than the heavier onslaught of the stronger assailants.
+
+Then, suddenly, the end came. The rowan-tree, whose topmost branches had
+already forced their way through the broken windows under the vaulted
+roof, rushed in violently with its formidable stream of greenery. It
+planted itself in the centre of the nave and grew there monstrously.
+Its trunk expanded till its girth became so colossal that it seemed as
+though it would burst the church asunder like a girdle spanning it too
+closely. Its branches shot out in knotted arms, each one of which broke
+down a piece of the wall or thrust off a strip of the roof, and they
+went on multiplying without cessation, each branch ramifying, till a
+fresh tree sprang out of each single knot, with such impetuosity of
+growth that the ruins of the church, pierced through and through like a
+sieve, flew into fragments, scattering a fine dust to the four quarters
+of the heavens.
+
+Now the giant tree seemed to reach the stars; its forest of branches was
+a forest of legs, arms, and breasts full of sap; the long locks of women
+streamed down from it; men’s heads burst out from the bark; and up aloft
+pairs of lovers, lying languid by the edges of their nests, filled the
+air with the music of their delights.
+
+A final blast of the storm which had broken over the church swept away
+the dust of its remains: the pulpit and the confessional-box, which
+had been ground into powder, the lacerated holy pictures, the shattered
+sacred vessels, all the litter at which the legion of sparrows that had
+once dwelt amongst the tiles was eagerly pecking. The great Christ,
+torn from the cross, hung for a moment from one of the streaming women’s
+curls, and then was whirled away into the black darkness, in the depths
+of which it sank with a loud crash. The Tree of Life had pierced the
+heavens; it overtopped the stars.
+
+Abbé Mouret was filled with the mad joy of an accursed spirit at the
+sight before him. The church was vanquished; God no longer had a house.
+And thenceforward God could no longer trouble him. He was free to rejoin
+Albine, since it was she who triumphed. He laughed at himself for having
+declared, an hour previously, that the church would swallow up the
+whole earth with its shadow. The earth, indeed, had avenged itself
+by consuming the church. The mad laughter into which he broke had
+the effect of suddenly awakening him from his hallucination. He
+gazed stupidly round the nave, which the evening shadows were slowly
+darkening. Through the windows he could see patches of star-spangled
+sky; and he was about to stretch out his arms to feel the walls, when he
+heard Desirée calling to him from the vestry-passage:
+
+‘Serge! Serge! Are you there? Why don’t you answer? I have been looking
+for you for this last half-hour.’
+
+She came in; she was holding a lighted lamp; and the priest then saw
+that the church was still standing. He could no longer understand
+anything, but remained in a horrible state of doubt betwixt the
+unconquerable church, springing up again from its ashes, and Albine, the
+all-powerful, who could shake the very throne of God by a single breath.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+Desirée came up to him, full of merry chatter.
+
+‘Are you there? Are you there?’ she cried. ‘Why are you playing at
+hide-and-seek? I called out to you at the top of my voice at least a
+dozen times. I thought you must have gone out.’
+
+She pried into all the gloomy corners with an inquisitive glance, and
+even stepped up to the confessional-box, as though she had expected
+to surprise some one hiding there. Then she came back to Serge,
+disappointed, and continued:
+
+‘So you are quite alone? Have you been asleep? What amusement do you
+find in shutting yourself up all alone in the dark? Come along; it is
+time we went to dinner.’
+
+The Abbé drew his feverish hands across his brow to wipe away the traces
+of the thoughts which he feared were plain for all the world to read. He
+fumbled mechanically at the buttons of his cassock, which seemed to him
+all disarranged. Then he followed his sister with stern-set face and
+never a sign of emotion, stiffened by that priestly energy which throws
+the dignity of sacerdotalism like a veil over the agonies of the flesh.
+Desirée did not even suspect that there was anything the matter with
+him. She simply said as they entered the dining-room:
+
+‘I have had such a good sleep; but you have been talking too much, and
+have made yourself quite pale.’
+
+In the evening, after dinner, Brother Archangias came in to have his
+game of cards with La Teuse. He was in a very merry mood that night;
+and, when the Brother was merry, it was his habit to prod La Teuse
+in the sides with his big fists, an attention which she returned by
+heartily boxing his ears. This skirmishing made them both laugh, with a
+laughter that shook the very ceiling. The Brother, too, when he was in
+these gay humours, would devise all kinds of pranks. He would try to
+smash plates with his nose, and would offer to wager that he could break
+through the dining-room door in battering-ram fashion. He would also
+empty the snuff out of his box into the old servant’s coffee, or would
+thrust a handful of pebbles down her neck. The merest trifle would give
+rise to these noisy outbursts of gaiety in the very midst of his wonted
+surliness. Some little incident, at which nobody else laughed, often
+sufficed to throw him into a state of wild hilarity, make him stamp his
+feet, twirl himself round like a top, and hold in his splitting sides.
+
+‘What is it that makes you so gay to-night?’ La Teuse inquired.
+
+He made no reply, bestriding a chair and galloping round the table on
+it.
+
+‘Well! well! go on making a baby of yourself!’ said the old woman; ‘and,
+my gracious, what a big baby you are! If the Lord is looking at you, He
+must be very well pleased with you!’
+
+The Brother had just slipped off the chair and was lying on the floor,
+with his legs in the air.
+
+‘He does see me, and is pleased to see me as I am. It is His wish that I
+should be gay. When He wishes me to be merry for a time, He rings a bell
+in my body, and then I begin to roll about; and all Paradise smiles as
+it watches me.’
+
+He dragged himself on his back to the wall, and then, supporting himself
+on the nape of his neck, he hoisted up his body as high as he could and
+began drumming on the wall with his heels. His cassock slipped down and
+exposed to view his black breeches, which were patched at the knees with
+green cloth.
+
+‘Look, Monsieur le Curé,’ he said, ‘you see how high I can reach with
+my heels. I dare bet that you couldn’t do as much. Come! look amused and
+laugh a little. It is better to drag oneself along on one’s back than to
+think about a hussy as you are always doing. You know what I mean. For
+my part, when I take to scratching myself I imagine myself to be God’s
+dog, and that’s what makes me say that all Paradise looks out of the
+windows to smile at me. You might just as well laugh too, Monsieur le
+Curé. It’s all done for the saints and you. See! here’s a turn-over for
+Saint Joseph; here’s another for Saint Michael, and another for Saint
+John, and another for Saint Mark, and another for Saint Matthew----’
+
+So he went on, enumerating a whole string of saints, and turning
+somersaults all round the room.
+
+Abbé Mouret, who had been sitting in perfect silence, with his hands
+resting on the edge of the table, was at last constrained to smile. As
+a rule, the Brother’s sportiveness only disquieted him. La Teuse, as
+Archangias rolled within her reach, kicked at him with her foot.
+
+‘Come!’ she said, ‘are we to have our game to-night?’
+
+His only reply was a grunt. Then, upon all fours, he sprang towards La
+Teuse as if he meant to bite her. But in lieu thereof he spat upon her
+petticoats.
+
+‘Let me alone! will you?’ she cried. ‘What are you up to now? I begin
+to think you have gone crazy. What it is that amuses you so much I can’t
+conceive.’
+
+‘What makes me gay is my own affair,’ he replied, rising to his feet and
+shaking himself. ‘It is not necessary to explain it to you, La Teuse.
+However, as you want a game of cards, let us have it.’
+
+Then the game began. It was a terrible struggle. The Brother hurled
+his cards upon the table. Whenever he cried out the windows shook
+sonorously. La Teuse at last seemed to be winning. She had secured three
+aces for some time already, and was casting longing eyes at the fourth.
+But Brother Archangias began to indulge in fresh outbursts of gaiety.
+He pushed up the table, at the risk of breaking the lamp. He cheated
+outrageously, and defended himself by means of the most abominable
+lies, ‘Just for a joke,’ said he. Then he suddenly began to sing the
+‘Vespers,’ beating time on the palm of his left hand with his cards.
+When his gaiety reached a climax, and he could find no adequate means
+of expressing it, he always took to chanting the ‘Vespers,’ which he
+repeated for hours at a time. La Teuse, who well knew his habits, cried
+out to him, amidst the bellowing with which he shook the room:
+
+‘Make a little less noise, do! It is quite distracting. You are much too
+lively to-night.’
+
+But he set to work on the ‘Complines.’ Abbé Mouret had now seated
+himself by the window. He appeared to pay no attention to what went on
+around him, apparently neither hearing nor seeing anything of it. At
+dinner he had eaten with his ordinary appetite and had even managed to
+reply to Desirée’s everlasting rattle of questions. But now he had given
+up the struggle, his strength at an end, racked, exhausted as he was
+by the internal tempest that still raged within him. He even lacked the
+courage to rise from his seat and go upstairs to his own room. Moreover,
+he was afraid that if he turned his face towards the lamplight, the
+tears, which he could no longer keep from his eyes, would be noticed. So
+he pressed his face close to the window and gazed out into the darkness,
+growing gradually more drowsy, sinking into a kind of nightmare stupor.
+
+Brother Archangias, still busy at his psalm-singing, winked and nodded
+in the direction of the dozing priest.
+
+‘What’s the matter?’ asked La Teuse.
+
+The Brother replied by a yet more significant wink.
+
+‘Well, what do you mean? Can’t you speak? Ah! there’s a king. That’s
+capital!--so I take your queen.’
+
+The Brother laid down his cards, bent over the table, and whispered
+close to La Teuse’s face: ‘That hussy has been here.’
+
+‘I know that well enough,’ answered La Teuse. ‘I saw her go with
+mademoiselle into the poultry-yard.’
+
+At this he gave her a terrible look, and shook his fist in her face.
+
+‘You saw her, and you let her come in! You ought to have called me, and
+we would have hung her up by the feet to a nail in your kitchen.’
+
+But at this the old woman lost her temper, and, lowering her voice
+solely in order that she might not awaken Abbé Mouret, she replied:
+‘Don’t you go talking about hanging people up in my kitchen! I certainly
+saw her, and I even kept my back turned when she went to join his
+reverence in the church when the catechising was over. But all that
+was no business of mine. I had my cooking to attend to! As for the girl
+herself, I detest her. But if his reverence wishes to see her--why, she
+is welcome to come whenever she pleases. I’d let her in myself!’
+
+‘If you were to do that, La Teuse,’ retorted the Brother ragefully, ‘I
+would strangle you, that I would.’
+
+But she laughed at him.
+
+‘Don’t talk any of your nonsense to me, my man! Don’t you know that it
+is forbidden you to lay your hands upon a woman, just as it’s forbidden
+for a donkey to have anything to do with the _Pater Noster_? Just you
+try to strangle me and you’ll see what I’ll do! But do be quiet now, and
+let us finish the game. See, here’s another king.’
+
+But the Brother, holding up a card, went on growling:
+
+‘She must have come by some road that the devil alone knows for me to
+have missed her to-day. Every afternoon I go and keep guard up yonder
+by the Paradou. If ever I find them together again, I will acquaint
+the hussy with a stout dogwood stick which I have cut expressly for her
+benefit. And I shall keep a watch in the church as well now.’
+
+He played his card, which La Teuse took with a knave. Then he threw
+himself back in his chair and again burst into one of his loud laughs.
+He did not seem to be able to work himself up into a genuine rage that
+evening.
+
+‘Well, well,’ he grumbled, ‘never mind, even if she did see him, she had
+a smacking fall on her nose. I’ll tell you all about it, La Teuse. It
+was raining, you know. I was standing by the school-door when I caught
+sight of her coming down from the church. She was walking along quite
+straight and upright, in her stuck-up fashion, in spite of the pouring
+rain. But when she got into the road, she tumbled down full length, no
+doubt because the ground was so slippery. Oh! how I did laugh! How I did
+laugh! I clapped my hands, too. When she picked herself up again, I saw
+she was bleeding at the wrist. I shall feel happy over it for a week.
+I cannot think of her lying there on the ground without feeling the
+greatest delight.’
+
+Then, turning his attention to the game, he puffed out his cheeks and
+began to chant the _De profundis_. When he had got to the end of it, he
+began it all over again. The game came to a conclusion in the midst of
+this dirge. It was he who was beaten, but his defeat did not seem to vex
+him in the least.
+
+When La Teuse had locked the door behind him, after first awakening Abbé
+Mouret, his voice could still be heard, as he went his way through
+the black night, singing the last verse of the psalm, _Et ipse redimet
+Israel ex omnibus iniquitatibus ejus_, with extraordinary jubilation.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+That night Abbé Mouret slept very heavily. When he opened his eyes in
+the morning, later than usual, his face and hands were wet with tears.
+He had been weeping all through the night while he slept. He did not say
+his mass that day. In spite of his long rest, he had not recovered from
+his excessive weariness of the previous evening, and he remained in
+his bedroom till noon, sitting in a chair at the foot of his bed. The
+condition of stupor into which he more and more deeply sank, took all
+sensation of suffering away from him. He was conscious only of a great
+void and blank as he sat there overpowered and benumbed. Even to
+read his breviary cost him a great effort. Its Latin seemed to him a
+barbarous language, which he would never again be able to pronounce.
+
+Having tossed the book upon his bed he gazed for hours through his open
+window at the surrounding country. In the far distance he saw the long
+wall of the Paradou, creeping like a thin white line amongst the gloomy
+patches of the pine plantations to the crest of the hills. On the left,
+hidden by one of those plantations, was the breach. He could not see it,
+but he knew it was there. He remembered every bit of bramble scattered
+among the stones. On the previous night he would not have thus dared to
+gaze upon that dreaded scene. But now with impunity he allowed himself
+to trace the whole line of the wall, as it emerged again and again
+from the clumps of verdure which here and there concealed it. His
+blood pulsed none the faster for this scrutiny. Temptation, as though
+disdaining his present weakness, left him free from attack. Forsaken by
+the Divine grace, he was incapable of entering upon any struggle, the
+thought of sin could no longer even impassion him; it was sheer stupor
+alone that now rendered him willing to accept that which he had the day
+before so strenuously refused.
+
+At one moment he caught himself talking aloud and saying that, since
+the breach in the wall was still open, he would go and join Albine at
+sunset. This decision brought him a slight feeling of worry, but he did
+not think that he could do otherwise. She was expecting him to go,
+and she was his wife. When he tried to picture her face, he could only
+imagine her as very pale and a long way off. Then he felt a little
+uneasy as to their future manner of life together. It would be difficult
+for them to remain in the neighbourhood; they would have to go away
+somewhere, without any one knowing anything about it. And then, when
+they had managed to conceal themselves, they would need a deal of money
+in order to live happily and comfortably. He tried a score of times to
+hit upon some scheme by which they could get away and live together like
+happy lovers, but he could devise nothing satisfactory. Now that he was
+no longer wild with passion, the practical side of the situation
+alarmed him. He found himself, in all his weakness, face to face with a
+complicated problem with which he was incompetent to grapple.
+
+Where could they get horses for their escape? And if they went away
+on foot, would they not be stopped and detained as vagabonds? Was he
+capable of securing any employment by which he could earn bread for his
+wife? He had never been taught any kind of trade. He was quite ignorant
+of actual life. He ransacked his memory, and he could remember nothing
+but strings of prayers, details of ceremonies, and pages of Bouvier’s
+‘Instruction Theologique,’ which he had learned by heart at the
+seminary. He worried too over matters of no real concern. He asked
+himself whether he would dare to give his arm to his wife in the street.
+He certainly could not walk with a woman clinging to his arm. He would
+surely appear so strange and awkward that every one would turn round
+to stare at him. They would guess that he was a priest and would insult
+Albine. It would be vain for him to try to obliterate the traces of
+his priesthood. He would always wear that mournful pallor and carry the
+odour of incense about with him. And what if he should have children
+some day? As this thought suddenly occurred to him, he quite started. He
+felt a strange repugnance at the very idea. He felt sure that he should
+not care for any children that might be born to him. Suppose there were
+two of them, a little boy and a little girl. He could never let them get
+on his knees; it would distress him to feel their hands clutching at his
+clothes. The thought of the little girl troubled him the most; he
+could already see womanly tenderness shining in the depths of her big,
+childish eyes. No! no! he would have no children.
+
+Nevertheless he resolved that he would flee with Albine that evening.
+But when the evening came, he felt too weary. So he deferred his flight
+till the next morning. And the next morning he made a fresh pretext
+for delay. He could not leave his sister alone with La Teuse. He would
+prepare a letter, directing that she should be taken to her uncle
+Pascal’s. For three days he was ever on the point of writing that
+letter, and the paper and pen and ink were lying ready on the table
+in his room. Then, on the third day, he went off, leaving the letter
+unwritten. He took up his hat quite suddenly and set off for the
+Paradou in a state of mingled stupor and resignation, as though he were
+unwillingly performing some compulsory task which he saw no means of
+avoiding. Albine’s image was now effaced from his memory; he no longer
+beheld her, but he was driven on by old resolves whose lingering
+influence, though they themselves were dead, still worked upon him in
+his silence and loneliness.
+
+He took no pains to escape notice when he set foot out of doors. He
+stopped at the end of the village to talk for a moment to Rosalie. She
+told him that her baby was suffering from convulsions; but she laughed,
+as she spoke, with the laugh that was natural to her. Then he struck
+out through the rocks, and walked straight on towards the breach in the
+wall. By force of habit he had brought his breviary with him. Finding
+the way long, he opened the book and read the regulation prayers. When
+he put it back again under his arm, he had forgotten the Paradou. He
+went on walking steadily, thinking about a new chasuble that he wished
+to purchase to replace the old gold-broidered one, which was certainly
+falling into shreds. For some time past he had been saving up
+twenty-sous pieces, and he calculated that by the end of seven months
+he would have got the necessary amount of money together. He had reached
+the hills when the song of a peasant in the distance reminded him of
+a canticle which had been familiar to him at the seminary. He tried to
+recall the first lines of it, but his recollection failed him. It vexed
+him to find that his memory was so poor. And when, at last, he succeeded
+in remembering the words, he found a soothing pleasure in humming the
+verses, which came back to his mind one by one. It was a hymn of homage
+to Mary. He smiled as though some soft breath from the days of his
+childhood were playing upon his face. Ah! how happy he had then been!
+Why shouldn’t he be as happy again? He had not grown any bigger, he
+wanted nothing more than the same old happiness, unruffled peace, a nook
+in the chapel, where his knees marked his place, a life of seclusion,
+enlivened by the delightful puerilities of childhood. Little by little
+he raised his voice, singing the canticle in flutelike tones, when he
+suddenly became aware of the breach immediately in front of him.
+
+For a moment he seemed surprised. Then, the smile dying from his face,
+he murmured quietly:
+
+‘Albine must be expecting me. The sun is already setting.’
+
+But just as he was about to push some stones aside to make himself a
+passage, he was startled by a snore. He sprang down again: he had only
+just missed setting his foot upon the very face of Brother Archangias,
+who was lying on the ground there sleeping soundly. Slumber had
+overtaken him while he kept guard over the entrance to the Paradou. He
+barred the approach to it, lying at full length before its threshold,
+with arms and legs spread out. His right hand, thrown back behind his
+head, still clutched his dogwood staff, which he seemed to brandish like
+a fiery sword. And he snored loudly in the midst of the brambles, his
+face exposed to the sun, without a quiver on his tanned skin. A swarm of
+big flies was hovering over his open mouth.
+
+Abbé Mouret looked at him for a moment. He envied the slumber of that
+dust-wallowing saint. He wished to drive the flies away, but they
+persistently returned, and clung around the purple lips of the Brother,
+who was quite unconscious of their presence. Then the Abbé strode over
+his big body and entered the Paradou.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+Albine was seated on a patch of grass a few paces away from the wall.
+She sprang up as she caught sight of Serge.
+
+‘Ah! you have come!’ she cried, trembling from head to foot.
+
+‘Yes,’ he answered calmly, ‘I have come.’
+
+She flung herself upon his neck, but she did not kiss him. To her bare
+arms the beads of his neckband seemed very cold. She scrutinised him,
+already feeling uneasy, and resuming:
+
+‘What is the matter with you? Why don’t you kiss my cheeks as you used
+to do? Oh! if you are ill, I will cure you once again. Now that you
+are here, all our old happiness will return. There will be no more
+wretchedness.... See! I am smiling. You must smile, too, Serge.’
+
+But his face remained grave.
+
+‘I have been troubled, too,’ she went on. ‘I am still quite pale, am I
+not? For a whole week I have been living on that patch of grass, where
+you found me. I wanted one thing only, to see you coming back through
+the breach in the wall. At every sound I sprang up and rushed to meet
+you. But, alas! it was not you I heard. It was only the leaves rustling
+in the wind. But I was sure that you would come. I should have waited
+for you for years.’
+
+Then she asked him:
+
+‘Do you still love me?’
+
+‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘I love you still.’
+
+They stood looking at each other, feeling rather ill at ease. And deep
+silence fell between them. Serge, who evinced perfect calmness, did not
+attempt to break it. Albine twice opened her mouth to speak, but closed
+it immediately, surprised at the words that rose to her lips. She could
+summon up nothing but expressions tinged with bitterness. She felt tears
+welling into her eyes. What could be the matter with her that she did
+not feel happy now that her love had come back?
+
+‘Listen to me,’ she said at last. ‘We must not stay here. It is that
+hole that freezes us! Let us go back to our old home. Give me your
+hand.’
+
+They plunged into the depths of the Paradou. Autumn was fast
+approaching, and the trees seemed anxious as they stood there with their
+yellowing crests from which the leaves were falling one by one. The
+paths were already littered with dead foliage soaked with moisture,
+which gave out a sound as of sighing beneath one’s tread. And away
+beyond the lawns misty vapour ascended, throwing a mourning veil over
+the blue distance. And the whole garden was wrapped in silence, broken
+only by some sorrowful moans that sounded quiveringly.
+
+Serge began to shiver beneath the avenue of tall trees, along which they
+were walking.
+
+‘How cold it is here!’ said he in an undertone.
+
+‘You are cold indeed,’ murmured Albine, sadly. ‘My hand is no longer
+able to warm you. Shall I wrap you round with part of my dress? Come,
+all our love will now be born afresh.’
+
+She led him to the parterre, the flower-garden. The great thicket-like
+rosary was still fragrant with perfume, but there was a tinge of
+bitterness in the scent of the surviving blossoms, and their foliage,
+which had expanded in wild profusion, lay strewn upon the ground. Serge
+displayed such unwillingness to enter the tangled jungle, that they
+lingered on its borders, trying to detect in the distance the paths
+along which they had passed in the spring-time. Albine recollected
+every little nook. She pointed to the grotto where the marble woman lay
+sleeping; to the hanging screens of honeysuckle and clematis; the fields
+of violets; the fountain that spurted out crimson carnations; the steps
+down which flowed golden gilliflowers; the ruined colonnade, in the
+midst of which the lilies were rearing a snowy pavilion. It was
+there that they had been born again beneath the sunlight. And she
+recapitulated every detail of that first day together, how they had
+walked, and how fragrant had been the air beneath the cool shade. Serge
+seemed to be listening, but he suddenly asked a question which showed
+that he had not understood her. The slight shiver which made his face
+turn pale never left him.
+
+Then she led him towards the orchard, but they could not reach it. The
+stream was too much swollen. Serge no longer thought of taking Albine
+upon his back and lightly bounding across with her to the other side.
+Yet there the apple-trees and the pear-trees were still laden with
+fruit, and the vines, now with scantier foliage, bent beneath the weight
+of their gleaming clusters, each grape freckled by the sun’s caress.
+Ah! how they had gambolled beneath the appetising shade of those ancient
+trees! What merry children had they then been! Albine smiled as she
+thought of how she had clambered up into the cherry-tree that had broken
+down beneath her. He, Serge, must at least remember what a quantity of
+plums they had eaten. He only answered by a nod. He already seemed quite
+weary. The orchard, with its green depths and chaos of mossy trunks,
+disquieted him and suggested to his mind some dark, dank spot, teeming
+with snakes and nettles.
+
+Then she led him to the meadow-lands, where he had to take a few steps
+amongst the grass. It reached to his shoulders now, and seemed to him
+like a swarm of clinging arms that tried to bind his limbs and pull him
+down and drown him beneath an endless sea of greenery. He begged Albine
+to go no further. She was walking on in front, and at first she did not
+stop; but when she saw how distressed he appeared, she halted and
+came back and stood beside him. She also was growing gradually more
+low-spirited, and at last she shuddered like himself. Still she went on
+talking. With a sweeping gesture she pointed out to him the streams,
+the rows of willows, the grassy expanse stretching far away towards
+the horizon. All that had formerly been theirs. For whole days they had
+lived there. Over yonder, between those three willows by the water’s
+edge, they had played at being lovers. And they would then have been
+delighted if the grass had been taller than themselves so that they
+might have lost themselves in its depths, and have been the more
+secluded, like larks nesting at the bottom of a field of corn. Why,
+then, did he tremble so to-day, when the tip of his foot just sank into
+the grass?
+
+Then she led him to the forest. But the huge trees seemed to inspire
+Serge with still greater dread. He did not know them again, so sternly
+solemn seemed their bare black trunks. Here, more than anywhere else,
+amidst those austere columns, through which the light now freely
+streamed, the past seemed quite dead. The first rains had washed the
+traces of their footsteps from the sandy paths, the winds had swept
+every other lingering memorial into the underbrush. But Albine, with
+grief at her throat, shot out a protesting glance. She could still
+plainly see their lightest footprints on the sandy gravel, and, as they
+passed each bush, the warmth with which they had once brushed against it
+surged to her cheeks. With eyes full of soft entreaty, she still strove
+to awaken Serge’s memory. It was along that path that they had walked
+in silence, full of emotion, but as yet not daring to confess that they
+loved one another. It was in that clearing that they had lingered one
+evening till very late watching the stars, which had rained upon
+them like golden drops of warmth. Farther, beneath that oak they had
+exchanged their first kiss. Its fragrance still clung to the tree, and
+the very moss still remembered it. It was false to say that the forest
+had become voiceless and bare.
+
+Serge, however, turned away his head, that he might escape the gaze of
+Albine’s eyes, which oppressed him.
+
+Then she led him to the great rocks. There, perhaps, he would no longer
+shudder with that appearance of debility which so distressed her. At
+that hour the rocks were still warm with the red glow of the setting
+sun. They still wore an aspect of tragic passion, with their hot ledges
+of stone whereon the fleshy plants writhed monstrously. Without speaking
+a word, without even turning her head, Albine led Serge up the rough
+ascent, wishing to take him ever higher and higher, far up beyond the
+springs, till they should emerge into the full light on the summit. They
+would there see the cedar, beneath whose shade they had first felt
+the thrill of desire, and there amidst the glowing stones they would
+assuredly find passion once more. But Serge soon began to stumble
+pitiably. He could walk no further. He fell a first time on his knees.
+Albine, by a mighty effort, raised him and for a moment carried him
+along, but afterwards he fell again, and remained, quite overcome, on
+the ground. In front of him, beneath him, spread the vast Paradou.
+
+‘You have lied!’ cried Albine. ‘You love me no longer!’
+
+She burst into tears as she stood there by his side, feeling that she
+could not carry him any higher. There was no sign of anger in her
+now. She was simply weeping over their dying love. Serge lay dazed and
+stupefied.
+
+‘The garden is all dead. I feel so very cold,’ he murmured. But she took
+his head between her hands, and showed him the Paradou.
+
+‘Look at it! Ah! it is your eyes that are dead; your ears and your limbs
+and your whole body. You have passed by all the scenes of our happiness
+without seeing them or hearing them or feeling their presence. You have
+done nothing but slip and stumble, and now you have fallen down here in
+sheer weariness and boredom.... You love me no more.’
+
+He protested, but in a gentle, quiet fashion. Then, for the first time,
+she spoke out passionately.
+
+‘Be quiet! As if the garden could ever die! It will sleep for the
+winter, but it will wake up again in May, and will restore to us all
+the love we have entrusted to its keeping. Our kisses will blossom again
+amongst the flower-beds, and our vows will bud again with the trees and
+plants. If you could only see it and understand it, you would know that
+it throbs with even deeper passion, and loves even more absorbingly at
+this autumn-time, when it falls asleep in its fruitfulness.... But you
+love me no more, and so you can no longer understand.’
+
+He raised his eyes to her as if begging her not to be angry. His face
+was pinched and pale with an expression of childish fear. The sound of
+her voice made him tremble. He ended by persuading her to rest a little
+while by his side. They could talk quietly and discuss matters. Then,
+with the Paradou spreading out in front of them, they began to speak of
+their love, but without even touching one another’s fingers.
+
+‘I love you; indeed I love you,’ said Serge, in his calm, quiet voice.
+‘If I did not love you, I should not be here: I should not have come.
+I am very weary, it is true. I don’t know why. I thought I should find
+that pleasant warmth again, of which the mere memory was so delightful.
+But I am cold, the garden seems quite black. I cannot see anything of
+what I left here. But it is not my fault. I am trying hard to be as you
+would wish me and to please you.’
+
+‘You love me no longer!’ Albine repeated once more.
+
+‘Yes, I do love you. I suffered grievously the other day after I had
+driven you away.... Oh! I loved you with such passion that, had you come
+back and thrown yourself in my arms, I should almost have crushed you
+to death.... And for hours your image remained present before me. When
+I shut my eyes, you gleamed out with all the brightness of the sun and
+threw a flame around me.... Then I trampled down every obstacle, and
+came here.’
+
+He remained silent for a moment, as if in thought. Then he spoke again:
+
+‘And now my arms feel as though they were broken. If I tried to clasp
+you, I could not hold you; I should let you fall.... Wait till this
+shudder has passed away. Give me your hands, and let me kiss them again.
+Be gentle and do not look at me with such angry eyes. Help me to find my
+heart again.’
+
+He spoke with such genuine sadness, such evident longing to begin
+the past anew, that Albine was touched. For a moment all her wonted
+gentleness returned to her, and she questioned him anxiously:
+
+‘What is the matter with you? What makes you so ill?’
+
+‘I do not know. It is as though all my blood had left my veins. Just
+now, as I was coming here, I felt as if some one had flung a robe of ice
+around my shoulders, which turned me into stone from head to foot.... I
+have felt it before, but where I don’t remember.’
+
+She interrupted him with a kindly laugh.
+
+‘You are a child. You have caught cold, that’s all. At any rate, it is
+not I that you are afraid of, is it? We won’t stop in the garden during
+the winter, like a couple of wild things. We will go wherever you like,
+to some big town. We can love each other there, amongst all the people,
+as quietly as amongst the trees. You will see that I can be something
+else than a wilding, for ever bird’s-nesting and tramping about for
+hours. When I was a little girl, I used to wear embroidered skirts and
+fine stockings and laces and all kinds of finery. I dare say you never
+heard of that.’
+
+He was not listening to her. He suddenly gave vent to a little cry, and
+said: ‘Ah! now I recollect!’
+
+She asked him what he meant, but he would not answer her. He had just
+remembered the feeling he had long ago experienced in the chapel of the
+seminary. That was the icy robe enwrapping his shoulders and turning him
+to stone. And then his life as a priest took complete possession of his
+thoughts. The vague recollections which had haunted him as he walked
+from Les Artaud to the Paradou became more and more distinct and assumed
+complete mastery over him. While Albine talked on of the happy life that
+they would lead together, he heard the tinkling of the sanctuary bell
+that signalled the elevation of the Host, and he saw the monstrance
+trace gleaming crosses over the heads of kneeling multitudes.
+
+‘And for your sake,’ Albine was saying, ‘I will put on my broidered
+skirts again.... I want you to be bright and gay. We will try to find
+something to make you lively. Perhaps you will love me better when you
+see me looking beautiful and prettily dressed, like a fine lady. I will
+wear my comb properly and won’t let my hair fall wildly about my neck
+any more. And I won’t roll my sleeves up over my elbows; I will fasten
+my dress so as to hide my shoulders. I still know how to bow and how to
+walk along quite properly. Yes, I will make you a nice little wife, as I
+walk through the streets leaning on your arm.’
+
+‘Did you ever go to church when you were a little girl?’ he asked her in
+an undertone, as if, in spite of himself, he were continuing aloud the
+reverie which prevented him from hearing her. ‘I could never pass a
+church without entering it. As soon as the door closed silently
+behind me, I felt as though I were in Paradise itself, with the angels
+whispering stories of love in my ears and the saints caressing me with
+their breath. Ah! I would have liked to live there for ever, in that
+absorbing beatitude.’
+
+She looked at him with steady eyes, a passing blaze kindling in her
+loving glance. Nevertheless, submissive still, she answered:
+
+‘I will do as you may fancy. I learned music once. I was quite a clever
+young lady and was taught all the accomplishments. I will go back to
+school and start music again. If there is any tune you would like to
+hear me play, you will only have to tell me, and I will practise it for
+months and months, so as to play it to you some evening in our own home
+when we are by ourselves in some snug little room, with the curtains
+closely drawn. And you will pay me with just one kiss, won’t you? A kiss
+right on the lips, which will awaken all your love again!’
+
+‘Yes, yes,’ he murmured, answering his own thoughts only; ‘my great
+pleasure at first was to light the candles, prepare the cruets, and
+carry the missal. Then, afterwards, I was filled with bliss at the
+approach of God, and felt as though I could die of sheer love. Those are
+my only recollections. I know of nothing else. When I raise my hand, it
+is to give a benediction. When my lips protrude it is to kiss the altar.
+If I look for my heart, I can no longer find it. I have offered it to
+God, and He has taken it.’
+
+Albine grew very pale and her eyes gleamed like fire. In a quivering
+voice she resumed:
+
+‘I should not like my little girl to leave me. You can send the boy to
+college, if you wish, but the little girl must always keep with me. I
+myself will teach her to read. Oh! I shall remember everything, and
+if indeed there be anything that I find I have forgotten, I will have
+masters to teach me.... Yes, we will keep our dear little ones always
+about our knees. You will be happy so, won’t you? Speak to me; tell me
+that you will then feel warm again, and will smile, and feel no regrets
+for anything you have left behind.’
+
+But Serge continued:
+
+‘I have often thought of the stone-saints that have been censed in their
+niches for centuries past. They must have become quite saturated with
+incense; and I am like one of them. I have the fragrance of incense
+in the inmost parts of my being. It is that embalmment that gives me
+serenity, deathlike tranquillity of body, and the peace which I enjoy in
+no longer living.... Ah! may nothing ever disturb my quiescence! May I
+ever remain cold and rigid, with a ceaseless smile on my granite lips,
+incapable of descending among men! That is my one, my only desire!’
+
+At this Albine sprang to her feet, exasperated, threatening. She shook
+Serge and cried:
+
+‘What are you saying? What is it you are dreaming aloud? Am I not your
+wife? Haven’t you come here to be my husband?’
+
+He recoiled, trembling yet more violently.
+
+‘No! Leave me! I am afraid!’ he faltered.
+
+‘But our life together, our happiness, the children we shall have?’
+
+‘No, no; I am afraid.’ And he broke out into a supreme cry: ‘I cannot! I
+cannot!’
+
+For a moment Albine remained silent, gazing at the unhappy man who lay
+shivering at her feet. Her face flared. She opened her arms as if to
+seize him and strain him to her breast with wild angry passion. But
+another idea came to her, and she merely took him by the hand and raised
+him to his feet.
+
+‘Come!’ said she.
+
+She led him away to that giant tree, to the very spot where their love
+had reigned supreme. There was the same bliss-inspiring shade, there was
+the same trunk as of yore, the same branches spreading far around, like
+sheltering and protecting arms. The tree still towered aloft, kindly,
+robust, powerful, and fertile. As on the day of their nuptials,
+languorous warmth, the glimmer of a summer’s night fading on the bare
+shoulder of some fair girl, a sob of love dying away into passionate
+silence, lingered about the clearing as it lay there bathed in dim green
+light. And, in the distance, the Paradou, in spite of the first
+chills of autumn, sighed once more with passion, again becoming love’s
+accomplice. From the parterre, from the orchard, from the meadow-lands,
+from the forest, from the great rocks, from the spreading heavens,
+came back a ripple of voluptuous joy. Never had the garden, even on the
+warmest evenings of spring-time, shown such deep tenderness as now, on
+this fair autumn evening, when the plants and trees seemed to be bidding
+one another goodnight ere they sank to sleep. And the scent of ripened
+germs wafted the intoxication of desire athwart the scanty leaves.
+
+‘Do you hear? Do you hear?’ faltered Albine in Serge’s ear, when she had
+let him slip upon the grass at the foot of the tree.
+
+Serge was weeping.
+
+‘You see that the Paradou is not dead,’ she added. ‘It is crying out
+to us to love each other. It still desires our union. Oh, do remember!
+Clasp me to your heart!’
+
+Serge still wept.
+
+Albine said nothing more. She flung her arms around him; she pressed her
+warm lips to his corpse-like face; but tears were still his only answer.
+
+Then, after a long silence, Albine spoke. She stood erect, full of
+contempt and determination.
+
+‘Away with you! Go!’ she said, in a low voice.
+
+Serge rose with difficulty. He picked up his breviary, which had fallen
+upon the grass. And he walked away.
+
+‘Away with you! Go!’ repeated Albine, in louder tones, as she followed
+and drove him before her.
+
+Thus she urged him on from bush to bush till she had driven him back
+to the breach in the wall, in the midst of the stern-looking trees.
+And there, as she saw Serge hesitate, with lowered head she cried out
+violently:
+
+‘Away with you Go!’
+
+And slowly she herself went back into the Paradou, without even turning
+her head. Night was fast falling, and the garden was but a huge bier of
+shadows.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+Brother Archangias, aroused from his slumber, stood erect in the breach,
+striking the stones with his stick and swearing abominably.
+
+‘May the devil break their legs for them! May he drag them to hell by
+their feet, with their noses trailing in their abomination!’
+
+But when he saw Albine driving away the priest, he stopped for a moment
+in surprise. Then he struck the stones yet more vigorously, and burst
+into a roar of laughter.
+
+‘Good-bye, you hussy! A pleasant journey to you! Go back to your mates
+the wolves! A priest is no fit companion for such as you.’
+
+Then, looking at Abbé Mouret, he growled:
+
+‘I knew you were in there. I saw that the stones had been disturbed....
+Listen to me, Monsieur le Curé. Your sin has made me your superior, and
+God tells you, through my mouth, that hell has no torments severe enough
+for a priest who lets himself succumb to the lusts of the flesh. If He
+were to pardon you now, He would be too indulgent, it would be contrary
+to His own justice.’
+
+They slowly walked down the hill towards Les Artaud. The priest had
+not opened his lips; but gradually he raised his head erect: he was no
+longer trembling. As in the distance he caught sight of the Solitaire
+looming blackly against the purplish sky, and the ruddy glow of the
+tiles on the church, a faint smile came to his lips, while to his calm
+eyes there rose an expression of perfect serenity.
+
+Meantime the Brother was every now and then giving a vicious kick at the
+stones that came in his way. Presently he turned to his companion:
+
+‘Is it all over this time?’ he asked. ‘When I was your age I was
+possessed too. A demon was ever gnawing at me. But, after a time, he
+grew weary of it, and took himself off. Now that he has gone I live
+quietly enough.... Oh! I knew very well that you would go. For three
+weeks past I have been keeping watch upon you. I used to look into the
+garden through the breach in the wall. I should have liked to cut the
+trees down. I have often hurled stones at them; it was delightful to
+break the branches. Tell me, now, is it so very nice to be there?’
+
+He made Abbé Mouret stop in the middle of the road, and glared at him
+with a terrible expression of jealousy. The thought of the priest’s
+life in the Paradou tortured him. But the Abbé kept perfect silence, so
+Archangias set off again, jeering as he went. Then, in a louder voice,
+he said:
+
+‘You see, when a priest behaves as you have done, he scandalises every
+other priest. I myself felt sullied by your conduct. However, you
+are now behaving more sensibly. There is no need for you to make any
+confession. I know what has happened well enough. Heaven has broken your
+back for you, as it has done for so many others. So much the better! So
+much the better!’
+
+He clapped his hands triumphantly. But Abbé Mouret, immersed in deep
+reverie, with a smile spreading over his whole face, did not even hear
+him. When the Brother quitted him at the parsonage door, he went round
+and entered the church. It was grey and gloomy, as on that terrible
+rainy evening when temptation had racked him so violently. And it still
+remained poverty-stricken and meditative, bare of all that gleaming
+gold and sighing passion that had seemed to him to sweep in from the
+countryside. It preserved solemn silence. But a breath of mercy seemed
+to fill it.
+
+Kneeling before the great Christ and bursting into tears, which he let
+flow down his cheeks as though they were so many blessings, the priest
+murmured:
+
+‘O God, it is not true that Thou art pitiless. I know it, I feel it:
+Thou hast already pardoned me. I feel it in the outpouring of Thy grace,
+which, for hours now, has been flowing through me in a sweet stream,
+bringing me back, slowly but surely, perfect peace and spiritual health.
+O God, it was at the very moment when I was about to forsake Thee that
+Thou didst protect me most effectually. Thou didst hide Thyself from me,
+the better to rescue me from evil. Thou didst allow my flesh to run its
+course, that I might be convinced of its nothingness. And now, O God,
+I see that Thou hast for ever marked me with Thy seal, that awful seal,
+pregnant with blessings, which sets a man apart from other men, and
+whose mark is so ineffaceable that, sooner or later, it makes itself
+manifest even upon those who sin. Thou hast broken me with sin and
+temptation. Thou hast ravaged me with Thy flames. Thou hast willed
+that there should be nought left of me save ruins wherein Thou mightest
+safely descend. I am an empty tabernacle wherein Thou may’st dwell.
+Blessed art Thou, O God!’
+
+He prostrated himself and continued stammering in the dust. The church
+triumphed. It remained firm and unshaken over the priest’s head, with
+its altars and its confessional, its pulpit, its crosses, and its holy
+images. The world had ceased to exist. Temptation was extinguished like
+a fire that was henceforth unnecessary for the Abbé’s purification. He
+was entering into supernatural peace. And he raised this supreme cry:
+
+‘To the exclusion of life and its creatures and of everything that be in
+it, I belong to Thee, O God; to Thee, Thee alone, through all eternity!’
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+At that moment Albine was still wandering about the Paradou with all
+the mute agony of a wounded animal. She had ceased to weep. Her face was
+very white and a deep crease showed upon her brow. Why did she have to
+suffer that deathlike agony? Of what fault had she been guilty, that
+the garden no longer kept the promises it had held out to her since
+her childhood’s days? She questioned herself as she walked along, never
+heeding the avenues through which the gloom was slowly stealing. She
+had always obeyed the voices of the trees. She could not remember having
+injured a single flower. She had ever been the beloved daughter of the
+greenery, hearkening to it submissively, yielding to it with full belief
+in the happiness which it promised to her. And when, on that supreme
+day, the Paradou had cried to her to cast herself beneath the
+giant-tree, she had done so in compliance with its voice. If she then
+had nothing to reproach herself with, it must be the garden which had
+betrayed her; the garden which was torturing her for the mere sake of
+seeing her suffer.
+
+She halted and looked around her. The great gloomy masses of foliage
+preserved deep silence. The paths were blocked with black walls of
+darkness. The distant lawns were lulling to sleep the breezes that
+kissed them. And she thrust out her hands with a gesture of hopelessness
+and raised a cry of protest. It could not all end thus. But her voice
+choked beneath the silent trees. Thrice did she implore the Paradou to
+answer her, but never an explanation fell from its lofty branches, not
+a leaf seemed to be moved with pity for her. Then she resumed her weary
+wandering, and felt that she was entering into the fatal sternness of
+winter. Now that she had ceased to rebelliously question the earth, she
+caught sound of a gentle murmur speeding along the ground. It was the
+farewell of the plants, wishing one another a happy death. To have drunk
+in the sunshine for a whole season, to have lived ever blossoming,
+to have breathed continual perfume, and then, at the first blast, to
+depart, with the hope of springing up again elsewhere, was not that
+sufficiently long and full a life which obstinate craving for further
+existence would mar? Ah! how sweet death must be; how sweet to have an
+endless night before one, wherein to dream of the short days of life and
+to recall eternally its fugitive joys!
+
+She stayed her steps once more; but she no longer protested as she stood
+there amidst the deep stillness of the Paradou. She now believed that
+she understood everything. The garden doubtless had death in store for
+her as a supreme culminating happiness. It was to death that it had all
+along been leading her in its tender fashion. After love, there could be
+nought but death. And never had the garden loved her so much as it did
+now; she had shown herself ungrateful in accusing it, for all the time
+she had remained its best beloved child. The motionless boughs, the
+paths blocked up with darkness, the lawns where the breezes fell asleep,
+had only become mute in order that they might lure her on to taste the
+joys of long silence. They wished her to be with them in their winter
+rest, they dreamt of carrying her off, swathed in their dry leaves with
+her eyes frozen like the waters of the springs, her limbs stiffened like
+the bare branches, and her blood sleeping the sleep of the sap. And,
+yes, she would live their life to the very end, and die their death.
+Perhaps they had already willed that she should spring up next summer as
+a rose in the flower-garden, or a pale willow in the meadow-lands, or a
+tender birch in the forest. Yes, it was the great law of life; she was
+about to die.
+
+Then, for the last time, she resumed her walk through the Paradou in
+quest of death. What fragrant plant might need her sweet-scented tresses
+to increase the perfume of its leaves? What flower might wish the gift
+of her satinlike skin, the snowy whiteness of her arms, the tender pink
+of her bosom? To what weakly tree should she offer her young blood? She
+would have liked to be of service to the weeds vegetating beside the
+paths, to slay herself there so that from her flesh some huge greenery
+might spring, lofty and sapful, laden with birds at May-time, and
+passionately caressed by the sun. But for a long while the Paradou still
+maintained silence as if it had not yet made up its mind to confide to
+her in what last kiss it would spirit away her life. She had to wander
+all over it again, seeking, pilgrim-like, for her favourite spots. Night
+was now more swiftly approaching, and it seemed to her as if she were
+being gradually sucked into the earth. She climbed to the great rocks
+and questioned them, asking whether it was upon their stony beds that
+she must breathe her last breath. She crossed the forest with lingering
+steps, hoping that some oak would topple down and bury her beneath the
+majesty of its fall. She skirted the streams that flowed through the
+meadows, bending down at almost every step she took so as to peep into
+the depths and see whether a couch had not been prepared for her amongst
+the water lilies. But nowhere did Death call her; nowhere did he offer
+her his cold hands. Yet, she was not mistaken. It was, indeed, the
+Paradou that was about to teach her to die, as, indeed, it had taught
+her to love. She again began to scour the bushes, more eagerly even than
+on those warm mornings of the past when she had gone searching for love.
+And, suddenly, just as she was reaching the parterre, she came upon
+death, amidst all the evening fragrance. She ran forward, breaking out
+into a rapturous laugh. She was to die amongst the flowers.
+
+First she hastened to the thicket-like rosary. There, in the last
+flickering of the gloaming, she searched the beds and gathered all the
+roses that hung languishing at the approach of winter. She plucked them
+from down below, quite heedless of their thorns; she plucked them in
+front of her, with both hands; she plucked them from above, rising upon
+tip-toes and pulling down the boughs. So eager was she, so desperate
+was her haste, that she even broke the branches, she, who had ever shown
+herself tender to the tiniest blades of grass. Soon her arms were full
+of roses, she tottered beneath her burden of flowers. And having quite
+stripped the rose trees, carrying away even the fallen petals, she
+turned her steps to the pavilion; and when she had let her load of
+blossoms slip upon the floor of the room with the blue ceiling, she
+again went down to the garden.
+
+This time she sought the violets. She made huge bunches of them,
+which she pressed one by one against her breast. Then she sought the
+carnations, plucking them all, even to the buds; massing them together
+in big sheaves of white blossoms that suggested bowls of milk, and big
+sheaves of the red ones, that seemed like bowls of blood. Then, too,
+she sought the stocks, the patches of mirabilis, the heliotropes and
+the lilies. She tore the last blossoming stocks off by the handful,
+pitilessly crumpling their satin ruches; she devastated the beds of
+mirabilis, whose flowers were scarcely opening to the evening air; she
+mowed down the field of heliotropes, piling her harvest of blooms into
+a heap; and she thrust bundles of lilies under her arms like handles
+of reeds. When she was again laden with as much as she could carry,
+she returned to the pavilion to cast the violets, the carnations, the
+lilies, the stocks, the heliotrope, and the mirabilis by the side of
+the roses. And then, without stopping to draw breath, she went down yet
+again.
+
+This time she repaired to that gloomy corner which seemed like the
+graveyard of the flower-garden. A warm autumn had there brought on a
+second crop of spring flowers. She raided the borders of tuberoses and
+hyacinths; going down upon her knees, and gathering her harvest with
+all a miser’s care, lest she should miss a single blossom. The tuberoses
+seemed to her to be extremely precious flowers, which would distil drops
+of gold and wealth and wondrous sweetness. The hyacinths, beaded with
+pearly blooms, were like necklets, whose every pearl would pour forth
+joys unknown to man. And although she almost buried herself beneath the
+mass of tuberoses and hyacinths which she plucked, she next stripped a
+field of poppies, and even found means to crop an expanse of marigolds
+farther on. All these she heaped over the tuberoses and hyacinths, and
+then ran back to the room with the blue ceiling, taking the greatest
+care as she went that the breeze should not rob her of a single pistil.
+And once more did she come downstairs.
+
+But what was she to gather now? She had stripped the parterre bare. As
+she rose upon the tips of her shoes in the dim gloom, she could only see
+the garden lying there naked and dead, deprived of the tender eyes of
+its roses, the crimson smile of its carnations, and the perfumed locks
+of its heliotropes. Nevertheless, she could not return with empty arms.
+So she laid hands upon the herbs and leafy plants. She crawled over the
+ground, as though she would have carried off the very soil itself in
+a clutch of supreme passion. She filled her skirt with a harvest of
+aromatic plants, southernwood, mint, verbenas. She came across a border
+of balm, and left not a leaf of it unplucked. She even broke off two big
+fennels which she threw over her shoulders like a couple of trees. Had
+she been able, she would have carried all the greenery of the garden
+away with her between her teeth. When she reached the threshold of the
+pavilion, she turned round and gave a last look at the Paradou. It was
+quite dark now. The night had fully come and cast a black veil over
+everything. Then for the last time she went up the stairs, never more to
+step down them.
+
+The spacious room was quickly decked. She had placed a lighted lamp upon
+the table. She sorted out the flowers heaped upon the floor and arranged
+them in big bunches, which she distributed about the room. First she
+placed some lilies behind the lamp on the table, forming with them a
+lofty lacelike screen which softened the light with its snowy purity.
+Then she threw handfuls of carnations and stocks over the old sofa,
+which was already strewn with red bouquets that had faded a century
+ago, till all these were hidden, and the sofa looked like a huge bed of
+stocks bristling with carnations. Next she placed the four armchairs in
+front of the alcove. On the first one she piled marigolds, on the second
+poppies, on the third mirabilis, and on the fourth heliotrope. The
+chairs were completely buried in bloom, with nothing but the tips of
+their arms visible. At last she thought of the bed. She pushed a little
+table near the head of it, and reared thereon a huge pile of violets.
+Then she covered the whole bed with the hyacinths and tuberoses she
+had plucked. They were so abundant that they formed a thick couch
+overflowing all around, so that the bed now looked like one colossal
+bloom.
+
+The roses still remained. And these she scattered chancewise all over
+the room, without even looking to see where they fell. Some of them
+dropped upon the table, the sofa, and the chairs; and a corner of the
+bed was inundated with them. For some minutes there was a rain of roses,
+a real downpour of heavy blossoms, which settled in flowery pools in the
+hollows of the floor. But as the heap seemed scarcely diminished, she
+finished by weaving garlands of roses which she hung upon the walls.
+She twined wreaths around the necks and arms and waists of the plaster
+cupids that sported over the alcove. The blue ceiling, the oval panels,
+edged with flesh-coloured ribbon, the voluptuous paintings, preyed upon
+by time, were all hung with a mantle, a drapery of roses. The big room
+was fully decked at last. Now she could die there.
+
+For a moment she remained standing, glancing around her. She was looking
+to see if death was there. And she gathered up the aromatic greenery,
+the southernwood, the mint, the verbenas, the balm, and the fennel. She
+broke them and twisted them and made wedges of them with which to stop
+up every little chink and cranny about the windows and the door. Then
+she drew the white coarsely sewn calico curtains and, without even a
+sigh, laid herself upon the bed, on all the florescence of hyacinths and
+tuberoses.
+
+And then a final rapture was granted her. With her eyes wide open she
+smiled at the room. Ah! how she had loved there! And how happily she was
+there going to die! At that supreme moment the plaster cupids suggested
+nothing impure to her; the amorous paintings disturbed her no more. She
+was conscious of nothing beneath that blue ceiling save the intoxicating
+perfume of the flowers. And it seemed to her as if this perfume was none
+other than the old love-fragrance which had always warmed the room, now
+increased a hundredfold, till it had become so strong and penetrating
+that it would surely suffocate her. Perchance it was the breath of the
+lady who had died there a century ago. In perfect stillness, with her
+hands clasped over her heart, she continued smiling, while she listened
+to the whispers of the perfumes in her buzzing head. They were singing
+to her a soft strange melody of fragrance, which slowly and very gently
+lulled her to sleep.
+
+At first there was a prelude, bright and childlike; her hands, that had
+just now twisted and twined the aromatic greenery, exhaled the pungency
+of crushed herbage, and recalled her old girlish ramblings through the
+wildness of the Paradou. Then there came a flutelike song, a song of
+short musky notes, rising from the violets that lay upon the table near
+the head of the bed; and this flutelike strain, trilling melodiously to
+the soft accompaniment of the lilies on the other table, sang to her of
+the first joys of love, its first confession, and first kiss beneath the
+trees of the forest. But she began to stifle as passion drew nigh with
+the clove-like breath of the carnations, which burst upon her in brazen
+notes that seemed to drown all others. She thought that death was nigh
+when the poppies and the marigolds broke into a wailing strain, which
+recalled the torment of desire. But suddenly all grew quieter; she felt
+that she could breathe more freely; she glided into greater serenity,
+lulled by a descending scale that came from the throats of the stocks,
+and died away amidst a delightful hymn from the heliotropes, which, with
+their vanilla-like breath, proclaimed the approach of nuptial bliss.
+Here and there the mirabilis gently trilled. Then came a hush. And
+afterwards the roses languidly made their entry. Their voices streamed
+from the ceiling, like the strains of a distant choir. It was a chorus
+of great breadth, to which she at first listened with a slight quiver.
+Then the volume of the strain increased, and soon her whole frame
+vibrated with the mighty sounds that burst in waves around her. The
+nuptials were at hand, the trumpet blasts of the roses announced
+them. She pressed her hands more closely to her heart as she lay there
+panting, gasping, dying. When she opened her lips for the kiss which was
+to stifle her, the hyacinths and tuberoses shot out their perfume and
+enveloped her with so deep, so great a sigh that the chorus of the roses
+could be heard no more.
+
+And then, amidst the final gasp of the flowers, Albine died.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+About three o’clock the next afternoon, La Teuse and Brother Archangias,
+who were chatting on the parsonage-steps, saw Doctor Pascal’s gig
+come at full gallop through the village. The whip was being vigorously
+brandished from beneath the lowered hood.
+
+‘Where can he be off to at that rate?’ murmured the old servant. ‘He
+will break his neck.’
+
+The gig had just reached the rising ground on which the church was
+built. Suddenly, the horse reared and stopped, and the doctor’s head,
+with its long white hair all dishevelled appeared from under the hood.
+
+‘Is Serge there?’ he cried, in a voice full of indignant excitement.
+
+La Teuse had stepped to the edge of the hill. ‘Monsieur le Curé is in
+his room,’ she said. ‘He must be reading his breviary. Do you want to
+speak to him? Shall I call him?’
+
+Uncle Pascal, who seemed almost distracted, made an angry gesture with
+his whip hand. Bending still further forward, at the risk of falling
+out, he replied:
+
+‘Ah! he’s reading his breviary, is he? No! no! don’t call him. I should
+strangle him, and that would do no good. I wanted to tell him that
+Albine was dead. Dead! do you hear me? Tell him, from me, that she is
+dead!’
+
+And he drove off, lashing his horse so fiercely that it almost bolted.
+But, twenty paces away, he pulled up again, and once more stretching out
+his head, cried loudly:
+
+‘Tell him, too, from me, that she was _enceinte_! It will please him to
+know that.’
+
+Then the gig rolled on wildly again, jolting dangerously as it ascended
+the stony hill that led to the Paradou. La Teuse was quite dumbfounded.
+But Brother Archangias sniggered and looked at her with savage delight
+glittering in his eyes. She noticed this at last, and thrust him away
+from her, almost making him fall down the steps.
+
+‘Be off with you!’ she stammered, full of anger, seeking to relieve her
+feelings by abusing him. ‘I shall grow to hate you. Is it possible to
+rejoice at any one’s death? I wasn’t fond of the girl, myself; but it is
+very sad to die at her age. Be off with you, and don’t go on sniggering
+like that, or I will throw my scissors in your face!’
+
+It was only about one o’clock that a peasant, who had gone to Plassans
+to sell vegetables, had told Doctor Pascal of Albine’s death, and had
+added that Jeanbernat wished to see him. The doctor now was feeling a
+little relieved by what he had just shouted as he passed the parsonage.
+He had gone out of his way expressly to give himself that satisfaction.
+He reproached himself for the death of the girl as for a crime in which
+he had participated. All along the road he had never ceased overwhelming
+himself with insults, and though he wiped the tears from his eyes that
+he might see where to guide his horse, he ever angrily drove his gig
+over heaps of stones, as if hoping that he would overturn himself and
+break one of his limbs. However, when he reached the long lane that
+skirted the endless wall of the park, a glimmer of hope broke upon him.
+Perhaps Albine was only in a dead faint. The peasant had told him that
+she had suffocated herself with flowers. Ah! if he could only get there
+in time, if he could only save her! And he lashed his horse ferociously
+as though he were lashing himself.
+
+It was a lovely day. The pavilion was all bathed in sunlight, just as
+it had been in the fair spring-time. But the leaves of the ivy which
+mounted to the roof were spotted and patched with rust, and bees
+no longer buzzed round the tall gilliflowers. Doctor Pascal hastily
+tethered his horse and pushed open the gate of the little garden. All
+around still prevailed that perfect silence amidst which Jeanbernat
+had been wont to smoke his pipe; but, to-day, the old man was no longer
+seated on his bench watching his lettuces.
+
+‘Jeanbernat!’ called the doctor.
+
+No one answered. Then, on entering the vestibule, he saw something that
+he had never seen before. At the end of the passage, below the dark
+staircase, was a door opening into the Paradou, and he could see the
+vast garden spreading there beneath the pale sunlight, with all its
+autumn melancholy, its sere and yellow foliage. The doctor hurried
+through the doorway and took a few steps over the damp grass.
+
+‘Ah! it is you, doctor!’ said Jeanbernat in a calm voice.
+
+The old man was digging a hole at the foot of a mulberry-tree. He had
+straightened his tall figure on hearing the approach of footsteps.
+But he promptly betook himself to his task again, throwing out at each
+effort a huge mass of rich soil.
+
+‘What are you doing there?’ asked Doctor Pascal.
+
+Jeanbernat straightened himself again and wiped the sweat off his
+face with the sleeve of his jacket. ‘I am digging a hole,’ he answered
+simply. ‘She always loved the garden, and it will please her to sleep
+here.’
+
+The doctor nearly choked with emotion. For a moment he stood by the
+edge of the grave, incapable of speaking, but watching Jeanbernat as the
+other sturdily dug on.
+
+‘Where is she?’ he asked at last.
+
+‘Up there, in her room. I left her on the bed. I should like you to
+go and listen to her heart before she is put away in here. I listened
+myself, but I couldn’t hear anything at all.’
+
+The doctor went upstairs. The room had not been disturbed. Only a
+window had been opened. There the withered flowers, stifled by their own
+perfumes, exhaled but the faint odour of dead beauty. Within the alcove,
+however, there still hung an asphyxiating warmth, which seemed to
+trickle into the room and gradually disperse in tiny puffs. Albine,
+snowy-pale, with her hands upon her heart and a smile playing over her
+face, lay sleeping on her couch of hyacinths and tuberoses. And she
+was quite happy, since she was quite dead. Standing by the bedside,
+the doctor gazed at her for a long time, with a keen expression such as
+comes into the eyes of scientists who attempt to work resurrections. But
+he did not even disturb her clasped hands. He kissed her brow, on the
+spot where her latent maternity had already set a slight shadow. Below,
+in the garden, Jeanbernat was still driving his spade into the ground in
+heavy, regular fashion.
+
+A quarter of an hour later, however, the old man came upstairs. He had
+completed his work. He found the doctor seated by the bedside, buried
+in such a deep reverie that he did not seem conscious of the heavy tears
+that were trickling down his cheeks.
+
+The two men only glanced at each other. Then, after an interval of
+silence, Jeanbernat slowly said:
+
+‘Well, was I not right? There is nothing, nothing, nothing. It is all
+mere nonsense.’
+
+He remained standing and began to pick up the roses that had fallen from
+the bed, throwing them, one by one, upon Albine’s skirts.
+
+‘The flowers,’ he said, ‘live only for a day, while the rough nettles,
+like me, wear out the very stones amidst which they spring.... Now it’s
+all over; I can kick the bucket; I am nearly distracted. My last ray of
+sunlight has been snuffed out. It’s all nonsense, as I said before.’
+
+He threw himself upon one of the chairs in his turn. He did not shed
+a tear; he bore himself with rigid despair, like some automaton whose
+mechanism is broken. Mechanically he reached out his hand and took a
+book that lay on the little table strewn with violets. It was one of the
+books stored away in the loft, an odd volume of Holbach,* which he had
+been reading since the morning, while watching by Albine’s body. As the
+doctor still remained silent, buried in distressful thought, he began to
+turn its pages over. But a sadden idea occurred to him.
+
+  * Doubtless Holbach’s now forgotten _Catechism of Nature_, into
+    which M. Zola himself may well have peeped whilst writing this
+    story.--ED.
+
+‘If you will help me,’ he said to the doctor, ‘we will carry her
+downstairs, and bury her with all her flowers.’
+
+Uncle Pascal shuddered. Then he explained to the old man that it was not
+allowed for one to keep the dead in that fashion.
+
+‘What! it isn’t allowed!’ cried Jeanbernat. ‘Well, then, I will allow
+it myself! Doesn’t she belong to me? Isn’t she mine? Do you think I am
+going to let the priests walk off with her? Let them try, if they want
+to get a shot from my gun!’
+
+He sprang to his feet and waved his book about with a terrible gesture.
+But the doctor caught hold of his hands and clasped them within his own,
+beseeching him to be calm. And for a long time he talked to him, saying
+all that he had upon his mind. He blamed himself, made fragmentary
+confessions of his fault, and vaguely hinted at those who had killed
+Albine.
+
+‘Listen,’ he said in conclusion, ‘she is yours no longer; you must give
+her up.’
+
+But Jeanbernat shook his head, and again waved his hand in token of
+refusal. However, his obstinate resolution was shaken; and at last he
+said:
+
+‘Well, well, let them take her, and may she break their arms for them!
+I only wish that she could rise up out of the ground and kill them all
+with fright.... By the way. I have a little business to settle over
+there. I will go to-morrow.... Good-bye, then, doctor. The hole will do
+for me.’
+
+And, when the doctor had left, he again sat down by the dead girl’s
+side, and gravely resumed the perusal of his book.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+That morning there was great commotion in the yard at the parsonage.
+The Artaud butcher had just slaughtered Matthew, the pig, in the shed.
+Desirée, quite enthusiastic about it all, had held Matthew’s feet, while
+he was being bled, kissing him on the back that he might feel the pain
+of the knife less, and telling him that it was absolutely necessary that
+he should be killed, now that he had got so fat. No one could cut off a
+goose’s neck with a single stroke of the hatchet more unconcernedly than
+she could, or gash open a fowl’s throat with a pair of scissors. However
+much she loved her charges, she looked upon their slaughter with great
+equanimity. It was quite necessary, she would say. It made room for the
+young ones who were growing up. And that morning she was very gay.
+
+‘Mademoiselle,’ grumbled La Teuse every minute, ‘you will end by making
+yourself ill. There is no sense in working yourself up into such a
+state, just because a pig has been slaughtered. You are as red as if you
+had been dancing a whole night.’
+
+But Desirée only clapped her hands and turned away and bustled about
+again. La Teuse, for her part, complained that her legs were sinking
+under her. Since six o’clock in the morning her big carcass had been
+perpetually rolling between the kitchen and the yard, for she had black
+puddings to make. It was she who had whisked the blood in two large
+earthenware pans, and she had thought that she would never get finished,
+since mademoiselle was for ever calling her away for mere nothings.
+
+It must be admitted that, at the very moment when the butcher was
+bleeding Matthew, Desirée had been thrilled with wild excitement, for
+Lisa, the cow, was about to calve. And the girl’s delight at this had
+quite turned her head.
+
+‘One goes and another comes!’ she cried, skipping and twirling round.
+‘Come here, La Teuse! come here!’
+
+It was eleven o’clock. Every now and then the sound of chanting was
+wafted from the church. A confused murmur of doleful voices, a muttering
+of prayers could be heard amidst scraps of Latin pronounced in louder
+and clearer tones.
+
+‘Come! oh, do come!’ repeated Desirée for the twentieth time.
+
+‘I must go and toll the bell, now,’ muttered the old servant. ‘I shall
+never get finished really. What is it that you want now, mademoiselle?’
+
+But she did not wait for an answer. She threw herself upon a swarm of
+fowls, who were greedily drinking the blood from the pans. And having
+angrily kicked them away, and then covered up the pans, she called to
+Desirée:
+
+‘It would be a great deal better if, instead of tormenting me, you only
+came to look after these wretched birds. If you let them do as they like
+there will be no black-pudding for you. Do you hear?’
+
+Desirée only laughed. What of it, if the fowls did drink a few drops of
+the blood? It would fatten them. Then she again tried to drag La Teuse
+off to the cow, but the old servant refused to go.
+
+‘I must go and toll the bell. The procession will be coming out of
+church directly. You know that quite well.’
+
+At this moment the voices in the church rose yet more loudly, and a
+sound of steps could be distinctly heard.
+
+‘No! no!’ insisted Desirée, dragging La Teuse towards the stable. ‘Just
+come and look at her, and tell me what ought to be done.’
+
+La Teuse shrugged her shoulders. All that the cow wanted was to be left
+alone and not bothered. Then she set off towards the vestry, but, as she
+passed the shed, she raised a fresh cry:
+
+‘There! there!’ she shrieked, shaking her fist. ‘Ah! the little wretch!’
+
+Matthew was lying at full length on his back, with his feet in the air,
+under the shed, waiting to be singed.* The gash which the knife had made
+in his neck was still quite fresh, and was beaded with drops of blood.
+And a little white hen was very delicately picking off these drops of
+blood one by one.
+
+  * In some parts of France pigs, when killed, are singed, not scalded,
+    as is, I think, the usual practice in England.--ED.
+
+‘Why, of course,’ quietly remarked Desirée, ‘she’s regaling herself.’
+And the girl stooped and patted the pig’s plump belly, saying: ‘Eh! my
+fat fellow, you have stolen their food too often to grudge them a wee
+bit of your neck now!’
+
+La Teuse hastily doffed her apron and threw it round Matthew’s neck.
+Then she hurried away and disappeared within the church. The great door
+had just creaked on its rusty hinges, and a burst of chanting rose in
+the open air amidst the quiet sunshine. Suddenly the bell began to toll
+with slow and regular strokes. Desirée, who had remained kneeling
+beside the pig patting his belly, raised her head to listen, while still
+continuing to smile. When she saw that she was alone, having glanced
+cautiously around, she glided away into the cow’s stable and closed the
+door behind her.
+
+The little iron gate of the graveyard, which had been opened quite wide
+to let the body pass, hung against the wall, half torn from its hinges.
+The sunshine slept upon the herbage of the empty expanse, into which the
+funeral procession passed, chanting the last verse of the _Miserere_.
+Then silence fell.
+
+‘_Requiem æternam dona ei, Domine_,’ resumed Abbé Mouret, in solemn
+tones.
+
+‘_Et lux perpetua luceat ei_,’ Brother Archangias bellowed.
+
+At the head walked Vincent, wearing a surplice and bearing the cross,
+a large copper cross, half the silver plating of which had come off. He
+lifted it aloft with both his hands. Then followed Abbé Mouret, looking
+very pale in his black chasuble, but with his head erect, and without
+a quiver on his lips as he chanted the office, gazing into the distance
+with fixed eyes. The flame of the lighted candle which he was carrying
+scarcely showed in the daylight. And behind him, almost touching him,
+came Albine’s coffin, borne by four peasants on a sort of litter,
+painted black. The coffin was clumsily covered with too short a pall,
+and at the lower end of it the fresh deal of which it was made could be
+seen, with the heads of the nails sparkling with a steely glitter. Upon
+the pall lay flowers: handfuls of white roses, hyacinths, and tuberoses,
+taken from the dead girl’s very bed.
+
+‘Just be careful!’ cried Brother Archangias to the peasants, as they
+slightly tilted the litter in order to get it through the gateway. ‘You
+will be upsetting everything on to the ground!’
+
+He kept the coffin in its place with one of his fat hands. With the
+other--as there was no second clerk--he was carrying the holy-water
+vessel, and he likewise represented the choirman, the rural guard, who
+had been unable to come.
+
+‘Come in, too, you others,’ he exclaimed, turning round.
+
+There was a second funeral, that of Rosalie’s baby, who had died the
+previous day from an attack of convulsions. The mother, the father, old
+mother Brichet, Catherine, and two big girls, La Rousse and Lisa, were
+there. The two last were carrying the baby’s coffin, one supporting each
+end.
+
+Suddenly all voices were hushed again, and there came another interval
+whilst the bell continued tolling in slow and desolate accents. The
+funeral procession crossed the entire burial-ground, going towards
+the corner which was formed by the church and the wall of Desirée’s
+poultry-yard. Swarms of grasshoppers leaped away at the approaching
+footsteps, and lizards hurried into their holes. A heavy warmth hung
+over this corner of the loamy cemetery. The crackling of the dry grass
+beneath the tramp of the mourners sounded like choking sobs.
+
+‘There! stop where you are!’ cried the Brother, barring the way before
+the two big girls who were carrying the baby’s coffin. ‘Wait for your
+turn. Don’t be getting in our legs here.’
+
+The two girls laid the baby on the ground. Rosalie, Fortune, and old
+mother Brichet were lingering in the middle of the graveyard, while
+Catherine slyly followed Brother Archangias. Albine’s grave was on
+the left hand of Abbé Caffin’s tomb, whose white stone seemed in the
+sunshine to be flecked with silvery spangles. The deep cavity, freshly
+dug that morning, yawned amidst thick tufts of grass. Big weeds, almost
+uprooted, drooped over the edges, and a fallen flower lay at the bottom,
+staining the dark soil with its crimson petals. When Abbé Mouret came
+forward, the soft earth crumbled and gave way beneath his feet; he was
+obliged to step back to keep himself from slipping into the grave.
+
+‘_Ego sum_--’ he began in a full voice, which rose above the mournful
+tolling of the bell.
+
+During the anthem, those who were present instinctively cast furtive
+glances towards the bottom of the empty grave. Vincent, who had planted
+the cross at the foot of the cavity opposite the priest, pushed the
+loose earth with his foot, and amused himself by watching it fall. This
+drew a laugh from Catherine, who was leaning forward from behind him to
+get a better view. The peasants had set the litter on the grass and were
+stretching their arms, while Brother Archangias prepared the sprinkler.
+
+‘Come here, Voriau!’ called Fortune.
+
+The big black dog, who had gone to sniff at the coffin, came back
+sulkily.
+
+‘Why has the dog been brought?’ exclaimed Rosalie.
+
+‘Oh! he followed us,’ said Lisa, smiling quietly.
+
+They were all chatting together in subdued tones round the baby’s
+coffin. The father and mother occasionally forgot all about it, but
+on catching sight of it again, lying between them at their feet, they
+relapsed into silence.
+
+‘And so old Bambousse wouldn’t come?’ said La Rousse. Mother Brichet
+raised her eyes to heaven.
+
+‘He threatened to break everything to pieces yesterday when the little
+one died,’ said she. ‘No, no, I must say that he is not a good man.
+Didn’t he nearly strangle me, crying out that he had been robbed, and
+that he would have given one of his cornfields for the little one to
+have died three days before the wedding?’
+
+‘One can never tell what will happen,’ remarked Fortune with a knowing
+look.
+
+‘What’s the good of the old man putting himself out about it? We are
+married, all the same, now,’ added Rosalie.
+
+Then they exchanged a smile across the little coffin while Lisa and
+La Rousse nudged each other with their elbows. But afterwards they all
+became very serious again. Fortune picked up a clod of earth to throw at
+Voriau, who was now prowling about amongst the old tombstones.
+
+‘Ah! they’ve nearly finished over there, now!’ La Rousse whispered very
+softly.
+
+Abbé Mouret was just concluding the _De profundis_ in front of Albine’s
+grave. Then, with slow steps, he approached the coffin, drew himself up
+erect, and gazed at it for a moment without a quiver in his glance. He
+looked taller, his face shone with a serenity that seemed to transfigure
+him. He stooped and picked up a handful of earth, and scattered it over
+the coffin crosswise. Then, in a voice so steady and clear that not a
+syllable was lost, he said:
+
+‘_Revertitur in terrain suam unde erat, et spiritus redit ad Deum qui
+dedit illum_.’
+
+A shudder ran through those who were present. Lisa seemed to reflect for
+a moment, and then remarked with an expression of worry: ‘It is not very
+cheerful, eh, when one thinks that one’s own turn will come some day or
+other.’
+
+But Brother Archangias had now handed the sprinkler to the priest, who
+took it and shook it several times over the corpse.
+
+‘_Requiescat in pace_,’ he murmured.
+
+‘_Amen_,’ responded Vincent and the Brother together, in tones so
+respectively shrill and deep that Catherine had to cram her fist into
+her mouth to keep from laughing.
+
+‘No, indeed, it is certainly not cheerful,’ continued Lisa. ‘There
+really was nobody at all at that funeral. The graveyard would be quite
+empty without us.’
+
+‘I’ve heard say that she killed herself,’ said old mother Brichet.
+
+‘Yes, I know,’ interrupted La Rousse. ‘The Brother didn’t want to
+let her be buried amongst Christians, but Monsieur le Curé said
+that eternity was for everybody. I was there. But all the same the
+Philosopher might have come.’
+
+At that very moment Rosalie reduced them all to silence by murmuring:
+‘See! there he is, the Philosopher.’
+
+Jeanbernat was, indeed, just entering the graveyard. He walked straight
+to the group that stood around Albine’s grave; and he stepped along with
+so lithe, so springy a gait, that none of them heard him coming. When
+he was close to them, he remained for a moment behind Brother Archangias
+and seemed to fix his eyes, for an instant, on the nape of the Brother’s
+neck. Then, just as the Abbé Mouret was finishing the office, he calmly
+drew a knife from his pocket, opened it, and with a single cut sliced
+off the Brother’s right ear.
+
+There had been no time for any one to interfere. The Brother gave a
+terrible yell.
+
+‘The left one will be for another occasion,’ said Jeanbernat quietly, as
+he threw the ear upon the ground. Then he went off.
+
+So great and so general was the stupefaction that nobody followed him.
+Brother Archangias had dropped upon the heap of fresh soil which had
+been thrown out of the grave. He was staunching his bleeding wound with
+his handkerchief. One of the four peasants who had carried the coffin,
+wanted to lead him away, conduct him home; but he refused with a gesture
+and remained where he was, fierce and sullen, wishing to see Albine
+lowered into the pit.
+
+‘There! it’s our turn at last!’ said Rosalie with a little sigh.
+
+But Abbé Mouret still lingered by the grave, watching the bearers who
+were slipping cords under Albine’s coffin in order that they might let
+it down gently. The bell was still tolling; but La Teuse must have been
+getting tired, for it tolled irregularly, as though it were becoming a
+little irritated at the length of the ceremony.
+
+The sun was growing hotter and the Solitaire’s shadow crept slowly over
+the grass and the grave mounds. When Abbé Mouret was obliged to step
+back in order to give the bearers room, his eyes lighted upon the marble
+tombstone of Abbé Caffin, that priest who also had loved, and who was
+now sleeping there so peacefully beneath the wild-flowers.
+
+Then, all at once, even as the coffin descended, supported by the cords,
+whose knots made it strain and creak, a tremendous uproar arose in the
+poultry-yard on the other side of the wall. The goat began to bleat. The
+ducks, the geese, and the turkeys raised their loudest calls and flapped
+their wings. The fowls all cackled at once. The yellow cock, Alexander,
+crowed forth his trumpet notes. The rabbits could even be heard leaping
+in their hutches and shaking their wooden floors. And, above all this
+lifeful uproar of the animal creation, a loud laugh rang out. There was
+a rustling of skirts. Desirée, with her hair streaming, her arms bare
+to the elbows, and her face crimson with triumph, burst into sight, her
+hands resting upon the coping of the wall. She had doubtless climbed
+upon the manure-heap.
+
+‘Serge! Serge!’ she cried.
+
+At that moment Albine’s coffin had reached the bottom of the grave.
+The cords had just been withdrawn. One of the peasants was throwing the
+first shovelful of earth into the cavity.
+
+‘Serge! Serge!’ Desirée cried, still more loudly, clapping her hands,
+‘the cow has got a calf!’
+
+
+
+                              THE END
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ABBÉ MOURET'S TRANSGRESSION ***
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+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg Book of Abbé Mouret's Transgression, by Émile Zola</title>
+
+<style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify;}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
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+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
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+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Abbé Mouret's Transgression, by Émile Zola</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
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+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Abbé Mouret's Transgression<br />
+La Faute De L'abbé Mouret</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Émile Zola</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Editor: Ernest Alfred Vizetelly</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: November 28, 2004 [eBook #14200]<br />
+[Most recently updated: June 8, 2021]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Dagny and David Widger</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ABBÉ MOURET'S TRANSGRESSION ***</div>
+
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      ABBÉ MOURET&rsquo;S TRANSGRESSION
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Émile Zola
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> <a href="#link2H_INTR"> INTRODUCTION </a><br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2H_4_0002"> <b>ABBÉ MOURET&rsquo;S TRANSGRESSION</b> </a><br /><br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> <b>BOOK I</b>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </a><br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> I </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> II </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> III </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> IV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> V </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> VI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> VII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> VIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> IX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> X </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> XI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> XII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> XIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> XIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> XV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> XVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> XVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> <b>BOOK II</b>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+        </a><br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> I </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> II </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> III </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> IV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0026"> V </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0027"> VI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0028"> VII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0029"> VIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0030"> IX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0031"> X </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0032"> XI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0033"> XII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0034"> XIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0035"> XIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0036"> XV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0037"> XVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0038"> XVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0039"> <b>BOOK III</b> </a><br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0040"> I </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0041"> II </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0042"> III </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0043"> IV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0044"> V </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0045"> VI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0046"> VII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0047"> VIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0048"> IX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0049"> X </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0050"> XI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0051"> XII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0052"> XIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0053"> XIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0054"> XV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0055"> XVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /><br /><br />
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_INTR" id="link2H_INTR">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      INTRODUCTION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;LA FAUTE DE L&rsquo;ABBÉ MOURET&rsquo; was, with respect to the date of publication,
+      the fourth volume of M. Zola&rsquo;s &lsquo;Rougon-Macquart&rsquo; series; but in the
+      amended and final scheme of that great literary undertaking, it occupies
+      the ninth place. It proceeds from the sixth volume of the series, &lsquo;The
+      Conquest of Plassans;&rsquo; which is followed by the two works that deal with
+      the career of Octave Mouret, Abbé Serge Mouret&rsquo;s elder brother. In &lsquo;The
+      Conquest of Plassans,&rsquo; Serge and his half-witted sister, Desirée, are seen
+      in childhood at their home in Plassans, which is wrecked by the doings of
+      a certain Abbé Faujas and his relatives. Serge Mouret grows up, is called
+      by an instinctive vocation to the priesthood, and becomes parish priest of
+      Les Artaud, a well-nigh pagan hamlet in one of those bare, burning
+      stretches of country with which Provence abounds. And here it is that &lsquo;La
+      Faute de l&rsquo;Abbé Mouret&rsquo; opens in the old ruinous church, perched upon a
+      hillock in full view of the squalid village, the arid fields, and the
+      great belts of rock which shut in the landscape all around.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are two elements in this remarkable story, which, from the
+      standpoint of literary style, has never been excelled by anything that M.
+      Zola has since written; and one may glance at it therefore from two points
+      of view. Taking it under its sociological and religious aspect, it will be
+      found to be an indirect indictment of the celibacy of the priesthood; that
+      celibacy, contrary to Nature&rsquo;s fundamental law, which assuredly has
+      largely influenced the destinies of the Roman Catholic Church. To that
+      celibacy, and to all the evils that have sprang from it, may be ascribed
+      much of the irreligion current in France to-day. The periodical reports on
+      criminality issued by the French Ministers of Justice since the foundation
+      of the Republic in 1871, supply materials for a most formidable indictment
+      of that vow of perpetual chastity which Rome exacts from her clergy.
+      Nowadays it is undoubtedly too late for Rome to go back upon that vow and
+      thereby transform the whole of her sacerdotal organisation; but, perhaps,
+      had she done so in past times, before the spirit of inquiry and free
+      examination came into being, she might have assured herself many more
+      centuries of supremacy than have fallen to her lot. But she has ever
+      sought to dissociate the law of the Divinity from the law of Nature, as
+      though indeed the latter were but the invention of the Fiend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret, M. Zola&rsquo;s hero, finds himself placed between the law of the
+      Divinity and the law of Nature: and the struggle waged within him by those
+      two forces is a terrible one. That which training has implanted in his
+      mind proves the stronger, and, so far as the canons of the Church can
+      warrant it, he saves his soul. But the problem is not quite frankly put by
+      M. Zola; for if Abbé Mouret transgresses he does so unwittingly, at a time
+      when he is unconscious of his priesthood and has no memory of any vow.
+      When the truth flashes upon him he is horrified with himself, and
+      forthwith returns to the Church. A further struggle between the contending
+      forces then certainly ensues, and ends in the final victory of the Church.
+      But it must at least be said that in the lapses which occur in real life
+      among the Roman priesthood, the circumstances are altogether different
+      from those which M. Zola has selected for his story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The truth is that in &lsquo;La Faute de l&rsquo;Abbé Mouret,&rsquo; betwixt lifelike
+      glimpses of French rural life, the author transports us to a realm of
+      poesy and imagination. This is, indeed, so true that he has introduced
+      into his work all the ideas on which he had based an early unfinished poem
+      called &lsquo;Genesis.&rsquo; He carries us to an enchanted garden, the Paradou&mdash;a
+      name which one need hardly say is Provencal for Paradise*&mdash;and there
+      Serge Mouret, on recovering from brain fever, becomes, as it were, a new
+      Adam by the side of a new Eve, the fair and winsome Albine. All this part
+      of the book, then, is poetry in prose. The author has remembered the ties
+      which link Rousseau to the realistic school of fiction, and, as in the
+      pages of Jean-Jacques, trees, springs, mountains, rocks, and flowers
+      become animated beings and claim their place in the world&rsquo;s mechanism. One
+      may indeed go back far beyond Rousseau, even to Lucretius himself; for
+      more than once we are irresistibly reminded of Lucretian scenes, above
+      which through M. Zola&rsquo;s pages there seems to hover the pronouncement of
+      Sophocles:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     No ordinance of man shall override
+     The settled laws of Nature and of God;
+     Not written these in pages of a book,
+     Nor were they framed to-day, nor yesterday;
+     We know not whence they are; but this we know,
+     That they from all eternity have been,
+     And shall to all eternity endure.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  * There is a village called Paradou in Provence, between
+    Les Baux and Arles.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And if we pass to the young pair whose duo of love is sung amidst the
+      varied voices of creation, we are irresistibly reminded of the Paul and
+      Virginia of St. Pierre, and the Daphnis and Chloe of Longus. Beside them,
+      in their marvellous garden, lingers a memory too of Manon and Des Grieux,
+      with a suggestion of Lauzun and a glimpse of the art of Fragonard. All
+      combine, all contribute&mdash;from the great classics to the eighteenth
+      century <i>petits maitres</i>&mdash;to build up a story of love&rsquo;s rise in
+      the human breast in answer to Nature&rsquo;s promptings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Zola wrote &lsquo;La Faute de l&rsquo;Abbé Mouret&rsquo; one summer under the trees of
+      his garden, mindful the while of gardens that he had known in childhood:
+      the flowery expanse which had stretched before his grandmother&rsquo;s home at
+      Pont-au-Beraud and the wild estate of Galice, between Roquefavour and
+      Aix-en-Provence, through which he had roamed as a lad with friends then
+      boys like himself: Professor Baille and Cezanne, the painter. And into his
+      description of the wondrous Paradou he has put all his remembrance of the
+      gardens and woods of Provence, where many a plant and flower thrive with a
+      luxuriance unknown to England. True, in order to refresh his memory and
+      avoid mistakes, he consulted various horticultural manuals whilst he was
+      writing; of which circumstance captious critics have readily laid hold, to
+      proclaim that the description of the Paradou is a mere florist&rsquo;s
+      catalogue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it is nothing of the kind. The florist who might dare to offer such a
+      catalogue to the public would be speedily assailed by all the
+      horticultural journalists of England and all the customers of villadom.
+      For M. Zola avails himself of a poet&rsquo;s license to crowd marvel upon
+      marvel, to exaggerate nature&rsquo;s forces, to transform the tiniest blooms
+      into giant examples of efflorescence, and to mingle even the seasons one
+      with the other. But all this was premeditated; there was a picture before
+      his mind&rsquo;s eye, and that picture he sought to trace with his pen,
+      regardless of all possible objections. It is the poet&rsquo;s privilege to do
+      this and even to be admired for it. It would be easy for some learned
+      botanist, some expert zoologist, to demolish Milton from the standpoint of
+      their respective sciences, but it would be absurd to do so. We ask of the
+      poet the flowers of his imagination, and the further he carries us from
+      the sordid realities, the limited possibilities of life, the more are we
+      grateful to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And M. Zola&rsquo;s Paradou is a flight of fancy, even as its mistress, the
+      fair, loving, guileless Albine, whose smiles and whose tears alike go to
+      our hearts, is the daughter of imagination. She is a flower&mdash;the very
+      flower of life&rsquo;s youth&mdash;in the midst of all the blossoms of her
+      garden. She unfolds to life and to love even as they unfold; she loves
+      rapturously even as they do under the sun and the azure; and she dies with
+      them when the sun&rsquo;s caress is gone and the chill of winter has fallen. At
+      the thought of her, one instinctively remembers Malherbe&rsquo;s &lsquo;Ode A Du
+      Perrier:&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     She to this earth belonged, where beauty fast
+          To direst fate is borne:
+     A rose, she lasted, as the roses last,
+          Only for one brief morn.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      French painters have made subjects of many episodes in M. Zola&rsquo;s works,
+      but none has been more popular with them than Albine&rsquo;s pathetic, perfumed
+      death amidst the flowers. I know several paintings of great merit which
+      that touching incident has inspired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine, if more or less unreal, a phantasm, the spirit as it were of
+      Nature incarnate in womanhood, is none the less the most delightful of M.
+      Zola&rsquo;s heroines. She smiles at us like the vision of perfect beauty and
+      perfect love which rises before us when our hearts are yet young and full
+      of illusions. She is the ideal, the very quintessence of woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Serge Mouret, her lover, we find a man who, in more than one respect,
+      recalls M. Zola&rsquo;s later hero, the Abbé Froment of &lsquo;Lourdes&rsquo; and &lsquo;Rome.&rsquo; He
+      has the same loving, yearning nature; he is born&mdash;absolutely like
+      Abbé Froment&mdash;of an unbelieving father and a mother of mystical mind.
+      But unlike Froment he cannot shake off the shackles of his priesthood.
+      Reborn to life after his dangerous illness, he relapses into the religion
+      of death, the religion which regards life as impurity, which denies
+      Nature&rsquo;s laws, and so often wrecks human existence, as if indeed that had
+      been the Divine purpose in setting man upon earth. His struggles suggest
+      various passages in &lsquo;Lourdes&rsquo; and &lsquo;Rome.&rsquo; In fact, in writing those works,
+      M. Zola must have had his earlier creation in mind. There are passages in
+      &lsquo;La Faute de l&rsquo;Abbé Mouret&rsquo; culled from the writings of the Spanish Jesuit
+      Fathers and the &lsquo;Imitation&rsquo; of Thomas à Kempis that recur almost word for
+      word in the Trilogy of the Three Cities. Some might regard this as
+      evidence of the limitation of M. Zola&rsquo;s powers, but I think differently. I
+      consider that he has in both instances designedly taken the same type of
+      priest in order to show how he may live under varied circumstances; for in
+      the earlier instance he has led him to one goal, and in the later one to
+      another. And the passages of prayer, entreaty, and spiritual conflict
+      simply recur because they are germane, even necessary, to the subject in
+      both cases.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of the minor characters that figure in &lsquo;La Faute de l&rsquo;Abbé Mouret&rsquo; the
+      chief thing to be said is that they are lifelike. If Serge is almost
+      wholly spiritual, if Albine is the daughter of poesy, they, the others,
+      are of the earth earthy. As a result of their appearance on the scene,
+      there are some powerful contrasting passages in the book. Archangias, the
+      coarse and brutal Christian Brother who serves as a foil to Abbé Mouret;
+      La Teuse, the priest&rsquo;s garrulous old housekeeper; Desirée, his &lsquo;innocent&rsquo; 
+      sister, a grown woman with the mind of a child and an almost crazy
+      affection for every kind of bird and beast, are all admirably portrayed.
+      Old Bambousse, though one sees but little of him, stands out as a genuine
+      type of the hard-headed French peasant, who invariably places pecuniary
+      considerations before all others. And Fortune and Rosalie, Vincent and
+      Catherine, and their companions, are equally true to nature. It need
+      hardly be said that there is many a village in France similar to Les
+      Artaud. That hamlet&rsquo;s shameless, purely animal life has in no wise been
+      over-pictured by M. Zola. Those who might doubt him need not go as far as
+      Provence to find such communities. Many Norman hamlets are every whit as
+      bad, and, in Normandy, conditions are aggravated by a marked predilection
+      for the bottle, which, as French social-scientists have been pointing out
+      for some years now, is fast hastening the degenerescence of the peasantry,
+      both morally and physically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With reference to the English version of &lsquo;La Faute de l&rsquo;Abbé Mouret&rsquo; 
+      herewith presented, I may just say that I have subjected it to
+      considerable revision and have retranslated all the more important
+      passages myself.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     MERTON, SURREY.                                    E. A. V.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      ABBÉ MOURET&rsquo;S TRANSGRESSION
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As La Teuse entered the church she rested her broom and feather-brush
+      against the altar. She was late, as she had that day began her half-yearly
+      wash. Limping more than ever in her haste and hustling the benches, she
+      went down the church to ring the <i>Angelus</i>. The bare, worn bell-rope
+      dangled from the ceiling near the confessional, and ended in a big knot
+      greasy from handling. Again and again, with regular jumps, she hung
+      herself upon it; and then let her whole bulky figure go with it, whirling
+      in her petticoats, her cap awry, and her blood rushing to her broad face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having set her cap straight with a little pat, she came back breathless to
+      give a hasty sweep before the altar. Every day the dust persistently
+      settled between the disjoined boards of the platform. Her broom rummaged
+      among the corners with an angry rumble. Then she lifted the altar cover
+      and was sorely vexed to find that the large upper cloth, already darned in
+      a score of places, was again worn through in the very middle, so as to
+      show the under cloth, which in its turn was so worn and so transparent
+      that one could see the consecrated stone, embedded in the painted wood of
+      the altar. La Teuse dusted the linen, yellow from long usage, and plied
+      her feather-brush along the shelf against which she set the liturgical
+      altar-cards. Then, climbing upon a chair, she removed the yellow cotton
+      covers from the crucifix and two of the candlesticks. The brass of the
+      latter was tarnished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Dear me!&rsquo; she muttered, &lsquo;they really want a clean! I must give them a
+      polish up!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then hopping on one leg, swaying and stumping heavily enough to drive in
+      the flagstones, she hastened to the sacristy for the Missal, which she
+      placed unopened on the lectern on the Epistle side, with its edges turned
+      towards the middle of the altar. And afterwards she lighted the two
+      candles. As she went off with her broom, she gave a glance round her to
+      make sure that the abode of the Divinity had been put in proper order. All
+      was still, save that the bell-rope near the confessional still swung
+      between roof and floor with a sinuous sweep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret had just come down to the sacristy, a small and chilly
+      apartment, which a passage separated from his dining-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good morning, Monsieur le Curé,&rsquo; said La Teuse, laying her broom aside.
+      &lsquo;Oh! you have been lazy this morning! Do you know it&rsquo;s a quarter past
+      six?&rsquo; And without allowing the smiling young priest sufficient time to
+      reply, she added &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve a scolding to give you. There&rsquo;s another hole in the
+      cloth again. There&rsquo;s no sense in it. We have only one other, and I&rsquo;ve been
+      ruining my eyes over it these three days in trying to mend it. You will
+      leave our poor Lord quite bare, if you go on like this.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret was still smiling. &lsquo;Jesus does not need so much linen, my good
+      Teuse,&rsquo; he cheerfully replied. &lsquo;He is always warm, always royally received
+      by those who love Him well.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then stepping towards a small tap, he asked: &lsquo;Is my sister up yet? I have
+      not seen her.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, Mademoiselle Desirée has been down a long time,&rsquo; answered the
+      servant, who was kneeling before an old kitchen sideboard in which the
+      sacred vestments were kept. &lsquo;She is already with her fowls and rabbits.
+      She was expecting some chicks to be hatched yesterday, and it didn&rsquo;t come
+      off. So you can guess her excitement.&rsquo; Then the worthy woman broke off to
+      inquire: &lsquo;The gold chasuble, eh?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest, who had washed his hands and stood reverently murmuring a
+      prayer, nodded affirmatively. The parish possessed only three chasubles: a
+      violet one, a black one, and one in cloth-of-gold. The last had to be used
+      on the days when white, red, or green was prescribed by the ritual, and it
+      was therefore an all important garment. La Teuse lifted it reverently from
+      the shelf covered with blue paper, on which she laid it after each
+      service; and having placed it on the sideboard, she cautiously removed the
+      fine cloths which protected its embroidery. A golden lamb slumbered on a
+      golden cross, surrounded by broad rays of gold. The gold tissue, frayed at
+      the folds, broke out in little slender tufts; the embossed ornaments were
+      getting tarnished and worn. There was perpetual anxiety, fluttering
+      concern, at seeing it thus go off spangle by spangle. The priest had to
+      wear it almost every day. And how on earth could it be replaced&mdash;how
+      would they be able to buy the three chasubles whose place it took, when
+      the last gold threads should be worn out?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon the chasuble La Teuse next laid out the stole, the maniple, the
+      girdle, alb and amice. But her tongue still wagged while she crossed the
+      stole with the maniple, and wreathed the girdle so as to trace the
+      venerated initial of Mary&rsquo;s holy name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That girdle is not up to much now,&rsquo; she muttered; &lsquo;you will have to make
+      up your mind to get another, your reverence. It wouldn&rsquo;t be very hard; I
+      could plait you one myself if I only had some hemp.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret made no answer. He was dressing the chalice at a small table.
+      A large old silver-gilt chalice it was with a bronze base, which he had
+      just taken from the bottom of a deal cupboard, in which the sacred vessels
+      and linen, the Holy Oils, the Missals, candlesticks, and crosses were
+      kept. Across the cup he laid a clean purificator, and on this set the
+      silver-gilt paten, with the host in it, which he covered with a small lawn
+      pall. As he was hiding the chalice by gathering together the folds in the
+      veil of cloth of gold matching the chasuble, La Teuse exclaimed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Stop, there&rsquo;s no corporal in the burse. Last night I took all the dirty
+      purificators, palls, and corporals to wash them&mdash;separately, of
+      course&mdash;not with the house-wash. By-the-bye, your reverence, I didn&rsquo;t
+      tell you: I have just started the house-wash. A fine fat one it will be!
+      Better than the last.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then while the priest slipped a corporal into the burse and laid the
+      latter on the veil, she went on quickly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;By-the-bye, I forgot! that gadabout Vincent hasn&rsquo;t come. Do you wish me
+      to serve your mass, your reverence?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young priest eyed her sternly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, it isn&rsquo;t a sin,&rsquo; she continued, with her genial smile. &lsquo;I did serve
+      a mass once, in Monsieur Caffin&rsquo;s time. I serve it better, too, than
+      ragamuffins who laugh like heathens at seeing a fly buzzing about the
+      church. True I may wear a cap, I may be sixty years old, and as round as a
+      tub, but I have more respect for our Lord than those imps of boys whom I
+      caught only the other day playing at leap-frog behind the altar.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest was still looking at her and shaking his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What a hole this village is!&rsquo; she grumbled. &lsquo;Not a hundred and fifty
+      people in it! There are days, like to-day, when you wouldn&rsquo;t find a living
+      soul in Les Artaud. Even the babies in swaddling clothes are gone to the
+      vineyards! And goodness knows what they do among such vines&mdash;vines
+      that grow under the pebbles and look as dry as thistles! A perfect
+      wilderness, three miles from any highway! Unless an angel comes down to
+      serve your mass, your reverence, you&rsquo;ve only got me to help you, on my
+      honour! or one of Mademoiselle Desirée&rsquo;s rabbits, no offence to your
+      reverence!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just at that moment, however, Vincent, the Brichets&rsquo; younger son, gently
+      opened the door of the sacristy. His shock of red hair and his little,
+      glistening, grey eyes exasperated La Teuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! the wretch!&rsquo; she cried. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll bet he&rsquo;s just been up to some mischief!
+      Come on, you scamp, since his reverence is afraid I might dirty our Lord!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On seeing the lad, Abbé Mouret had taken up the amice. He kissed the cross
+      embroidered in the centre of it, and for a second laid the cloth upon his
+      head; then lowering it over the collar-band of his cassock, he crossed it
+      and fastened the tapes, the right one over the left. He next donned the
+      alb, the symbol of purity, beginning with the right sleeve. Vincent
+      stooped and turned around him, adjusting the alb, in order that it should
+      fall evenly all round him to a couple of inches from the ground. Then he
+      presented the girdle to the priest, who fastened it tightly round his
+      loins, as a reminder of the bonds wherewith the Saviour was bound in His
+      Passion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      La Teuse remained standing there, feeling jealous and hurt and struggling
+      to keep silence; but so great was the itching of her tongue, that she soon
+      broke out once more: &lsquo;Brother Archangias has been here. He won&rsquo;t have a
+      single child at school to-day. He went off again like a whirlwind to pull
+      the brats&rsquo; ears in the vineyards. You had better see him. I believe he has
+      got something to say to you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret silenced her with a wave of the hand. Then he repeated the
+      usual prayers while he took the maniple&mdash;which he kissed before
+      slipping it over his left forearm, as a symbol of the practice of good
+      works&mdash;and while crossing on his breast the stole, the symbol of his
+      dignity and power. La Teuse had to help Vincent in the work of adjusting
+      the chasuble, which she fastened together with slender tapes, so that it
+      might not slip off behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Holy Virgin! I had forgotten the cruets!&rsquo; she stammered, rushing to the
+      cupboard. &lsquo;Come, look sharp, lad!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereupon Vincent filled the cruets, phials of coarse glass, while she
+      hastened to take a clean finger-cloth from a drawer. Abbé Mouret, holding
+      the chalice by its stem with his left hand, the fingers of his right
+      resting meanwhile on the burse, then bowed profoundly, but without
+      removing his biretta, to a black wooden crucifix, which hung over the
+      side-board. The lad bowed too, and, bearing the cruets covered with the
+      finger-cloth, led the way out of the sacristy, followed by the priest, who
+      walked on with downcast eyes, absorbed in deep and prayerful meditation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The empty church was quite white that May morning. The bell-rope near the
+      confessional hung motionless once more. The little bracket light, with its
+      stained glass shade, burned like a crimson splotch against the wall on the
+      right of the tabernacle. Vincent, having set the cruets on the credence,
+      came back and knelt just below the altar step on the left, while the
+      priest, after rendering homage to the Holy Sacrament by a genuflexion,
+      went up to the altar and there spread out the corporal, on the centre of
+      which he placed the chalice. Then, having opened the Missal, he came down
+      again. Another bend of the knee followed, and, after crossing himself and
+      uttering aloud the formula, &lsquo;In the name of the Father, the Son, and the
+      Holy Ghost,&rsquo; he raised his joined hands to his breast, and entered on the
+      great divine drama, with his countenance blanched by faith and love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Introibo ad altare Dei</i>.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Ad Deum qui loetificat juventutem meam</i>,&rsquo; gabbled Vincent, who,
+      squatting on his heels, mumbled the responses of the antiphon and the
+      psalm, while watching La Teuse as she roved about the church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old servant was gazing at one of the candles with a troubled look. Her
+      anxiety seemed to increase while the priest, bowing down with hands joined
+      again, recited the <i>Confiteor</i>. She stood still, in her turn struck
+      her breast, her head bowed, but still keeping a watchful eye on the taper.
+      For another minute the priest&rsquo;s grave voice and the server&rsquo;s stammers
+      alternated:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Dominus vobiscum</i>.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Et cum spiritu tuo</i>.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the priest, spreading out his hands and afterwards again joining
+      them, said with devout compunction: &lsquo;<i>Oremus</i>&rsquo; (Let us pray).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      La Teuse could now stand it no longer, but stepped behind the altar,
+      reached the guttering candle, and trimmed it with the points of her
+      scissors. Two large blobs of wax had already been wasted. When she came
+      back again putting the benches straight on her way, and making sure that
+      there was holy-water in the fonts, the priest, whose hands were resting on
+      the edge of the altar-cloth, was praying in subdued tones. And at last he
+      kissed the altar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Behind him, the little church still looked wan in the pale light of early
+      morn. The sun, as yet, was only level with the tiled roof. The <i>Kyrie
+      Eleisons</i> rang quiveringly through that sort of whitewashed stable with
+      flat ceiling and bedaubed beams. On either side three lofty windows of
+      plain glass, most of them cracked or smashed, let in a raw light of chalky
+      crudeness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The free air poured in as it listed, emphasising the naked poverty of the
+      God of that forlorn village. At the far end of the church, above the big
+      door which was never opened and the threshold of which was green with
+      weeds, a boarded gallery&mdash;reached by a common miller&rsquo;s ladder&mdash;stretched
+      from wall to wall. Dire were its creakings on festival days beneath the
+      weight of wooden shoes. Near the ladder stood the confessional, with
+      warped panels, painted a lemon yellow. Facing it, beside the little door,
+      stood the font&mdash;a former holy-water stoup resting on a stonework
+      pedestal. To the right and to the left, halfway down the church, two
+      narrow altars stood against the wall, surrounded by wooden balustrades. On
+      the left-hand one, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, was a large gilded
+      plaster statue of the Mother of God, wearing a regal gold crown upon her
+      chestnut hair; while on her left arm sat the Divine Child, nude and
+      smiling, whose little hand raised the star-spangled orb of the universe.
+      The Virgin&rsquo;s feet were poised on clouds, and beneath them peeped the heads
+      of winged cherubs. Then the right-hand altar, used for the masses for the
+      dead, was surmounted by a crucifix of painted papier-mache&mdash;a
+      pendant, as it were, to the Virgin&rsquo;s effigy. The figure of Christ, as
+      large as a child of ten years old, showed Him in all the horror of His
+      death-throes, with head thrown back, ribs projecting, abdomen hollowed in,
+      and limbs distorted and splashed with blood. There was a pulpit, too&mdash;a
+      square box reached by a five-step block&mdash;near a clock with running
+      weights, in a walnut case, whose thuds shook the whole church like the
+      beatings of some huge heart concealed, it might be, under the stone flags.
+      All along the nave the fourteen Stations of the Cross, fourteen coarsely
+      coloured prints in narrow black frames, bespeckled the staring whiteness
+      of the walls with the yellow, blue, and scarlet of scenes from the
+      Passion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Deo Gratias</i>,&rsquo; stuttered out Vincent at the end of the Epistle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mystery of love, the immolation of the Holy Victim, was about to
+      begin. The server took the Missal and bore it to the left, or Gospel-side,
+      of the altar, taking care not to touch the pages of the book. Each time he
+      passed before the tabernacle he made a genuflexion slantwise, which threw
+      him all askew. Returning to the right-hand side once more, he stood
+      upright with crossed arms during the reading of the Gospel. The priest,
+      after making the sign of the cross upon the Missal, next crossed himself:
+      first upon his forehead&mdash;to declare that he would never blush for the
+      divine word; then on his mouth&mdash;to show his unchanging readiness to
+      confess his faith; and finally on his heart&mdash;to mark that it belonged
+      to God alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Dominus vobiscum</i>,&rsquo; said he, turning round and facing the cold
+      white church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Et cum spiritu tuo</i>,&rsquo; answered Vincent, who once more was on his
+      knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Offertory having been recited, the priest uncovered the chalice. For a
+      moment he held before his breast the paten containing the host, which he
+      offered up to God, for himself, for those present, and for all the
+      faithful, living and dead. Then, slipping it on to the edge of the
+      corporal without touching it with his fingers, he took up the chalice and
+      carefully wiped it with the purificator. Vincent had in the meanwhile
+      fetched the cruets from the credence table, and now presented them in
+      turn, first the wine and then the water. The priest then offered up on
+      behalf of the whole world the half-filled chalice, which he next replaced
+      upon the corporal and covered with the pall. Then once again he prayed,
+      and returned to the side of the altar where the server let a little water
+      dribble over his thumbs and forefingers to purify him from the slightest
+      sinful stain. When he had dried his hands on the finger-cloth, La Teuse&mdash;who
+      stood there waiting&mdash;emptied the cruet-salver into a zinc pail at the
+      corner of the altar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Orate, fratres</i>,&rsquo; resumed the priest aloud as he faced the empty
+      benches, extending and reclasping his hands in a gesture of appeal to all
+      men of good-will. And turning again towards the altar, he continued his
+      prayer in a lower tone, while Vincent began to mutter a long Latin
+      sentence in which he eventually got lost. Now it was that the yellow
+      sunbeams began to dart through the windows; called, as it were, by the
+      priest, the sun itself had come to mass, throwing golden sheets of light
+      upon the left-hand wall, the confessional, the Virgin&rsquo;s altar, and the big
+      clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A gentle creak came from the confessional; the Mother of God, in a halo,
+      in the dazzlement of her golden crown and mantle smiled tenderly with
+      tinted lips upon the infant Jesus; and the heated clock throbbed out the
+      time with quickening strokes. It seemed as if the sun peopled the benches
+      with the dusty motes that danced in his beams, as if the little church,
+      that whitened stable, were filled with a glowing throng. Without, were
+      heard the sounds that told of the happy waking of the countryside, the
+      blades of grass sighed out content, the damp leaves dried themselves in
+      the warmth, the birds pruned their feathers and took a first flit round.
+      And indeed the countryside itself seemed to enter with the sun; for beside
+      one of the windows a large rowan tree shot up, thrusting some of its
+      branches through the shattered panes and stretching out leafy buds as if
+      to take a peep within; while through the fissures of the great door the
+      weeds on the threshold threatened to encroach upon the nave. Amid all this
+      quickening life, the big Christ, still in shadow, alone displayed signs of
+      death, the sufferings of ochre-daubed and lake-bespattered flesh. A
+      sparrow raised himself up for a moment at the edge of a hole, took a
+      glance, then flew away; but only to reappear almost immediately when with
+      noiseless wing he dropped between the benches before the Virgin&rsquo;s altar. A
+      second sparrow followed; and soon from all the boughs of the rowan tree
+      came others that calmly hopped about the flags.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth</i>,&rsquo; said the priest
+      in a low tone, whilst slightly stooping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vincent rang the little bell thrice; and the sparrows, scared by the
+      sudden tinkling, flew off with such a mighty buzz of wings that La Teuse,
+      who had just gone back into the sacristy, came out again, grumbling; &lsquo;The
+      little rascals! they will mess everything. I&rsquo;ll bet that Mademoiselle
+      Desirée has been here again to scatter bread-crumbs for them.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dread moment was at hand. The body and the blood of a God were about
+      to descend upon the altar. The priest kissed the altar-cloth, clasped his
+      hands, and multiplied signs of the cross over host and chalice. The
+      prayers of the canon of the mass now fell from his lips in a very ecstasy
+      of humility and gratitude. His attitude, his gestures, the inflections of
+      his voice, all expressed his consciousness of his littleness, his emotion
+      at being selected for so great a task. Vincent came and knelt beside him,
+      lightly lifted the chasuble with his left hand, the bell ready in his
+      right; and the priest, his elbows resting on the edge of the altar,
+      holding the host with the thumbs and forefingers of both hands, pronounced
+      over it the words of consecration: <i>Hoc est enim corpus meum</i>. Then
+      having bowed the knee before it, he raised it slowly as high as his hands
+      could reach, following it upwards with his eyes, while the kneeling server
+      rang the bell thrice. Then he consecrated the wine&mdash;<i>Hic est enim
+      calix</i>&mdash;leaning once more upon his elbows, bowing, raising the cup
+      aloft, his right hand round the stem, his left holding its base, and his
+      eyes following it aloft. Again the server rang the bell three times. The
+      great mystery of the Redemption had once more been repeated, once more had
+      the adorable Blood flowed forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Just you wait a bit,&rsquo; growled La Teuse, as she tried to scare away the
+      sparrows with outstretched fist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the sparrows were now fearless. They had come back even while the bell
+      was ringing, and, unabashed, were fluttering about the benches. The
+      repeated tinklings even roused them into liveliness, and they answered
+      back with little chirps which crossed amid the Latin words of prayer, like
+      the rippling laughs of free urchins. The sun warmed their plumage, the
+      sweet poverty of the church captivated them. They felt at home there, as
+      in some barn whose shutters had been left open, and screeched, fought, and
+      squabbled over the crumbs they found upon the floor. One flew to perch
+      himself on the smiling Virgin&rsquo;s golden veil; another, whose daring put the
+      old servant in a towering rage, made a hasty reconnaissance of La Teuse&rsquo;s
+      skirts. And at the altar, the priest, with every faculty absorbed, his
+      eyes fixed upon the sacred host, his thumbs and forefingers joined, did
+      not even hear this invasion of the warm May morning, this rising flood of
+      sunlight, greenery and birds, which overflowed even to the foot of the
+      Calvary where doomed nature was wrestling in the death-throes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Per omnia soecula soeculorum</i>,&rsquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Amen,&rsquo; answered Vincent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The <i>Pater</i> ended, the priest, holding the host over the chalice,
+      broke it in the centre. Detaching a particle from one of the halves, he
+      dropped it into the precious blood, to symbolise the intimate union into
+      which he was about to enter with God. He said the <i>Agnus Dei</i> aloud,
+      softly recited the three prescribed prayers, and made his act of
+      unworthiness, and then with his elbows resting on the altar, and with the
+      paten beneath his chin, he partook of both portions of the host at once.
+      After a fervent meditation, with his hands clasped before his face, he
+      took the paten and gathered from the corporal the sacred particles of the
+      host that had fallen, and dropped them into the chalice. One particle
+      which had adhered to his thumb he removed with his forefinger. And,
+      crossing himself, chalice in hand, with the paten once again below his
+      chin, he drank all the precious blood in three draughts, never taking his
+      lips from the cup&rsquo;s rim, but imbibing the divine Sacrifice to the last
+      drop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vincent had risen to fetch the cruets from the credence table. But
+      suddenly the door of the passage leading to the parsonage flew open and
+      swung back against the wall, to admit a handsome child-like girl of
+      twenty-two, who carried something hidden in her apron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thirteen of them,&rsquo; she called out. &lsquo;All the eggs were good.&rsquo; And she
+      opened out her apron and revealed a brood of little shivering chicks, with
+      sprouting down and beady black eyes. &lsquo;Do just look,&rsquo; said she; &lsquo;aren&rsquo;t
+      they sweet little pets, the darlings! Oh, look at the little white one
+      climbing on the others&rsquo; backs! and the spotted one already flapping his
+      tiny wings! The eggs were a splendid lot; not one of them unfertile.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      La Teuse, who was helping to serve the mass in spite of all prohibitions,
+      and was at that very moment handing the cruets to Vincent for the
+      ablutions, thereupon turned round and loudly exclaimed: &lsquo;Do be quiet,
+      Mademoiselle Desirée! Don&rsquo;t you see we haven&rsquo;t finished yet?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through the open doorway now came the strong smell of a farmyard, blowing
+      like some generative ferment into the church amidst the warm sunlight that
+      was creeping over the altar. Desirée stood there for a moment delighted
+      with the little ones she carried, watching Vincent pour, and her brother
+      drink, the purifying wine, in order that nought of the sacred elements
+      should be left within his mouth. And she stood there still when he came
+      back to the side of the altar, holding the chalice in both hands, so that
+      Vincent might pour over his forefingers and thumbs the wine and water of
+      ablution, which he likewise drank. But when the mother hen ran up clucking
+      with alarm to seek her little ones, and threatened to force her way into
+      the church, Desirée went off, talking maternally to her chicks, while the
+      priest, after pressing the purificator to his lips, wiped first the rim
+      and next the interior of the chalice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came the end, the act of thanksgiving to God. For the last time the
+      server removed the Missal, and brought it back to the right-hand side. The
+      priest replaced the purificator, paten, and pall upon the chalice; once
+      more pinched the two large folds of the veil together, and laid upon it
+      the burse containing the corporal. His whole being was now one act of
+      ardent thanksgiving. He besought from Heaven the forgiveness of his sins,
+      the grace of a holy life, and the reward of everlasting life. He remained
+      as if overwhelmed by this miracle of love, the ever-recurring immolation,
+      which sustained him day by day with the blood and flesh of his Savior.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having read the final prayers, he turned and said: &lsquo;<i>Ite, missa est</i>.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Deo gratias</i>,&rsquo; answered Vincent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And having turned back to kiss the altar, the priest faced round anew, his
+      left hand just below his breast, his right outstretched whilst blessing
+      the church, which the gladsome sunbeams and noisy sparrows filled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus, Pater et Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus</i>.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Amen</i>,&rsquo; said the server, as he crossed himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun had risen higher, and the sparrows were growing bolder. While the
+      priest read from the left-hand altar-card the passage of the Gospel of St.
+      John, announcing the eternity of the Word, the sunrays set the altar
+      ablaze, whitened the panels of imitation marble, and dimmed the flame of
+      the two candles, whose short wicks were now merely two dull spots. The
+      victorious orb enveloped with his glory the crucifix, the candlesticks,
+      the chasuble, the veil of the chalice&mdash;all the gold work that paled
+      beneath his beams. And when at last the priest, after taking the chalice
+      in his hands and making a genuflexion, covered his head and turned from
+      the altar to follow the server, laden with the cruets and finger-cloth, to
+      the sacristy, the planet remained sole master of the church. Its rays in
+      turn now rested on the altar-cloth, irradiating the tabernacle-door with
+      splendour, and celebrating the fertile powers of May. Warmth rose from the
+      stone flags. The daubed walls, the tall Virgin, the huge Christ, too, all
+      seemed to quiver as with shooting sap, as if death had been conquered by
+      the earth&rsquo;s eternal youth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Le Teuse hastily put out the candles, but lingered to make one last
+      attempt to drive away the sparrows, and so when she returned to the
+      sacristy with the Missal she no longer found Abbé Mouret there. Having
+      washed his hands and put away the sacred vessels and vestments, he was now
+      standing in the dining room, breakfasting off a cup of milk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You really ought to prevent your sister from scattering bread in the
+      church,&rsquo; said La Teuse on coming in. &lsquo;It was last winter she hit upon that
+      pretty prank. She said the sparrows were cold, and that God might well
+      give them some food. You see, she&rsquo;ll end by making us sleep with all her
+      fowls and rabbits.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We should be all the warmer,&rsquo; pleasantly replied the young priest. &lsquo;You
+      are always grumbling, La Teuse. Do let our poor Desirée pet her animals.
+      She has no other pleasure, poor innocent!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The servant took her stand in the centre of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I do believe you yourself wouldn&rsquo;t mind a bit if the magpies actually
+      built their nests in the church. You never can see anything, everything
+      seems just what it ought to be to you. Your sister is precious lucky in
+      having had you to take charge of her when you left the seminary. No
+      father, no mother. I should like to know who would let her mess about as
+      she does in a farmyard.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then softening, she added in a gentler tone: &lsquo;To be sure, it would be a
+      pity to cross her. She hasn&rsquo;t a touch of malice in her. She&rsquo;s like a child
+      of ten, although she&rsquo;s one of the finest grown girls in the neighbourhood.
+      And I have to put her to bed, as you know, every night, and send her to
+      sleep with stories, just like a little child.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret had remained standing, finishing the cup of milk he held
+      between his fingers, which were slightly reddened by the chill atmosphere
+      of the dining-room&mdash;a large room with painted grey walls, a floor of
+      square tiles, and having no furniture beyond a table and a few chairs. La
+      Teuse picked up a napkin which she had laid at a corner of the table in
+      readiness for breakfast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It isn&rsquo;t much linen you dirty,&rsquo; she muttered. &lsquo;One would think you could
+      never sit down, that you are always just about to start off. Ah! if you
+      had known Monsieur Caffin, the poor dead priest whose place you have
+      taken! What a man he was for comfort! Why, he couldn&rsquo;t have digested his
+      food, if he had eaten standing. A Norman he was, from Canteleu, like
+      myself. I don&rsquo;t thank him, I tell you, for having brought me to such a
+      wild-beast country as this. When first we came, O, Lord! how bored we
+      were! But the poor priest had had some uncomfortable tales going about him
+      at home.... Why, sir, didn&rsquo;t you sweeten your milk, then? Aren&rsquo;t those the
+      two lumps of sugar?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest put down his cup.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, I must have forgotten, I believe,&rsquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      La Teuse stared at him and shrugged her shoulders. She folded up inside
+      the napkin a slice of stale home-made bread which had also been left
+      untouched on the table. Then just as the priest was about to go out, she
+      ran after him and knelt down at his feet, exclaiming: &lsquo;Stop, your
+      shoe-laces are not even fastened. I cannot imagine how your feet can stand
+      those peasant shoes, you&rsquo;re such a little, tender man and look as if you
+      had been preciously spoilt! Ah, the bishop must have known a deal about
+      you, to go and give you the poorest living in the department.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But it was I who chose Les Artaud,&rsquo; said the priest, breaking into
+      another smile. &lsquo;You are very bad-tempered this morning, La Teuse. Are we
+      not happy here? We have got all we want, and our life is as peaceful as if
+      in paradise.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She then restrained herself and laughed in her turn, saying: &lsquo;You are a
+      holy man, Monsieur le Curé. But come and see what a splendid wash I have
+      got. That will be better than squabbling with one another.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest was obliged to follow, for she might prevent him going out at
+      all if he did not compliment her on her washing. As he left the
+      dining-room he stumbled over a heap of rubbish in the passage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What is this?&rsquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, nothing,&rsquo; said La Teuse in her grimest tone. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s only the parsonage
+      coming down. However, you are quite content, you&rsquo;ve got all you want. Good
+      heavens! there are holes and to spare. Just look at that ceiling, now.
+      Isn&rsquo;t it cracked all over? If we don&rsquo;t get buried alive one of these days,
+      we shall owe a precious big taper to our guardian angel. However, if it
+      suits you&mdash;It&rsquo;s like the church. Those broken panes ought to have
+      been replaced these two years. In winter our Lord gets frozen with the
+      cold. Besides, it would keep out those rascally sparrows. I shall paste
+      paper over the holes. You see if I don&rsquo;t.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;A capital idea,&rsquo; murmured the priest, &lsquo;they might very well be pasted
+      over. As to the walls, they are stouter than we think. In my room, the
+      floor has only given way slightly in front of the window. The house will
+      see us all buried.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On reaching the little open shed near the kitchen, in order to please La
+      Teuse he went into ecstasies over the washing; he even had to dip his
+      fingers into it and feel it. This so pleased the old woman that her
+      attentions became quite motherly. She no longer scolded, but ran to fetch
+      a clothes-brush, saying: &lsquo;You surely are not going out with yesterday&rsquo;s
+      mud on your cassock! If you had left it out on the banister, it would be
+      clean now&mdash;it&rsquo;s still a good one. But do lift it up well when you
+      cross any field. The thistles tear everything.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While speaking she kept turning him round like a child, shaking him from
+      head to foot with her energetic brushing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There, there, that will do,&rsquo; he said, escaping from her at last. &lsquo;Take
+      care of Desirée, won&rsquo;t you? I will tell her I am going out.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at this minute a fresh clear voice called to him: &lsquo;Serge! Serge!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Desirée came flying up, her cheeks ruddy with glee, her head bare, her
+      black locks twisted tightly upon her neck, and her hands and arms
+      smothered up to the elbows with manure. She had been cleaning out her
+      poultry house. When she caught sight of her brother just about to go out
+      with his breviary under his arm, she laughed aloud, and kissed him on his
+      mouth, with her arms thrown back behind her to avoid soiling him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, no,&rsquo; she hurriedly exclaimed, &lsquo;I should dirty you. Oh! I am having
+      such fun! You must see the animals when you come back.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereupon she fled away again. Abbé Mouret then said that he would be back
+      about eleven for luncheon, and as he started, La Teuse, who had followed
+      him to the doorstep, shouted after him her last injunctions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t forget to see Brother Archangias. And look in also at the
+      Brichets&rsquo;; the wife came again yesterday about that wedding. Just listen,
+      Monsieur le Curé! I met their Rosalie. She&rsquo;d ask nothing better than to
+      marry big Fortune. Have a talk with old Bambousse; perhaps he will listen
+      to you now. And don&rsquo;t come back at twelve o&rsquo;clock, like the other day.
+      Come, say you&rsquo;ll be back at eleven, won&rsquo;t you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the priest turned round no more. So she went in again, growling
+      between her teeth:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;When does he ever listen to me? Barely twenty-six years old and does just
+      as he likes. To be sure, he&rsquo;s an old man of sixty for holiness; but then
+      he has never known life; he knows nothing, it&rsquo;s no trouble to him to be as
+      good as a cherub!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When Abbé Mouret had got beyond all hearing of La Teuse he stopped,
+      thankful to be alone at last. The church was built on a hillock, which
+      sloped down gently to the village. With its large gaping windows and
+      bright red tiles, it stretched out like a deserted sheep-cote. The priest
+      turned round and glanced at the parsonage, a greyish building springing
+      from the very side of the church; but as if fearful that he might again be
+      overtaken by the interminable chatter that had been buzzing in his ears
+      ever since morning, he turned up to the right again, and only felt safe
+      when he at last stood before the great doorway, where he could not be seen
+      from the parsonage. The front of the church, quite bare and worn by the
+      sunshine and rain of years, was crowned by a narrow open stone belfry, in
+      which a small bell showed its black silhouette, whilst its rope
+      disappeared through the tiles. Six broken steps, on one side half buried
+      in the earth, led up to the lofty arched door, now cracked, smothered with
+      dust and rust and cobwebs, and so frailly hung upon its outwrenched hinges
+      that it seemed as if the first slight puff would secure free entrance to
+      the winds of heaven. Abbé Mouret, who had an affection for this
+      dilapidated door, leaned against one of its leaves as he stood upon the
+      steps. Thence he could survey the whole country round at a glance. And
+      shading his eyes with his hands he scanned the horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the month of May exuberant vegetation burst forth from that stony soil.
+      Gigantic lavenders, juniper bushes, patches of rank herbage swarmed over
+      the church threshold, and scattered clumps of dark greenery even to the
+      very tiles. It seemed as if the first throb of shooting sap in the tough
+      matted underwood might well topple the church over. At that early hour,
+      amid all the travail of nature&rsquo;s growth, there was a hum of vivifying
+      warmth, and the very rocks quivered as with a long and silent effort. But
+      the Abbé failed to comprehend the ardour of nature&rsquo;s painful labour; he
+      simply thought that the steps were tottering, and thereupon leant against
+      the other side of the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The countryside stretched away for a distance of six miles, bounded by a
+      wall of tawny hills speckled with black pine-woods. It was a fearful
+      landscape of arid wastes and rocky spurs rending the soil. The few patches
+      of arable ground were like scattered pools of blood, red fields with rows
+      of lean almond trees, grey-topped olive trees and long lines of vines,
+      streaking the soil with their brown stems. It was as if some huge
+      conflagration had swept by there, scattering the ashes of forests over the
+      hill-tops, consuming all the grass of the meadow lands, and leaving its
+      glare and furnace-like heat behind in the hollows. Only here and there was
+      the softer note of a pale green patch of growing corn. The landscape
+      generally was wild, lacking even a threadlet of water, dying of thirst,
+      and flying away in clouds of dust at the least breath of wind. But at the
+      farthest point where the crumbling hills on the horizon had left a breach
+      one espied some distant fresh moist greenery, a stretch of the
+      neighbouring valley fertilised by the Viorne, a river flowing down from
+      the gorges of the Seille.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest lowered his dazzled glance upon the village, whose few
+      scattered houses straggled away below the church&mdash;wretched hovels
+      they were of rubble and boards strewn along a narrow path without sign of
+      streets. There were about thirty of them altogether, some squatting amidst
+      muck-heaps, and black with woeful want; others roomier and more
+      cheerful-looking with their roofs of pinkish tiles. Strips of garden,
+      victoriously planted amidst stony soil, displayed plots of vegetables
+      enclosed by quickset hedges. At this hour Les Artaud was empty, not a
+      woman was at the windows, not a child was wallowing in the dust; parties
+      of fowls alone went to and fro, ferreting among the straw, seeking food up
+      to the very thresholds of the houses, whose open doors gaped in the
+      sunlight. A big black dog seated on his haunches at the entrance to the
+      village seemed to be mounting guard over it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Languor slowly stole over Abbé Mouret. The rising sun steeped him in such
+      warmth that he leant back against the church door pervaded by a feeling of
+      happy restfulness. His thoughts were dwelling on that hamlet of Les
+      Artaud, which had sprung up there among the stones like one of the knotty
+      growths of the valley. All its inhabitants were related, all bore the same
+      name, so that from their very cradle they were distinguished among
+      themselves by nicknames. An Artaud, their ancestor, had come hither and
+      settled like a pariah in this waste. His family had grown with all the
+      wild vitality of the herbage that sucked life from the rocky boulders. It
+      had at last become a tribe, a rural community, in which cousin-ships were
+      lost in the mists of centuries. They intermarried with shameless
+      promiscuity. Not an instance could be cited of any Artaud taking himself a
+      wife from any neighbouring village; only some of the girls occasionally
+      went elsewhere. The others were born and died fixed to that spot,
+      leisurely increasing and multiplying on their dunghills with the
+      irreflectiveness of trees, and with no definite notion of the world that
+      lay beyond the tawny rocks, in whose midst they vegetated. And yet there
+      were already rich and poor among them; fowls having at times disappeared,
+      the fowl-houses were now closed at night with stout padlocks; moreover one
+      Artaud had killed another Artaud one evening behind the mill. These folk,
+      begirt by that belt of desolate hills, were truly a people apart&mdash;a
+      race sprung from the soil, a miniature replica of mankind, three hundred
+      souls all told, beginning the centuries yet once again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Over the priest the sombre shadows of seminary life still hovered. For
+      years he had never seen the sun. He perceived it not even now, his eyes
+      closed and gazing inwards on his soul, and with no feeling for perishable
+      nature, fated to damnation, save contempt. For a long time in his hours of
+      devout thought he had dreamt of some hermit&rsquo;s desert, of some mountain
+      hole, where no living thing&mdash;neither being, plant, nor water&mdash;should
+      distract him from the contemplation of God. It was an impulse springing
+      from the purest love, from a loathing of all physical sensation. There,
+      dying to self, and with his back turned to the light of day, he would have
+      waited till he should cease to be, till nothing should remain of him but
+      the sovereign whiteness of the soul. To him heaven seemed all white, with
+      a luminous whiteness as if lilies there snowed down upon one, as if every
+      form of purity, innocence, and chastity there blazed. But his confessor
+      reproved him whenever he related his longings for solitude, his cravings
+      for an existence of Godlike purity; and recalled him to the struggles of
+      the Church, the necessary duties of the priesthood. Later on, after his
+      ordination, the young priest had come to Les Artaud at his own request,
+      there hoping to realise his dream of human annihilation. In that desolate
+      spot, on that barren soil, he might shut his ears to all worldly sounds,
+      and live the dreamy life of a saint. For some months past, in truth, his
+      existence had been wholly undisturbed, rarely had any thrill of the
+      village-life disturbed him; and even the sun&rsquo;s heat scarcely brought him
+      any glow of feeling as he walked the paths, his whole being wrapped in
+      heaven, heedless of the unceasing travail of life amidst which he moved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The big black dog watching over Les Artaud had determined to come up to
+      Abbé Mouret, and now sat upon its haunches at the priest&rsquo;s feet; but the
+      unconscious man remained absorbed amidst the sweetness of the morning. On
+      the previous evening he had begun the exercises of the Rosary, and to the
+      intercession of the Virgin with her Divine Son he attributed the great joy
+      which filled his soul. How despicable appeared all the good things of the
+      earth! How thankfully he recognised his poverty! When he entered into holy
+      orders, after losing on the same day both his father and his mother
+      through a tragedy the fearful details of which were even now unknown to
+      him,* he had relinquished all his share of their property to an elder
+      brother. His only remaining link with the world was his sister; he had
+      undertaken the care of her, stirred by a kind of religious affection for
+      her feeble intelligence. The dear innocent was so childish, such a very
+      little girl, that she recalled to him the poor in spirit to whom the
+      Gospel promises the kingdom of heaven. Of late, however, she had somewhat
+      disturbed him; she was growing too lusty, too full of health and life. But
+      his discomfort was yet of the slightest. His days were spent in that inner
+      life he had created for himself, for which he had relinquished all else.
+      He closed the portals of his senses, and sought to free himself from all
+      bodily needs, so that he might be but a soul enrapt in contemplation. To
+      him nature offered only snares and abominations; he gloried in maltreating
+      her, in despising her, in releasing himself from his human slime. And as
+      the just man must be a fool according to the world, he considered himself
+      an exile on this earth; his thoughts were solely fixed upon the favours of
+      Heaven, incapable as he was of understanding how an eternity of bliss
+      could be weighed against a few hours of perishable enjoyment. His reason
+      duped him and his senses lied; and if he advanced in virtue it was
+      particularly by humility and obedience. His wish was to be the last of
+      all, one subject to all, in order that the divine dew might fall upon his
+      heart as upon arid sand; he considered himself overwhelmed with reproach
+      and with confusion, unworthy of ever being saved from sin. He no longer
+      belonged to himself&mdash;blind, deaf, dead to the world as he was. He was
+      God&rsquo;s thing. And from the depth of the abjectness to which he sought to
+      plunge, Hosannahs suddenly bore him aloft, above the happy and the mighty
+      into the splendour of never-ending bliss.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  * This forms the subject of M. Zola&rsquo;s novel, <i>The Conquest of
+    Plassans</i>. ED.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Thus, at Les Artaud, Abbé Mouret had once more experienced, each time he
+      read the &lsquo;Imitation,&rsquo; the raptures of the cloistered life which he had
+      longed for at one time so ardently. As yet he had not had to fight any
+      battle. From the moment that he knelt down, he became perfect, absolutely
+      oblivious of the flesh, unresisting, undisturbed, as if overpowered by the
+      Divine grace. Such ecstasy at God&rsquo;s approach is well known to some young
+      priests: it is a blissful moment when all is hushed, and the only desire
+      is but a boundless craving for purity. From no human creature had he
+      sought his consolations. He who believes a certain thing to be all in all
+      cannot be troubled: and he did believe that God was all in all, and that
+      humility, obedience, and chastity were everything. He could remember
+      having heard temptation spoken of as an abominable torture that tries the
+      holiest. But he would only smile: God had never left him. He bore his
+      faith about him thus like a breast-plate protecting him from the slightest
+      breath of evil. He could recall how he had hidden himself and wept for
+      very love; he knew not whom he loved, but he wept for love, for love of
+      some one afar off. The recollection never failed to move him. Later on he
+      had decided on becoming a priest in order to satisfy that craving for a
+      superhuman affection which was his sole torment. He could not see where
+      greater love could be. In that state of life he satisfied his being, his
+      inherited predisposition, his youthful dreams, his first virile desires.
+      If temptation must come, he awaited it with the calmness of the seminarist
+      ignorant of the world. He felt that his manhood had been killed in him: it
+      gladdened him to feel himself a creature set apart, unsexed, turned from
+      the usual paths of life, and, as became a lamb of the Lord, marked with
+      the tonsure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      While the priest pondered the sun was heating the big church-door. Gilded
+      flies buzzed round a large flower that was blooming between two of the
+      church-door steps. Abbé Mouret, feeling slightly dazed, was at last about
+      to move away, when the big black dog sprang, barking violently, towards
+      the iron gate of the little graveyard on the left of the church. At the
+      same time a harsh voice called out: &lsquo;Ah! you young rascal! So you stop
+      away from school, and I find you in the graveyard! Oh, don&rsquo;t say no: I
+      have been watching you this quarter of an hour.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the priest stepped forward he saw Vincent, whom a Brother of the
+      Christian Schools was clutching tightly by the ear. The lad was suspended,
+      as it were, over a ravine skirting the graveyard, at the bottom of which
+      flowed the Mascle, a mountain torrent whose crystal waters plunged into
+      the Viorne, six miles away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Brother Archangias!&rsquo; softly called the priest, as if to appease the
+      fearful man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Brother, however, did not release the boy&rsquo;s ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, it&rsquo;s you, Monsieur le Curé?&rsquo; he growled. &lsquo;Just fancy, this rascal is
+      always poking his nose into the graveyard. I don&rsquo;t know what he can be up
+      to here. I ought to let go of him and let him smash his skull down there.
+      It would be what he deserves.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lad remained dumb, with his cunning eyes tight shut as he clung to the
+      bushes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Take care, Brother Archangias,&rsquo; continued the priest, &lsquo;he might slip.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he himself helped Vincent to scramble up again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come, my young friend, what were you doing there?&rsquo; he asked. &lsquo;You must
+      not go playing in graveyards.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lad had opened his eyes, and crept away, fearfully, from the Brother,
+      to place himself under the priest&rsquo;s protection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you,&rsquo; he said in a low voice, as he raised his bushy head.
+      &lsquo;There is a tomtit&rsquo;s nest in the brambles there, under that rock. For over
+      ten days I&rsquo;ve been watching it, and now the little ones are hatched, so I
+      came this morning after serving your mass.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;A tomtit&rsquo;s nest!&rsquo; exclaimed Brother Archangias. &lsquo;Wait a bit! wait a bit!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereupon he stepped aside, picked a clod of earth off a grave and flung
+      it into the brambles. But he missed the nest. Another clod, however, more
+      skilfully thrown upset the frail cradle, and precipitated the fledglings
+      into the torrent below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now, perhaps,&rsquo; he continued, clapping his hands to shake off the earth
+      that soiled them, &lsquo;you won&rsquo;t come roaming here any more, like a heathen;
+      the dead will pull your feet at night if you go walking over them again.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vincent, who had laughed at seeing the nest dive into the stream, looked
+      round him and shrugged his shoulders like one of strong mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m not afraid,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;Dead folk don&rsquo;t stir.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The graveyard, in truth, was not a place to inspire fear. It was a barren
+      piece of ground whose narrow paths were smothered by rank weeds. Here and
+      there the soil was bossy with mounds. A single tombstone, that of Abbé
+      Caffin, brand-new and upright, could be perceived in the centre of the
+      ground. Save this, all around there were only broken fragments of crosses,
+      withered tufts of box, and old slabs split and moss-eaten. There were not
+      two burials a year. Death seemed to make no dwelling in that waste spot,
+      whither La Teuse came every evening to fill her apron with grass for
+      Desirée&rsquo;s rabbits. A gigantic cypress tree, standing near the gate, alone
+      cast shadow upon the desert field. This cypress, a landmark visible for
+      nine miles around, was known to the whole countryside as the Solitaire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s full of lizards,&rsquo; added Vincent, looking at the cracks of the
+      church-wall. &lsquo;One could have a fine lark&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he sprang out with a bound on seeing the Brother lift his foot. The
+      latter proceeded to call the priest&rsquo;s attention to the dilapidated state
+      of the gate, which was not only eaten up with rust, but had one hinge off,
+      and the lock broken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It ought to be repaired,&rsquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret smiled, but made no reply. Addressing Vincent, who was romping
+      with the dog: &lsquo;I say, my boy,&rsquo; he asked, &lsquo;do you know where old Bambousse
+      is at work this morning?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lad glanced towards the horizon. &lsquo;He must be at his Olivettes field
+      now,&rsquo; he answered, pointing towards the left. &lsquo;But Voriau will show your
+      reverence the way. He&rsquo;s sure to know where his master is.&rsquo; And he clapped
+      his hands and called: &lsquo;Hie! Voriau! hie!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The big black dog paused a moment, wagging his tail, and seeking to read
+      the urchin&rsquo;s eyes. Then, barking joyfully, he set off down the slope to
+      the village. Abbé Mouret and Brother Archangias followed him, chatting. A
+      hundred yards further Vincent surreptitiously bolted, and again glided up
+      towards the church, keeping a watchful eye upon them, and ready to dart
+      behind a bush if they should look round. With adder-like suppleness, he
+      once more glided into the graveyard, that paradise full of lizards, nests,
+      and flowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, while Voriau led the way before them along the dusty road,
+      Brother Archangias was angrily saying to the priest: &lsquo;Let be! Monsieur le
+      Curé, they&rsquo;re spawn of damnation, those toads are! They ought to have
+      their backs broken, to make them pleasing to God. They grow up in
+      irreligion, like their fathers. Fifteen years have I been here, and not
+      one Christian have I been able to turn out. The minute they quit my hands,
+      good-bye! They think of nothing but their land, their vines, their
+      olive-trees. Not one ever sets foot in church. Brute beasts they are,
+      struggling with their stony fields! Guide them with the stick, Monsieur le
+      Curé, yes, the stick!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, after drawing breath, he added with a terrific wave of his hands:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Those Artauds, look you, are like the brambles over-running these rocks.
+      One stem has been enough to poison the whole district. They cling on, they
+      multiply, they live in spite of everything. Nothing short of fire from
+      heaven, as at Gomorrha, will clear it all away.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We should never despair of sinners,&rsquo; said Abbé Mouret, all inward
+      peacefulness, as he leisurely walked on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But these are the devil&rsquo;s own,&rsquo; broke in the Brother still more
+      violently. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve been a peasant, too. Up to eighteen I dug the earth; and
+      later on, when I was at the Training College, I had to sweep, pare
+      vegetables, do all the heavy work. It&rsquo;s not their toilsome labour I find
+      fault with. On the contrary, for God prefers the lowly. But the Artauds
+      live like beasts! They are like their dogs, they never attend mass, and
+      make a mock of the commandments of God and of the Church. They think of
+      nothing but their plots of lands, so sweet they are on them!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Voriau, his tail wagging, kept stopping and moving on again as soon as he
+      saw that they still followed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There certainly are some grievous things going on,&rsquo; said Abbé Mouret. &lsquo;My
+      predecessor, Abbé Caffin&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;A poor specimen,&rsquo; interrupted the Brother. &lsquo;He came here to us from
+      Normandy owing to some disreputable affair. Once here, his sole thought
+      was good living; he let everything go to rack and ruin.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, no, Abbé Caffin certainly did what he could; but I must own that his
+      efforts were all but barren in results. My own are mostly fruitless.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Brother Archangias shrugged his shoulders. He walked on for a minute in
+      silence, swaying his tall bony frame, which looked as if it had been
+      roughly fashioned with a hatchet. The sun beat down upon his neck,
+      shadowing his hard, sword-edged peasant&rsquo;s face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Listen to me, Monsieur le Curé,&rsquo; he said at last. &lsquo;I am too much beneath
+      you to lecture you; but still, I am almost double your age, I know this
+      part, and therefore I feel justified in telling you that you will gain
+      nothing by gentleness. The catechism, understand, is enough. God has no
+      mercy on the wicked. He burns them. Stick to that.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, as Abbé Mouret, whose head remained bowed, did not open his mouth,
+      he went on: &lsquo;Religion is leaving the country districts because it is made
+      over indulgent. It was respected when it spoke out like an unforgiving
+      mistress. I really don&rsquo;t know what they can teach you now in the
+      seminaries. The new priests weep like children with their parishioners.
+      God no longer seems the same. I dare say, Monsieur le Curé, that you don&rsquo;t
+      even know your catechism by heart now?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the priest, wounded by the imperiousness with which the Brother so
+      roughly sought to dominate him, looked up and dryly rejoined:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That will do, your zeal is very praiseworthy. But haven&rsquo;t you something
+      to tell me? You came to the parsonage this morning, did you not?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereupon Brother Archangias plumply answered: &lsquo;I had to tell you just
+      what I have told you. The Artauds live like pigs. Only yesterday I learned
+      that Rosalie, old Bambousse&rsquo;s eldest daughter, is in the family way. It
+      happens with all of them before they get married. And they simply laugh at
+      reproaches, as you know.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; murmured Abbé Mouret, &lsquo;it is a great scandal. I am just on my way
+      to see old Bambousse to speak to him about it; it is desirable that they
+      should be married as soon as possible. The child&rsquo;s father, it seems, is
+      Fortune, the Brichets&rsquo; eldest son. Unfortunately the Brichets are poor.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That Rosalie, now,&rsquo; continued the Brother, &lsquo;is just eighteen. Not four
+      years since I still had her under me at school, and she was already a
+      gadabout. I have now got her sister Catherine, a chit of eleven, who seems
+      likely to become even worse than her elder. One comes across her in every
+      corner with that little scamp, Vincent. It&rsquo;s no good, you may pull their
+      ears till they bleed, the woman always crops up in them. They carry
+      perdition about with them and are only fit to be thrown on a muck-heap.
+      What a splendid riddance if all girls were strangled at their birth!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His loathing, his hatred of woman made him swear like a carter. Abbé
+      Mouret, who had been listening to him with unmoved countenance, smiled at
+      last at his rabid utterances. He called Voriau, who had strayed into a
+      field close by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There, look there!&rsquo; cried Brother Archangias, pointing to a group of
+      children playing at the bottom of a ravine, &lsquo;there are my young devils,
+      who play the truant under pretence of going to help their parents among
+      the vines! You may be certain that jade of a Catherine is among them....
+      There, didn&rsquo;t I tell you! Till to-night, Monsieur le Curé. Oh, just you
+      wait, you rascals!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Off he went at a run, his dirty neckband flying over his shoulder, and his
+      big greasy cassock tearing up the thistles. Abbé Mouret watched him swoop
+      down into the midst of the children, who scattered like frightened
+      sparrows. But he succeeded in seizing Catherine and one boy by the ears
+      and led them back towards the village, clutching them tightly with his big
+      hairy fingers, and overwhelming them with abuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest walked on again. Brother Archangias sometimes aroused strange
+      scruples in his mind. With his vulgarity and coarseness the Brother seemed
+      to him the true man of God, free from earthly ties, submissive in all to
+      Heaven&rsquo;s will, humble, blunt, ready to shower abuse upon sin. He, the
+      priest, would then feel despair at his inability to rid himself more
+      completely of his body; he regretted that he was not ugly, unclean,
+      covered with vermin like some of the saints. Whenever the Brother had
+      wounded him by some words of excessive coarseness, or by some over-hasty
+      churlishness, he would blame himself for his refinement, his innate
+      shrinking, as if these were really faults. Ought he not to be dead to all
+      the weaknesses of this world? And this time also he smiled sadly as he
+      thought how near he had been to losing his temper at the Brother&rsquo;s roughly
+      put lesson. It was pride, it seemed to him, seeking to work his perdition
+      by making him despise the lowly. However, in spite of himself, he felt
+      relieved at being alone again, at being able to walk on gently, reading
+      his breviary, free at last from the grating voice that had disturbed his
+      dream of heavenly love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The road wound on between fallen rocks, among which the peasants had
+      succeeded here and there in reclaiming six or seven yards of chalky soil,
+      planted with old olive trees. Under the priest&rsquo;s feet the dust in the deep
+      ruts crackled lightly like snow. At times, as he felt a warmer puff upon
+      his face, he would raise his eyes from his book, as if to seek whence came
+      this soft caress; but his gaze was vacant, straying without perception
+      over the glowing horizon, over the twisted outlines of that
+      passion-breathing landscape as it stretched out in the sun before him,
+      dry, barren, despairing of the fertilisation for which it longed. And he
+      would lower his hat over his forehead to protect himself against the warm
+      breeze and tranquilly resume his reading, his cassock raising behind him a
+      cloudlet of dust which rolled along the surface of the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good morning, Monsieur le Curé,&rsquo; a passing peasant said to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sounds of digging alongside the cultivated strips of ground again roused
+      him from his abstraction. He turned his head and perceived big
+      knotty-limbed old men greeting him from among the vines. The Artauds were
+      eagerly satisfying their passion for the soil, in the sun&rsquo;s full blaze.
+      Sweating brows appeared from behind the bushes, heaving chests were slowly
+      raised, the whole scene was one of ardent fructification, through which he
+      moved with the calm step born of ignorance. No discomfort came to him from
+      the great travail of love that permeated that splendid morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Steady! Voriau, you mustn&rsquo;t eat people!&rsquo; some one gaily shouted in a
+      powerful voice by way of silencing the dog&rsquo;s loud barks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret looked up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! it&rsquo;s you. Fortune?&rsquo; he said, approaching the edge of the field in
+      which the young peasant was at work. &lsquo;I was just on my way to speak to
+      you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortune was of the same age as the priest: a bigly built, bold-looking
+      young fellow, with skin already hardened. He was clearing a small plot of
+      stony heath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What about, Monsieur le Curé?&rsquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;About Rosalie and you,&rsquo; replied the priest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortune began to laugh. Perhaps he thought it droll that a priest should
+      interest himself in such a matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well,&rsquo; he muttered, &lsquo;I&rsquo;m not to blame in it nor she either. So much the
+      worse if old Bambousse refuses to let me have her. You saw yourself how
+      his dog was trying to bite me just now; he sets him on me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, as Abbé Mouret was about to continue, old Artaud, called Brichet,
+      whom he had not previously perceived, emerged from the shadow of a bush
+      behind which he and his wife were eating. He was a little man, withered by
+      age, with a cringing face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Your reverence must have been told a pack of lies,&rsquo; he exclaimed. &lsquo;The
+      youngster is quite ready to marry Rosalie. What&rsquo;s happened isn&rsquo;t anybody&rsquo;s
+      fault. It has happened to others who got on all right just the same. The
+      matter doesn&rsquo;t rest with us. You ought to speak to Bambousse. He&rsquo;s the one
+      who looks down on us because he&rsquo;s got money.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, we are very poor,&rsquo; whined his wife, a tall lachrymose woman, who
+      also rose to her feet. &lsquo;We&rsquo;ve only this scrap of ground where the very
+      devil seems to have been hailing stones. Not a bite of bread from it,
+      even. Without you, your reverence, life would be impossible.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Brichet&rsquo;s wife was the one solitary devotee of the village. Whenever she
+      had been to communion, she would hang about the parsonage, well knowing
+      that La Teuse always kept a couple of loaves for her from her last baking.
+      At times she was even able to carry off a rabbit or a fowl given her by
+      Desirée.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There&rsquo;s no end to the scandals,&rsquo; continued the priest. &lsquo;The marriage must
+      take place without delay.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! at once! as soon as the others are agreeable,&rsquo; said the old woman,
+      alarmed about her periodical presents. &lsquo;What do you say, Brichet? we are
+      not such bad Christians as to go against his reverence?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortune sniggered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m quite ready,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;and so is Rosalie. I saw her yesterday at
+      the back of the mill. We haven&rsquo;t quarrelled. We stopped there to have a
+      bit of a laugh.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Abbé Mouret interrupted him: &lsquo;Very well, I am now going to speak to
+      Bambousse. He is over there, at Les Olivettes, I believe.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest was going off when the mother asked him what had become of her
+      younger son Vincent, who had left in the early morning to serve mass.
+      There was a lad now who badly needed his reverence&rsquo;s admonitions. And she
+      walked by the priest&rsquo;s side for another hundred yards, bemoaning her
+      poverty, the failure of the potato crop, the frost which had nipped the
+      olive trees, the hot weather which threatened to scorch up the scanty
+      corn. Then, as she left him, she solemnly declared that her son Fortune
+      always said his prayers, both morning and evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Voriau now ran on in front, and suddenly, at a turn in the road, he bolted
+      across the fields. The priest then struck into a small path leading up a
+      low hill. He was now at Les Olivettes, the most fertile spot in the
+      neighbourhood, where the mayor of the commune, Artaud, otherwise
+      Bambousse, owned several fields of corn, olive plantations, and vines. The
+      dog was now romping round the skirts of a tall brunette, who burst into a
+      loud laugh as she caught sight of the priest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Is your father here, Rosalie?&rsquo; the latter asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, just across there,&rsquo; she said, pointing with her hand and still
+      smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leaving the part of the field she had been weeding, she walked on before
+      him with the vigorous springiness of a hard-working woman, her head
+      unshielded from the sun, her neck all sunburnt, her hair black and coarse
+      like a horse&rsquo;s mane. Her green-stained hands exhaled the odour of the
+      weeds she had been pulling up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Father,&rsquo; she called out, &lsquo;here&rsquo;s Monsieur le Curé asking for you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there she remained, bold, unblushing, with a sly smile still hovering
+      over her features. Bambousse, a stout, sweating, round-faced man, left his
+      work and gaily came towards the priest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;d take my oath you are going to speak to me about the repairs of the
+      church,&rsquo; he exclaimed, as he clapped his earthy hands. &lsquo;Well, then,
+      Monsieur le Curé, I can only say no, it&rsquo;s impossible. The commune hasn&rsquo;t
+      got the coin. If the Lord provides plaster and tiles, we&rsquo;ll provide the
+      workmen.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this jest of his the unbelieving peasant burst into a loud guffaw,
+      slapped his thighs, coughed, and almost choked himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It was not for the church I came,&rsquo; replied the Abbé Mouret. &lsquo;I wanted to
+      speak to you about your daughter Rosalie.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Rosalie? What has she done to you, then?&rsquo; inquired Bambousse, his eyes
+      blinking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl was boldly staring at the young priest, scrutinising his white
+      hands and slender, feminine neck, as if trying to make him redden. He,
+      however, bluntly and with unruffled countenance, as if speaking of
+      something quite indifferent, continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You know what I mean, Bambousse. She must get married.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, that&rsquo;s it, is it?&rsquo; muttered the old man, with a bantering look. &lsquo;Many
+      thanks for the message. The Brichets sent you, didn&rsquo;t they? Mother Brichet
+      goes to mass, and so you give her a helping hand to marry her son&mdash;it&rsquo;s
+      all very fine. But, I&rsquo;ve got nothing to do with that. It doesn&rsquo;t suit me.
+      That&rsquo;s all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereupon the astonished priest represented to him that the scandal must
+      be stopped, and that he ought to forgive Fortune, as the latter was
+      willing to make reparation for his transgression, and that, lastly, his
+      daughter&rsquo;s reputation demanded a speedy marriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ta, ta, ta,&rsquo; replied Bambousse, what a lot of words! I shall keep my
+      daughter, please understand it. All that&rsquo;s got nothing to do with me. That
+      Fortune is a beggarly pauper, without a brass farthing. What an easy job,
+      if one could marry a girl like that! At that rate we should have all the
+      young things marrying off morning and night. Thank Heaven! I&rsquo;m not worried
+      about Rosalie: everybody knows what has happened; but it makes no
+      difference. She can marry any one she chooses in the neighbourhood.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But the child?&rsquo; interrupted the priest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The child indeed! There&rsquo;ll be time enough to think of that when it&rsquo;s
+      born.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rosalie, perceiving the turn the priest&rsquo;s application was taking, now
+      thought it proper to ram her fists into her eyes and whimper. And she even
+      let herself fall upon the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Shut up, will you, you hussy!&rsquo; howled her father in a rage. And he
+      proceeded to revile her in the coarsest terms, which made her laugh
+      silently behind her clenched fists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You won&rsquo;t shut up? won&rsquo;t you? Just wait a minute then, you jade!&rsquo; 
+      continued old Bambousse. And thereupon he picked up a clod of earth and
+      flung it at her. It burst upon her knot of hair, crumbling down her neck
+      and smothering her in dust. Dizzy from the blow, she bounded to her feet
+      and fled, sheltering her head between her hands. But Bambousse had time to
+      fling two more clods at her, and if the first only grazed her left
+      shoulder, the next caught her full on the base of the spine, with such
+      force that she fell upon her knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Bambousse!&rsquo; cried the priest, as he wrenched from the peasant&rsquo;s hand a
+      number of stones which he had just picked up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Let be, Monsieur le Curé,&rsquo; said the other. &lsquo;It was only soft earth. I
+      ought to have thrown these stones at her. It&rsquo;s easy to see that you don&rsquo;t
+      know girls. Hard as nails, all of them. I might duck that one in the well,
+      I might break all her bones with a cudgel, and she&rsquo;d still be just the
+      same. But I&rsquo;ve got my eye on her, and if I catch her!... Ah! well, they
+      are all like that.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was already comforted. He took a good pull at a big flat bottle of
+      wine, encased in wicker-work, which lay warming on the hot ground. And
+      breaking once more into a laugh, he said: &lsquo;If I only had a glass, Monsieur
+      le Curé, I would offer you some with pleasure.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So then,&rsquo; again asked the priest, &lsquo;this marriage?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, it can&rsquo;t be; I should get laughed at. Rosalie is a stout wench. She&rsquo;s
+      worth a man to me. I shall have to hire a lad the day she goes off.... We
+      can have another talk about it after the vintage. Besides, I don&rsquo;t want to
+      be robbed. Give and take, say I. That&rsquo;s fair. What do you think?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless for another long half-hour did the priest remain there
+      preaching to Bambousse, speaking to him of God, and plying him with all
+      the reasons suited to the circumstances. But the old man had resumed his
+      work; he shrugged his shoulders, jested, and grew more and more obstinate.
+      At last, he broke out: &lsquo;But if you asked me for a sack of corn, you would
+      give me money, wouldn&rsquo;t you? So why do you want me to let my daughter go
+      for nothing?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Much discomfited, Abbé Mouret left him. As he went down the path he saw
+      Rosalie rolling about under an olive tree with Voriau, who was licking her
+      face. With her arms whirling, she kept on repeating: &lsquo;You tickle me, you
+      big stupid. Leave off!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she perceived the priest, she made an attempt at a blush, settled her
+      clothes, and once more raised her fists to her eyes. He, on his part,
+      sought to console her by promising to attempt some fresh efforts with her
+      father, adding that, in the meantime, she should do nothing to aggravate
+      her sin. And then, as she impudently smiled at him, he pictured hell,
+      where wicked women burn in torment. And afterwards he left her, his duty
+      done, his soul once more full of the serenity which enabled him to pass
+      undisturbed athwart the corruptions of the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The morning was becoming terribly hot. In that huge rocky amphitheatre the
+      sun kindled a furnace-like glare from the moment when the first fine
+      weather began. By the planet&rsquo;s height in the sky Abbé Mouret now perceived
+      that he had only just time to return home if he wished to get there by
+      eleven o&rsquo;clock and escape a scolding from La Teuse. Having finished
+      reading his breviary and made his application to Bambousse, he swiftly
+      retraced his steps, gazing as he went at his church, now a grey spot in
+      the distance, and at the black rigid silhouette which the big
+      cypress-tree, the Solitaire, set against the blue sky. Amidst the
+      drowsiness fostered by the heat, he thought of how richly that evening he
+      might decorate the Lady chapel for the devotions of the month of Mary.
+      Before him the road offered a carpet of dust, soft to the tread and of
+      dazzling whiteness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the Croix-Verte, as the Abbé was about to cross the highway leading
+      from Plassans to La Palud, a gig coming down the hill compelled him to
+      step behind a heap of stones. Then, as he crossed the open space, a voice
+      called to him: &lsquo;Hallo, Serge, my boy!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gig had pulled up and from it a man leant over. The priest recognised
+      him&mdash;he was an uncle of his, Doctor Pascal Rougon, or Monsieur
+      Pascal, as the poor folk of Plassans, whom he attended for nothing,
+      briefly styled him. Although barely over fifty, he was already snowy
+      white, with a big beard and abundant hair, amidst which his handsome
+      regular features took an expression of shrewdness and benevolence.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  * See M. Zola&rsquo;s novels, <i>Dr. Pascal</i> and <i>The Fortune of the
+    Rougons</i>.&mdash;ED.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So you potter about in the dust at this hour of the day?&rsquo; he said gaily,
+      as he stooped to grasp the Abbé&rsquo;s hands. &lsquo;You&rsquo;re not afraid of sunstroke?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No more than you are, uncle,&rsquo; answered the priest, laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, I have the hood of my trap to shield me. Besides, sick folks won&rsquo;t
+      wait. People die at all times, my boy.&rsquo; And he went on to relate that he
+      was now on his way to old Jeanbernat, the steward of the Paradou, who had
+      had an apoplectic stroke the night before. A neighbour, a peasant on his
+      way to Plassans market, had summoned him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He must be dead by this time,&rsquo; the doctor continued. &lsquo;However, we must
+      make sure.... Those old demons are jolly tough, you know.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was already raising his whip, when Abbé Mouret stopped him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Stay! what o&rsquo;clock do you make it, uncle?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;A quarter to eleven.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Abbé hesitated; he already seemed to hear La Teuse&rsquo;s terrible voice
+      bawling in his ears that his luncheon was getting cold. But he plucked up
+      courage and added swiftly: &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll go with you, uncle. The unhappy man may
+      wish to reconcile himself to God in his last hour.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Doctor Pascal could not restrain a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What, Jeanbernat!&rsquo; he said; &lsquo;ah, well! if ever you convert him! Never
+      mind, come all the same. The sight of you is enough to cure him.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest got in. The doctor, apparently regretting his jest, displayed
+      an affectionate warmth of manner, whilst from time to time clucking his
+      tongue by way of encouraging his horse. And out of the corner of his eye
+      he inquisitively observed his nephew with the keenness of a scientist bent
+      on taking notes. In short kindly sentences he inquired about his life, his
+      habits, and the peaceful happiness he enjoyed at Les Artaud. And at each
+      satisfactory reply he murmured, as if to himself in a tone of reassurance:
+      &lsquo;Come, so much the better; that&rsquo;s just as it should be!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He displayed peculiar anxiety about the young priest&rsquo;s state of health.
+      And Serge, greatly surprised, assured him that he was in splendid trim,
+      and had neither fits of giddiness or of nausea, nor headaches whatsoever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Capital, capital,&rsquo; reiterated his uncle Pascal. &lsquo;In spring, you see, the
+      blood is active. But you are sound enough. By-the-bye, I saw your brother
+      Octave at Marseilles last month. He is off to Paris, where he will get a
+      fine berth in a high-class business. The young beggar, a nice life he
+      leads.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What life?&rsquo; innocently inquired the priest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To avoid replying the doctor chirruped to his horse, and then went on:
+      &lsquo;Briefly, everybody is well&mdash;your aunt Felicite, your uncle Rougon,
+      and the others. Still, that does not hinder our needing your prayers. You
+      are the saint of the family, my lad; I rely upon you to save the whole
+      lot.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed, but in such a friendly, good-humoured way that Serge himself
+      began to indulge in jocularity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You see,&rsquo; continued Pascal, &lsquo;there are some among the lot whom it won&rsquo;t
+      be easy to lead to Paradise. Some nice confessions you&rsquo;d hear if all came
+      in turn. For my part, I can do without their confessions; I watch them
+      from a distance; I have got their records at home among my botanical
+      specimens and medical notes. Some day I shall be able to draw up a
+      wondrously interesting diagram. We shall see; we shall see!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was forgetting himself, carried away by his enthusiasm for science. A
+      glance at his nephew&rsquo;s cassock pulled him up short.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;As for you, you&rsquo;re a parson,&rsquo; he muttered; &lsquo;you did well; a parson&rsquo;s a
+      very happy man. The calling absorbs you, eh? And so you&rsquo;ve taken to the
+      good path. Well! you would never have been satisfied otherwise. Your
+      relatives, starting like you, have done a deal of evil, and still they are
+      unsatisfied. It&rsquo;s all logically perfect, my lad. A priest completes the
+      family. Besides, it was inevitable. Our blood was bound to run to that. So
+      much the better for you; you have had the most luck.&rsquo; Correcting himself,
+      however, with a strange smile, he added: &lsquo;No, it&rsquo;s your sister Desirée who
+      has had the best luck of all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He whistled, whipped up his horse, and changed the conversation. The gig,
+      after climbing a somewhat steep slope, was threading its way through
+      desolate ravines; at last it reached a tableland, where the hollow road
+      skirted an interminable and lofty wall. Les Artaud had disappeared; they
+      found themselves in the heart of a desert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We are getting near, are we not?&rsquo; asked the priest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;This is the Paradou,&rsquo; replied the doctor, pointing to the wall. &lsquo;Haven&rsquo;t
+      you been this way before, then? We are not three miles from Les Artaud. A
+      splendid property it must have been, this Paradou. The park wall this side
+      alone is quite a mile and a half long. But for over a hundred years it&rsquo;s
+      all been running wild.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There are some fine trees,&rsquo; observed the Abbé, as he looked up in
+      astonishment at the luxuriant mass of foliage which jutted over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, that part is very fertile. In fact, the park is a regular forest
+      amidst the bare rocks which surround it. The Mascle, too, rises there; I
+      have heard four or five springs mentioned, I fancy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In short sentences, interspersed with irrelevant digressions, he then
+      related the story of the Paradou, according to the current legend of the
+      countryside. In the time of Louis XV., a great lord had erected a
+      magnificent palace there, with vast gardens, fountains, trickling streams,
+      and statues&mdash;a miniature Versailles hidden away among the stones,
+      under the full blaze of the southern sun. But he had there spent but one
+      season with a lady of bewitching beauty, who doubtless died there, as none
+      had ever seen her leave. Next year the mansion was destroyed by fire, the
+      park doors were nailed up, the very loopholes of the walls were filled
+      with mould; and thus, since that remote time, not a glance had penetrated
+      that vast enclosure which covered the whole of one of the plateaux of the
+      Garrigue hills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There can be no lack of nettles there,&rsquo; laughingly said Abbé Mouret.
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t you find that the whole wall reeks of damp, uncle?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A pause followed, and he asked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And whom does the Paradou belong to now?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why, nobody knows,&rsquo; the doctor answered. &lsquo;The owner did come here once,
+      some twenty years ago. But he was so scared by the sight of this adders&rsquo; 
+      nest that he has never turned up since. The real master is the caretaker,
+      that old oddity, Jeanbernat, who has managed to find quarters in a lodge
+      where the stones still hang together. There it is, see&mdash;that grey
+      building yonder, with its windows all smothered in ivy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gig passed by a lordly iron gate, ruddy with rust, and lined inside
+      with a layer of boards. The wide dry throats were black with brambles. A
+      hundred yards further on was the lodge inhabited by Jeanbernat. It stood
+      within the park, which it overlooked. But the old keeper had apparently
+      blocked up that side of his dwelling, and had cleared a little garden by
+      the road. And there he lived, facing southwards, with his back turned upon
+      the Paradou, as if unaware of the immensity of verdure that stretched away
+      behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young priest jumped down, looking inquisitively around him and
+      questioning the doctor, who was hurriedly fastening the horse to a ring
+      fixed in the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And the old man lives all alone in this out-of-the-way hole?&rsquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, quite alone,&rsquo; replied his uncle, adding, however, the next minute:
+      &lsquo;Well, he has with him a niece whom he had to take in, a queer girl, a
+      regular savage. But we must make haste. The whole place looks death-like.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The house with its shutters closed seemed wrapped in slumber as it stood
+      there in the midday sun, amidst the hum of the big flies that swarmed all
+      up the ivy to the roof tiles. The sunlit ruin was steeped in happy
+      quietude. When the doctor had opened the gate of the narrow garden, which
+      was enclosed by a lofty quickset hedge, there, in the shadow cast by a
+      wall, they found Jeanbernat, tall and erect, and calmly smoking his pipe,
+      as in the deep silence he watched his vegetables grow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What, are you up then, you humbug?&rsquo; exclaimed the astonished doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So you were coming to bury me, were you?&rsquo; growled the old man harshly. &lsquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t want anybody. I bled myself.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped short as he caught sight of the priest, and assumed so
+      threatening an expression that the doctor hastened to intervene.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;This is my nephew,&rsquo; he said; &lsquo;the new Curé of Les Artaud&mdash;a good
+      fellow, too. Devil take it, we haven&rsquo;t been bowling over the roads at this
+      hour of the day to eat you, Jeanbernat.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man calmed down a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t want any shavelings here,&rsquo; he grumbled. &lsquo;They&rsquo;re enough to make
+      one croak. Mind, doctor, no priests, and no physics when I go off, or we
+      shall quarrel. Let him come in, however, as he is your nephew.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret, struck dumb with amazement, could not speak a word. He stood
+      there in the middle of the path scanning that strange solitaire, with
+      scorched, brick-tinted face, and limbs all withered and twisted like a
+      bundle of ropes, who seemed to bear the burden of his eighty years with a
+      scornful contempt for life. When the doctor attempted to feel his pulse,
+      his ill-humour broke out afresh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Do leave me in peace! I bled myself with my knife, I tell you. It&rsquo;s all
+      over, now. Who was the fool of a peasant who disturbed you? The doctor
+      here, and the priest as well, why not the mutes too! Well, it can&rsquo;t be
+      helped, people will be fools. It won&rsquo;t prevent us from having a drink,
+      eh?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He fetched a bottle and three glasses, and stood them on an old table
+      which he brought out into the shade. Then, having filled the glasses to
+      the brim, he insisted on clinking them. His anger had given place to
+      jeering cheerfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It won&rsquo;t poison you, Monsieur le Curé,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;A glass of good wine
+      isn&rsquo;t a sin. Upon my word, however, this is the first time I ever clinked
+      a glass with a cassock, but no offence to you. That poor Abbé Caffin, your
+      predecessor, refused to argue with me. He was afraid.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jeanbernat gave vent to a hearty laugh, and then went on: &lsquo;Just fancy, he
+      had pledged himself that he would prove to me that God exists. So,
+      whenever I met him, I defied him to do it; and he sloped off crestfallen,
+      I can tell you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What, God does not exist!&rsquo; cried Abbé Mouret, roused from his silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! just as you please,&rsquo; mockingly replied Jeanbernat. &lsquo;We&rsquo;ll begin
+      together all over again, if it&rsquo;s any pleasure to you. But I warn you that
+      I&rsquo;m a tough hand at it. There are some thousands of books in one of the
+      rooms upstairs, which were rescued from the fire at the Paradou: all the
+      philosophers of the eighteenth century, a whole heap of old books on
+      religion. I&rsquo;ve learned some fine things from them. I&rsquo;ve been reading them
+      these twenty years. Marry! you&rsquo;ll find you&rsquo;ve got some one who can talk,
+      Monsieur le Curé.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had risen, slowly waving his hand towards the surrounding horizon, to
+      the earth and to the sky, and repeating solemnly: &lsquo;There&rsquo;s nothing,
+      nothing, nothing. When the sun is snuffed out, all will be at an end.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Doctor Pascal nudged Abbé Mouret with his elbow. With blinking eyes he was
+      curiously observing the old man and nodding approvingly in order to induce
+      him to talk. &lsquo;So you are a materialist, Jeanbernat?&rsquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, I am only a poor man,&rsquo; replied the old fellow, relighting his pipe.
+      &lsquo;When Count de Corbiere, whose foster-brother I was, died from a fall from
+      his horse, his children sent me here to look after this park of the
+      Sleeping Beauty, in order to get rid of me. I was sixty years old then,
+      and I thought I was about done. But death forgot me; and I had to make
+      myself a burrow. If one lives all alone, look you, one gets to see things
+      in rather a queer fashion. The trees are no longer trees, the earth puts
+      on the ways of a living being, the stones seem to tell you tales. A parcel
+      of rubbish, eh? But I know some secrets that would fairly stagger you.
+      Besides, what do you think there is to do in this devilish desert? I read
+      the old books; it was more amusing than shooting. The Count, who used to
+      curse like a heathen, was always saying to me: &ldquo;Jeanbernat, my boy, I
+      fully expect to meet you again in the hot place, so that you will be able
+      to serve me there as you have up here.&rdquo;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more he waved his hand to the horizon and added: &lsquo;You hear, nothing;
+      there&rsquo;s nothing. It&rsquo;s all foolery.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Pascal began to laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;A pleasant piece of foolery, at any rate,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;Jeanbernat, you are
+      a deceiver. I suspect you are in love, in spite of your affectation of
+      being <i>blasé</i>. You were speaking very tenderly of the trees and
+      stones just now.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, no, I assure you,&rsquo; murmured the old man, &lsquo;I have done with that. At
+      one time, it&rsquo;s true, when I first knew you and used to go herborising with
+      you, I was stupid enough to love all sorts of things I came across in that
+      huge liar, the country. Fortunately, the old volumes have killed all that.
+      I only wish my garden was smaller; I don&rsquo;t go out into the road twice a
+      year. You see that bench? That&rsquo;s where I spend all my time, just watching
+      my lettuces grow.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And what about your rounds in the park?&rsquo; broke in the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;In the park!&rsquo; repeated Jeanbernat, with a look of profound surprise.
+      &lsquo;Why, it&rsquo;s more than twelve years since I set foot in it! What do you
+      suppose I could do inside that cemetery? It&rsquo;s too big. It&rsquo;s stupid, what
+      with those endless trees and moss everywhere and broken statues, and holes
+      in which one might break one&rsquo;s neck at every step. The last time I went in
+      there, it was so dark under the trees, there was such a stink of wild
+      flowers, and such queer breezes blew along the paths, that I felt almost
+      afraid. So I have shut myself up to prevent the park coming in here. A
+      patch of sunlight, three feet of lettuce before me, and a big hedge
+      shutting out all the view, why, that&rsquo;s more than enough for happiness.
+      Nothing, that&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;d like, nothing at all, something so tiny that
+      nothing from outside could come to disturb me. Seven feet of earth, if you
+      like, just to be able to croak on my back.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He struck the table with his fist, and suddenly raised his voice to call
+      out to Abbé Mouret: &lsquo;Come, just another glass, your reverence. The old
+      gentleman isn&rsquo;t at the bottom of the bottle, you know.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest felt ill at ease. To lead back to God that singular old man,
+      whose reason seemed to him to be strangely disordered, appeared a task
+      beyond his powers. He now remembered certain bits of gossip he had heard
+      from La Teuse about the Philosopher, as the peasants of Les Artaud dubbed
+      Jeanbernat. Scraps of scandalous stories vaguely floated in his memory. He
+      rose, making a sign to the doctor that he wished to leave this house,
+      where he seemed to inhale an odour of damnation. But, in spite of his
+      covert fears, a strange feeling of curiosity made him linger. He simply
+      walked to the end of the garden, throwing a searching glance into the
+      vestibule, as if to see beyond it, behind the walls. All he could
+      perceive, however, through the gaping doorway, was the black staircase. So
+      he came back again, and sought for some hole, some glimpse of that sea of
+      foliage which he knew was near by the mighty murmur that broke upon the
+      house, like the sound of waves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And is the little one well?&rsquo; asked the doctor, taking up his hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Pretty well,&rsquo; answered Jeanbernat. &lsquo;She&rsquo;s never here. She often
+      disappears all day long&mdash;still, she may be in the upstair rooms.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He raised his head and called: &lsquo;Albine! Albine!&rsquo; Then with a shrug of his
+      shoulders, he added: &lsquo;Yes, my word, she is a nice hussy.... Well, till
+      next time, Monsieur le Curé. I&rsquo;m always at your disposal.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret, however, had no time to accept the Philosopher&rsquo;s challenge. A
+      door suddenly opened at the end of the vestibule; a dazzling breach was
+      made in the black darkness of the wall, and through the breach came a
+      vision of a virgin forest, a great depth of woodland, beneath a flood of
+      sunbeams. In that sudden blaze of light the priest distinctly perceived
+      certain far-away things: a large yellow flower in the middle of a lawn, a
+      sheet of water falling from a lofty rock, a colossal tree filled with a
+      swarm of birds; and all this steeped, lost, blazing in such a tangle of
+      greenery, such riotous luxuriance of vegetation, that the whole horizon
+      seemed one great burst of shooting foliage. The door banged to, and
+      everything vanished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! the jade!&rsquo; cried Jeanbernat, &lsquo;she was in the Paradou again!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine was now laughing on the threshold of the vestibule. She wore an
+      orange-coloured skirt, with a large red kerchief fastened round her waist,
+      thus looking like some gipsy in holiday garb. And she went on laughing,
+      her head thrown back, her bosom swelling with mirth, delighted with her
+      flowers, wild flowers which she had plaited into her fair hair, fastened
+      to her neck, her bodice, and her bare slender golden arms. She seemed like
+      a huge nosegay, exhaling a powerful perfume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ay, you are a beauty!&rsquo; growled the old man. &lsquo;You smell of weeds enough to
+      poison one&mdash;would any one think she was sixteen, that doll?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine remained unabashed, however, and laughed still more heartily.
+      Doctor Pascal, who was her great friend, let her kiss him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So you are not frightened in the Paradou?&rsquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Frightened? What of?&rsquo; she said, her eyes wide open with astonishment.
+      &lsquo;The walls are too high, no one can get in. There&rsquo;s only myself. It is my
+      garden, all my very own. A fine big one, too. I haven&rsquo;t found out where it
+      ends yet.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And the animals?&rsquo; interrupted the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The animals? Oh! they don&rsquo;t hurt; they all know me well.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But it is very dark under the trees?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Course! there&rsquo;s shade: if there were none, the sun would burn my face up.
+      It is very pleasant in the shade among the leaves.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She flitted about, filling the little garden with the rustling sweep of
+      her skirts, and scattering round the pungent odour of wild flowers which
+      clung to her. She had smiled at Abbé Mouret without trace of shyness,
+      without heed of the astonished look with which he observed her. The priest
+      had stepped aside. That fair-haired maid, with long oval face, glowing
+      with life, seemed to him to be the weird mysterious offspring of the
+      forest of which he had caught a glimpse in a sheet of sunlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I say, I have got some blackbird nestlings; would you like them?&rsquo; Albine
+      asked the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, thanks,&rsquo; he answered, laughing. &lsquo;You should give them to the Curé&rsquo;s
+      sister; she is very fond of pets. Good day, Jeanbernat.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine, however, had fastened on the priest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You are the vicar of Les Artaud, aren&rsquo;t you? You have a sister? I&rsquo;ll go
+      and see her. Only you must not speak to me about God. My uncle will not
+      have it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You bother us, be off,&rsquo; exclaimed Jeanbernat, shrugging his shoulders.
+      Then bounding away like a goat, dropping a shower of flowers behind her,
+      she disappeared. The slam of a door was heard, and from behind the house
+      came bursts of laughter, which died away in the distance like the
+      scampering rush of some mad animal let loose among the grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;ll see, she will end by sleeping in the Paradou,&rsquo; muttered the old
+      man with indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as he saw his visitors off, he added: &lsquo;If you should find me dead one
+      of these fine days, doctor, just do me the favour of pitching me into the
+      muck-pit there, behind my lettuces. Good evening, gentlemen.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He let the wooden gate which closed the hedge fall to again, and the house
+      assumed once more its aspect of happy peacefulness in the noonday
+      sunlight, amidst the buzzing of the big flies that swarmed all up the ivy
+      even to the roof tiles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The gig once more rolled along the road skirting the Paradou&rsquo;s
+      interminable wall. Abbé Mouret, still silent, scanned with upturned eyes
+      the huge boughs which stretched over that wall, like the arms of giants
+      hidden there. All sorts of sounds came from the park: rustling of wings,
+      quivering of leaves, furtive bounds at which branches snapped, mighty
+      sighs that bowed the young shoots&mdash;a vast breath of life sweeping
+      over the crests of a nation of trees. At times, as he heard a birdlike
+      note that seemed like a human laugh, the priest turned his head, as if he
+      felt uneasy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;A queer girl!&rsquo; said his uncle as he eased the reins a little. &lsquo;She was
+      nine years old when she took up her quarters with that old heathen. Some
+      brother of his had ruined himself, though in what I can&rsquo;t remember. The
+      little one was at school somewhere when her father killed himself. She was
+      even quite a little lady, up to reading, embroidery, chattering, and
+      strumming on the piano. And such a coquette too! I saw her arrive with
+      open-worked stockings, embroidered skirts, frills, cuffs, a heap of
+      finery. Ah, well! the finery didn&rsquo;t last long!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed. A big stone nearly upset the gig.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It will be lucky if I don&rsquo;t leave a wheel in this cursed road!&rsquo; he
+      muttered. &lsquo;Hold on, my boy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wall still stretched beside them: the priest still listened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;As you may well imagine,&rsquo; continued the doctor, &lsquo;the Paradou, what with
+      its sun, its stones, and its thistles, would wreck a whole outfit every
+      day. Three or four mouthfuls, that&rsquo;s all it made of all the little one&rsquo;s
+      beautiful dresses. She used to come back naked. Now she dresses like a
+      savage. To-day she was rather presentable; but sometimes she has scarcely
+      anything on beyond her shoes and chemise. Did you hear her? The Paradou is
+      hers. The very day after she came she took possession of it. She lives in
+      it; jumps out of the window when Jeanbernat locks the door, bolts off in
+      spite of all, goes nobody knows whither, buries herself in some invisible
+      burrows known only to herself. She must have a fine time in that
+      wilderness.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hark, uncle!&rsquo; interrupted Abbé Mouret. &lsquo;Isn&rsquo;t that some animal running
+      behind the wall?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Uncle Pascal listened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No,&rsquo; he said after a minute&rsquo;s silence, &lsquo;it is the rattle of the trap on
+      the stones. No, the child doesn&rsquo;t play the piano now. I believe she has
+      even forgotten how to read. Just picture to yourself a young lady gone
+      back to a state of primevalness, turned out to play on a desert island. My
+      word, if ever you get to know of a girl who needs proper bringing up, I
+      advise you not to entrust her to Jeanbernat. He has a most primitive way
+      of letting nature alone. When I ventured to speak to him about Albine he
+      answered me that he must not prevent trees from growing as they pleased.
+      He says he is for the normal development of temperaments.... All the same,
+      they are very interesting, both of them. I never come this way without
+      paying them a visit.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gig was now emerging from the hollowed road. At this point the wall of
+      the Paradou turned and wound along the crest of the hills as far as one
+      could see. As Abbé Mouret turned to take a last look at that grey-hued
+      barrier, whose impenetrable austerity had at last begun to annoy him, a
+      rustling of shaken boughs was heard and a clump of young birch trees
+      seemed to bow in greeting from above the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I knew some animal was running behind,&rsquo; said the priest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, although nobody could be seen, though nothing was visible in the air
+      above save the birches rocking more and more violently, they heard a
+      clear, laughing voice call out: &lsquo;Good-bye, doctor! good-bye, Monsieur le
+      Curé! I am kissing the tree, and the tree is sending you my kisses.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why! it is Albine,&rsquo; exclaimed Doctor Pascal. &lsquo;She must have followed the
+      trap at a run. Jumping over bushes is mere play to her, the little elf!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he in his turn shouted out:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good-bye, my pet! How tall you must be to bow like that.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The laughter grew louder, the birches bowed still lower, scattering their
+      leaves around even on the hood of the gig.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I am as tall as the trees; all the leaves that fall are kisses,&rsquo; replied
+      the voice now mellowed by distance, so musical, so merged into the
+      rippling whispers of the park, that the young priest was thrilled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The road grew better. On coming down the slope Les Artaud reappeared in
+      the midst of the scorched plain. When the gig reached the turning to the
+      village, Abbé Mouret would not let his uncle drive him back to the
+      vicarage. He jumped down, saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, thanks, I prefer to walk: it will do me good.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, just as you like,&rsquo; at last answered the doctor. And with a clasp of
+      the hand, he added: &lsquo;Well, if you only had such parishioners as that old
+      brute Jeanbernat, you wouldn&rsquo;t often be disturbed. However, you yourself
+      wanted to come. And mind you keep well. At the slightest ache, night or
+      day, send for me. You know I attend all the family gratis.... There,
+      good-bye, my boy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      X
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret felt more at ease when he found himself again alone, walking
+      along the dusty road. The stony fields brought him back to his dream of
+      austerity, of an inner life spent in a desert. From the trees all along
+      the sunken road disturbing moisture had fallen on his neck, which now the
+      burning sun was drying. The sight of the lean almond trees, the scanty
+      corn crops, the weak vines, on either side of the way, soothed him,
+      delivered him from the perturbation into which the lusty atmosphere of the
+      Paradou had thrown him. Amid the blinding glare that flowed from heaven
+      over the bare land, Jeanbernat&rsquo;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&rsquo;s motionless bar-like silhouette and the
+      pink patch of tiles on the church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, as he walked on, fresh anxiety beset the Abbé. La Teuse would give
+      him a fine reception; for his luncheon must have been waiting nearly two
+      hours for him. He pictured her terrible face, the flood of words with
+      which she would greet him, the angry clatter of kitchen ware which he
+      would hear the whole afternoon. When he had got through Les Artaud, his
+      fear became so lively that he hesitated, full of trepidation, and wondered
+      if it would not be better to go round and reach the parsonage by way of
+      the church. But, while he deliberated, La Teuse herself appeared on the
+      doorstep of the parsonage, her cap all awry, and her hands on her hips.
+      With drooping head he had perforce to climb the slope under her
+      storm-laden gaze, which he could feel weighing upon his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I believe I am rather late, my good Teuse,&rsquo; he stammered, as he turned
+      the path&rsquo;s last bend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have had so many things to do,&rsquo; began the priest, scared by this dumb
+      reception. &lsquo;I have been running about all the morning.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;My sister has had her luncheon?&rsquo; he asked. &lsquo;Quite right of her. Luncheon
+      should always be served whenever I am kept out.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! that&rsquo;s how it is!&rsquo; she exclaimed. &lsquo;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!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She took off her apron with trembling hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You must have seen that I didn&rsquo;t wish to say anything to you. A nice
+      life, indeed! Only mountebanks do such things, Monsieur le Curé! This is
+      eleven o&rsquo;clock, ain&rsquo;t it! Aren&rsquo;t you ashamed of sitting at table when it&rsquo;s
+      almost two o&rsquo;clock? It&rsquo;s not like a Christian, no, it is not like a
+      Christian!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, taking her stand before him, she went on: &lsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;t know you, they would end by thinking
+      queer things about you. And shall I tell you? Why, I won&rsquo;t say but what
+      you may have been up to something wrong. When folks lunch at such hours
+      they are capable of anything!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret let the storm blow over him. At the old servant&rsquo;s wrathful
+      words he experienced a kind of relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come, my good Teuse,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;you will first put your apron on again.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, no,&rsquo; she cried, &lsquo;it&rsquo;s all over, I am going.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he got up and, laughing, tied her apron round her waist. She struggled
+      against him and stuttered: &lsquo;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&rsquo;ll see afterwards.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gaily sat down to table again like a man who has gained a victory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;First, I must be allowed to eat. I am dying with hunger,&rsquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No doubt,&rsquo; she murmured, her pity moved. &lsquo;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&rsquo;t got a tender tooth like poor Monsieur
+      Caffin. Yes, you have some good points, I don&rsquo;t deny it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus chattering, she waited on him with all a mother&rsquo;s care. After he had
+      finished she ran to the kitchen to see if the coffee was still warm. She
+      frisked about and limped most outrageously in her delight at having made
+      things up with him. As a rule Abbé Mouret fought shy of coffee, which
+      always upset his nervous system; but on this occasion, to ratify the
+      conclusion of peace, he took the cup she brought him. And as he lingered
+      at table she sat down opposite him and repeated gently, like a woman
+      tortured by curiosity:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Where have you been, Monsieur le Curé?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well,&rsquo; he answered with a smile, &lsquo;I have seen the Brichets, I have spoken
+      to Bambousse.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s father, &lsquo;Of course!&rsquo; she
+      exclaimed, &lsquo;if the child should die her mishap would go for nothing.&rsquo; And
+      clasping her hands with a look of envious admiration she added, &lsquo;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?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Abbé, who by this time had risen, made no answer. He had been on the
+      point of speaking about the Paradou, and asking for some information
+      concerning it. But a fear of being flooded with eager questions, and a
+      kind of vague unavowed shame, made him keep silence respecting his visit
+      to Jeanbernat. He cut all further questions short by asking:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Where is my sister? I don&rsquo;t hear her.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come along, sir,&rsquo; said La Teuse, beginning to laugh, and raising her
+      finger to her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They went into the next room, a country drawing-room, hung with faded
+      wall-paper showing large grey flowers, and furnished with four armchairs
+      and a sofa, covered with horse-hair. On the sofa now slept Desirée,
+      stretched out at full length, with her head resting on her clenched hands.
+      The pronounced curve of her bosom was raised somewhat by her upstretched
+      arms, bare to the elbows. She was breathing somewhat heavily, her red lips
+      parted, and thus showing her teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Lord! isn&rsquo;t she sleeping sound!&rsquo; whispered La Teuse. &lsquo;She didn&rsquo;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.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment the priest gazed lovingly at her. &lsquo;We must let her have as
+      much rest as she wants,&rsquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Of course. Isn&rsquo;t it a pity she&rsquo;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&rsquo;t you
+      think she is like that stone lady in Plassans corn-market?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She spoke thus of a Cybele stretched upon sheaves of wheat, the work of
+      one of Puget&rsquo;s pupils, which was carved on the frontal of the market
+      building. Without replying, however, Abbé Mouret gently pushed her out of
+      the room, and begged her to make as little noise as possible. Till
+      evening, therefore, perfect silence settled on the parsonage. La Teuse
+      finished her washing in the shed. The priest, seated at the bottom of the
+      little garden, his breviary fallen on his lap, remained absorbed in pious
+      thoughts, while all around him rosy petals rained from the blossoming
+      peach-trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      About six o&rsquo;clock there came a sudden wakening. A noise of doors opening
+      and closing, accompanied by bursts of laughter, shook the whole house.
+      Desirée appeared, her hair all down and her arms still half bare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Serge! Serge!&rsquo; she called.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Do come and see the animals! You haven&rsquo;t seen the animals yet, have you?
+      If you only knew how beautiful they are now!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had to beg very hard, for the yard rather scared him. But when he saw
+      tears in Desirée&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! how nice you are!&rsquo; she stammered, as she dragged him off. &lsquo;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.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Desirée was then twenty-two years old. Reared in the country by her nurse,
+      a peasant woman of Saint-Eutrope, she had grown up anyhow. Her brain void
+      of all serious thoughts, she had thriven on the fat soil and open air of
+      the country, developing physically but never mentally, growing into a
+      lovely animal&mdash;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&mdash;neither
+      lady nor peasant&mdash;but a girl nourished by the soil, with the broad
+      shoulders and narrow brow of a youthful goddess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, at sixteen, Desirée 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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 Desirée 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 Desirée appeared at the wooden fence which
+      prevented her charges from making their way into the church, a deafening
+      uproar greeted her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Eh! can&rsquo;t you hear them?&rsquo; she said to her brother, as they reached the
+      dining-room door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Leave me alone, do! all you creatures!&rsquo; she cried with a hearty sonorous
+      laugh, feeling tickled by all the feathers, claws, and beaks and paws
+      rubbing against her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s Moumou,&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;His paws are like velvet.&rsquo; Then, calling her
+      brother&rsquo;s attention to the yard, she proudly added: &lsquo;See, how clean it
+      is!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 Abbé Mouret half choked. The dung was heaped against the
+      graveyard wall in a huge smoking mound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What a pile, eh?&rsquo; continued Desirée, leading her brother into the pungent
+      vapour, &lsquo;I put it all there myself, nobody helped me. Go on, it isn&rsquo;t
+      dirty. It cleans. Look at my arms.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she spoke she held out her arms, which she had merely dipped into a
+      pail of water&mdash;regal arms they were, superbly rounded, blooming like
+      full white roses amidst the manure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, yes,&rsquo; gently said the priest, &lsquo;you have worked hard. It&rsquo;s very nice
+      now.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he turned towards the wicket, but she stopped him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Do wait a bit. You shall see them all. You have no idea&mdash;&rsquo; And so
+      saying, she dragged him to the rabbit house under the shed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There are young ones in all the hutches,&rsquo; she said, clapping her hands in
+      glee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is you they are frightened at,&rsquo; Desirée kept on saying. &lsquo;They know me
+      well.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! the greedy little things!&rsquo; exclaimed Desirée. &lsquo;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.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest had risen as if to depart, but she never wearied of smiling on
+      her dear little ones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You see the big one there, that&rsquo;s all white, with black ears&mdash;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.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She poked her fingers through the wire netting and stroked the rabbits&rsquo; 
+      backs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t you say it was satin?&rsquo; she continued. &lsquo;They are dressed like
+      princes. And ain&rsquo;t they coquettish! Look, there&rsquo;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.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Desirée paused to apostrophise the rabbit. &lsquo;Yes, you may listen to
+      me; you&rsquo;re a rogue!&rsquo; And turning towards her brother, &lsquo;He understands all
+      I say,&rsquo; she added softly, with a wink.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Abbé 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&rsquo; bellies, exhaling powerful emanations. On the other
+      hand, Desirée, as if slowly intoxicated, was growing brighter and pinker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But there&rsquo;s nothing to take you away!&rsquo; she cried; &lsquo;you always seem
+      anxious to go off. You must see my little chicks! They were born last
+      night.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. Desirée laughed with enjoyment at
+      sight of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What little loves they are!&rsquo; she stammered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It isn&rsquo;t easy to tell the cocks. But I never make a mistake. This one is
+      a hen, and this one is a hen too.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Alexander is getting splendid,&rsquo; said the Abbé, to please his sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alexander was the cock&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He is very fond of me,&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;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?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. Desirée was greatly amused by her
+      brother&rsquo;s startled looks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He deafens one, eh?&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;He has a splendid voice. But he&rsquo;s not
+      vicious, I assure you, though the hens are&mdash;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.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The remembrance of the fowls&rsquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You might give them a human being,&rsquo; she continued, &lsquo;they&rsquo;d finish him.
+      And aren&rsquo;t they tough livers! They get on with a broken limb even. They
+      may have wounds, big holes in their bodies, and still they&rsquo;ll gobble their
+      victuals. That&rsquo;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&rsquo;ll see how they love them.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. Desirée
+      called them by their names, and talked pettingly to them; while Abbé
+      Mouret retreated a few steps from this display of voracious life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, I am not at all comfortable,&rsquo; he said to his sister, when she tried
+      to make him feel the weight of a fowl she was fattening. &lsquo;It always makes
+      me uneasy to touch live animals.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He tried to smile, but Desirée taxed him with cowardice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah well, what about my ducks, and geese, and turkeys?&rsquo; said she. &lsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;t advise you to
+      trust your finger to them. They would swallow it at a gulp. But my
+      fingers, they only kiss&mdash;see!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 Desirée 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;See, it has plenty of milk,&rsquo; she added, pointing to the animal&rsquo;s udder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s long silky coat, and
+      carefully guarded his cassock from the touch of its horns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;All right, I&rsquo;ll let you go now,&rsquo; said Desirée, becoming aware of his
+      growing discomfort. &lsquo;But you must just let me show you something else
+      first. Promise not to scold me, won&rsquo;t you? I have not said anything to you
+      about it, because you wouldn&rsquo;t have allowed it.... But if you only knew
+      how pleased I am!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she spoke she put on an entreating expression, clasped her hands, and
+      laid her head upon her brother&rsquo;s shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Another piece of folly, no doubt,&rsquo; he murmured, unable to refrain from
+      smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You won&rsquo;t mind, will you?&rsquo; she continued, her eyes glistening with
+      delight. &lsquo;You won&rsquo;t be angry?&mdash;He is so pretty!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereupon she ran to open the low door under the shed, and forthwith a
+      little pig bounded into the middle of the yard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! isn&rsquo;t he a cherub?&rsquo; she exclaimed with a look of profound rapture as
+      she saw him leap out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I won&rsquo;t have this beast here!&rsquo; exclaimed the priest, terribly put out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, Serge, dear old Serge,&rsquo; begged Desirée again, &lsquo;don&rsquo;t be so unkind.
+      See, what a harmless little thing he is! I&rsquo;ll wash him, I&rsquo;ll keep him very
+      clean. La Teuse went and had him given her for me. We can&rsquo;t send him back
+      now. See, he is looking at you; he wants to smell you. Don&rsquo;t be afraid, he
+      won&rsquo;t eat you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she broke off, seized with irresistible laughter. The little pig had
+      blundered in a dazed fashion between the goat&rsquo;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 Desirée 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stirring of this foul water put a crowning touch to Abbé Mouret&rsquo;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 Desirée 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There, you are quite red now,&rsquo; Desirée said to him as she joined him
+      outside the wicket. &lsquo;Aren&rsquo;t you pleased to have seen everything? Do you
+      hear the noise they are making?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. Desirée,
+      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: &lsquo;I should so like a cow.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her, with a ready gesture of disapproval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, no, not now,&rsquo; she hurriedly went on. &lsquo;We&rsquo;ll talk about it again later
+      on&mdash;&mdash; But there would be room in the stable. A lovely white cow
+      with red spots. You&rsquo;d soon see what nice milk we should have. A goat
+      becomes too little in the end. And when the cow has a calf!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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 Abbé 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&rsquo;s
+      reply quite natural.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The man&rsquo;s right,&rsquo; said the Ignorantin.* &lsquo;You don&rsquo;t give away chattels
+      like that. Rosalie is no great bargain, but it&rsquo;s always hard to see your
+      own daughter throw herself away on a pauper.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  * A popular name in France for a Christian Brother.&mdash;ED.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Still,&rsquo; rejoined Abbé Mouret, &lsquo;a marriage is the only way of stopping the
+      scandal.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Brother shrugged his big shoulders and laughed aggravatingly. &lsquo;Do you
+      think you&rsquo;ll cure the neighbourhood with that marriage?&rsquo; he exclaimed.
+      &lsquo;Before another two years Catherine will be following her sister&rsquo;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&rsquo; necks if you don&rsquo;t want the country to be
+      poisoned. No husbands, Monsieur le Curé, but a good thick stick!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then calming down a bit, he added: &lsquo;Let every one do with their own as
+      they think best.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went on to speak about fixing the hours for the catechism classes; but
+      Abbé 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 Desirée&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;See,&rsquo; cried Brother Archangias, interrupting his discourse to point to a
+      tall girl who was letting her sweetheart snatch a kiss, &lsquo;there is another
+      hussy over there!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. Abbé Mouret, hat in hand, delighted with the
+      coolness, once more felt quietude descend upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Monsieur le Curé! Brother Archangias!&rsquo; cried La Teuse. &lsquo;Come quick! The
+      soup is on the table.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Isn&rsquo;t my soup good, then, Monsieur le Curé?&rsquo; the old servant asked the
+      priest. &lsquo;You are only fiddling with your plate.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I am not a bit hungry, my good Teuse,&rsquo; Serge replied, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well! how can one wonder at it when you go on as you do! But you would
+      have been hungry, if you hadn&rsquo;t lunched at past two o&rsquo;clock.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Brother Archangias, tilting into his spoon the last few drops of soup
+      remaining in his plate, said gravely: &lsquo;You should be regular in your
+      meals, Monsieur le Curé.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment Desirée, who also had finished her soup, sedately and in
+      silence, rose and followed La Teuse to the kitchen. The Brother, then left
+      alone with Abbé Mouret, cut himself some long strips of bread, which he
+      ate while waiting for the next dish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So you made a long round to-day?&rsquo; 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 Abbé rose in vexed and hurried accents, which finally died
+      away in a burst of glee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What can it be?&rsquo; said Serge, rising from his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Desirée bounded in again, carrying something hidden in her gathered-up
+      skirt. And she burst out excitedly: &lsquo;Isn&rsquo;t she queer? She wouldn&rsquo;t come in
+      at all. I caught hold of her dress; but she is awfully strong; she soon
+      got away from me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Whom on earth is she talking about?&rsquo; asked La Teuse, running in from the
+      kitchen with a dish of potatoes, across which lay a piece of bacon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl sat down, and with the greatest caution drew from her skirt a
+      blackbird&rsquo;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. Desirée clapped her hands, enchanted, seized with strange emotion at
+      the sight of these hitherto unknown creatures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s that Paradou girl!&rsquo; exclaimed the Abbé suddenly, remembering
+      everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      La Teuse had gone to the window. &lsquo;So it is,&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;I might have known
+      that grasshopper&rsquo;s voice&mdash;&mdash; Oh! the gipsy! Look, she&rsquo;s stopped
+      there to spy on us.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret drew near. He, too, thought that he could see Albine&rsquo;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: &lsquo;May the devil
+      take you, you brigand&rsquo;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!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. Abbé 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An accursed soul! a child of perdition!&rsquo; 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 Desirée 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old servant, however, was troubled by a suspicion, and taking her
+      stand on her sound leg, she looked the young curé in the face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So you know the Paradou people?&rsquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You might have spoken to me of those people these three months past,&rsquo; 
+      said the priest at last. &lsquo;I should have known at any rate what sort of
+      people I was going to call upon.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      La Teuse stopped short as if her legs had just broken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t tell falsehoods, Monsieur le Curé,&rsquo; she stuttered, &lsquo;don&rsquo;t tell
+      them; you will only make your sin still worse. How dare you say I haven&rsquo;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&rsquo;d spare yourself a good deal of trouble!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I, too, have spoken to you about those abominations,&rsquo; affirmed the
+      Brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret lightly shrugged his shoulders. &lsquo;Well, I didn&rsquo;t remember it,&rsquo; 
+      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.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Brother Archangias, his mouth full, struck the table violently with his
+      knife, and roared: &lsquo;Jeanbernat is a dog; he ought to die like a dog.&rsquo; Then
+      seeing the priest about to protest he cut him short: &lsquo;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.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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: &lsquo;Let
+      it be, his reverence will have his own way. He has secrets from us now.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Silence reigned. For a moment one only heard the working of Brother
+      Archangias&rsquo;s jaws, and the extraordinary rumbling of his gullet. Desirée,
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;People say what they have done when they have nothing to hide,&rsquo; suddenly
+      cried La Teuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 Abbé, not
+      addressing anybody, but comforting herself with soliloquy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s it; that&rsquo;s why we have lunch so late! We go gadding about till two
+      o&rsquo;clock in the afternoon. We go into such disreputable houses that we
+      don&rsquo;t even dare to tell what we&rsquo;ve done. And then we tell lies, we deceive
+      everybody.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But nobody,&rsquo; gently interrupted Abbé Mouret, who was forcing himself to
+      eat a little more, so as to prevent La Teuse from getting crosser than
+      ever, &lsquo;nobody asked me if I had been to the Paradou. I have not had to
+      tell any lies.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      La Teuse, however, went on as if she had never heard him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;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&rsquo;t trust. We hide things like a slyboots, we&rsquo;d rather
+      die than breathe a word; we&rsquo;re not even considerate enough to enliven our
+      home by relating what we&rsquo;ve seen.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned to the priest, and looked him full in the face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, you take that to yourself. You are a close one, you&rsquo;re a bad man!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereupon she fell to crying and the Abbé had to soothe her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Monsieur Caffin used to tell me everything,&rsquo; she moaned out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, she soon grew calmer. Brother Archangias was finishing a big
+      piece of cheese, apparently quite unruffled by the scene. In his opinion
+      Abbé 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well now,&rsquo; finally asked the old servant, &lsquo;what did you see at the
+      Paradou? Tell us, at any rate.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;May Heaven crush him!&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;and burn both him and his witch!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his turn the Abbé then endeavoured to elicit some fresh particulars
+      about the people at the Paradou, and listened intently to the Brother&rsquo;s
+      monstrous narrative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, that little she-devil came and sat down in the school. It&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She&rsquo;s never taken her first communion,&rsquo; exclaimed La Teuse below her
+      breath with a slight shudder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, never,&rsquo; rejoined Brother Archangias. &lsquo;She must be sixteen now. She&rsquo;s
+      growing up like a brute beast. I have seen her running on all fours in a
+      thicket near La Palud.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;On all fours,&rsquo; muttered the servant, turning towards the window with
+      superstitious anxiety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret attempted to express some doubt, but the Brother burst out:
+      &lsquo;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&rsquo;t leave him a scrap of
+      skin on his bones, I know.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Brother&rsquo;s hatred of womankind was boiling over. He banged the table
+      with his fist, and poured forth all his wonted abuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The devil&rsquo;s in them. They reek of the devil! And that&rsquo;s what bewitches
+      fools.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest nodded approvingly. Brother Archangias&rsquo;s outrageous violence
+      and La Teuse&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There is nought but filth,&rsquo; he muttered as he folded up his napkin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      La Teuse began to clear the table and wished to remove the plate on which
+      Desirée had laid the blackbird&rsquo;s nest. You are not going to bed here, I
+      suppose, mademoiselle,&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;Do leave those nasty things.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Desirée, however, defended her plate. She covered the nest with her bare
+      arms, no longer gay, but cross at being disturbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I hope those birds are not going to be kept,&rsquo; exclaimed Brother
+      Archangias. &lsquo;It would bring bad luck. You must wring their necks.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t touch the little things,&rsquo; she stammered. &lsquo;You are ugly.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With such singular contempt did she emphasise that last word that Abbé
+      Mouret started as if the Brother&rsquo;s ugliness had just struck him for the
+      first time. The latter contented himself with growling. He had always felt
+      a covert hatred for Desirée, 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She had better go to bed,&rsquo; said La Teuse. &lsquo;She would only bore us
+      by-and-by in church.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Has any one come yet?&rsquo; asked Abbé Mouret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;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.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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: &lsquo;For the month of Mary, eh?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; replied Abbé Mouret. &lsquo;The last few days the girls about here were
+      hard at work and couldn&rsquo;t come as usual to decorate the Lady Chapel. So
+      the ceremony was postponed till to-night.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;A nice custom,&rsquo; muttered the Brother. &lsquo;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&rsquo;s a shame to allow women to
+      rustle their dresses so near the holy relics.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Abbé made an apologetic gesture. He had only been at Les Artaud a
+      little while, he must follow the customs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Whenever you like, Monsieur le Curé, we&rsquo;re ready!&rsquo; now called out La
+      Teuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Brother Archangias detained him a minute. &lsquo;I am off,&rsquo; he said.
+      &lsquo;Religion isn&rsquo;t a prostitute that it should be decorated with flowers and
+      laces.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked slowly to the door. Then once more he stopped, and lifting one
+      of his hairy fingers added: &lsquo;Beware of your devotion to the Virgin.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      On entering the church Abbé 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Will you let me do it, Monsieur le Curé?&rsquo; she asked. &lsquo;You are not used to
+      it&mdash;&mdash; Come, stand there in front of the altar. You can tell me
+      if the decorations please you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Not so fast, now! You must give me time to fix the boughs. We can&rsquo;t have
+      all these bundles coming down on his reverence&rsquo;s head&mdash;&mdash; Come
+      on, Babet, it&rsquo;s your turn. What&rsquo;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.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s it, Lisa!&rsquo; cried La Teuse; &lsquo;why don&rsquo;t you sit on the altar while
+      you&rsquo;re about it? Just pull your petticoats straight, will you? Aren&rsquo;t you
+      ashamed of behaving like that?&mdash;If any one of you lolls about I&rsquo;ll
+      lay her boughs across her face.&mdash;Can&rsquo;t you hand me the things
+      quietly?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then turning round, she asked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Do you like it, sir? Do you think it will do?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had converted the space behind the Virgin&rsquo;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: &lsquo;I think there ought to be a cluster of
+      more delicate foliage up above.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No doubt,&rsquo; grumbled La Teuse. &lsquo;But they only bring me laurel and rosemary&mdash;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!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this, however, Catherine came up laden with an enormous olive bough
+      which completely hid her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, you&rsquo;ve got some, you minx!&rsquo; continued the old servant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Of course,&rsquo; one of the other girls exclaimed, &lsquo;she stole it. I saw
+      Vincent breaking it off while she kept a look-out.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Besides,&rsquo; she added, &lsquo;all the trees belong to the Blessed Virgin.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There,&rsquo; said La Teuse, as she came down and stood beside him to get a
+      good view of her work, &lsquo;there&rsquo;s the top done. Now we will put some clumps
+      between the candlesticks, unless you would prefer a garland all along the
+      altar shelf.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest decided in favour of some big clumps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Very good; come on, then,&rsquo; continued the old servant, once more
+      clambering up the steps. &lsquo;We can&rsquo;t go to bed here. Just kiss the altar,
+      will you, Miette? Do you fancy you are in your stable? Monsieur le Curé,
+      do just see what they are up to over there! I can hear them laughing like
+      lunatics.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, the measure of La Teuse&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Get down, will you?&rsquo; she cried to her. &lsquo;You are a cool one, and no
+      mistake, my lass!&mdash;Hurry up, off you go with your bundle.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What for, I&rsquo;d like to know?&rsquo; said Rosalie boldly. &lsquo;You can&rsquo;t say I have
+      stolen it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other girls drew closer, feigning innocence and exchanging sparkling
+      glances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Clear out,&rsquo; repeated La Teuse, &lsquo;you have no business here, do you hear?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, quite losing her scanty patience, she gave vent to a very coarse
+      epithet, which provoked a titter of delight among the peasant girls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, what next?&rsquo; said Rosalie. &lsquo;Mind your own business. Is it any
+      concern of yours?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she burst into a fit of sobbing and threw down her boughs, but let
+      the Abbé 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Let us make haste, be quick!&rsquo; he exclaimed, clapping his hands lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Goodness knows I would rather be in my bed,&rsquo; grumbled La Teuse. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s not
+      so easy as you think to fasten all these bits of stuff.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At present La Teuse was willing to make way for Abbé Mouret, who ascended
+      the altar steps, and, again lightly clapping his hands, exclaimed: &lsquo;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.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      La Teuse dismissed them; while the priest, after crossing himself,
+      remained absorbed before the altar, no longer hearing what went on behind
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come, now, clear out,&rsquo; muttered the old woman. &lsquo;You&rsquo;re a pack of
+      good-for-nothings, who can&rsquo;t even respect God. It&rsquo;s shameful, it&rsquo;s unheard
+      of, for girls to roll about on the floor in church like beasts in a meadow&mdash;&mdash;
+      What are you doing there, La Rousse? If I see you pinching any one, you&rsquo;ll
+      have to deal with me! Oh, yes, you may put out your tongue at me; I&rsquo;ll
+      tell his reverence about it. Out you get; out you get, you minxes!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;To think that such creatures dare to come to our Lady&rsquo;s altar!&rsquo; La Teuse
+      stuttered as she shot the bolts. &lsquo;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 <i>Aves</i> by
+      himself&mdash;&mdash; We shall only see the jades who have got
+      assignations.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s nearly ten o&rsquo;clock, Monsieur le Curé,&rsquo; she said, drawing near the
+      priest, who was still on his knees. &lsquo;You might as well come up now.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made no answer, but only bowed his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;All right, I know what that means,&rsquo; continued La Teuse. &lsquo;In another hour
+      he will still be on the stones there, giving himself a stomach-ache. I&rsquo;m
+      off, as I shall only bore him. All the same, I can&rsquo;t see much sense in it,
+      eating one&rsquo;s lunch when others are at dinner, and going to bed when the
+      fowls get up!&mdash;&mdash; I worry you, don&rsquo;t I, your reverence?
+      Good-night. You&rsquo;re not at all reasonable!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. Abbé Mouret,
+      his eyes uplifted, his arms tightly clasped against his breast, then
+      remained alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé 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&mdash;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&rsquo;s wing
+      disturbing him amidst the delight of loving. Never had his morning mass
+      afforded him the superhuman joys of his nightly prayers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With quivering lips Abbé 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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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. &lsquo;She will lead you far!&rsquo; 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: &lsquo;Woman, what have we in common, thou and I?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Abbé Mouret thrust away such thoughts, prostrated himself, endeavoured
+      to forget the Brother&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret&rsquo;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&mdash;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 &lsquo;Mother of God,&rsquo; he had felt no awe of them as he had
+      often felt for grown-up persons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;easy,
+      short, perfect, and certain&mdash;he surrendered himself anew to her,
+      wholly and without remorse: he strove to be her true devotee, dead to self
+      and steeped in submission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;to become her thing, her mite, the dust
+      lightly scattered by the waving of her azure robe. With David he
+      exclaimed: &lsquo;Mary is made for me,&rsquo; and with the Evangelist he added: &lsquo;I
+      have taken her for my all.&rsquo; He called her his &lsquo;beloved mistress,&rsquo; 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&rsquo;s beauteous precincts&mdash;resting,
+      hiding, heedlessly straying there, drinking in the milk of infinite love
+      that fell drop by drop from her virginal bosom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>Ave maris
+      Stella</i>, 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 <i>Salve
+      Regina</i>, the <i>Regina Coeli</i>, the <i>O gloriosa Domina</i>, 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&mdash;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 <i>Ave Maria</i>,
+      his heart&rsquo;s perfect prayer. &lsquo;Hail, Mary&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo; 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 <i>Aves</i> to commemorate
+      the crown of twelve stars that encircled Mary&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, alone in his cell, with time to give to his love, he knelt upon the
+      floor, the whole of Mary&rsquo;s garden with its lofty flowers of chastity
+      blossomed around him. Between his fingers glided the Rosary&rsquo;s wreath of <i>Aves</i>,
+      intersected by <i>Paters</i>, 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 <i>Aves</i>, 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&mdash;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&rsquo;s
+      salutation, the fertilising ray gliding down from heaven, fraught with the
+      spotless union&rsquo;s adorable ecstasy; then the visit to Elizabeth on a bright
+      hope-laden morn, when the fruit of Mary&rsquo;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&rsquo;s justice, to Simeon&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo; 
+      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 <i>Aves</i>
+      Serge had not once repeated himself. The monotonous murmur, the ever
+      recurring words, akin to the &lsquo;I love you&rsquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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 <i>Magnificat</i>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when he had given all up to Mary&mdash;his body, his soul, his earthly
+      goods, and spiritual chattels&mdash;when he stood before her stripped,
+      bare, with all his prayers exhausted, there welled from his burning lips
+      the Virgin&rsquo;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 &lsquo;Holy.&rsquo; Next he called her &lsquo;Mother,&rsquo; 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 &lsquo;Virgin,&rsquo; 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 &lsquo;Mirror of
+      Justice,&rsquo; &lsquo;Seat of Wisdom,&rsquo; and &lsquo;Source of Joy,&rsquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &lsquo;Vessel
+      of Honour,&rsquo; chosen of God, a &lsquo;Bosom of Election,&rsquo; wherein he desired to
+      pour his being, and slumber for ever.* She was the &lsquo;Mystical Rose&rsquo;&mdash;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 &lsquo;House of Gold,&rsquo; a &lsquo;Tower of David,&rsquo; and a &lsquo;Tower of Ivory,&rsquo; 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 &lsquo;Gate of Heaven,&rsquo; 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 &lsquo;Morning Star&rsquo; to help all travellers astray, like the
+      very dawn of Love. And when he had ascended to this height&mdash;scant of
+      breath, yet still unsatiated&mdash;he could only further glorify her with
+      the title of &lsquo;Queen,&rsquo; 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: &lsquo;Queen of virgins,
+      Queen of all saints. Queen conceived without sin!&rsquo; She, ever before him,
+      shone in splendour; and he, on the topmost step, only reached by Mary&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  * Curiously enough I find no trace of &lsquo;Bosom of Election&rsquo; in the
+    Litany of the Blessed Virgin as printed in English Catholic
+    works.&mdash;ED.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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, Abbé
+      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&mdash;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, &lsquo;Here I am, receive
+      me!&rsquo; Thrice a day when the <i>Angelus</i> rang out&mdash;at break of dawn,
+      in the fulness of midday, and at the gentle fall of twilight&mdash;he
+      bared his head and said an <i>Ave</i> with a glance around him as if to
+      ascertain whether the bell were not at last announcing Mary&rsquo;s coming. He
+      was five-and-twenty. He awaited her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the month of May the young priest&rsquo;s expectation was fraught with
+      joyful hope. To La Teuse&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night Abbé 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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this ecstatic trance, half asleep, half awake, he remained till eleven
+      o&rsquo;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&rsquo;s varnished face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the clock, about to strike, gave out a rending whine, a shudder
+      passed through Abbé 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&mdash;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret&rsquo;s bedroom, which occupied a corner of the vicarage, was a
+      spacious one, having two large square windows; one of which opened above
+      Desirée&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé 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&rsquo;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&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Benedicamus Domino</i>!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Deo gratias</i>!&rsquo; he answered half asleep, with his eyes still swollen
+      with slumber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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: &lsquo;What profit
+      be it to a man to gain the whole world if he lose his soul?&rsquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&rsquo;clock,
+      there came twenty minutes&rsquo; 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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s day closed in peacefulness; he returned to his
+      work; then, at four o&rsquo;clock, he partook of his afternoon snack, and
+      renewed his everlasting walk in sight of St. Mark&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;a larger
+      one, with an armchair, a dressing-table, and a bookcase&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&mdash;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&rsquo;clock, seated in groups beneath the
+      willows, his comrades and himself recited the Office of the Virgin in
+      common, or read in pairs the &lsquo;Little Hours,&rsquo; the book of prayers
+      recommended to young seminarists, but not enjoined on them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé 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 <i>anisette</i> in a cupboard.
+      For a long time, even, he had had no suspicion of the sinfulness around
+      him&mdash;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&rsquo; 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&rsquo;s wickedness
+      reappearing at the altar&rsquo;s very foot, he had withdrawn still further into
+      himself, giving himself still more to God, to console Him for being
+      forsaken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s
+      &lsquo;Ecclesiastical History&rsquo; from submission; he ventured as far as Gousset&rsquo;s
+      arguments, and Bouvier&rsquo;s &lsquo;Theological Course,&rsquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the perfume of blossoming stocks, of mignonette and
+      of heliotropes&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this very hour Abbé 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&rsquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next came back the memory of the ensuing ordination, more solemn and more
+      dread, amid the same organ strains which sounded now like God&rsquo;s own
+      thunder: this time he wore a sub-deacon&rsquo;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 <i>Accedite</i> 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: &lsquo;<i>Accipe Spiritum Sanctum.... Quorum remiseris peccata,
+      remittuntur eis, et quorum retinueris, retenta sunt</i>.&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;Receive
+      the Holy Ghost.... Whose sins thou dost forgive they are forgiven; and
+      whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      This evocation of the deep joys of his youth had given Abbé 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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The feeling of melancholy regret evoked by this recollection surprised
+      Abbé 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 &lsquo;he was Mademoiselle Desirée&rsquo;s brother all over.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 Abbé
+      Craisson, the superior of the great seminary at Valence: &lsquo;<i>De rebus
+      Veneris ad usum confessariorum</i>.&rsquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moon was rising behind the Garrigue hills. Abbé 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 Desirée&rsquo;s poultry-yard. And then he lived through the
+      day again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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, Abbé Mouret&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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
+      Desirée&rsquo;s poultry-yard, black and steaming. He could not clearly
+      distinguish the rabbit-hutches, the fowls&rsquo; roosting-places, or the ducks&rsquo; 
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then all at once Abbé Mouret remembered: The fever had struck him in
+      Desirée&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Holy Virgin of Virgins, pray for me!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Virgin most faithful, pray for me,&rsquo; the priest despairingly pleaded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Mother most pure, Mother most chaste, Mother ever-virgin, pray for me!&rsquo; 
+      he stammered in his fear, pressing close to the Virgin&rsquo;s feet, as if he
+      could hear Albine&rsquo;s sonorous footfalls behind him. &lsquo;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&mdash;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&rsquo;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!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This despairing appeal, this cry of purified longing, calmed the young
+      priest&rsquo;s fears. The Virgin&mdash;wholly white, with eyes turned
+      heavenward, appeared to smile more tenderly with her thin red lips. And in
+      a softened voice he went on:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;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&rsquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;like a girl of my own
+      age. Your close hanging garments, your childish veil, your blue scarf&mdash;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.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, then,&rsquo; he went on more wildly still, &lsquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&rsquo;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!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then Abbé Mouret, felled by fever, his teeth chattering, swooned away
+      on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moved by the sight Albine was about to let the curtain fall again. But
+      Serge faintly murmured, &lsquo;I am not asleep.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I heard you,&rsquo; he murmured again. &lsquo;You were walking very gently.&lsquo;*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  * From this point in the original Serge and Albine thee and thou
+    one another; but although this <i>tutoiement</i> has some bearing on
+    the development of the story, it was impossible to preserve it
+    in an English translation.&mdash;ED.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      His voice enchanted her. She went up to his bed and crouched beside it to
+      bring her face on a level with his own. &lsquo;How are you?&rsquo; she asked, and then
+      continued: &lsquo;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&rsquo;t I kiss your uncle Pascal when he
+      brought you here to recruit your health!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she tucked in his bed-clothes like a young mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Those burnt-up rocks over yonder, you see, were no good to you. You need
+      trees, and coolness, and quiet. The doctor hasn&rsquo;t even told a soul that he
+      was hiding you away here. That&rsquo;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&rsquo;t coming
+      back any more. I am to be your doctor now. You don&rsquo;t want any more physic,
+      it seems. What you now want is to be loved; do you see?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;This is my room,&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;I have given it to you. Isn&rsquo;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&rsquo;re not putting me out a bit. I shall sleep on the second
+      floor. There are three or four empty rooms there.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still he looked anxious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;re alone?&rsquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes; why do you ask that?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made no answer, but muttered wearily: &lsquo;I have been dreaming, I am
+      always dreaming. I hear bells ringing, and they tire me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And after a pause he went on: &lsquo;Go and shut the door, bolt it; I want you
+      to be alone, quite alone.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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: &lsquo;Nobody can come in
+      now. I shall not hear those bells any more. When you are talking to me, it
+      rests me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Would you like something to drink?&rsquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made a sign that he was not thirsty. He looked at Albine&rsquo;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: &lsquo;Ah! it&rsquo;s
+      as soft as silk. It is just as if it were sending a cool breeze through my
+      hair. Don&rsquo;t take it away, please.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came another long spell of silence. They gazed on one another with
+      loving kindliness&mdash;Albine calmly scanning herself in the
+      convalescent&rsquo;s eyes, Serge apparently listening to some faint whisper from
+      the small, cool hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Your hand is so nice,&rsquo; he said once more. &lsquo;You can&rsquo;t fancy what good it
+      does me. It seems to steal inside me, and take away all the pain in my
+      limbs. It&rsquo;s as if I were being soothed all over, relieved, cured.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gently rubbed his cheek against it, with growing animation, as if he
+      were at last coming back to life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You won&rsquo;t give me anything nasty to drink, will you? You won&rsquo;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.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Dear Serge,&rsquo; said Albine softly, &lsquo;how you must have suffered.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Suffered! yes, yes; but it&rsquo;s a long time ago. I slept badly, I had such
+      frightful dreams. If I could, I would tell you all about it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He closed his eyes for a moment and strove hard to remember.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I can see nothing but darkness,&rsquo; he stammered. &lsquo;It is very odd, I have
+      just come back from a long journey. I don&rsquo;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&mdash;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.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine tried to lay a hand upon his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;it doesn&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He closed his eyes and pondered dreamily. Then, with a careless pout, he
+      again sank upon Albine&rsquo;s hand and said laughing: &lsquo;How silly of me! I am a
+      child.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! I am not strong enough yet,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;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.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed at this simile, and continued: &lsquo;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&mdash;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&rsquo;t
+      remember, I tell you. I came, you took me, and that is all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And restfully, pettingly, he said once more: &lsquo;How warm your hand is now!
+      it is as nice as the sun. Don&rsquo;t let us talk any more. It makes me hot.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Would you like me to open the curtains?&rsquo; asked Albine, misunderstanding
+      his steady gaze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, no,&rsquo; he hastily replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s a fine day; you would see the sunlight and the trees.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, please don&rsquo;t.... I don&rsquo;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&rsquo;s so nice.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then he calmly fell asleep, while Albine watched beside him and
+      breathed upon his face to make his slumber cool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The fine weather broke up on the morrow, and it rained heavily. Serge&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;To-morrow there will be sunlight on the curtains,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;and then I
+      shall be well again.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s smile on Serge&rsquo;s lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Open the shutters,&rsquo; he said faintly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She thought him still delirious, for only an hour previously she had seen
+      but a gloomy sky on looking out from the landing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hush, go to sleep,&rsquo; she answered sadly; &lsquo;I have promised to wake you at
+      the very first ray&mdash;&mdash; Sleep on, there&rsquo;s no sun out yet.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, I can feel it, its light is there.... Open the shutters.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      And there, indeed, the sunlight was. When Albine had opened the shutters,
+      behind the large curtains, the genial yellow glow once more warmed a patch
+      of the white calico. But that which impelled Serge to sit up in bed was
+      the sight of the shadowy bough, the branch that for him heralded the
+      return of life. All the resuscitated earth, with its wealth of greenery,
+      its waters, and its belts of hills, was in that greenish blur that
+      quivered with the faintest breath of air. It no longer disturbed him; he
+      greedily watched it rocking, and hungered for the fortified powers of the
+      vivifying sap which to him it symbolised. Albine, happy once more,
+      exclaimed, as she supported him in her arms: &lsquo;Ah! my dear Serge, the
+      winter is over. Now we are saved.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lay down again, his eyes already brighter, and his voice clearer.
+      &lsquo;To-morrow I shall be very strong,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;You shall draw back the
+      curtains. I want to see everything.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But on the morrow he was seized with childish fear. He would not hear of
+      the windows being opened wide. &lsquo;By-and-by,&rsquo; he muttered, &lsquo;later on.&rsquo; He
+      was fearful, he dreaded the first beam of light that would flash upon his
+      eyes. Evening came on, and still he had been unable to make up his mind to
+      look upon the sun. He remained thus all day long, his face turned towards
+      the curtains, watching on their transparent tissue the pallor of morn, the
+      glow of noon, the violet tint of twilight, all the hues, all the emotions
+      of the sky. There were pictured even the quiverings of the warm air at the
+      light stroke of a bird&rsquo;s wing, even the delight of earth&rsquo;s odours
+      throbbing in a sunbeam. Behind that veil, behind that softened phantasm of
+      the mighty life without, he could hear the rise of spring. He even felt
+      stifled at times when in spite of the curtains&rsquo; barrier the rush of the
+      earth&rsquo;s new blood came upon him too strongly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The following morning he was still asleep when Albine, to hasten his
+      recovery, cried out to him:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Serge! Serge! here&rsquo;s the sun!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She swiftly drew back the curtains and threw the windows wide open. He
+      raised himself and knelt upon his bed, oppressed, swooning, his hands
+      tightly pressed against his breast to keep his heart from breaking. Before
+      him stretched the broad sky, all blue, a boundless blue; and in it he
+      washed away his sufferings, surrendering himself to it, and drinking from
+      it sweetness and purity and youth. The bough whose shadow he had noted
+      jutted across the window and alone set against the azure sea its vigorous
+      growth of green; but even this was too much for his sickly fastidiousness;
+      it seemed to him that the very swallows flying past besmeared the purity
+      of the azure. He was being born anew. He raised little involuntary cries,
+      as he felt himself flooded with light, assailed by waves of warm air,
+      while a whirling, whelming torrent of life flowed within him. As last with
+      outstretched hands he sank back upon his pillow in a swoon of joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a happy, delicious day that was! The sun came in from the right, far
+      away from the alcove. Throughout the morning Serge watched it creeping
+      onward. He could see it coming towards him, yellow as gold, perching here
+      and there on the old furniture, frolicking in corners, at times gliding
+      along the ground like a strip of ribbon. It was a slow deliberate march,
+      the approach of a fond mistress stretching her golden limbs, drawing nigh
+      to the alcove with rhythmic motion, with voluptuous lingering, which
+      roused intense desire. At length, towards two o&rsquo;clock, the sheet of
+      sunlight left the last armchair, climbed along the coverlet, and spread
+      over the bed like loosened locks of hair. To its glowing fondling Serge
+      surrendered his wasted hands: with his eyes half-closed, he could feel
+      fiery kisses thrilling each of his fingers; he lay in a bath of light, in
+      the embrace of a glowing orb. And when Albine leaned over smiling, &lsquo;Let me
+      be,&rsquo; he stammered, his eyes now shut; &lsquo;don&rsquo;t hold me so tightly. How do
+      you manage to hold me like this in your arms?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the sun crept down the bed again and slowly retreated to the left; and
+      as Serge watched it bend once more and settle on chair after chair, he
+      bitterly regretted that he had not kept it to his breast. Albine still sat
+      upon the side of the bed, and the pair of them, an arm round each other&rsquo;s
+      neck, watched the slow paling of the sky. At times a mighty thrill seemed
+      to make it blanch. Serge&rsquo;s languid eyes now wandered over it more freely
+      and detected in it exquisite tints of which he had never dreamed. It was
+      not all blue, but rosy blue, lilac blue, tawny blue, living flesh, vast
+      and spotless nudity heaving like a woman&rsquo;s bosom in the breeze. At every
+      glance into space he found a fresh surprise&mdash;unknown nooks, coy
+      smiles, bewitching rounded outlines, gauzy veils which were cast over the
+      mighty, glorious forms of goddesses in the depths of peeping paradises.
+      And with his limbs lightened by suffering he winged his way amid that
+      shimmering silk, that stainless down of azure. The sun sank lower and
+      lower, the blue melted into purest gold, the sky&rsquo;s living flesh gleamed
+      fairer still, and then was slowly steeped in all the hues of gloom. Not a
+      cloud&mdash;nought but gradual disappearance, a disrobing which left
+      behind it but a gleam of modesty on the horizon. And at last the broad sky
+      slumbered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, the dear baby!&rsquo; exclaimed Albine, as she looked at Serge, who had
+      fallen asleep upon her neck at the same time as the heavens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She laid him down in bed and shut the windows. Next morning, however, they
+      were opened at break of day. Serge could no longer live without the
+      sunlight. His strength was growing, he was becoming accustomed to the
+      gusts of air which sent the alcove curtains flying. Even the azure, the
+      everlasting azure, began to pall upon him. He grew weary of being white
+      and swanlike, of ever swimming on heaven&rsquo;s limpid lake. He came to wish
+      for a pack of black clouds, some crumbling of the skies, that would break
+      upon the monotony of all that purity. And as his health returned, he
+      hungered for keener sensations. He now spent hours in gazing at the
+      verdant bough: he would have liked to see it grow, expand, and throw out
+      its branches to his very bed. It no longer satisfied him, but only roused
+      desires, speaking to him as it did of all the trees whose deep-sounding
+      call he could hear although their crests were hidden from his sight. An
+      endless whispering of leaves, a chattering as of running water, a
+      fluttering as of wings, all blended in one mighty, long-drawn, quivering
+      voice, resounded in his ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;When you are able to get up,&rsquo; said Albine, &lsquo;you shall sit at the window.
+      You will see the lovely garden!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He closed his eyes and murmured gently:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! I can see it, I hear it; I know where the trees are, where the water
+      runs, where the violets grow.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then he added: &lsquo;But I can&rsquo;t see it clearly, I see it without any
+      light. I must be very strong before I shall be able to get as far as the
+      window.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At times when Albine thought him asleep, she would vanish for hours. And
+      on coming in again, she would find him burning with impatience, his eyes
+      gleaming with curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Where have you been?&rsquo; he would call to her, taking hold of her arms, and
+      feeling her skirts, her bodice, and her cheeks. &lsquo;You smell of all sorts of
+      nice things. Ah! you have been walking on the grass?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this she would laugh and show him her shoes wet with dew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You have been in the garden! you have been in the garden!&rsquo; he then
+      exclaimed delightedly. &lsquo;I knew it. When you came in you seemed like a
+      large flower. You have brought the whole garden in your skirt.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He would keep her by him, inhaling her like a nosegay. Sometimes she came
+      back with briars, leaves, or bits of wood entangled in her clothes. These
+      he would remove and hide under his pillow like relics. One day she brought
+      him a bunch of roses. At the sight of them he was so affected that he
+      wept. He kissed them and went to sleep with them in his arms. But when
+      they faded, he felt so keenly grieved that he forbade Albine to gather any
+      more. He preferred her, said he, for she was as fresh and as balmy; and
+      she never faded, her hands, her hair, her cheeks were always fragrant. At
+      last he himself would send her into the garden, telling her not to come
+      back before an hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;In that way,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;I shall get sunlight, fresh air, and roses till
+      to-morrow.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Often, when he saw her coming in out of breath, he would cross-examine
+      her. Which path had she taken? Had she wandered among the trees, or had
+      she gone round the meadow side? Had she seen any nests? Had she sat down
+      behind a bush of sweetbriar, or under an oak, or in the shade of a clump
+      of poplars? But when she answered him and tried to describe the garden to
+      him, he would put his hand to her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, no,&rsquo; he said gently. &lsquo;It is wrong of me. I don&rsquo;t want to know. I
+      would rather see it myself.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he would relapse into his favourite dream of all the greenery which
+      he could feel only a step away. For several days he lived on that dream
+      alone. At first, he said, he had perceived the garden much more
+      distinctly. As he gained strength, the surging blood that warmed his veins
+      seemed to blur his dreamy imaginings. His uncertainties multiplied. He
+      could no longer tell whether the trees were on the right, whether the
+      water flowed at the bottom of the garden, or whether some great rocks were
+      not piled below his windows. He talked softly of all this to himself. On
+      the slightest indication he would rear wondrous plans, which the song of a
+      bird, the creaking of a bough, the scent of a flower, would suddenly make
+      him modify, impelling him to plant a thicket of lilac in one spot, and in
+      another to place flower-beds where formerly there had been a lawn. Every
+      hour he designed some new garden, much to the amusement of Albine, who,
+      whenever she surprised him at it, would exclaim with a burst of laughter:
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s not it, I assure you. You can&rsquo;t have any idea of it. It&rsquo;s more
+      beautiful than all the beautiful things you ever saw. So don&rsquo;t go racking
+      your head about it. The garden&rsquo;s mine, and I will give it to you. Be easy,
+      it won&rsquo;t run away.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge, who had already been so afraid of the light, felt considerable
+      trepidation when he found himself strong enough to go and rest his elbows
+      on the window-sill. Every evening he once more repeated, &lsquo;To-morrow,&rsquo; and
+      &lsquo;To-morrow.&rsquo; He would turn away in his bed with a shudder when Albine came
+      in, and would cry out that she smelt of hawthorn, that she had scratched
+      her hands in burrowing a hole through a hedge to bring him all its odour.
+      One morning, however, she suddenly took him up in her arms, and almost
+      carrying him to the window, held him there and forced him to look out and
+      see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What a coward you are!&rsquo; she exclaimed with her fine ringing laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And waving one hand all round the landscape, she repeated with an air of
+      triumph, full of tender promise: &lsquo;The Paradou! The Paradou!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge looked out upon it, speechless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      A sea of verdure, in front, to right, to left, everywhere. A sea rolling
+      its surging billows of leaves as far as the horizon, unhindered by house,
+      or screen of wall, or dusty road. A desert, virgin, hallowed sea,
+      displaying its wild sweetness in the innocence of solitude. The sun alone
+      came thither, weltering in the meadows in a sheet of gold, threading the
+      paths with the frolicsome scamper of its beams, letting its fine-spun,
+      flaming locks droop through the trees, sipping from the springs with amber
+      lips that thrilled the water. Beneath that flaming dust the vast garden
+      ran riot like some delighted beast let loose at the world&rsquo;s very end, far
+      from everything and free from everything. So prodigal was the luxuriance
+      of foliage, so overflowing the tide of herbage, that from end to end it
+      all seemed hidden, flooded, submerged. Nought could be seen but slopes of
+      green, stems springing up like fountains, billowy masses, woodland
+      curtains closely drawn, mantles of creepers trailing over the ground, and
+      flights of giant boughs swooping down upon every side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Amidst that tremendous luxuriance of vegetation even lengthy scrutiny
+      could barely make out the bygone plan of the Paradou. In the foreground,
+      in a sort of immense amphitheatre, must have lain the flower garden, whose
+      fountains were now sunken and dry, its stone balustrades shattered, its
+      flight of steps all warped, and its statues overthrown, patches of their
+      whiteness gleaming amidst the dusky stretches of turf. Farther back,
+      behind the blue line of a sheet of water, stretched a maze of fruit-trees;
+      farther still rose towering woodland, its dusky, violet depths streaked
+      with bands of light. It was a forest which had regained virginity, an
+      endless stretch of tree-tops rising one above the other, tinged with
+      yellowish green and pale green and vivid green, according to the variety
+      of the species.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the right, the forest scaled some hills, dotting them with little
+      clumps of pine-trees, and dying away in straggling brushwood, while a huge
+      barrier of barren rock, heaped together like the fallen wreckage of a
+      mountain, shut out all view beyond. Flaming growths there cleaved the
+      rugged soil, monstrous plants lay motionless in the heat, like drowsing
+      reptiles; a silvery streak, a foamy splash that glistened in the distance
+      like a cloud of pearls, revealed the presence of a waterfall, the source
+      of those tranquil streams that lazily skirted the flower-garden. Lastly,
+      on the left the river flowed through a vast stretch of meadowland, where
+      it parted into four streamlets which winded fitfully beneath the rushes,
+      between the willows, behind the taller trees. And far away into the
+      distance grassy patches prolonged the lowland freshness, forming a
+      landscape steeped in bluish haze, where a gleam of daylight slowly melted
+      into the verdant blue of sunset. The Paradou&mdash;its flower-garden,
+      forest, rocks, streams, and meadows&mdash;filled the whole breadth of sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The Paradou!&rsquo; stammered Serge, stretching out his arms as if to clasp the
+      entire garden to his breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He tottered, and Albine had to seat him in an armchair. There he sat for
+      two whole hours intently gazing, without opening his lips, his chin
+      resting on his hands. At times his eyelids fluttered and a flush rose to
+      his cheeks. Slowly he looked, profoundly amazed. It was all too vast, too
+      complex, too overpowering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I cannot see, I cannot understand,&rsquo; he cried, stretching out his hands to
+      Albine with a gesture of uttermost weariness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl came and leant over the back of his armchair. Taking his head
+      between her hands, she compelled him to look again, and softly said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s all our own. Nobody will ever come in. When you are well again, we
+      will go for walks there. We shall have room enough for walking all our
+      lives. We&rsquo;ll go wherever you like. Where would you like to go?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! not far,&rsquo; he murmured. &lsquo;The first day only two steps or so beyond the
+      door. I should surely fall&mdash;&mdash; See, I&rsquo;ll go over there, under
+      that tree close to the window.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she resumed: &lsquo;Would you like to go into the flower-garden, the
+      parterre? You shall see the roses&mdash;they have over-run everything,
+      even the old paths are all covered with them. Or would you like the
+      orchard better? I can only crawl into it on my hands and knees, the boughs
+      are so bowed down with fruit. But we&rsquo;ll go even farther if you feel strong
+      enough. We&rsquo;ll go as far as the forest, right into the depths of shade,
+      far, far away; so far that we&rsquo;ll sleep out there when night steals over
+      us. Or else, some morning, we can climb up yonder to the summit of those
+      rocks. You&rsquo;ll see the plants which make me quake; you&rsquo;ll see the springs,
+      such a shower of water! What fun it will be to feel the spray all over our
+      faces!... But if you prefer to walk along the hedges, beside a brook, we
+      must go round by the meadows. It is so nice under the willows in the
+      evening, at sunset. One can lie down on the grass and watch the little
+      green frogs hopping about on the rushes.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, no,&rsquo; said Serge, &lsquo;you weary me, I don&rsquo;t want to go so far.... I will
+      only go a couple of steps, that will be more than enough.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Even I,&rsquo; she still continued, &lsquo;even I have not yet been able to go
+      everywhere. There are many nooks I don&rsquo;t know. I have walked and walked in
+      it for years, and still I feel sure there are unknown spots around, places
+      where the shade must be cooler and the turf softer. Listen, I have always
+      fancied there must be one especially in which I should like to live for
+      ever. I know it&rsquo;s somewhere; I must have passed it by, or perhaps it&rsquo;s
+      hidden so far away that I have never even got as far, with all my rambles.
+      But we&rsquo;ll look for it together, Serge, won&rsquo;t we? and live there.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, no, be quiet,&rsquo; stammered the young man. &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t understand what you
+      are saying. You&rsquo;re killing me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment she let him sob in her arms. It troubled and grieved her that
+      she could find no words to soothe him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Isn&rsquo;t the Paradou as beautiful, then, as you fancied it?&rsquo; she asked at
+      last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He raised his face and answered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t know. It was quite little, and now it is ever growing bigger and
+      bigger&mdash;&mdash; Take me away, hide me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She led him back to bed, soothing him like a child, lulling him with a
+      fib.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There, there! it&rsquo;s not true, there is no garden. It was only a story that
+      I told you. Go, sleep in peace.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0026" id="link2H_4_0026">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Every day in this wise she made him sit at the window during the cool
+      hours of morning. He would now attempt to take a few steps, leaning the
+      while on the furniture. A rosy tint appeared upon his cheeks, and his
+      hands began to lose their waxy transparency. But, while he thus regained
+      health, his senses remained in a state of stupor which reduced him to the
+      vegetative life of some poor creature born only the day before. Indeed, he
+      was nothing but a plant; his sole perception was that of the air which
+      floated round him. He lacked the blood necessary for the efforts of life,
+      and remained, as it were, clinging to the soil, imbibing all the sap he
+      could. It was like a slow hatching in the warm egg of springtide. Albine,
+      remembering certain remarks of Doctor Pascal, felt terrified at seeing him
+      remain in this state, &lsquo;innocent,&rsquo; dull-witted like a little boy. She had
+      heard it said that certain maladies left insanity behind them. And she
+      spent hours in gazing at him and trying her utmost, as mothers do, to make
+      him smile. But as yet he had not laughed. When she passed her hand across
+      his eyes, he never saw, he never followed the shadow. Even when she spoke
+      to him, he barely turned his head in the direction whence the sound came.
+      She had but one consolation: he thrived splendidly, he was quite a
+      handsome child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For another whole week she lavished the tenderest care on him. She
+      patiently waited for him to grow. And as she marked various symptoms of
+      awakening perception, her fears subsided and she began to think that time
+      might make a man of him. When she touched him now he started slightly.
+      Another time, one night, he broke into a feeble laugh. On the morrow, when
+      she had seated him at the window, she went down into the garden, and ran
+      about in it, calling to him the while. She vanished under the trees,
+      flitted across the sunny patches, and came back breathless and clapping
+      her hands. At first his wavering eyes failed to perceive her. But as she
+      started off again, perpetually playing at hide-and-seek, reappearing
+      behind every other bush, he was at last able to follow the white gleam of
+      her skirt; and when she suddenly came forward and stood with upraised face
+      below his window, he stretched out his arms and seemed anxious to go down
+      to her. But she came upstairs again, and embraced him proudly: &lsquo;Ah! you
+      saw me, you saw me!&rsquo; she cried. &lsquo;You would like to come into the garden
+      with me, would you not?&mdash;&mdash; If you only knew how wretched you
+      have made me these last few days, with your stupid ways, never seeing me
+      or hearing me!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He listened to her, but apparently with some slight sensation of pain that
+      made him bend his neck in a shrinking way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You are better now, however,&rsquo; she went on. &lsquo;Well enough to come down
+      whenever you like&mdash;&mdash; Why don&rsquo;t you say anything? Have you lost
+      your tongue? Oh, what a baby! Why, I shall have to teach him how to talk!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And thereupon she really did amuse herself by telling him the names of the
+      things he touched. He could only stammer, reiterating the syllables, and
+      failing to utter a single word plainly. However, she began to walk him
+      about the room, holding him up and leading him from the bed to the window&mdash;quite
+      a long journey. Two or three times he almost fell on the way, at which she
+      laughed. One day he fairly sat down on the floor, and she had all the
+      trouble in the world to get him up on his feet again. Then she made him
+      undertake the round of the room, letting him rest by the way on the sofa
+      and the chairs&mdash;a tour round a little world which took up a good
+      hour. At last he was able to venture on a few steps alone. She would stand
+      before him with outstretched hands, and move backwards, calling him, so
+      that he should cross the room in search of her supporting arms. If he
+      sulked and refused to walk, she would take the comb from her hair and hold
+      it out to him like a toy. Then he would come to her and sit still in a
+      corner for hours, playing with her comb, and gently scratching his hands
+      with its teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last one morning she found him up. He had already succeeded in opening
+      one of the shutters, and was attempting to walk about without leaning on
+      the furniture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good gracious, we are active this morning!&rsquo; she exclaimed gleefully.
+      &lsquo;Why, he will be jumping out of the window to-morrow if he has his own way&mdash;&mdash;
+      So you are quite strong now, eh?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge&rsquo;s answer was a childish laugh. His limbs were regaining the strength
+      of adolescence, but more perceptive sensations remained unroused. He spent
+      whole afternoons in gazing out on the Paradou, pouting like a child that
+      sees nought but whiteness and hears but the vibration of sounds. He still
+      retained the ignorance of urchinhood&mdash;his sense of touch as yet so
+      innocent that he failed to tell Albine&rsquo;s gown from the covers of the old
+      armchairs. His eyes still stared wonderingly; his movements still
+      displayed the wavering hesitation of limbs which scarce knew how to reach
+      their goal; his state was one of incipient, purely instinctive existence
+      into which entered no knowledge of surroundings. The man was not yet born
+      within him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s right, you&rsquo;ll act the silly, will you?&rsquo; muttered Albine. &lsquo;We&rsquo;ll
+      see.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She took off her comb, and held it out to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Will you have my comb?&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;Come and fetch it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she had got him out of the room, by retreating before him all the
+      way, she put her arm round his waist and helped him down each stair,
+      amusing him while she put her comb back, even tickling his neck with a
+      lock of her hair, so that he remained unaware that he was going
+      downstairs. But when he was in the hall, he became frightened at the
+      darkness of the passage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Just look!&rsquo; she cried, throwing the door wide open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was like a sudden dawn, a curtain of shadow snatched aside, revealing
+      the joyousness of early day. The park spread out before them verdantly
+      limpid, freshly cool and deep as a spring. Serge, entranced, lingered upon
+      the threshold, with a hesitating desire to feel that luminous lake with
+      his foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;One would think you were afraid of wetting yourself,&rsquo; said Albine. &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t
+      be frightened, the ground is safe enough.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had ventured to take one step, and was astonished at encountering the
+      soft resistance of the gravel. The first touch of the soil gave him a
+      shock; life seemed to rebound within him and to set him for a moment
+      erect, with expanding frame, while he drew long breaths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come now, be brave,&rsquo; insisted Albine. &lsquo;You know you promised me to take
+      five steps. We&rsquo;ll go as far as the mulberry tree there under the window&mdash;&mdash;
+      There you can rest.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It took him a quarter of an hour to make those five steps. After each
+      effort he stopped as if he had been obliged to tear up roots that held him
+      to the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl, pushing him along, said with a laugh: &lsquo;You look just like a
+      walking tree.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having placed him with his back leaning against the mulberry tree, in the
+      rain of sunlight falling from its boughs, she bounded off and left him,
+      calling out to him that he must not stir. Serge, standing there with
+      drooping hands, slowly turned his head towards the park. Terrestrial
+      childhood met his gaze. The pale greenery was steeped in the very milk of
+      youth, flooded with golden brightness. The trees were still in infancy,
+      the flowers were as tender-fleshed as babes, the streams were blue with
+      the artless blue of lovely infantile eyes. Beneath every leaf was some
+      token of a delightful awakening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge had fixed his eyes upon a yellow breach which a wide path made in
+      front of him amidst a dense mass of foliage. At the very end, eastward,
+      some meadows, steeped in gold, looked like the luminous field upon which
+      the sun would descend, and he waited for the morn to take that path and
+      flow towards him. He could feel it coming in a warm breeze, so faint at
+      first that it barely brushed across his skin, but rising little by little,
+      and growing ever brisker till he was thrilled all over. He could also
+      taste it coming with a more and more pronounced savour, bringing the
+      healthful acridity of the open air, holding to his lips a feast of sugary
+      aromatics, sour fruits, and milky shoots. Further, he could smell it
+      coming with the perfumes which it culled upon its way&mdash;the scent of
+      earth, the scent of the shady woods, the scent of the warm plants, the
+      scent of living animals, a whole posy of scents, powerful enough to bring
+      on dizziness. He could likewise hear it coming with the rapid flight of a
+      bird skimming over the grass, waking the whole garden from silence, giving
+      voice to all it touched, and filling his ears with the music of things and
+      beings. Finally, he could see it coming from the end of the path, from the
+      meadows steeped in gold&mdash;yes, he could see that rosy air, so bright
+      that it lighted the way it took with a gleaming smile, no bigger in the
+      distance than a spot of daylight, but in a few swift bounds transformed
+      into the very splendour of the sun. And the morn flowed up and beat
+      against the mulberry tree against which Serge was leaning. And he himself
+      resuscitated amidst the childhood of the morn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Serge! Serge!&rsquo; cried Albine, lost to sight behind the high shrubs of the
+      flower garden. &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t be afraid, I am here.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Serge no longer felt frightened. He was being born anew in the
+      sunshine, in that pure bath of light which streamed upon him. He was being
+      born anew at five-and-twenty, his senses hurriedly unclosing, enraptured
+      with the mighty sky, the joyful earth, the prodigy of loveliness spread
+      out around him. This garden, which he knew not only the day before, now
+      afforded him boundless delight. Everything filled him with ecstasy, even
+      the blades of grass, the pebbles in the paths, the invisible puffs of air
+      that flitted over his cheeks. His whole body entered into possession of
+      this stretch of nature; he embraced it with his limbs, he drank it in with
+      his lips, he inhaled it with his nostrils, he carried it in his ears and
+      hid it in the depths of his eyes. It was his own. The roses of the flower
+      garden, the lofty boughs of the forest, the resounding rocks of the
+      waterfall, the meadows which the sun planted with blades of light, were
+      his. Then he closed his eyes and slowly reopened them that he might enjoy
+      the dazzle of a second wakening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The birds have eaten all the strawberries,&rsquo; said Albine disconsolately,
+      as she ran up to him. &lsquo;See, I have only been able to find these two!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she stopped short a few steps away, heart-struck and gazing at Serge
+      with rapturous astonishment. &lsquo;How handsome you are!&rsquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She drew a little nearer; then stood there, absorbed in her contemplation,
+      and murmuring: &lsquo;I had never, never seen you before.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had certainly grown taller. Clothed in a loose garment, he stood erect,
+      still somewhat slender, with finely moulded limbs, square chest, and
+      rounded shoulders. His head, slightly thrown back, was poised upon a
+      flexible and snowy neck, rimmed with brown behind. Health and strength and
+      power were on his face. He did not smile, his expression was that of
+      repose, with grave and tender mouth, firm cheeks, large nose, and grey,
+      clear, commanding eyes. The long locks that thickly covered his head fell
+      upon his shoulders in jetty curls; while a slender growth of hair, through
+      which gleamed his white skin, curled upon his upper lip and chin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! how handsome, how handsome you are!&rsquo; lingeringly repeated Albine,
+      crouching at his feet and gazing up at him with loving eyes. &lsquo;But why are
+      you sulking with me? Why don&rsquo;t you speak to me?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still he stood there and made no answer. His eyes were far away; he never
+      even saw that child at his feet. He spoke to himself in the sunlight, and
+      said: &lsquo;How good the light is!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That utterance sounded like a vibration of the sunlight itself. It fell
+      amid the silence in the faintest of whispers like a musical sigh, a quiver
+      of warmth and of life. For several days Albine had never heard his voice,
+      and now, like himself, it had altered. It seemed to her to course through
+      the park more sweetly than the melody of birds, more imperiously than the
+      wind that bends the boughs. It reigned, it ruled. The whole garden heard
+      it, though it had been but a faint and passing breath, and the whole
+      garden was thrilled with the joyousness it brought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Speak to me,&rsquo; implored Albine. &lsquo;You have never spoken to me like that.
+      When you were upstairs in your room, when you were not dumb, you talked
+      the silly prattle of a child. How is it I no longer know your voice? Just
+      now I thought it had come down from the trees, that it reached me from
+      every part of the garden, that it was one of those deep sighs that used to
+      worry me at night before you came. Listen, everything is keeping silence
+      to hear you speak again.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But still he failed to recognise her presence. Tenderer grew her tones.
+      &lsquo;No, don&rsquo;t speak if it tires you. Sit down beside me, and we will remain
+      here on the grass till the sun wanes. And look, I have found two
+      strawberries. Such trouble I had too! The birds eat up everything. One&rsquo;s
+      for you, both if you like; or we can halve them, and taste each of them.
+      You&rsquo;ll thank me, and then I shall hear you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he would not sit down, he refused the strawberries, which Albine
+      pettishly threw away. She did not open her lips again. She would rather
+      have seen him ill, as in those earlier days when she had given him her
+      hand for a pillow, and had felt him coming back to life beneath the
+      cooling breath she blew upon his face. She cursed the returning health
+      which now made him stand in the light like a young unheeding god. Would he
+      be ever thus then, with never a glance for her? Would he never be further
+      healed, and at last see her and love her? And she dreamed of once again
+      being his healer, of accomplishing by the sole power of her little hands
+      the cure of the second childhood in which he remained. She could clearly
+      see that there was no spark in the depths of his grey eyes, that his was
+      but a pallid beauty like that of the statues which had fallen among the
+      nettles of the flower-garden. She rose and clasped him, breathing on his
+      neck to rouse him. But that morning Serge never even felt the breath that
+      lifted his silky beard. The sun got low, it was time to go indoors. On
+      reaching his room, Albine burst into tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that morning forward the invalid took a short walk in the garden
+      every day. He went past the mulberry tree, as far as the edge of the
+      terrace, where a wide flight of broken steps descended to the flowery
+      parterre. He grew accustomed to the open air, each bath of sunlight
+      brought him fresh vigour. A young chestnut tree, which had sprung from
+      some fallen nut between two stones of the balustrade, burst the resin of
+      its buds, and unfolded its leafy fans with far less vigour than he
+      progressed. One day, indeed, he even attempted to descend the steps, but
+      in this his strength failed him, and he sat down among the dane-wort which
+      had grown up between the cracks in the stone flags. Below, to the left, he
+      could see a small wood of roses. It was thither that he dreamt of going.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Wait a little longer,&rsquo; said Albine. &lsquo;The scent of the roses is too strong
+      for you yet. I have never been able to sit long under the rose-trees
+      without feeling exhausted, light-headed, with a longing to cry. Don&rsquo;t be
+      afraid, I will some day lead you to the rose-trees, and I shall surely
+      weep among them, for you make me very sad.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0027" id="link2H_4_0027">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      One morning she at last succeeded in helping him to the foot of the steps,
+      trampling down the grass before him with her feet, and clearing a way for
+      him through the briars, whose supple arms barred the last few yards. Then
+      they slowly entered the wood of roses. It was indeed a very wood, with
+      thickets of tall standard roses throwing out leafy clumps as big as trees,
+      and enormous rose bushes impenetrable as copses of young oaks. Here,
+      formerly, there had been a most marvellous collection of plants. But since
+      the flower garden had been left in abandonment, everything had run wild,
+      and a virgin forest had arisen, a forest of roses over-running the paths,
+      crowded with wild offshoots, so mingled, so blended, that roses of every
+      scent and hue seemed to blossom on the same stem. Creeping roses formed
+      mossy carpets on the ground, while climbing roses clung to others like
+      greedy ivy plants, and ascended in spindles of verdure, letting a shower
+      of their loosened petals fall at the lightest breeze. Natural paths
+      coursed through the wood&mdash;narrow footways, broad avenues, enchanting
+      covered walks in which one strolled in the shade and scent. These led to
+      glades and clearings, under bowers of small red roses, and between walls
+      hung with tiny yellow ones. Some sunny nooks gleamed like green silken
+      stuff embroidered with bright patterns; other shadier corners offered the
+      seclusion of alcoves and an aroma of love, the balmy warmth, as it were,
+      of a posy languishing on a woman&rsquo;s bosom. The rose bushes had whispering
+      voices too. And the rose bushes were full of songbirds&rsquo; nests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We must take care not to lose ourselves,&rsquo; said Albine, as she entered the
+      wood. &lsquo;I did lose myself once, and the sun had set before I was able to
+      free myself from the rose bushes which caught me by the skirt at every
+      step.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had barely walked a few minutes, however, before Serge, worn out with
+      fatigue, wished to sit down. He stretched himself upon the ground, and
+      fell into deep slumber. Albine sat musing by his side. They were on the
+      edge of a glade, near a narrow path which stretched away through the wood,
+      streaked with flashes of sunlight, and, through a small round blue gap at
+      its far end, revealed the sky. Other little paths led from the clearing
+      into leafy recesses. The glade was formed of tall rose bushes rising one
+      above the other with such a wealth of branches, such a tangle of thorny
+      shoots, that big patches of foliage were caught aloft, and hung there
+      tent-like, stretching out from bush to bush. Through the tiny apertures in
+      the patches of leaves, which were suggestive of fine lace, the light
+      filtered like impalpable sunny dust. And from the vaulted roof hung stray
+      branches, chandeliers, as it were, thick clusters suspended from green
+      thread-like stems, armfuls of flowers that reached to the ground, athwart
+      some rent in the leafy ceiling, which trailed around like a tattered
+      curtain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine meanwhile was gazing at Serge asleep. She had never seen him so
+      utterly prostrated in body as now, his hands lying open on the turf, his
+      face deathly. So dead indeed he was to her that she thought she could kiss
+      his face without his even feeling it. And sadly, absently, she busied her
+      hands with shredding all the roses within her reach. Above her head
+      drooped an enormous cluster which brushed against her hair, set roses on
+      her twisted locks, her ears, her neck, and even threw a mantle of the
+      fragrant flowers across her shoulders. Higher up, under her fingers, other
+      roses rained down with large and tender petals exquisitely formed, which
+      in hue suggested the faintly flushing purity of a maiden&rsquo;s bosom. Like a
+      living snowfall these roses already hid her feet in the grass. And they
+      climbed her knees, covered her skirt, and smothered her to her waist;
+      while three stray petals, which had fluttered on to her bodice, just above
+      her bosom, there looked like three glimpses of her bewitching skin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! the lazy fellow!&rsquo; she murmured, feeling bored and picking up two
+      handfuls of roses, which she flung in Serge&rsquo;s face to wake him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not stir, however, but still lay there with the roses on his eyes
+      and mouth. This made Albine laugh. She stooped down, and with her whole
+      heart kissed both his eyes and his mouth, blowing as she kissed to drive
+      the rose petals away; but they remained upon his lips, and she broke into
+      still louder laughter, intensely amused at this flowery caressing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge slowly raised himself. He gazed at her with amazement, as if
+      startled at finding her there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Who are you? where do you come from? what are you doing here beside me?&rsquo; 
+      he asked her. And still she smiled, transported with delight at marking
+      this awakening of his senses. Then he seemed to remember something, and
+      continued with a gesture of happy confidence:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I know, you are my love, flesh of my flesh, you are waiting for me that
+      we may be one for ever. I was dreaming of you. You were in my breast, and
+      I gave you my blood, my muscles, my bones. I felt no pain. You took half
+      my heart so tenderly that I experienced keen inward delight at thus
+      dividing myself. I sought all that was best and most beautiful within me
+      to give it to you. You might have carried off everything, and still I
+      should have thanked you. And I woke when you went out of me. You left
+      through my eyes and mouth; ay, I felt it. You were all warm, all fragrant,
+      so sweet that it was the thrill from you that has made me awake.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine listened to his words with ecstasy. At last he saw her; at last his
+      birth was accomplished, his cure begun. With outstretched hands she begged
+      him to go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How have I managed to live without you?&rsquo; he murmured. &lsquo;No, I did not
+      live, I was like a slumbering animal. And now you are mine! and you are no
+      one but myself! Listen, you must never leave me; for you are my very
+      breath, and in leaving me you would rob me of my life. We will remain
+      within ourselves. You will be mine even as I shall be yours. Should I ever
+      forsake you, may I be accursed, may my body wither like a useless and
+      noxious weed!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He caught hold of her hands, and exclaimed in a voice quivering with
+      admiration: &lsquo;How beautiful you are!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the falling dust of sunshine Albine&rsquo;s skin looked milky white, scarce
+      gilded here and there by the sunny sheen. The shower of roses around and
+      on her steeped her in pinkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her fair hair, loosely held together by her comb, decked her head as with
+      a setting planet whose last bright sparks shone upon the nape of her neck.
+      She wore a white gown; her arms, her throat, her stainless skin bloomed
+      unabashed as a flower, musky with a goodly fragrance. Her figure was
+      slender, not too tall, but supple as a snake&rsquo;s, with softly rounded,
+      voluptuously expanding outlines, in which the freshness of childhood
+      mingled with womanhood&rsquo;s nascent charms. Her oval face, with its narrow
+      brow and rather full mouth, beamed with the tender living light of her
+      blue eyes. And yet she was grave, too, her cheeks unruffled, her chin
+      plump&mdash;as naturally lovely as are the trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And how I love you!&rsquo; said Serge, drawing her to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were wholly one another&rsquo;s now, clasped in each other&rsquo;s arms! They did
+      not kiss, but held each other round the waist, cheek to cheek, united,
+      dumb, delighted with their oneness. Around them bloomed the roses with a
+      mad, amorous blossoming, full of crimson and rosy and white laughter. The
+      living, opening flowers seemed to bare their very bosoms. Yellow roses
+      were there showing the golden skin of barbarian maidens: straw-coloured
+      roses, lemon-coloured roses, sun-coloured roses&mdash;every shade of the
+      necks which are ambered by glowing skies. Then there was skin of softer
+      hue: among the tea roses, bewitchingly moist and cool, one caught glimpses
+      of modest, bashful charms, with skin as fine as silk tinged faintly with a
+      blue network of veins. Farther on all the smiling life of the rose
+      expanded: there was the blush white rose, barely tinged with a dash of
+      carmine, snowy as the foot of a maid dabbling in a spring; there was the
+      silvery pink, more subdued than even the glow with which a youthful arm
+      irradiates a wide sleeve; there was the clear, fresh rose, in which blood
+      seemed to gleam under satin as in the bare shoulders of a woman bathed in
+      light; and there was the bright pink rose with its buds like the nipples
+      of virgin bosoms, and its opening flowers that suggested parted lips,
+      exhaling warm and perfumed breath. And the climbing roses, the tall
+      cluster roses with their showers of white flowers, clothed all these
+      others with the lacework of their bunches, the innocence of their flimsy
+      muslin; while, here and there, roses dark as the lees of wine,
+      sanguineous, almost black, showed amidst the bridal purity like passion&rsquo;s
+      wounds. Verily, it was like a bridal&mdash;the bridal of the fragrant
+      wood, the virginity of May led to the fertility of July and August; the
+      first unknowing kiss culled like a nosegay on the wedding morn. Even in
+      the grass, moss roses, clad in close-fitting garments of green wool,
+      seemed to be awaiting the advent of love. Flowers rambled all along the
+      sun-streaked path, faces peeped out everywhere to court the passing
+      breezes. Bright were the smiles under the spreading tent of the glade. Not
+      a flower that bloomed the same: the roses differed in the fashion of their
+      wooing. Some, shy and blushing, would show but a glimpse of bud, while
+      others, panting and wide open, seemed consumed with infatuation for their
+      persons. There were pert, gay little things that filed off, cockade in
+      cap; there were huge ones, bursting with sensuous charms, like portly,
+      fattened-up sultanas; there were impudent hussies, too, in coquettish
+      disarray, on whose petals the white traces of the powder-puff could be
+      espied; there were virtuous maids who had donned low-necked garb like
+      demure <i>bourgeoises</i>; and aristocratic ladies, graceful and original,
+      who contrived attractive deshabilles. And the cup-like roses offered their
+      perfume as in precious crystal; the drooping, urn-shaped roses let it drip
+      drop by drop; the round, cabbage-like roses exhaled it with the even
+      breath of slumbering flowers; while the budding roses tightly locked their
+      petals and only sent forth as yet the faint sigh of maidenhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I love you, I love you,&rsquo; softly repeated Serge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine, too, was a large rose, a pallid rose that had opened since the
+      morning. Her feet were white, her arms were rosy pink, her neck was fair
+      of skin, her throat bewitchingly veined, pale and exquisite. She was
+      fragrant, she proffered lips which offered as in a coral cup a perfume
+      that was yet faint and cool. Serge inhaled that perfume, and pressed her
+      to his breast. Albine laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ring of that laugh, which sounded like a bird&rsquo;s rhythmic notes,
+      enraptured Serge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What, that lovely song is yours?&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;It is the sweetest I ever
+      heard. You are indeed my joy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she laughed yet more sonorously, pouring forth rippling scales of
+      high-pitched, flute-like notes that melted into deeper ones. It was an
+      endless laugh, a long-drawn cooing, then a burst of triumphant music
+      celebrating the delight of awakening love. And everything&mdash;the roses,
+      the fragrant wood, the whole of the Paradou&mdash;laughed in that laugh of
+      woman just born to beauty and to love. Till now the vast garden had lacked
+      one charm&mdash;a winning voice which should prove the living mirth of the
+      trees, the streams, and the sunlight. Now the vast garden was endowed with
+      that charm of laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How old are you?&rsquo; asked Albine, when her song had ended in a faint
+      expiring note.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nearly twenty-six,&rsquo; Serge answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was amazed. What! he was twenty-six! He, too, was astonished at having
+      made that answer so glibly, for it seemed to him that he had not yet lived
+      a day&mdash;an hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And how old are you?&rsquo; he asked in his turn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, I am sixteen.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she broke into laughter again, quivering from head to foot, repeating
+      and singing her age. She laughed at her sixteen years with a fine-drawn
+      laugh that flowed on with rhythmic trilling like a streamlet. Serge
+      scanned her closely, amazed at the laughing life that transfigured her
+      face. He scarcely knew her now with those dimples in her cheeks, those
+      bow-shaped lips between which peeped the rosy moistness of her mouth, and
+      those eyes blue like bits of sky kindling with the rising of the sun. As
+      she threw back her head, she sent a glow of warmth through him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He put out his hand, and fumbled mechanically behind her neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What do you want?&rsquo; she asked. And suddenly remembering, she exclaimed:
+      &lsquo;My comb! my comb! that&rsquo;s it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave him her comb, and let fall her heavy tresses. A cloth of gold
+      suddenly unrolled and clothed her to her hips. Some locks which flowed
+      down upon her breast gave, as it were a finishing touch to her regal
+      raiment. At the sight of that sudden blaze, Serge uttered an exclamation;
+      he kissed each lock, and burned his lips amidst that sunset-like
+      refulgence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Albine now relieved herself of her long silence, and chatted and
+      questioned unceasingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, how wretched you made me! You no longer took any notice of me, and
+      day after day I found myself useless and powerless, worried out of my wits
+      like a good-for-nothing.... And yet the first few days I had done you
+      good. You saw me and spoke to me.... Do you remember when you were lying
+      down, and went to sleep on my shoulder, and murmured that I did you good?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No!&rsquo; said Serge, &lsquo;no, I don&rsquo;t remember it. I had never seen you before. I
+      have only just seen you for the first time&mdash;lovely, radiant, never to
+      be forgotten.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She clapped her hands impatiently, exclaiming: &lsquo;And my comb? You must
+      remember how I used to give you my comb to keep you quiet when you were a
+      little child? Why, you were looking for it just now.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, I don&rsquo;t remember. Your hair is like fine silk. I have never kissed
+      your hair before.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this, with some vexation, she recounted certain particulars of his
+      convalescence in the room with the blue ceiling. But he only laughed at
+      her, and at last closed her lips with his hand, saying with anxious
+      weariness: &lsquo;No, be quiet, I don&rsquo;t know; I don&rsquo;t want to know any more....
+      I have only just woke up, and found you there, covered with roses. That is
+      enough.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he drew her once more towards him and held her there, dreaming aloud,
+      and murmuring: &lsquo;Perhaps I have lived before. It must have been a long,
+      long time ago.... I loved you in a painful dream. You had the same blue
+      eyes, the same rather long face, the same youthful mien. But your hair was
+      carefully hidden under a linen cloth, and I never dared to remove that
+      cloth, because your locks seemed to me fearsome and would have made me
+      die. But to-day your hair is the very sweetness of yourself. It preserves
+      your scent, and when I kiss it, when I bury my face in it like this, I
+      drink in your very life.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He kept on passing the long curls through his hands, and pressing them to
+      his lips, as if to squeeze from them all Albine&rsquo;s blood. And after an
+      interval of silence, he continued: &lsquo;It&rsquo;s strange, before one&rsquo;s birth, one
+      dreams of being born.... I was buried somewhere. I was very cold. I could
+      hear all the life of the world outside buzzing above me. But I shut my
+      ears despairingly, for I was used to my gloomy den, and enjoyed some
+      fearful delights in it, so that I never sought to free myself from all the
+      earth weighing upon my chest. Where could I have been then? Who was it
+      gave me light?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He struggled to remember, while Albine now waited in fear and trembling
+      lest he should really do so. Smiling, she took a handful of her hair and
+      wound it round the young man&rsquo;s neck, thus fastening him to herself. This
+      playful act roused him from his musings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;re right,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;I am yours, what does the rest matter? It was
+      you, was it not, who drew me out of the earth? I must have been under this
+      garden. What I heard were your steps rattling the little pebbles in the
+      path. You were looking for me, you brought down upon my head the songs of
+      the birds, the scent of the pinks, the warmth of the sun. I fancied that
+      you would find me at last. I waited a long time for you. But I never
+      expected that you would give yourself to me without your veil, with your
+      hair undone&mdash;the terrible hair which has become so soft.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat her on his lap, placing his face beside hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Do not let us talk any more. We are alone for ever. We love each other.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And thus in all innocence they lingered in each other&rsquo;s arms; for a long,
+      long time did they remain there forgetfully. The sun rose higher; and the
+      dust of light fell hotter from the lofty boughs. The yellow and white and
+      crimson roses were now only a ray of their delight, a sign of their smiles
+      to one another. They had certainly caused buds to open around them. The
+      roses crowned their heads and threw garlands about their waists. And the
+      scent of the roses became so penetrating, so strong with amorous emotion,
+      that it seemed to be the scent of their own breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Serge put up Albine&rsquo;s hair. He raised it in handfuls with
+      delightful awkwardness, and stuck her comb askew in the enormous knot that
+      he had heaped upon her head. And as it happened she looked bewitching
+      thus. Then, rising from the ground, he held out his hands to her, and
+      supported her waist as she got up. They still smiled without speaking a
+      word, and slowly they went down the path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0028" id="link2H_4_0028">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Albine and Serge entered the flower garden. She was watching him with
+      tender anxiety, fearing lest he should overtire himself; but he reassured
+      her with a light laugh. He felt strong enough indeed to carry her
+      whithersoever she listed. When he found himself once more in the full
+      sunlight, he drew a sigh of content. At last he lived; he was no longer a
+      plant subject to the terrible sufferings of winter. And how he was moved
+      with loving gratitude! Had it been within his power, he would have spared
+      Albine&rsquo;s tiny feet even the roughness of the paths; he dreamed of carrying
+      her, clinging round his neck, like a child lulled to sleep by her mother.
+      He already watched over her with a guardian&rsquo;s watchful care, thrusting
+      aside the stones and brambles, jealous lest the breeze should waft a
+      fleeting kiss upon those darling locks which were his alone. She on her
+      side nestled against his shoulder and serenely yielded to his guidance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus Albine and Serge strolled on together in the sunlight for the first
+      time. A balmy fragrance floated in their wake, the very path on which the
+      sun had unrolled a golden carpet thrilled with delight under their feet.
+      Between the tall flowering shrubs they passed like a vision of such
+      wondrous charm that the distant paths seemed to entreat their presence and
+      hail them with a murmur of admiration, even as crowds hail long-expected
+      sovereigns. They formed one sole, supremely lovely being. Albine&rsquo;s snowy
+      skin was but the whiteness of Serge&rsquo;s browner skin. And slowly they passed
+      along clothed with sunlight&mdash;nay, they were themselves the sun&mdash;worshipped
+      by the low bending flowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A tide of emotion now stirred the Paradou to its depths. The old flower
+      garden escorted them&mdash;that vast field bearing a century&rsquo;s
+      untrammelled growth, that nook of Paradise sown by the breeze with the
+      choicest flowers. The blissful peace of the Paradou, slumbering in the
+      broad sunlight, prevented the degeneration of species. It could boast of a
+      temperature ever equable, and a soil which every plant had long enriched
+      to thrive therein in the silence of its vigour. Its vegetation was mighty,
+      magnificent, luxuriantly untended, full of erratic growths decked with
+      monstrous blossoming, unknown to the spade and watering-pot of gardeners.
+      Nature left to herself, free to grow as she listed, in the depths of that
+      solitude protected by natural shelters, threw restraint aside more
+      heartily at each return of spring, indulged in mighty gambols, delighted
+      in offering herself at all seasons strange nosegays not meant for any hand
+      to pluck. A rabid fury seemed to impel her to overthrow whatever the
+      effort of man had created; she rebelliously cast a straggling multitude of
+      flowers over the paths, attacked the rockeries with an ever-rising tide of
+      moss, and knotted round the necks of marble statues the flexible cords of
+      creepers with which she threw them down; she shattered the stonework of
+      the fountains, steps, and terraces with shrubs which burst through them;
+      she slowly, creepingly, spread over the smallest cultivated plots,
+      moulding them to her fancy, and planting on them, as ensign of rebellion,
+      some wayside spore, some lowly weed which she transformed into a gigantic
+      growth of verdure. In days gone by the parterre, tended by a master
+      passionately fond of flowers, had displayed in its trim beds and borders a
+      wondrous wealth of choice blossoms. And the same plants could still be
+      found; but perpetuated, grown into such numberless families, and
+      scampering in such mad fashion throughout the whole garden, that the place
+      was now all helter-skelter riot to its very walls, a very den of
+      debauchery, where intoxicated nature had hiccups of verbena and pinks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though to outward seeming Albine had yielded her weaker self to the
+      guidance of Serge, to whose shoulder she clung, it was she who really led
+      him. She took him first to the grotto. Deep within a clump of poplars and
+      willows gaped a cavern, formed by rugged bits of rocks which had fallen
+      over a basin where tiny rills of water trickled between the stones. The
+      grotto was completely lost to sight beneath the onslaught of vegetation.
+      Below, row upon row of hollyhocks seemed to bar all entrance with a
+      trellis-work of red, yellow, mauve, and white-hued flowers, whose stems
+      were hidden among colossal bronze-green nettles, which calmly exuded
+      blistering poison. Above them was a mighty swarm of creepers which leaped
+      aloft in a few bounds; jasmines starred with balmy flowers; wistarias with
+      delicate lacelike leaves; dense ivy, dentated and resembling varnished
+      metal; lithe honeysuckle, laden with pale coral sprays; amorous
+      clematideae, reaching out arms all tufted with white aigrettes. And among
+      them twined yet slenderer plants, binding them more and more closely
+      together, weaving them into a fragrant woof. Nasturtium, bare and green of
+      skin, showed open mouths of ruddy gold; scarlet runners, tough as
+      whipcord, kindled here and there a fire of gleaming sparks; convolvuli
+      opened their heart-shaped leaves, and with thousands of little bells rang
+      a silent peal of exquisite colours; sweetpeas, like swarms of settling
+      butterflies, folded tawny or rosy wings, ready to be borne yet farther
+      away by the first breeze. It was all a wealth of leafy locks, sprinkled
+      with a shower of flowers, straying away in wild dishevelment, and
+      suggesting the head of some giantess thrown back in a spasm of passion,
+      with a streaming of magnificent hair, which spread into a pool of perfume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have never dared to venture into all that darkness,&rsquo; Albine whispered
+      to Serge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He urged her on, carried her over the nettles; and as a great boulder
+      barred the way into the grotto, he held her up for a moment in his arms so
+      that she might be able to peer through the opening that yawned at a few
+      feet from the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;A marble woman,&rsquo; she whispered, &lsquo;has fallen full length into the stream.
+      The water has eaten her face away.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he, too, in his turn wanted to look, and pulled himself up. A cold
+      breeze played upon his cheeks. In the pale light that glided through the
+      hole, he saw the marble woman lying amidst the reeds and the duckweed. She
+      was naked to the waist. She must have been drowning there for the last
+      hundred years. Some grief had probably flung her into that spring where
+      she was slowly committing suicide. The clear water which flowed over her
+      had worn her face into a smooth expanse of marble, a mere white surface
+      without a feature; but her breasts, raised out of the water by what
+      appeared an effort of her neck, were still perfect and lifelike, throbbing
+      even yet with the joys of some old delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She isn&rsquo;t dead yet,&rsquo; said Serge, getting down again. &lsquo;One day we will
+      come and get her out of there.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Albine shuddered and led him away. They passed out again into the
+      sunlight and the rank luxuriance of beds and borders. They wandered
+      through a field of flowers capriciously, at random. Their feet trod a
+      carpet of lovely dwarf plants, which had once neatly fringed the walks,
+      and now spread about in wild profusion. In succession they passed
+      ankle-deep through the spotted silk of soft rose catchflies, through the
+      tufted satin of feathered pinks, and the blue velvet of forget-me-nots,
+      studded with melancholy little eyes. Further on they forced their way
+      through giant mignonette, which rose to their knees like a bath of
+      perfume; then they turned through a patch of lilies of the valley in order
+      that they might spare an expanse of violets, so delicate-looking that they
+      feared to hurt them. But soon they found themselves surrounded on all
+      sides by violets, and so with wary, gentle steps they passed over their
+      fresh fragrance inhaling the very breath of springtide. Beyond the
+      violets, a mass of lobelias spread out like green wool gemmed with pale
+      mauve. The softly shaded stars of globularia, the blue cups of nemophila,
+      the yellow crosses of saponaria, the white and purple ones of sweet
+      rocket, wove patches of rich tapestry, stretching onward and onward, a
+      fabric of royal luxury, so that the young couple might enjoy the delights
+      of that first walk together without fatigue. But the violets ever
+      reappeared; real seas of violets that rolled all round them, shedding the
+      sweetest perfumes beneath their feet and wafting in their wake the breath
+      of their leaf-hidden flowerets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine and Serge quite lost themselves. Thousands of loftier plants
+      towered up in hedges around them, enclosing narrow paths which they found
+      it delightful to thread. These paths twisted and turned, wandered
+      maze-like through dense thickets. There were ageratums with sky-blue tufts
+      of bloom; woodruffs with soft musky perfume; brazen-throated mimuluses,
+      blotched with bright vermilion; lofty phloxes, crimson and violet,
+      throwing up distaffs of flowers for the breezes to spin; red flax with
+      sprays as fine as hair; chrysanthemums like full golden moons, casting
+      short faint rays, white and violet and rose, around them. The young couple
+      surmounted all the obstacles that lay in their path and continued their
+      way betwixt the walls of verdure. To the right of them sprang up the slim
+      fraxinella, the centranthus draped with snowy blossoms, and the greyish
+      hounds-tongue, in each of whose tiny flowercups gleamed a dewdrop. To
+      their left was a long row of columbines of every variety; white ones, pale
+      rose ones, and some of deep violet hues, almost black, that seemed to be
+      in mourning, the blossoms that drooped from their lofty, branching stems
+      being plaited and goffered like crape. Then, as they advanced further on,
+      the character of the hedges changed. Giant larkspurs thrust up their
+      flower-rods, between the dentated foliage of which gaped the mouths of
+      tawny snapdragons, while the schizanthus reared its scanty leaves and
+      fluttering blooms, that looked like butterflies&rsquo; wings of sulphur hue
+      splashed with soft lake. The blue bells of campanulae swayed aloft, some
+      of them even over the tall asphodels, whose golden stems served as their
+      steeples. In one corner was a giant fennel that reminded one of a
+      lace-dressed lady spreading out a sunshade of sea-green satin. Then the
+      pair suddenly found their way blocked. It was impossible to advance any
+      further; a mass of flowers, a huge sheaf of plants stopped all progress.
+      Down below, a mass of brank-ursine formed as it were a pedestal, from the
+      midst of which sprang scarlet geum, rhodanthe with stiff petals, and
+      clarkia with great white carved crosses, that looked like the insignia of
+      some barbarous order. Higher up still, bloomed the rosy viscaria, the
+      yellow leptosiphon, the white colinsia, and the lagurus, whose dusty green
+      bloom contrasted with the glowing colours around it. Towering over all
+      these growths scarlet foxgloves and blue lupins, rising in slender
+      columns, formed a sort of oriental rotunda gleaming vividly with crimson
+      and azure; while at the very summit, like a surmounting dome of dusky
+      copper, were the ruddy leaves of a colossal castor-bean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Serge reached out his hands to try to force a passage, Albine stopped
+      him and begged him not to injure the flowers. &lsquo;You will break the stems
+      and crush the leaves,&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;Ever since I have been here, I have
+      always taken care to hurt none of them. Come, and I will show you the
+      pansies.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She made him turn and led him from the narrow paths to the centre of the
+      parterre, where, once upon a time, great basins had been hollowed out. But
+      these had now fallen into ruin, and were nothing but gigantic <i>jardinières</i>,
+      fringed with stained and cracked marble. In one of the largest of them,
+      the wind had sown a wonderful basketful of pansies. The velvety blooms
+      seemed almost like living faces, with bands of violet hair, yellow eyes,
+      paler tinted mouths, and chins of a delicate flesh colour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I was younger they used to make me quite afraid,&rsquo; murmured Albine.
+      &lsquo;Look at them. Wouldn&rsquo;t you think that they were thousands of little faces
+      looking up at you from the ground? And they turn, too, all in the same
+      direction. They might be a lot of buried dolls thrusting their heads out
+      of the ground.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She led him still further on. They went the round of all the other basins.
+      In the next one a number of amaranthuses had sprung up, raising monstrous
+      crests which Albine had always shrunk from touching, such was their
+      resemblance to big bleeding caterpillars. Balsams of all colours, now
+      straw-coloured, now the hue of peach-blossom, now blush-white, now grey
+      like flax, filled another basin where their seed pods split with little
+      snaps. Then in the midst of a ruined fountain, there flourished a colony
+      of splendid carnations. White ones hung over the moss-covered rims, and
+      flaked ones thrust a bright medley of blossom between the chinks of the
+      marble; while from the mouth of the lion, whence formerly the water-jets
+      had spurted, a huge crimson clove now shot out so vigorously that the
+      decrepit beast seemed to be spouting blood. Near by, the principal piece
+      of ornamental water, a lake, on whose surface swans had glided, had now
+      become a thicket of lilacs, beneath whose shade stocks and verbenas and
+      day-lilies screened their delicate tints, and dozed away, all redolent of
+      perfume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But we haven&rsquo;t seen half the flowers yet,&rsquo; said Albine, proudly. &lsquo;Over
+      yonder there are such huge ones that I can quite bury myself amongst them
+      like a partridge in a corn-field.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They went thither. They tripped down some broad steps, from whose fallen
+      urns still flickered the violet fires of the iris. All down the steps
+      streamed gilliflowers, like liquid gold. The sides were flanked with
+      thistles, that shot up like candelabra, of green bronze, twisted and
+      curved into the semblance of birds&rsquo; heads, with all the fantastic elegance
+      of Chinese incense-burners. Between the broken balustrades drooped tresses
+      of stonecrop, light greenish locks, spotted as with mouldiness. Then at
+      the foot of the steps another parterre spread out, dotted over with
+      box-trees that were vigorous as oaks; box-trees which had once been
+      carefully pruned and clipped into balls and pyramids and octagonal
+      columns, but which were now revelling in unrestrained freedom of
+      untidiness, breaking out into ragged masses of greenery, through which
+      blue patches of sky were visible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Albine led Serge straight on to a spot that seemed to be the graveyard
+      of the flower-garden. There the scabious mourned, and processions of
+      poppies stretched out in line, with deathly odour, unfolding heavy blooms
+      of feverish brilliance. Sad anemones clustered in weary throngs, pallid as
+      if infected by some epidemic. Thick-set daturas spread out purplish horns,
+      from which insects, weary of life, sucked fatal poison. Marigolds buried
+      with choking foliage their writhing starry flowers, that already reeked of
+      putrefaction. And there were other melancholy flowers also: fleshy
+      ranunculi with rusty tints, hyacinths and tuberoses that exhaled asphyxia
+      and died from their own perfume. But the cinerarias were most conspicuous,
+      crowding thickly in half-mourning robes of violet and white. In the middle
+      of this gloomy spot a mutilated marble Cupid still remained standing,
+      smiling beneath the lichens which overspread his youthful nakedness, while
+      the arm with which he had once held his bow lay low amongst the nettles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Albine and Serge passed on through a rank growth of peonies, reaching
+      to their waists. The white flowers fell to pieces as they passed, with a
+      rain of snowy petals which was as refreshing to their hands as the heavy
+      drops of a thunder shower. And the red ones grinned with apoplectical
+      faces which perturbed them. Next they passed through a field of fuchsias,
+      forming dense, vigorous shrubs that delighted them with their countless
+      bells. Then they went on through fields of purple veronicas and others of
+      geraniums, blazing with all the fiery tints of a brasier, which the wind
+      seemed to be ever fanning into fresh heat. And they forced their way
+      through a jungle of gladioli, tall as reeds, which threw up spikes of
+      flowers that gleamed in the full daylight with all the brilliance of
+      burning torches. They lost themselves too in a forest of sunflowers, with
+      stalks as thick as Albine&rsquo;s wrist, a forest darkened by rough leaves large
+      enough to form an infant&rsquo;s bed, and peopled with giant starry faces that
+      shone like so many suns. And thence they passed into another forest, a
+      forest of rhododendrons so teeming with blossom that the branches and
+      leaves were completely hidden, and nothing but huge nosegays, masses of
+      soft calyces, could be seen as far as the eye could reach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come along; we have not got to the end yet,&rsquo; cried Albine. &lsquo;Let us push
+      on.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Serge stopped. They were now in the midst of an old ruined colonnade.
+      Some of the columns offered inviting seats as they lay prostrate amongst
+      primroses and periwinkles. Further away, among the columns that still
+      remained upright, other flowers were growing in profusion. There were
+      expanses of tulips showing brilliant streaks like painted china; expanses
+      of calceolarias dotted with crimson and gold; expanses of zinnias like
+      great daisies; expanses of petunias with petals like soft cambric through
+      which rosy flesh tints gleamed; and other fields, with flowers they could
+      not recognise spreading in carpets beneath the sun, in a motley brilliance
+      that was softened by the green of their leaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We shall never be able to see it all,&rsquo; said Serge, smiling and waving his
+      hand. &lsquo;It would be very nice to sit down here, amongst all this perfume.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Near them there was a large patch of heliotropes, whose vanilla-like
+      breath permeated the air with velvety softness. They sat down upon one of
+      the fallen columns, in the midst of a cluster of magnificent lilies which
+      had shot up there. They had been walking for more than an hour. They had
+      wandered on through the flowers from the roses to the lilies. These
+      offered them a calm, quiet haven after their lovers&rsquo; ramble amid the
+      perfumed solicitations of luscious honeysuckle, musky violets, verbenas
+      that breathed out the warm scent of kisses, and tuberoses that panted with
+      voluptuous passion. The lilies, with their tall slim stems, shot up round
+      them like a white pavilion and sheltered them with snowy cups, gleaming
+      only with the gold of their slender pistils. And there they rested, like
+      betrothed children in a tower of purity; an impregnable ivory tower, where
+      all their love was yet perfect innocence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine and Serge lingered amongst the lilies till evening. They felt so
+      happy there, and seemed to break out into a new life. Serge felt the last
+      trace of fever leave his hands, while Albine grew quite white, with a
+      milky whiteness untinted by any rosy hue. They were unconscious that their
+      arms and necks and shoulders were bare, and their straying unconfined hair
+      in nowise troubled them. They laughed merrily one at the other, with frank
+      open laughter. The expression of their eyes retained the limpid calmness
+      of clear spring water. When they quitted the lilies, their feelings were
+      but those of children ten years old; it seemed to them that they had just
+      met each other in that garden so that they might be friends for ever and
+      amuse themselves with perpetual play. And as they returned through the
+      parterre, the very flowers bore themselves discreetly, as though they were
+      glad to see their childishness, and would do nothing that might corrupt
+      them. The forests of peonies, the masses of carnations, the carpets of
+      forget-me-nots, the curtains of clematis now steeped in the atmosphere of
+      evening, slumbering in childlike purity akin to their own, no longer
+      spread suggestions of voluptuousness around them. The pansies looked up at
+      them with their little candid faces, like playfellows; and the languid
+      mignonette, as Albine&rsquo;s white skirt brushed by it, seemed full of
+      compassion, and held its breath lest it should fan their love prematurely
+      into life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0029" id="link2H_4_0029">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At dawn the next day it was Serge who called Albine. She slept in a room
+      on the upper floor. He looked up at her window and saw her throw open the
+      shutters just as she had sprung out of bed. They laughed merrily as their
+      eyes met.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You must not go out to-day,&rsquo; said Albine, when she came down. &lsquo;We must
+      stay indoors and rest. To-morrow I will take you a long, long way off, to
+      a spot where we can have a very jolly time.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t we grow tired of stopping here?&rsquo; muttered Serge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, dear no! I will tell you stories.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They passed a delightful day. The windows were thrown wide open, and all
+      the beauty of the Paradou came in and rejoiced with them in the room.
+      Serge now really took possession of that delightful room, where he
+      imagined he had been born. He insisted upon seeing everything, and upon
+      having everything explained to him. The plaster Cupids who sported round
+      the alcove amused him so much that he mounted upon a chair to tie Albine&rsquo;s
+      sash round the neck of the smallest of them, a little bit of a man who was
+      turning somersaults with his head downward. Albine clapped her hands, and
+      said that he looked like a cockchafer fastened by a string. Then, as
+      though seized by an access of pity, she said, &lsquo;No, no, unfasten him. It
+      prevents him from flying.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was the Cupids painted over the doors that more particularly
+      attracted Serge&rsquo;s attention. He fidgeted at not being able to make out
+      what they were playing at, for the paintings had grown very dim. Helped by
+      Albine, he dragged a table to the wall, and when they both had climbed
+      upon it, Albine began to explain things to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Look, now, those are throwing flowers. Under the flowers you can only see
+      some bare legs. It seems to me that when first I came here I could make
+      out a lady reposing there. But she has been gone for a long time now.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They examined all the panels in turn; but they had faded to such a degree
+      that little more could be distinguished than the knees and elbows of
+      infants. The details which had doubtless delighted the eyes of those whose
+      old-time passion seemed to linger round the alcove, had so completely
+      disappeared under the influence of the fresh air, that the room, like the
+      park, seemed restored to pristine virginity beneath the serene glory of
+      the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! they are only some little boys playing,&rsquo; said Serge, as he descended
+      from the table. &lsquo;Do you know how to play at &ldquo;hot cockles&rdquo;?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no game that Albine did not know how to play at. But, for &lsquo;hot
+      cockles,&rsquo; at least three players are necessary, and that made them laugh.
+      Serge protested, however, that they got on too well together ever to
+      desire a third there, and they vowed that they would always remain by
+      themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We are quite alone here; one cannot hear a sound,&rsquo; said the young man,
+      lolling on the couch. &lsquo;And all the furniture has such a pleasant old-time
+      smell. The place is as snug as a nest. We ought to be very happy in this
+      room.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl shook her head gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If I had been at all timid,&rsquo; she murmured, &lsquo;I should have been very much
+      frightened at first.... That is one of the stories I want to tell you. The
+      people in the neighbourhood told it to me. Perhaps it isn&rsquo;t true, but it
+      will amuse us, at any rate.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she came and sat down by Serge&rsquo;s side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is years and years since it all happened. The Paradou belonged to a
+      rich lord, who came and shut himself up in it with a very beautiful lady.
+      The gates of the mansion were kept so tightly closed, and the garden walls
+      were built so very high, that no one ever caught sight even of the lady&rsquo;s
+      skirts.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! I know,&rsquo; Serge interrupted; &lsquo;the lady was never seen again.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, as Albine looked at him in surprise, somewhat annoyed to find that
+      he knew her story already, he added in a low voice, apparently a little
+      astonished himself: &lsquo;You told me the story before, you know.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She declared that she had never done so; but all at once she seemed to
+      change her mind, and allowed herself to be convinced. However, that did
+      not prevent her from finishing her tale in these words: &lsquo;When the lord
+      went away his hair was quite white. He had all the gates barricaded up, so
+      that no one might get inside and disturb the lady. It was in this room
+      that she died.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;In this room!&rsquo; cried Serge. &lsquo;You never told me that! Are you quite sure
+      that it was really in this room she died?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine seemed put out. She repeated to him what every one in the
+      neighbourhood knew. The lord had built the pavilion for the reception of
+      this unknown lady, who looked like a princess. The servants employed at
+      the mansion afterwards declared that he spent all his days and nights
+      there. Often, too, they saw him in one of the walks, guiding the tiny feet
+      of the mysterious lady towards the densest coppices. But for all the world
+      they would never have ventured to spy upon the pair, who sometimes scoured
+      the park for weeks together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And it was here she died?&rsquo; repeated Serge, who felt touched with sorrow.
+      &lsquo;And you have taken her room; you use her furniture, and you sleep in her
+      bed.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! well, you know, I am not timid. Besides, it is so long since it all
+      happened. You said what a delightful room it was.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they both dropped into silence, and glanced, for a moment, towards
+      the alcove, the lofty ceiling, and the corners, steeped in grey gloom. The
+      faded furniture seemed to speak of long past love. A gentle sigh, as of
+      resignation, passed through the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, indeed,&rsquo; murmured Serge, &lsquo;one could not feel afraid here. It is too
+      peaceful.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Albine came closer to him and said: &lsquo;There is something else that only
+      a few people know, and that is that the lord and the lady discovered in
+      the garden a certain spot where perfect happiness was to be found, and
+      where they afterwards spent all their time. I have been told that by a
+      very good authority. It is a cool, shady spot, hidden away in the midst of
+      an impenetrable jungle, and it is so marvellously beautiful that anyone
+      who reaches it forgets all else in the world. The poor lady must have been
+      buried there.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Is it anywhere about the parterre?&rsquo; asked Serge curiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! I cannot tell, I cannot tell,&rsquo; said the young girl with an expression
+      of discouragement. &lsquo;I know nothing about it. I have searched everywhere,
+      but I have never been able to find the least sign of that lovely clearing.
+      It is not amongst the roses, nor the lilies, nor the violets.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Perhaps it is hidden somewhere away amongst those mournful-looking
+      flowers, where you showed me the figure of a boy standing with his arm
+      broken off.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, no, indeed.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Perhaps, then, it is in that grotto, near that clear stream, where the
+      great marble woman, without a face, is lying.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, no.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine seemed to reflect for a moment. Then, as though speaking to
+      herself, she went on: &lsquo;As soon as ever I came here, I began to hunt for
+      it. I spent whole days in the Paradou, and ferreted about in all the
+      out-of-the-way green corners, to have the pleasure of sitting for an hour
+      in that happy spot. What mornings have I not wasted in groping under the
+      brambles and peeping into the most distant nooks of the park! Oh! I should
+      have known it at once, that enchanting retreat, with the mighty tree that
+      must shelter it with a canopy of foliage, with its carpet of soft silky
+      turf, and its walls of tangled greenery, which the very birds themselves
+      cannot penetrate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised her voice, and threw one of her arms round Serge&rsquo;s neck, as she
+      continued: &lsquo;Tell me, now; shall we search for it together? We shall surely
+      find it. You, who are strong, will push aside the heavy branches, while I
+      crawl underneath and search the brakes. When I grow weary, you can carry
+      me; you can help me to cross the streams; and if we happen to lose
+      ourselves, you can climb the trees and try to discover our way again. Ah!
+      and how delightful it will be for us to sit, side by side, beneath the
+      green canopy in the centre of the clearing! I have been told that in one
+      minute one may there live the whole of life. Tell me, my dear Serge, shall
+      we set off to-morrow and scour the park, from bush to bush, until we have
+      found what we want?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge shrugged his shoulders, and smiled. &lsquo;What would be the use?&rsquo; he
+      said. &lsquo;Is it not pleasant in the parterre? Don&rsquo;t you think we ought to
+      remain among the flowers, instead of seeking a greater happiness that lies
+      so far away?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is there that the dead lady lies buried,&rsquo; murmured Albine, falling
+      back into her reverie. &lsquo;It was the joy of being there that killed her. The
+      tree casts a shade, whose charm is deathly.... I would willingly die so.
+      We would clasp one another there, and we would die, and none would ever
+      find us again.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t talk like that,&rsquo; interrupted Serge. &lsquo;You make me feel so unhappy. I
+      would rather that we should live in the bright sunlight, far away from
+      that fatal shade. Your words distress me, as though they urged us to some
+      irreparable misfortune. It must be forbidden to sit beneath a tree whose
+      shade can thus affect one.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; Albine gravely declared, &lsquo;it is forbidden. All the folks of the
+      countryside have told me that it is forbidden.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then silence fell. Serge rose from the couch where he had been lolling,
+      and laughed, and pretended that he did not care about stories. The sun was
+      setting, however, before Albine would consent to go into the garden for
+      even a few minutes. She led Serge to the left, along the enclosing wall,
+      to a spot strewn with fragments of stone, and woodwork, and ironwork,
+      bristling too with briars and brambles. It was the site of the old
+      mansion, still black with traces of the fire which had destroyed the
+      building. Underneath the briars lay rotting timbers and fire-split
+      masonry. The spot was like a little ravined, hillocky wilderness of
+      sterile rocks, draped with rude vegetation, clinging creepers that twined
+      and twisted through every crevice like green serpents. The young folks
+      amused themselves by wandering across this chaos, groping about in the
+      holes, turning over the debris, trying to reconstruct something of the
+      past out of the ruins before them. They did not confess their curiosity as
+      they chased one another through the midst of fallen floorings and
+      overturned partitions; but they were indeed, all the time, secretly
+      pondering over the legend of those ruins, and of that lady, lovelier than
+      day, whose silken skirt had rustled down those steps, where now lizards
+      alone were idly crawling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge ended by climbing the highest of the ruinous masses; and, looking
+      round at the park which unfolded its vast expanse of greenery, he sought
+      the grey form of the pavilion through the trees. Albine was standing
+      silent by his side, serious once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The pavilion is yonder, to the right,&rsquo; she said at last, without waiting
+      for Serge to ask her. &lsquo;It is the only one of the buildings that is left.
+      You can see it quite plainly at the end of that grove of lime-trees.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They fell into silence again; and then Albine, as though pursuing aloud
+      the reflections which were passing through their minds, exclaimed: &lsquo;When
+      he went to see her, he must have gone down yonder path, then past those
+      big chestnut trees, and then under the limes. It wouldn&rsquo;t take him a
+      quarter of an hour.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge made no reply. But as they went home, they took the path which
+      Albine had pointed out, past the chestnuts and under the limes. It was a
+      path that love had consecrated. And as they walked over the grass, they
+      seemed to be seeking footmarks, or a fallen knot of ribbon, or a whiff of
+      ancient perfume&mdash;something that would clearly satisfy them that they
+      were really travelling along the path that led to the joy of union.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Wait out here,&rsquo; said Albine, when they once more stood before the
+      pavilion; &lsquo;don&rsquo;t come up for three minutes.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she ran off merrily, and shut herself up in the room with the blue
+      ceiling. And when she had let Serge knock at the door twice, she softly
+      set it ajar, and received him with an old-fashioned courtesy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good morrow, my dear lord,&rsquo; she said as she embraced him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This amused them extremely. They played at being lovers with childish
+      glee. In stammering accents they would have revived the passion which had
+      once throbbed and died there. But it was like a first effort at learning a
+      lesson. They knew not how to kiss each other&rsquo;s lips, but sought each
+      other&rsquo;s cheeks, and ended by dancing around each other, with shrieks of
+      laughter, from ignorance of any other way of showing the pleasure they
+      experienced from their mutual love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0030" id="link2H_4_0030">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The next morning Albine was anxious to start at sunrise upon the grand
+      expedition which she had planned the night before. She tapped her feet
+      gleefully on the ground, and declared that they would not come back before
+      nightfall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Where are you going to take me?&rsquo; asked Serge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You will see, you will see.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he caught her by the hands and looked her very earnestly in the face.
+      &lsquo;You must not be foolish, you know. I won&rsquo;t have you hunting for that
+      glade of yours, or for the tree, or for the grassy couch where one droops
+      and dies. You know that it is forbidden.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She blushed slightly, protesting that she had no such idea in her head.
+      Then she added: &lsquo;But if we should come across them, just by chance, you
+      know, and without really seeking them, you wouldn&rsquo;t mind sitting down,
+      would you? Else you must love me very little.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They set off, going straight through the parterre without stopping to
+      watch the awakening of the flowers which were all dripping after their
+      dewy bath. The morning had a rosy hue, the smile of a beautiful child,
+      just opening its eyes on its snowy pillow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Where are you taking me?&rsquo; repeated Serge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Albine only laughed and would not answer. Then, on reaching the stream
+      which ran through the garden at the end of the flower-beds, she halted in
+      great distress. The water was swollen with the late rains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We shall never be able to get across,&rsquo; she murmured. &lsquo;I can generally
+      manage it by taking off my shoes and stockings, but, to-day, the water
+      would reach to our waists.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They walked for a moment or two along the bank to find some fordable
+      point; but the girl said it was hopeless; she knew the stream quite well.
+      Once there had been a bridge across, but it had fallen in, and had strewn
+      the river bed with great blocks of stone, between which the water rushed
+      along in foaming eddies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Get on to my back, then,&rsquo; said Serge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, no; I&rsquo;d rather not. If you were to slip, we should both of us get a
+      famous wetting. You don&rsquo;t know how treacherous those stones are.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Get on to my back,&rsquo; repeated Serge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was tempted to do so. She stepped back for a spring, and then jumped
+      up, like a boy; but she felt that Serge was tottering; and crying out that
+      she was not safely seated, she got down again. However, after two more
+      attempts, she managed to settle herself securely on Serge&rsquo;s back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;When you are quite ready,&rsquo; said the young man, laughing, &lsquo;we will start.
+      Now, hold on tightly. We are off.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, with three light strides, he crossed the stream, scarcely wetting
+      even his toes. Midway, however, Albine thought that he was slipping. She
+      broke out into a little scream, and hugged him tightly round his neck. But
+      he sprang forward, and carried her at a gallop over the fine sand on the
+      other side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Gee up!&rsquo; she cried, quite calm again, and delighted with this novel game.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He ran along with her for some distance, she clucking her tongue, and
+      guiding him to right or left by some locks of his hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Here&mdash;here we are,&rsquo; she said at last, tapping him gently on the
+      cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she jumped to the ground; while he, hot and perspiring, leaned
+      against a tree to draw breath. Albine thereupon began to scold him, and
+      threatened that she would not nurse him if he made himself ill again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Stuff!&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;it&rsquo;s done me good. When I have grown quite strong
+      again, I will carry you about all day. But where are you taking me?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Here,&rsquo; she said, as she seated herself beneath a huge pear-tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were in the old orchard of the park. A hawthorn hedge, a real wall of
+      greenery with here and there a gap, separated it from everything else.
+      There was quite a forest of fruit trees, which no pruning knife had
+      touched for a century past. Some of the trees had been strangely warped
+      and twisted by the storms which had raged over them; while others, bossed
+      all over with huge knots and full of deep holes, seemed only to hold on to
+      the soil with their bark. The high branches, bent each year by weight of
+      fruit, stretched out like big rackets; and each tree helped to keep its
+      fellows erect. The trunks were like twisted pillars supporting a roof of
+      greenery; and sometimes narrow cloisters, sometimes light halls were
+      formed, while now and again the verdure swept almost to the ground and
+      left scarcely room to pass. Round each colossus a crowd of wild and
+      self-sown saplings had grown up, thicket-like with the entanglement of
+      their young shoots. In the greenish light which filtered like tinted water
+      through the foliage, in the deep silence of the mossy soil, one only heard
+      the dull thud of the fruit as it was culled by the wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there were patriarchal apricot trees that bore their great age quite
+      bravely. Though decayed on one side, where they showed a perfect
+      scaffolding of dead wood, they were so youthful, so full of life, that, on
+      the other, young shoots were ever bursting through their rough bark. There
+      were cherry trees, that formed complete towns with houses of several
+      stories, that threw out staircases and floors of branches, big enough for
+      half a score of families. Then there were the apple trees, with their
+      limbs twisted like old cripples, with bark gnarled and knotted, and all
+      stained with lichen-growth. There were also smooth pear trees, that shot
+      up mast-like with long slender spars. And there were rosy-blossomed
+      peach-trees that won a place amid this teeming growth as pretty maids do
+      amidst a human crowd by dint of bright smiles and gentle persistence. Some
+      had been formerly trained as espaliers, but they had broken down the low
+      walls which had once supported them, and now spread abroad in wild
+      confusion, freed from the trammels of trellis work, broken fragments of
+      which still adhered to some of their branches. They grew just as they
+      listed, and resembled well-bred trees, once neat and prim, which, having
+      gone astray, now flaunted but vestiges of whilom respectability. And from
+      tree to tree, and from bough to bough, vine branches hung in confusion.
+      They rose like wild laughter, twined for an instant round some lofty knot,
+      then started off again with yet more sonorous mirth, splotching all the
+      foliage with the merry ebriety of their tendrils. Their pale sun-gilt
+      green set a glow of bacchanalianism about the weather-worn heads of the
+      old orchard giants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then towards the left were trees less thickly planted. Thin-foliaged
+      almonds allowed the sun&rsquo;s rays to pass and ripen the pumpkins, which
+      looked like moons that had fallen to the earth. Near the edge of a stream
+      which flowed through the orchard there also grew various kinds of melons,
+      some rough with knotty warts, some smooth and shining, as oval as the eggs
+      of ostriches. At every step, too, progress was barred by currant bushes,
+      showing limpid bunches of fruit, rubies in one and all of which there
+      sparkled liquid sunlight. And hedges of raspberry canes shot up like wild
+      brambles, while the ground was but a carpet of strawberry plants, teeming
+      with ripe berries which exhaled a slight odour of vanilla.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the enchanted corner of the orchard was still further to the left,
+      near a tier of rocks which there began to soar upwards. There you found
+      yourself in a veritable land of fire, in a natural hot-house, on which the
+      sun fell freely. At first, you had to make your way through huge, ungainly
+      fig trees, which stretched out grey branches like arms weary of lying
+      still, and whose villose leather-like foliage was so dense that in order
+      to pass one constantly had to snap off twigs that had sprouted from the
+      old wood. Next you passed on through groves of strawberry trees with
+      verdure like that of giant box-plants, and with scarlet berries which
+      suggested maize plants decked out with crimson ribbon. Then there came a
+      jungle of nettle-trees, medlars and jujube trees, which pomegranates
+      skirted with never-fading verdure. The fruit of the latter, big as a
+      child&rsquo;s fist, was scarcely set as yet; and the purple blossoms, fluttering
+      at the ends of the branches, looked like the palpitating wings of the
+      humming birds, which do not even bend the shoots on which they perch.
+      Lastly, there was a forest of orange and lemon trees growing vigorously in
+      the open air. Their straight trunks stood like rows of brown columns,
+      while their shiny leaves showed brightly against the blue of the sky, and
+      cast upon the ground a network of light and shadow, figuring the palms of
+      some Indian fabric. Here there was shade beside which that of the European
+      orchard seemed colourless, insipid; the warm joy of sunlight, softened
+      into flying gold-dust; the glad certainty of evergreen foliage; the
+      penetrating perfume of blossom, and the more subdued fragrance of fruit;
+      all helping to fill the body with the soft languor of tropical lands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And now let us breakfast,&rsquo; cried Albine, clapping her hands. &lsquo;It must be
+      at least nine o&rsquo;clock, and I am very hungry.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had risen from the ground. Serge confessed that he, too, would find
+      some food acceptable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You goose!&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;you didn&rsquo;t understand, then, that I brought you
+      here to breakfast. We sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t die of hunger here. We can help ourselves to
+      all there is.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They went along under the trees, pushing aside the branches and making
+      their way to the thickest of the fruit. Albine, who went first, turned,
+      and in her flute-like voice asked her companion: &lsquo;What do you like best?
+      Pears, apricots, cherries, or currants? I warn you that the pears are
+      still green; but they are very nice all the same.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge decided upon having cherries, and Albine agreed it would be as well
+      to start with them; but when she saw him foolishly beginning to scramble
+      up the first cherry tree he found, she made him go on for another ten
+      minutes through a frightful entanglement of branches. The cherries on this
+      tree, she said, were small and good for nothing; those on that were sour;
+      those on another would not be ripe for at least a week. She knew all the
+      trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Stop, climb this one,&rsquo; she said at last, as she stopped at the foot of a
+      tree, so heavily laden with fruit that clusters of it hung down to the
+      ground, like strings of coral beads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge settled himself comfortably between two branches and began his
+      breakfast. He no longer paid attention to Albine. He imagined she was in
+      another tree, a few yards away, when, happening to cast his eyes towards
+      the ground, he saw her calmly lying on her back beneath him. She had
+      thrown herself there, and, without troubling herself to use her hands, was
+      plucking with her teeth the cherries which dangled over her mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she saw she was discovered, she broke out into a peal of laughter,
+      and twisted about on the grass like a fish taken from the water. And
+      finally, crawling along on her elbows, she gradually made the circuit of
+      the tree, snapping up the plumpest cherries as she went along.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They tickle me so,&rsquo; she cried. &lsquo;See, there&rsquo;s a beauty just fallen on my
+      neck. They are so deliciously fresh and juicy. They get into my ears, my
+      eyes, my nose, everywhere. They are much sweeter down here than up there.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; said Serge, laughing, &lsquo;you say that because you daren&rsquo;t climb up.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She remained for a moment silent with indignation. &lsquo;Daren&rsquo;t!&mdash;I!&mdash;&rsquo; 
+      she stammered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, having gathered up her skirts, she tightly grasped the tree and
+      pulled herself up the trunk with a single effort of her strong wrists. And
+      afterwards she stepped lightly along the branches, scarcely using her
+      hands to steady herself. She had all the agile nimbleness of a squirrel,
+      and made her way onward, maintaining her equilibrium only by the swaying
+      poise of her body. When she was quite aloft at the end of a frail branch,
+      which shook dangerously beneath her weight, she cried; &lsquo;Now you see
+      whether I daren&rsquo;t climb.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come down at once,&rsquo; implored Serge, full of alarm for her. &lsquo;I beg of you
+      to come down. You will be injuring yourself.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she, enjoying her triumph, began to mount still higher. She crawled
+      along to the extreme end of a branch, grasping its leaves in her hands to
+      maintain her hold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The branch will break!&rsquo; cried Serge, thoroughly frightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Let it break,&rsquo; she answered, with a laugh; &lsquo;it will save me the trouble
+      of getting down.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the branch did break, but only slowly, with such deliberation that, as
+      it gradually settled towards the ground, it let Albine slip down in very
+      gentle fashion. She did not appear in the least degree frightened; but
+      gave herself a shake, and said: &lsquo;That was really nice. It was quite like
+      being in a carriage.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge had jumped down from the tree to catch her in his arms. As he stood
+      there, quite pale from fright, she laughed at him. &lsquo;One tumbles down from
+      trees every day,&rsquo; she exclaimed, &lsquo;but there is never any harm done. Look
+      more cheerful, you great stupid! Stay, just wet your finger and rub it
+      upon my neck. I have scratched it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge wetted his finger and touched her neck with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There, I am all right again now,&rsquo; she cried, as she bounded off. &lsquo;Let us
+      play at hide and seek, shall we?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was the first to hide. She disappeared, and presently from the depths
+      of the greenery, which she alone knew, and where Serge could not possibly
+      find her, she called, &lsquo;Cuckoo, cuckoo.&rsquo; But this game of hide and seek did
+      not put a stop to the onslaught upon the fruit trees. Breakfasting went on
+      in all the nooks and corners where the two big children sought each other.
+      Albine, while gliding beneath the branches, would stretch out her hand to
+      pluck a green pear or fill her skirt with apricots. Then in some of her
+      lurking-places she would come upon such rich discoveries as would make her
+      careless of the game, content to sit upon the ground and remain eating.
+      Once, however, she lost sound of Serge&rsquo;s movements. So, in her turn, she
+      set about seeking him; and she was surprised, almost vexed, when she
+      discovered him under a plum-tree, of whose existence she herself had been
+      ignorant, and whose ripe fruit had a delicious musky perfume. She soundly
+      rated him. Did he want to eat everything himself, that he hadn&rsquo;t called to
+      her to come? He pretended to know nothing about the trees, but he
+      evidently had a very keen scent to be able to find all the good things.
+      She was especially indignant with the poor tree itself&mdash;a stupid tree
+      which no one had known of, and which must have sprung up in the night on
+      purpose to put people out. As she stood there pouting, refusing to pluck a
+      single plum, it occurred to Serge to shake the tree violently. And then a
+      shower, a regular hail, of plums came down. Albine, standing in the midst
+      of the downfall, received plums on her arms, plums on her neck, plums on
+      the very tip of her nose. At this she could no longer restrain her
+      laughter; she stood in the midst of the deluge, crying &lsquo;More! more!&rsquo; 
+      amused as she was by the round bullet-like fruit which fell around her as
+      she squatted there, with hands and mouth open, and eyes closed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a morning of childish play, of wild gambols in the Paradou. Albine
+      and Serge spent hours, scampering up and down, shouting and sporting with
+      each other, their thoughts still all innocence. And in what a delicious
+      spot they found themselves! Depths of greenery, with undiscoverable
+      hiding-places; paths, along whose windings it was never possible to be
+      serious, such greedy laughter fell from the very hedges. In this happy
+      orchard, there was such a playful straggling of bushes, such fresh and
+      appetising shade, such a wealth of old trees laden like kindly
+      grandfathers with sweet dainties. Even in the depths of the recesses green
+      with moss, beneath the broken trunks which compelled them to creep the one
+      behind the other, in the narrow leafy alleys, the young folks never
+      succumbed to the perilous reveries of silence. No trouble touched them in
+      that happy wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when they had grown weary of the apricot-trees and the plum-trees and
+      the cherry-trees, they ran beneath the slender almond-trees; eating green
+      almonds, scarcely yet as big as peas, hunting for strawberries in the
+      grassy carpet, and regretting that the melons were not already ripe.
+      Albine finished by running as fast as she could go, pursued by Serge, who
+      was unable to overtake her. She rushed amongst the fig-trees, leaping over
+      their heavy branches, and pulling off the leaves to throw them behind her
+      in her companion&rsquo;s face. In a few strides she had cleared the clumps of
+      arbutus, whose red berries she tasted on her way; and it was in the jungle
+      of nettle-trees, medlars, and jujube-trees that Serge lost her. At first
+      he thought she was hiding behind a pomegranate; but found that he had
+      mistaken two clustering blossoms for the rosy roundness of her wrists.
+      Then he scoured the plantation of orange-trees, rejoicing in their beauty
+      and perfume, and thinking that he must have reached the abode of the
+      fairies of the sun. In the midst of them he caught sight of Albine, who,
+      not believing him so near her, was peering inquisitively into the green
+      depths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What are you looking for?&rsquo; he cried. &lsquo;You know very well that is
+      forbidden.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sprang up hastily, and slightly blushed for the first time that day.
+      Then sitting down by the side of Serge, she told him of the fine times
+      there would be when the oranges should be ripe. The wood would then be all
+      golden, all bright with those round stars, dotting with yellow sparks the
+      arching green.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When at last they really set off homeward she halted at every wild-growing
+      fruit tree, and filled her pockets with sour pears and bitter plums,
+      saying that they would be good to eat on their way. They would prove a
+      hundred times more enjoyable than anything they had tasted before. Serge
+      was obliged to swallow some of them, in spite of the grimaces he made at
+      each bite. And eventually they found themselves indoors again, tired out
+      but feeling very happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0031" id="link2H_4_0031">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      X
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      A week later there was another expedition to the park. They had planned to
+      extend their rambles beyond the orchard, striking out to the left through
+      the meadows watered by the four streams. They would travel several miles
+      over the thick grass, and they might live on fish, if they happened to
+      lose themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I will take my knife,&rsquo; said Albine, holding up a broad-bladed peasant&rsquo;s
+      knife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She crammed all kinds of things into her pockets, string, bread, matches,
+      a small bottle of wine, some rags, a comb, and some needles. Serge took a
+      rug, but by the time they had passed the lime-trees and reached the ruins
+      of the chateau, he found it such an encumbrance that he hid it beneath a
+      piece of fallen wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun was hotter than before, Albine had delayed their departure by her
+      extensive preparations. Thus in the heat of the morning they stepped along
+      side by side, almost quietly. They actually managed to take twenty paces
+      at a time without pushing one another or laughing. They began to talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I never can wake up,&rsquo; began Albine. &lsquo;I slept so soundly last night. Did
+      you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, indeed, very soundly,&rsquo; replied Serge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What does it mean when you dream of a bird that talks to you?&rsquo; the girl
+      resumed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t know. What did your bird say to you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, I have forgotten. But it said all kinds of things, and many of them
+      sounded very comical. Stop, look at that big poppy over there. You sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t
+      get it, you sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t get it!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then she sprang forward; but Serge, thanks to his long legs,
+      outstripped her and plucked the poppy, which he waved about victoriously.
+      She stood there with lips compressed, saying nothing, but feeling a strong
+      inclination to cry. Serge threw down the flower. Nothing else occurred to
+      him. Then, to make his peace with her, he asked: &lsquo;Would you like me to
+      carry you as I did the other day?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, no.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She pouted a little, but she had not gone another thirty steps, when she
+      turned round smiling. A bramble had caught hold of her dress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I thought it was you who were treading on my dress purposely. It won&rsquo;t
+      let me go. Come and unfasten me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she was released, they walked on again, side by side, very quietly.
+      Albine pretended that it was much more amusing to stroll along in this
+      fashion, like steady grown-up folks. They had just reached the meadows.
+      Far away, in front of them, stretched grassy expanses scarce broken here
+      and there by the tender foliage of willows. The grass looked soft and
+      downy, like velvet. It was a deep green, subsiding in the distance into
+      lighter tints, and on the horizon assuming a bright yellow glow beneath
+      the flaring sun. The clumps of willows right over yonder seemed like pure
+      gold, bathed in the tremulous brilliance of the sunshine. Dancing dust
+      tipped the blades of grass with quivering light, and as the gentle breezes
+      swept over the free expanse, moire-like reflections appeared on the
+      caressed and quivering herbage. In the nearer fields a multitude of little
+      white daisies, now in swarms, now straggling, and now in groups, like
+      holiday makers at some public rejoicing, brightly peopled the dark grass.
+      Buttercups showed themselves, gay like little brass bells which the touch
+      of a fly&rsquo;s wing would set tinkling. Here and there big lonely poppies
+      raised fiery cups, and others, gathered together further away, spread out
+      like vats purple with lees of wine. Big cornflowers balanced aloft their
+      light blue caps which looked as if they would fly away at every breath of
+      air. Then under foot there were patches of woolly feather-grass and
+      fragrant meadow-sweet, sheets of fescue, dog&rsquo;s-tail, creeping-bent, and
+      meadow grass. Sainfoin reared its long fine filaments; clover unfurled its
+      clear green leaves, plantains brandished forests of spears, lucerne spread
+      out in soft beds of green satin broidered with purple flowers. And all
+      these were seen, to right, to left, in front, everywhere, rolling over the
+      level soil, showing like the mossy surface of a stagnant sea, asleep
+      beneath the sky which ever seemed to expand. Here and there, in the vast
+      expanse, the vegetation was of a limpid blue, as though it reflected the
+      colour of the heavens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine and Serge stepped along over the meadow-lands, with the grass
+      reaching to their knees. It was like wading through a pool. Now and then,
+      indeed, they found themselves caught by a current in which a stream of
+      bending stalks seemed to flow away between their legs. Then there were
+      placid-looking, slumbering lakes, basins of short grass, which scarcely
+      reached their ankles. As they walked along together, their joy found
+      expression not in wild gambols, as in the orchard a week before, but
+      rather in loitering, with their feet caught among the supple arms of the
+      herbage, tasting as it were the caresses of a pure stream which calmed the
+      exuberance of their youth. Albine turned aside and slipped into a lofty
+      patch of vegetation which reached to her chin. Only her head appeared. For
+      a moment or two she stood there in silence. Then she called to Serge:
+      &lsquo;Come here, it is just like a bath. It is as if one had green water all
+      over one.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she gave a jump and scampered off without waiting for him, and they
+      both walked along the margin of the first stream which barred their onward
+      course. It was a shallow tranquil brook between banks of wild cress. It
+      flowed on so placidly and gently that its surface reflected like a mirror
+      the smallest reed that grew beside it. Albine and Serge followed this
+      stream, whose onward motion was slower than their own, for a long time
+      before they came across a tree that flung a long shadow upon the idle
+      waters. As far as their eyes could reach they saw the bare brook stretch
+      out and slumber in the sunlight like a blue serpent half uncoiled. At last
+      they reached a clump of three willows. Two had their roots in the stream;
+      the third was set a little backward. Their trunks, rotten and crumbling
+      with age, were crowned with the bright foliage of youth. The shadow they
+      cast was so slight as scarcely to be perceptible upon the sunlit bank. Yet
+      here the water, which, both above and below, was so unruffled, showed a
+      transient quiver, a rippling of its surface, as though it were surprised
+      to find even this light veil cast over it. Between the three willows the
+      meadow-land sloped down to the stream, and some crimson poppies had sprung
+      up in the crevices of the decaying old trunks. The foliage of the willows
+      looked like a tent of greenery fixed upon three stakes by the water&rsquo;s
+      edge, beside a rolling prairie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;This is the place,&rsquo; cried Albine, &lsquo;this is the place;&rsquo; and she glided
+      beneath the willows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge sat down by her side, his feet almost in the water. He glanced round
+      him, and murmured: &lsquo;You know everything, you know all the best spots. One
+      might almost think this was an island, ten feet square, right in the
+      middle of the sea.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, indeed, we are quite at home,&rsquo; she replied, as she gleefully drummed
+      the grass with her fists. &lsquo;It is altogether our own, and we are going to
+      do everything ourselves.&rsquo; Then, as if struck by a brilliant idea, she
+      sprang towards him, and, with her face close to his, asked him joyously:
+      &lsquo;Will you be my husband? I will be your wife.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was delighted at the notion, and replied that he would gladly be her
+      husband, laughing even more loudly than she had done herself. Then Albine
+      suddenly became grave, and assumed the anxious air of a housewife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You know,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;that it is I who will have to give the orders. We
+      will have breakfast as soon as you have laid the table.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave him her orders in an imperious fashion. He had to stow all the
+      various articles which she extracted from her pockets into a hole in one
+      of the willows, which bole she called the cupboard. The rags supplied the
+      household linen, while the comb represented the toilette necessaries. The
+      needles and string were to be used for mending the explorers&rsquo; clothes.
+      Provision for the inner man consisted of the little bottle of wine and a
+      few crusts which she had saved from yesterday. She had, to be sure, some
+      matches, by the aid of which she intended to cook the fish they were going
+      to catch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Serge had finished laying the table, the bottle of wine in the
+      centre, and three crusts grouped round it, he hazarded the observation
+      that the fare seemed to be scanty. But Albine shrugged her shoulders with
+      feminine superiority. And wading into the water, she said in a severe
+      tone, &lsquo;I will catch the fish; you can watch me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For half an hour she strenuously exerted herself in trying to catch some
+      of the little fishes with her hands. She had gathered up her petticoats
+      and fastened them together with a piece of string. And she advanced
+      quietly into the water, taking the greatest care not to disturb it. When
+      she was quite close to some tiny fish, that lay lurking between a couple
+      of pebbles, she thrust down her bare arm, made a wild grasp, and brought
+      her hand up again with nothing in it but sand and gravel. Serge then broke
+      out into noisy laughter which brought her back to the bank, indignant. She
+      told him that he had no business to laugh at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But,&rsquo; he ended by asking, &lsquo;how are we going to cook your fish when you
+      have caught it? There is no wood about.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That put the finishing touch to her discouragement. However, the fish in
+      that stream didn&rsquo;t seem to be good for much; so she came out of the water
+      and ran through the long grass to get her feet dry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;See,&rsquo; she suddenly exclaimed, &lsquo;here is some pimpernel. It is very nice.
+      Now we shall have a feast.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge was ordered to gather a quantity of the pimpernel and place it on
+      the table. They ate it with their crusts. Albine declared that it was much
+      better than nuts. She assumed the position of mistress of the
+      establishment, and cut Serge&rsquo;s bread for him, for she would not trust him
+      with the knife. At last she made him store away in the &lsquo;cupboard&rsquo; the few
+      drops of wine that remained at the bottom of the bottle. He was also
+      ordered to sweep the grass. Then Albine lay down at full length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We are going to sleep now, you know. You must lie down by my side.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did as he was ordered. They lay there stiffly staring into the air, and
+      saying that they were asleep, and that it was very nice. After a while,
+      however, they drew slightly away from one another, averting their heads as
+      if they felt some discomfort. And at last breaking the silence which had
+      fallen between them, Serge exclaimed: &lsquo;I love you very much.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was love such as it is without any sensual feeling; that instinctive
+      love which wakens in the bosom of a little man ten years old at the sight
+      of some white-robed baby-girl. The meadow-lands, spreading around them all
+      open and free, dissipated the slight fear each felt of the other. They
+      knew that they lay there, seen of all the herbage, that the blue sky
+      looked down upon them through the light foliage of the willows, and the
+      thought was pleasant to them. The willow canopy over their heads was a
+      mere open screen. The shade it cast was so imperceptible that it wafted to
+      them none of the languor that some dim coppice might have done. From the
+      far-off horizon came a healthy breeze fraught with all the freshness of
+      the grassy sea, swelling here and there into waves of flowers; while, at
+      their feet, the stream, childlike as they were, flowed idly along with a
+      gentle babbling that sounded to them like the laughter of a companion. Ah!
+      happy solitude, so tranquil and placid, immensity wherein the little patch
+      of grass serving as their couch took the semblance of an infant&rsquo;s cradle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There, that&rsquo;s enough; said Albine, getting up; &lsquo;we&rsquo;ve rested long
+      enough.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge seemed a little surprised at this speedy termination of their sleep.
+      He stretched out his arm and caught hold of Albine, as though to draw her
+      near him again; and when she, laughing, dropped upon her knees he grasped
+      her elbows and gazed up at her. He knew not to what impulse he was
+      yielding. But when she had freed herself, and again had risen to her feet,
+      he buried his face amongst the grass where she had lain, and which still
+      retained the warmth of her body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; he said at last, &lsquo;it is time to get up,&rsquo; and then he rose from the
+      ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They scoured the meadow-lands until evening began to fall. They went on
+      and on, inspecting their garden. Albine walked in front, sniffing like a
+      young dog, and saying nothing, but she was ever in search of the happy
+      glade, although where they found themselves there were none of the big
+      trees of which her thoughts were full. Serge meanwhile indulged in all
+      kinds of clumsy gallantry. He rushed forward so hastily to thrust the tall
+      herbage aside, that he nearly tripped her up; and he almost tore her arm
+      from her body as he tried to assist her over the brooks. Their joy was
+      great when they came to the three other streams. The first flowed over a
+      bed of pebbles, between two rows of willows, so closely planted that they
+      had to grope between the branches with the risk of falling into some deep
+      part of the water. It only rose to Serge&rsquo;s knees, however, and having
+      caught Albine in his arms he carried her to the opposite bank, to save her
+      from a wetting. The next stream flowed black with shade beneath a lofty
+      canopy of foliage, passing languidly onward with the gentle rustling and
+      rippling of the satin train of some lady, dreamily sauntering through the
+      woodland depths. It was a deep, cold, and rather dangerous-looking stream,
+      but a fallen tree that stretched from bank to bank served them as a
+      bridge. They crossed over, bestriding the tree with dangling feet, at
+      first amusing themselves by stirring the water which looked like a mirror
+      of burnished steel, but then suddenly hastening, frightened by the strange
+      eyes which opened in the depths of the sleepy current at the slightest
+      splash. But it was the last stream which delayed them the most. It was
+      sportive like themselves, it flowed more slowly at certain bends, whence
+      it started off again with merry ripples, past piles of big stones, into
+      the shelter of some clump of trees, and grew calmer once more. It
+      exhibited every humour as it sped along over soft sand or rocky boulders,
+      over sparkling pebbles or greasy clay, where leaping frogs made yellow
+      puddles. Albine and Serge dabbled about in delight, and even walked
+      homewards through the stream in preference to remaining on the bank. At
+      every little island that divided the current they landed. They conquered
+      the savage spot or rested beneath the lofty canes and reeds, which seemed
+      to grow there expressly as shelter for shipwrecked adventurers. Thus they
+      made a delightful progress, amused by the changing scenery of the banks,
+      enlivened by the merry humour of the living current.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when they were about to leave the river, Serge realised that Albine
+      was still seeking something along the banks, on the island, even among the
+      plants that slept on the surface of the water. He was obliged to go and
+      pull her from the midst of a patch of water-lilies whose broad leaves set
+      <i>collerettes</i> around her limbs. He said nothing, but shook his finger
+      at her. And at last they went home, walking along, arm in arm, like young
+      people after a day&rsquo;s outing. They looked at each other, and thought one
+      another handsomer and stronger than before, and of a certainty their
+      laughter had a different ring from that with which it had sounded in the
+      morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0032" id="link2H_4_0032">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      &lsquo;Are we never going out again?&rsquo; asked Serge some days later.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      And when he saw Albine shrug her shoulders with a weary air, he added, in
+      a teasing kind of way, &lsquo;You have got tired of looking for your tree,
+      then?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They joked about the tree all day and made fun of it. It didn&rsquo;t exist. It
+      was only a nursery-story. Yet they both spoke of it with a slight feeling
+      of awe. And on the morrow they settled that they would go to the far end
+      of the park and pay a visit to the great forest-trees which Serge had not
+      yet seen. Albine refused to take anything along with them. They
+      breakfasted before starting and did not set off till late. The heat of the
+      sun, which was then great, brought them a feeling of languor, and they
+      sauntered along gently, side by side, seeking every patch of sheltering
+      shade. They lingered neither in the garden nor the orchard, through which
+      they had to pass. When they gained the shady coolness beneath the big
+      trees, they dropped into a still slower pace; and, without a word, but
+      with a deep sigh, as though it were welcome relief to escape from the
+      glare of day, they pushed on into the forest&rsquo;s depths. And when they had
+      nothing but cool green leaves about them, when no glimpse of the sunlit
+      expanse was afforded by any gap in the foliage, they looked at each other
+      and smiled, with a feeling of vague uneasiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How nice it is here!&rsquo; murmured Serge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine simply nodded her head. A choking sensation in her throat prevented
+      her from speaking. Their arms were not passed as usual round each other&rsquo;s
+      waist, but swung loosely by their sides. They walked along without
+      touching each other, and with their heads inclined towards the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Serge suddenly stopped short on seeing tears trickle down Albine&rsquo;s
+      cheeks and mingle with the smile that played around her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What is the matter with you?&rsquo; he exclaimed; &lsquo;are you in pain? Have you
+      hurt yourself?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, don&rsquo;t you see I&rsquo;m smiling? I don&rsquo;t know how it is, but the scent of
+      all these trees forces tears into my eyes.&rsquo; She glanced at him, and then
+      resumed: &lsquo;Why, you&rsquo;re crying too! You see you can&rsquo;t help it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; he murmured, &lsquo;all this deep shade affects one. It seems so
+      peaceful, so mournful here that one feels a little sad. But you must tell
+      me, you know, if anything makes you really unhappy. I have not done
+      anything to annoy you, have I? you are not vexed with me?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She assured him that she was not. She was quite happy, she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then why are you not enjoying yourself more? Shall we have a race?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! no, we can&rsquo;t race,&rsquo; she said, disdainfully, with a pout. And when he
+      went on to suggest other amusements, such as bird-nesting or gathering
+      strawberries or violets, she replied a little impatiently: &lsquo;We are too big
+      for that sort of thing. It is childish to be always playing. Doesn&rsquo;t it
+      please you better to walk on quietly by my side?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stepped along so prettily, that it was, indeed, a pleasure to hear the
+      pit-pat of her little boots on the hard soil of the path. Never before had
+      he paid attention to the rhythmic motion of her figure, the sweep of her
+      skirts that followed her with serpentine motion. It was happiness never to
+      be exhausted, to see her thus walking sedately by his side, for he was
+      ever discovering some new charm in the lissom suppleness of her limbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You are right,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;this is really the best. I would walk by your
+      side to the end of the world, if you wished it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little further on, however, he asked her if she were not tired, and
+      hinted that he would not be sorry to have a rest himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We might sit down for a few minutes,&rsquo; he suggested in a stammering voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No,&rsquo; she replied, &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t want to.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But we might lie down, you know, as we did in the meadows the other day.
+      We should be quite comfortable.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, no; I don&rsquo;t want to.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she suddenly sprang aside, as if scared by the masculine arms
+      outstretched towards her. Serge called her a big stupid, and tried to
+      catch her. But at the light touch of his fingers she cried out with such
+      an expression of pain that he drew back, trembling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have hurt you?&rsquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not reply for a moment, surprised, herself, at her cry of fear,
+      and already smiling at her own alarm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No; leave me, don&rsquo;t worry me;&rsquo; and she added in a grave tone, though she
+      tried to feign jocularity: &lsquo;you know that I have my tree to look for.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Serge began to laugh, and offered to help her in her search. He
+      conducted himself very gently in order that he might not again alarm her,
+      for he saw that she was even yet trembling, though she had resumed her
+      slow walk beside him. What they were contemplating was forbidden, and
+      could bring them no luck; and he, like her, felt a delightful awe, which
+      thrilled him at each repeated sigh of the forest trees. The perfume of the
+      foliage, the soft green light which filtered through the leaves, the
+      soughing silence of the undergrowth, filled them with tremulous
+      excitement, as though the next turn of the path might lead them to some
+      perilous happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And for hours they walked on under the cool trees. They retained their
+      reserved attitude towards each other, and scarcely exchanged a word,
+      though they never left each other&rsquo;s side, but went together through the
+      darkest greenery of the forest. At first their way lay through a jungle of
+      saplings with trunks no thicker than a child&rsquo;s wrist. They had to push
+      them aside, and open a path for themselves through the tender shoots which
+      threw a wavy lacework of foliage before their eyes. The saplings closed up
+      again behind them, leaving no trace of their passage, and they struggled
+      on and on at random, ignorant of where they might be, and leaving nothing
+      behind them to mark their progress, save a momentary waving of shaken
+      boughs. Albine, weary of being unable to see more than three steps in
+      front of her, was delighted when they at last found themselves free of
+      this jungle, whose end they had long tried to discover. They had now
+      reached a little clearing, whence several narrow paths, fringed with green
+      hedges, struck out in various directions, twisting hither and thither,
+      intersecting one another, bending and stretching in the most capricious
+      fashion. Albine and Serge rose on tip-toes to peep over the hedges; but
+      they were in no haste, and would willingly have stayed where they were,
+      lost in the mazy windings, without ever getting anywhere, if they had not
+      seen before them the proud lines of the lofty forest trees. They passed at
+      last beneath their shade, solemnly and with a touch of sacred awe, as when
+      one enters some vaulted cathedral. The straight lichen-stained trunks of
+      the mighty trees, of a dingy grey, like discoloured stone, towered
+      loftily, line by line, like a far-reaching infinity of columns. Naves
+      opened far away, with lower, narrower aisles; naves strangely bold in
+      their proportions, whose supporting pillars were very slender, richly
+      caned, so finely chiselled that everywhere they allowed a glimpse of the
+      blue heavens. A religious silence reigned beneath the giant arches, the
+      ground below lay hard as stone in its austere nakedness; not a blade of
+      green was there, nought but a ruddy dust of dead leaves. And Serge and
+      Albine listened to their ringing footsteps as they went on, thrilled by
+      the majestic solitude of this temple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, indeed, if anywhere, must be the much-sought tree, beneath whose
+      shade perfect happiness had made its home. They felt that it was nigh,
+      such was the delight which stole through them amidst the dimness of those
+      mighty arches. The trees seemed to be creatures of kindliness, full of
+      strength and silence and happy restfulness. They looked at them one by
+      one, and they loved them all; and they awaited from their majestic
+      tranquillity some revelation whereby they themselves might grow, expand
+      into the bliss of strong and perfect life. The maples, the ashes, the
+      hornbeams, the cornels, formed a nation of giants, a multitude full of
+      proud gentleness, who lived in peace, knowing that the fall of any one of
+      them would have sufficed to wreck a whole corner of the forest. The elms
+      displayed colossal bodies and limbs full of sap, scarce veiled by light
+      clusters of little leaves. The birches and the alders, delicate as sylphs,
+      swayed their slim figures in the breeze to which they surrendered the
+      foliage that streamed around them like the locks of goddesses already half
+      metamorphosed into trees. The planes shot up regularly with glossy
+      tattooed bark, whence scaly fragments fell. Down a gentle slope descended
+      the larches, resembling a band of barbarians, draped in <i>sayons</i> of
+      woven greenery. But the oaks were the monarchs of all&mdash;the mighty
+      oaks, whose sturdy trunks thrust out conquering arms that barred the sun&rsquo;s
+      approach from all around them; Titan-like trees, oft lightning-struck,
+      thrown back in postures like those of unconquered wrestlers, with
+      scattered limbs that alone gave birth to a whole forest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Could the tree which Serge and Albine sought be one of those colossal
+      oaks? or was it one of those lovely planes, or one of those pale, maidenly
+      birches, or one of those creaking elms? Albine and Serge still plodded on,
+      unable to tell, completely lost amongst the crowding trees. For a moment
+      they thought they had found the object of their quest in the midst of a
+      group of walnut trees from whose thick foliage fell so cold a shadow that
+      they shivered beneath it. Further on they felt another thrill of emotion
+      as they came upon a little wood of chestnut trees, green with moss and
+      thrusting out big strange-shaped branches, on which one might have built
+      an aerial village. But further still Albine caught sight of a clearing,
+      whither they both ran hastily. Here, in the midst of a carpet of fine
+      turf, a locust tree had set a very toppling of greenery, a foliaged Babel,
+      whose ruins were covered with the strangest vegetation. Stones, sucked up
+      from the ground by the mounting sap, still remained adhering to the trunk.
+      High branches bent down to earth again, and, taking root, surrounded the
+      parent tree with lofty arches, a nation of new trunks which ever increased
+      and multiplied. Upon the bark, seared with bleeding wounds, were ripening
+      fruit-pods; the mere effort of bearing fruit strained the old monster&rsquo;s
+      skin until it split. The young folks walked slowly round it, passing under
+      the arched branches which formed as it were the streets of a city, and
+      stared at the gaping cracks of the naked roots. Then they went off, for
+      they had not felt there the supernatural happiness they sought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Where are we?&rsquo; asked Serge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine did not know. She had never before come to this part of the park.
+      They were now in a grove of cytisus and acacias, from whose clustering
+      blossoms fell a soft, almost sugary perfume. &lsquo;We are quite lost,&rsquo; she
+      laughed. &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t know these trees at all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But the garden must come to an end somewhere,&rsquo; said Serge. &lsquo;When we get
+      to the end, you will know where you are, won&rsquo;t you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No,&rsquo; she answered, waving her hands afar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They fell into silence; never yet had the vastness of the park filled them
+      with such pleasure. They joyed at knowing that they were alone in so
+      far-spreading a domain that even they themselves could not reach its
+      limits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, we are lost,&rsquo; said Serge, gaily; then humbly drawing near her he
+      inquired: &lsquo;You are not afraid, are you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! no. There&rsquo;s no one except you and me in the garden. What could I be
+      afraid of? The walls are very high. We can&rsquo;t see them, but they guard us,
+      you know.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge was now quite close to her, and he murmured, &lsquo;But a little time ago
+      you were afraid of me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked him straight in the face, perfectly calm, without the least
+      faltering in her glance. &lsquo;You hurt me,&rsquo; she replied, &lsquo;but you are
+      different now. Why should I be afraid of you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then you will let me hold you like this. We will go back under the
+      trees.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, you may put your arm around me, it makes me feel happy. And we&rsquo;ll
+      walk slowly, eh? so that we may not find our way again too soon.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had passed his arm round her waist, and it was thus that they sauntered
+      back to the shade of the great forest trees, under whose arching vaults
+      they slowly went, with love awakening within them. Albine said that she
+      felt a little tired, and rested her head on Serge&rsquo;s shoulder. The fabulous
+      tree was now forgotten. They only sought to draw their faces nearer
+      together that they might smile in one another&rsquo;s eyes. And it was the
+      trees, the maples, the elms, the oaks, with their soft green shade, that
+      whisperingly suggested to them the first words of love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I love you!&rsquo; said Serge, while his breath stirred the golden hair that
+      clustered round Albine&rsquo;s temples. He tried to think of other words, but he
+      could only repeat, &lsquo;I love you! I love you!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine listened with a delightful smile upon her face. The music of her
+      heart was in accord with his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I love you! I love you!&rsquo; she sighed, with all the sweetness of her soft
+      young voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, lifting up her blue eyes, in which the light of love was dawning,
+      she asked, &lsquo;How do you love me?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge reflected for a moment. The forest was wrapped in solemn quietude,
+      the lofty naves quivered only with the soft footsteps of the young pair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I love you beyond everything,&rsquo; he answered. &lsquo;You are more beautiful than
+      all else that I see when I open my window in the morning. When I look at
+      you, I want nothing more. If I could have you only, I should be perfectly
+      happy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She lowered her eyes, and swayed her head as if accompanying a strain of
+      music. &lsquo;I love you,&rsquo; he went on. &lsquo;I know nothing about you. I know not who
+      you are, nor whence you came. You are neither my mother nor my sister; and
+      yet I love you to a point that I have given you my whole heart and kept
+      nought of it for others. Listen, I love those cheeks of yours, so soft and
+      satiny; I love your mouth with its rose-sweet breath; I love your eyes, in
+      which I see my own love reflected; I love even your eyelashes, even those
+      little veins which blue the whiteness of your temples. Ah! yes, I love
+      you, I love you, Albine.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And I love you, too,&rsquo; she answered. &lsquo;You are strong, and tall, and
+      handsome. I love you, Serge.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment or two they remained silent, enraptured. It seemed to them
+      that soft, flute-like music went before them, that their own words came
+      from some dulcet orchestra which they could not see. Shorter and shorter
+      became their steps as they leaned one towards the other, ever threading
+      their way amidst the mighty trees. Afar off through the long vista of the
+      colonnades were glimpses of waning sunlight, showing like a procession of
+      white-robed maidens entering church for a betrothal ceremony amid the low
+      strains of an organ.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And why do you love me?&rsquo; asked Albine again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He only smiled, and did not answer her immediately; then he said, &lsquo;I love
+      you because you came to me. That expresses all.... Now we are together and
+      we love one another. It seems to me that I could not go on living if I did
+      not love you. You are the very breath of my life.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He bent his head, speaking almost as though he were in a dream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;One does not know all that at first. It grows up in one as one&rsquo;s heart
+      grows. One has to grow, one has to get strong.... Do you remember how we
+      loved one another though we didn&rsquo;t speak of it? One is childish and silly
+      at first. Then, one fine day, it all becomes clear, and bursts out. You
+      see, we have nothing to trouble about; we love one another because our
+      love and our life are one.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine&rsquo;s head was cast back, her eyes were tightly closed, and she scarce
+      drew her breath. Serge&rsquo;s caressing words enraptured her: &lsquo;Do you really,
+      really love me?&rsquo; she murmured, without opening her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge remained silent, sorely troubled that he could find nothing further
+      to say to prove to her the force of his love. His eyes wandered over her
+      rosy face, which lay upon his shoulder with the restfulness of sleep. Her
+      eyelids were soft as silk. Her moist lips were curved into a bewitching
+      smile, her brow was pure white, with just a rim of gold below her hair. He
+      would have liked to give his whole being with the word which seemed to be
+      upon his tongue but which he could not utter. Again he bent over her, and
+      seemed to consider on what sweet spot of that fair face he should whisper
+      the supreme syllables. But he said nothing, he only breathed a little
+      sigh. Then he kissed Albine&rsquo;s lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Albine, I love you!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I love you, Serge!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they stopped short, thrilled, quivering with that first love kiss.
+      She had opened her eyes quite widely. He was standing with his lips
+      protruding slightly towards hers. They looked at each other without a
+      blush. They felt they were under the influence of some sovereign power. It
+      was like the realisation of a long dreamt-of meeting, in which they beheld
+      themselves grown, made one for the other, for ever joined. For a moment
+      they remained wondering, raising their eyes to the solemn vault of
+      greenery above them, questioning the tranquil nation of trees as if
+      seeking an echo of their kiss. But, beneath the serene complacence of the
+      forest, they yielded to prolonged, ringing lovers&rsquo; gaiety, full of all the
+      tenderness now born.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Tell me how long you have loved me. Tell me everything. Did you love me
+      that day when you lay sleeping upon my hand? Did you love me when I fell
+      out of the cherry tree, and you stood beneath it, stretching out your arms
+      to catch me, and looking so pale? Did you love me when you took hold of me
+      round the waist in the meadows to help me over the streams?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hush, let me speak. I have always loved you. And you, did you love me;
+      did you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Until the evening closed round them they lived upon that one word &lsquo;love,&rsquo; 
+      in which they ever seemed to find some new sweetness. They brought it into
+      every sentence, ejaculated it inconsequentially, merely for the pleasure
+      they found in pronouncing it. Serge, however, did not think of pressing a
+      second kiss to Albine&rsquo;s lips. The perfume of the first sufficed them in
+      their purity. They had found their way again, or rather had stumbled upon
+      it, for they had paid no attention to the paths they took. As they left
+      the forest, twilight had fallen, and the moon was rising, round and
+      yellow, between the black foliage. It was a delightful walk home through
+      the park, with that discreet luminary peering at them through the gaps in
+      the big trees. Albine said that the moon was surely following them. The
+      night was balmy, warm too with stars. Far away a long murmur rose from the
+      forest trees, and Serge listened, thinking: &lsquo;They are talking of us.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they reached the parterre, they passed through an atmosphere of
+      sweetest perfumes; the perfume of flowers at night, which is richer, more
+      caressing than by day, and seems like the very breath of slumber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good night, Serge.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good night, Albine.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They clasped each other by the hand on the landing of the first floor,
+      without entering the room where they usually wished each other good night.
+      They did not kiss. But Serge, when he was alone, remained seated on the
+      edge of his bed, listening to Albine&rsquo;s every movement in the room above.
+      He was weary with happiness, a happiness that benumbed his limbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0033" id="link2H_4_0033">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      For the next few days Albine and Serge experienced a feeling of
+      embarrassment. They avoided all allusion to their walk beneath the trees.
+      They had not again kissed each other, or repeated their confession of
+      love. It was not any feeling of shame which had sealed their lips, but
+      rather a fear of in any way spoiling their happiness. When they were
+      apart, they lived upon the dear recollection of love&rsquo;s awakening, plunged
+      into it, passed once more through the happy hours which they had spent,
+      with their arms around each other&rsquo;s waist, and their faces close together.
+      It all ended by throwing them both into a feverish state. They looked at
+      each other with heavy eyes, and talked, in a melancholy mood, of things
+      that did not interest them in the least. Then, after a long interval of
+      silence, Serge would say to Albine in a tone full of anxiety: &lsquo;You are
+      ill?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she shook her head as she answered, &lsquo;No, no. It is you who are not
+      well; your hands are burning.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The thought of the park filled them with vague uneasiness which they could
+      not understand. They felt that danger lurked for them in some by-path, and
+      would seize them and do them hurt. They never spoke about these
+      disquieting thoughts, but certain timid glances revealed to them the
+      mutual anguish which held them apart as though they were foes. One
+      morning, however, Albine ventured, after much hesitation, to say to Serge:
+      &lsquo;It is wrong of you to keep always indoors. You will fall ill again.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge laughed in rather an embarrassed way. &lsquo;Bah!&rsquo; he muttered, &lsquo;we have
+      been everywhere, we know all the garden by heart.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Albine shook her head, and in a whisper replied, &lsquo;No, no, we don&rsquo;t
+      know the rocks, we have never been to the springs. It was there that I
+      warmed myself last winter. There are some nooks where the stones seem to
+      be actually alive.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning, without having said another word on the subject, they
+      set out together. They climbed up to the left behind the grotto where the
+      marble woman lay slumbering; and as they set foot on the lowest stones,
+      Serge remarked: &lsquo;We must see everything. Perhaps we shall feel quieter
+      afterwards.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day was very hot, there was thunder in the air. They had not ventured
+      to clasp each other&rsquo;s waist; but stepped along, one behind the other,
+      glowing beneath the sunlight. Albine took advantage of a widening of the
+      path to let Serge go on in front; for the warmth of his breath upon her
+      neck troubled her. All around them the rocks arose in broad tiers, storeys
+      of huge flags, bristling with coarse vegetation. They first came upon
+      golden gorse, clumps of sage, thyme, lavender, and other balsamic plants,
+      with sour-berried juniper trees and bitter rosemary, whose strong scent
+      made them dizzy. Here and there the path was hemmed in by holly, that grew
+      in quaint forms like cunningly wrought metal work, gratings of blackened
+      bronze, wrought iron, and polished copper, elaborately ornamented, covered
+      with prickly <i>rosaces</i>. And before reaching the springs, they had to
+      pass through a pine-wood. Its shadow seemed to weigh upon their shoulders
+      like lead. The dry needles crackled beneath their feet, throwing up a
+      light resinous dust which burned their lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Your garden doesn&rsquo;t make itself very agreeable just here,&rsquo; said Serge,
+      turning towards Albine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They smiled at each other. They were now near the edge of the springs. The
+      sight of the clear waters brought them relief. Yet these springs did not
+      hide beneath a covering of verdure, like those that bubble up on the
+      plains and set thick foliage growing around them that they may slumber
+      idly in the shade. They shot up in the full light of day from a cavity in
+      the rock, without a blade of grass near by to tinge the clear water with
+      green. Steeped in the sunshine they looked silvery. In their depths the
+      sun beat against the sand in a breathing living dust of light. And they
+      darted out of their basin like arms of purest white, they rebounded like
+      nude infants at play, and then suddenly leapt down in a waterfall whose
+      curve suggested a woman&rsquo;s breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Dip your hands in,&rsquo; cried Albine; &lsquo;the water is icy cold at the bottom.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were indeed able to refresh their hot hands. They threw water over
+      their faces too, and lingered there amidst the spray which rose up from
+      the streaming springs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Look,&rsquo; cried Albine; &lsquo;look, there is the garden, and there are the
+      meadows and the forest.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment they looked at the Paradou spread out beneath their feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And you see,&rsquo; she added, &lsquo;there isn&rsquo;t the least sign of any wall. The
+      whole country belongs to us, right up to the sky.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time, almost unawares, they had slipped their arms round each
+      other&rsquo;s waist. The coolness of the springs had soothed their feverish
+      disquietude. But just as they were going away, Albine seemed to recall
+      something and led Serge back again, saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Down there, below the rocks, a long time ago, I once saw the wall.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But there is nothing to be seen,&rsquo; replied Serge, turning a little pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, yes; it must be behind that avenue of chestnut trees on the other
+      side of those bushes.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, on feeling Serge&rsquo;s arm tremble, she added: &lsquo;But perhaps I am
+      mistaken.... Yet I seem to remember that I suddenly came upon it as I left
+      the avenue. It stopped my way, and was so high that I felt a little
+      afraid. And a few steps farther on, I came upon another surprise. There
+      was a huge hole in it, through which I could see the whole country
+      outside.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge looked at her with entreaty in his eyes. She gave a little shrug of
+      her shoulders to reassure him, and went on: &lsquo;But I stopped the hole up; I
+      have told you that we are quite alone, and we are. I stopped it up at
+      once. I had my knife with me, and I cut down some brambles and rolled up
+      some big stones. I would defy even a sparrow to force its way through. If
+      you like, we will go and look at it one of these days, and then you will
+      be satisfied.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he shook his head. Then they went away together, still holding each
+      other by the waist; but they had grown anxious once more. Serge gazed down
+      askance at Albine&rsquo;s face, and she felt perturbed beneath his glance. They
+      would have liked to go down again at once, and thus escape the uneasiness
+      of a longer walk. But, in spite of themselves, as though impelled by some
+      stronger power, they skirted a rocky cliff and reached a table-land, where
+      once more they found the intoxication of the full sunlight. They no longer
+      inhaled the soft languid perfumes of aromatic plants, the musky scent of
+      thyme, and the incense of lavender. Now they were treading a foul-smelling
+      growth under foot; wormwood with bitter, penetrating smell; rue that
+      reeked like putrid flesh; and hot valerian, clammy with aphrodisiacal
+      exudations. Mandragoras, hemlocks, hellebores, dwales, poured forth their
+      odours, and made their heads swim till they reeled and tottered one
+      against the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Shall I hold you up?&rsquo; Serge asked Albine, as he felt her leaning heavily
+      upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was already pressing her in his arms, but she struggled out of his
+      grasp, and drew a long breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No; you stifle me,&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;Leave me alone. I don&rsquo;t know what is the
+      matter with me. The ground seems to give way under my feet. It is there I
+      feel the pain.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She took hold of his hand and laid it upon her breast. Then Serge turned
+      quite pale. He was even more overcome than she. And both had tears in
+      their eyes as they saw each other thus ill and troubled, unable to think
+      of a remedy for the evil which had fallen upon them. Were they going to
+      die here of that mysterious, suffocating faintness?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come and sit down in the shade,&rsquo; said Serge. &lsquo;It is these plants which
+      are poisoning us with their noxious odours.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He led her gently along by her finger-tips, for she shivered and trembled
+      when he but touched her wrist. It was beneath a fine cedar, whose level
+      roof-like branches spread nearly a dozen yards around, that she seated
+      herself. Behind grew various quaint conifers; cypresses, with soft flat
+      foliage that looked like heavy lace; spruce firs, erect and solemn, like
+      ancient druidical pillars, still black with the blood of sacrificed
+      victims; yews, whose dark robes were fringed with silver; evergreen trees
+      of all kinds, with thick-set foliage, dark leathery verdure, splashed here
+      and there with yellow and red. There was a weird-looking araucaria that
+      stood out strangely with large regular arms resembling reptiles grafted
+      one on the other, and bristling with imbricated leaves that suggested the
+      scales of an excited serpent. In this heavy shade, the warm air lulled one
+      to voluptuous drowsiness. The atmosphere slept, breathless; and a perfume
+      of Eastern love, the perfume that came from the painted lips of the
+      Shunamite, was exhaled by the odorous trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Are you not going to sit down?&rsquo; said Albine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she slipped a little aside to make room for him; but Serge stepped
+      back and remained standing. Then, as she renewed her request, he dropped
+      upon his knees, a little distance away, and said, softly: &lsquo;No, I am more
+      feverish even than you are; I should make you hot. If I wasn&rsquo;t afraid of
+      hurting you, I would take you in my arms, and clasp you so tightly that we
+      should no longer feel any pain.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He dragged himself nearer to her on his knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! to have you in my arms! In the night I awake from dreams in which I
+      see you near me; but, alas! you are ever far away. There seems to be some
+      wall built up between us which I can never beat down. And yet I am now
+      quite strong again; I could catch you up in my arms and swing you over my
+      shoulder, and carry you off as though you belonged to me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had let himself sink upon his elbows, in an attitude of deep adoration.
+      And he breathed a kiss upon the hem of Albine&rsquo;s skirt. But at this the
+      girl sprang up, as though it was she herself that had received the kiss.
+      She hid her brow with her hands, perturbed, quivering, and stammering
+      forth: &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t! don&rsquo;t! I beg of you. Let us go on.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not hurry away, but let Serge follow her as she walked slowly on,
+      stumbling against the roots of the plants, and with her hands still
+      clasped round her head, as though to check the excitement that thrilled
+      her. When they came out of the little wood, they took a few steps over
+      ledges of rocks, on which a whole nation of ardent fleshy plants was
+      squatting. It was like a crawling, writhing assemblage of hideous nameless
+      monsters such as people a nightmare; monsters akin to spiders,
+      caterpillars, and wood-lice, grown to gigantic proportions, some with bare
+      glaucous skins, others tufted with filthy matted hairs, whilst many had
+      sickly limbs&mdash;dwarf legs, and shrivelled, palsied arms&mdash;sprawling
+      around them. And some displayed horrid dropsical bellies; some had spines
+      bossy with hideous humps, and others looked like dislocated skeletons.
+      Mamillaria threw up living pustules, a crawling swarm of greenish
+      tortoises, bristling hideously with long hairs that were stiffer than
+      iron. The echinocacti, which showed more flesh, suggested nests of young
+      writhing, knotted vipers. The echinopses were mere excrescent red-haired
+      growths that made one think of huge insects rolled into balls. The
+      prickly-pears spread out fleshy leaves spotted with ruddy spikes that
+      resembled swarms of microscopic bees. The gasterias sprawled about like
+      big shepherd-spiders turned over on their backs, with long-speckled and
+      striated legs. The cacti of the cereus family showed a horrid vegetation,
+      huge polyps, the diseases of an overheated soil, the maladies of poisoned
+      sap. But the aloes, languidly unfolding their hearts, were particularly
+      numerous and conspicuous. Among them one found every possible tint of
+      green, pale green and vivid, yellowish green and greyish, browny green,
+      dashed with a ruddy tone, and deep green, fringed with pale gold. And the
+      shapes of their leaves were as varied as their tints. Some were broad and
+      heart-shaped, others were long and narrow like sword-blades; some bristled
+      with spikey thorns, while yet others looked as though they had been
+      cunningly hemmed at the edges. There were giant ones, in lonely majesty,
+      with flower stalks that towered up aloft like poles wreathed with rosy
+      coral; and there were tiny ones clustering thickly together on one and the
+      same stem, and throwing forth on all sides leaves that gleamed and
+      quivered like adders&rsquo; tongues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Let us go back to the shade,&rsquo; begged Serge. &lsquo;You can sit down there as
+      you did just now, and I will lie at your feet and talk to you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where they stood the sun rays fell like torrential rain. It was as if the
+      triumphant orb seized upon the shadowless ground, and strained it to his
+      blazing breast. Albine grew faint, staggered, and turned to Serge for
+      support.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the moment they felt each other&rsquo;s touch, they fell together without
+      even a word. It was as though the very rock beneath them had opened, as
+      though they were ever going down and down. Their hands sought each other
+      caressingly, embracingly, but such keen anguish did they experience that
+      they suddenly tore themselves apart, and fled, each in a different
+      direction. Serge did not cease running till he had reached the pavilion,
+      and had thrown himself upon his bed, his brain on fire, and despair in his
+      heart. Albine did not return till nightfall, after hours of weeping in a
+      corner of the garden. It was the first time that they had not returned
+      home together, tired after their long wanderings. For three days they kept
+      apart, feeling terribly unhappy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0034" id="link2H_4_0034">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Yet now the park was entirely their own. They had taken sovereign
+      possession of it. There was not a corner of it that was not theirs to use
+      as they willed. For them alone the thickets of roses put forth their
+      blossoms, and the parterre exhaled its soft perfume, which lulled them to
+      sleep as they lay at night with their windows open. The orchard provided
+      them with food, filling Albine&rsquo;s skirts with fruits, and spread over them
+      the shade of its perfumed boughs, under which it was so pleasant to
+      breakfast in the early morning. Away in the meadows the grass and the
+      streams were all theirs; the grass, which extended their kingdom to such
+      boundless distance, spreading an endless silky carpet before them; and the
+      streams, which were the best of their joys, emblematic of their own purity
+      and innocence, ever offering them coolness and freshness in which they
+      delighted to bathe their youth. The forest, too, was entirely theirs, from
+      the mighty oaks, which ten men could not have spanned, to the slim birches
+      which a child might have snapped; the forest, with all its trees, all its
+      shade, all its avenues and clearings, its cavities of greenery, of which
+      the very birds themselves were ignorant; the forest which they used as
+      they listed, as if it were a giant canopy, beneath which they might
+      shelter from the noontide heat their new-born love. They reigned
+      everywhere, even among the rocks and the springs, even over that gruesome
+      stretch of ground that teemed with such hideous growth, and which had
+      seemed to sink and give way beneath their feet, but which they loved yet
+      even more than the soft grassy couches of the garden, for the strange
+      thrill of passion they had felt there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, now, in front of them, behind them, to the right of them and to the
+      left, all was theirs. They had gained possession of the whole domain, and
+      they walked through a friendly expanse which knew them, and smiled kindly
+      greetings to them as they passed, devoting itself to their pleasure, like
+      a faithful and submissive servitor. The sky, with its vast canopy of blue
+      overhead, was also theirs to enjoy. The park walls could not enclose it,
+      their eyes could ever revel in its beauty, and it entered into the joy of
+      their life, at daytime with its triumphal sun, at night with its golden
+      rain of stars. At every moment of the day it delighted them afresh, its
+      expression ever varying. In the early morning it was pale as a maiden just
+      risen from her slumber; at noon, it was flushed, radiant as with a longing
+      for fruitfulness, and in the evening it became languid and breathless, as
+      after keen enjoyment. Its countenance was constantly changing.
+      Particularly in the evenings, at the hour of parting, did it delight them.
+      The sun, hastening towards the horizon, ever found a fresh smile.
+      Sometimes he disappeared in the midst of serene calmness, unflecked by a
+      single cloud, sinking gradually beneath a golden sea. At other times he
+      threw out crimson glories, tore his vaporous robe to shreds, and set
+      amidst wavy flames that streaked the skies like the tails of gigantic
+      comets, whose radiant heads lit up the crests of the forest trees. Then,
+      again, extinguishing his rays one by one, he would softly sink to rest on
+      shores of ruddy sand, far-reaching banks of blushing coral; and then, some
+      other night, he would glide away demurely behind a heavy cloud that
+      figured the grey hangings of some alcove, through which the eye could only
+      detect a spark like that of a night-light. Or else he would rush to his
+      couch in a tumult of passion, rolled round with white forms which
+      gradually crimsoned beneath his fiery embraces, and finally disappeared
+      with him below the horizon in a confused chaos of gleaming, struggling
+      limbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was only the plants which had not made their submission. Albine and
+      Serge passed like monarchs through the kingdom of animals, who rendered
+      them humble and loyal obeisance. When they crossed the parterre, flights
+      of butterflies arose to delight their eyes, to fan them with quivering
+      wings, and to follow in their train like living sunbeams or flying
+      blossoms. In the orchard, they were greeted by the birds that banqueted in
+      the fruit-trees. The sparrows, the chaffinches, the golden orioles, the
+      bullfinches, showed them the ripest fruit scarred by their hungry beaks;
+      and while they sat astride the branches and breakfasted, birds twittered
+      and sported round them like children at play, and even purloined the fruit
+      beneath their very feet. Albine found even more amusement in the meadows,
+      where she caught the little green frogs with eyes of gold, that lay
+      squatting amongst the reeds, absorbed in contemplation; while Serge, with
+      a piece of straw, poked the crickets out of their hiding-places, or
+      tickled the grasshoppers to make them sing. He picked up insects of all
+      colours, blue ones, red ones, yellow ones, and set them creeping upon his
+      sleeve, where they gleamed and glittered like buttons of sapphire and ruby
+      and topaz.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there was all the mysterious life of the streams; the grey-backed
+      fishes that threaded the dim waters, the eels whose presence was betrayed
+      by a slight quivering of the water-plants, the young fry, which dispersed
+      like blackish sand at the slightest sound, the long-legged flies and the
+      water-beetles that ruffled into circling silvery ripples the stagnant
+      surface of the pools; all that silent teeming life which drew them to the
+      water and impelled them to dabble and stand in it, so that they might feel
+      those millions of existences ever and ever gliding past their limbs. At
+      other times, when the day was hot and languid, they would betake
+      themselves beneath the voiceful shade of the forest and listen to the
+      serenades of their musicians, the clear fluting of the nightingales, the
+      silvery bugle-notes of the tomtits, and the far-off accompaniment of the
+      cuckoos. They gazed with delight upon the swift flight of the pheasants,
+      whose plumes gleamed like sudden sun rays amidst the branches, and with a
+      smile they stayed their steps to let a troop of young roebucks bound past,
+      or else a couple of grave stags that slackened their pace to look at them.
+      Again, on other days they would climb up amongst the rocks, when the sun
+      was blazing in the heavens, and find a pleasure in watching the swarms of
+      grasshoppers which at the sound of their footsteps arose with a great
+      crepitation of wings from the beds of thyme. The snakes that lay uncoiled
+      beneath the parched bushes, or the lizards that sprawled over the red-hot
+      stones, watched them with friendly eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of all the life that thus teemed round them in the park, Albine and Serge
+      had only become really conscious since the day when a kiss had awakened
+      them to life themselves. Now it deafened them at times, and spoke to them
+      in a language which they did not understand. It was that life&mdash;all
+      the voices of the animal creation, all the perfumes and soft shadows of
+      the flowers and trees&mdash;which perturbed them to such a point as to
+      make them angry with one another. And yet throughout the whole park they
+      found nothing but loving familiarity. Every plant and every creature was
+      their friend. All the Paradou was one great caress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before they had come thither, the sun had for a whole century reigned over
+      it in lonely majesty. The garden, then, had known no other master; it had
+      beheld him, every morning, scaling the boundary wall with his slanting
+      rays, at noontide it had seen him pour his vertical heat upon the panting
+      soil; and at evening it had seen him go off, on the other side, with a
+      kiss of farewell upon its foliage. And so the garden had no shyness; it
+      welcomed Albine and Serge, as it had so long welcomed the sun, as pleasant
+      companions, with whom one puts on no ceremony. The animals, the trees, the
+      streams, the rocks, all continued in an unrestrained state of nature,
+      speaking aloud, living openly, without a secret, displaying the innocent
+      shamelessness, the hearty tenderness of the world&rsquo;s first days. Serge and
+      Albine, however, suffered from these voluptuous surroundings, and at times
+      felt minded to curse the garden. On the afternoon when Albine had wept so
+      bitterly after their saunter amongst the rocks, she had called out to the
+      Paradou, whose intensity of life and passion filled her with distress:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If you really be our friend, why, why do you make us so wretched?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0035" id="link2H_4_0035">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The next morning Serge barricaded himself in his room. The perfume from
+      the garden irritated him. He drew the calico curtains closely across the
+      window to shut out the sight of the park. Perhaps he thought he might
+      recover all his old serenity and calm if he shut himself off from that
+      greenery, whose shade sent such passionate thrills quivering through him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the long hours they spent together, Albine and he never now spoke
+      of the rocks or the streams, the trees or the sky. The Paradou might no
+      longer have been in existence. They strove to forget it. And yet they were
+      all the time conscious of its presence on the other side of those slight
+      curtains. Scented breezes forced their way in through the interstices of
+      the window frame, the many voices of nature made the panes resound. All
+      the life of the park laughed, chattered, and whispered in ambush beneath
+      their window. As it reached them their cheeks would pale and they would
+      raise their voices, seeking some occupation which might prevent them from
+      hearing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Have you noticed,&rsquo; said Serge one morning during these uneasy intervals,
+      &lsquo;there is a painting of a woman over the door there? She is like you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed noisily as he finished speaking. They both turned to the
+      paintings and dragged the table once more alongside the wall, with a
+      nervous desire to occupy themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! no,&rsquo; murmured Albine. &lsquo;She is much fatter than I am. But one can&rsquo;t
+      see her very well; her position is so queer.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They relapsed into silence. From the decayed, faded painting a scene,
+      which they had never before noticed, now showed forth. It was as if the
+      picture had taken shape and substance again beneath the influence of the
+      summer heat. You could sea a nymph with arms thrown back and pliant figure
+      on a bed of flowers which had been strewn for her by young cupids, who,
+      sickle in hand, ever added fresh blossoms to her rosy couch. And nearer,
+      you could also see a cloven-hoofed faun who had surprised her thus. But
+      Albine repeated, &lsquo;No, she is not like me, she is very plain.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge said nothing. He looked at the girl and then at Albine, as though he
+      were comparing them one with the other. Albine pulled up one of her
+      sleeves, as if to show that her arm was whiter than that of the pictured
+      girl. Then they subsided into silence again, and gazed at the painting;
+      and for a moment Albine&rsquo;s large blue eyes turned to Serge&rsquo;s grey ones,
+      which were glowing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You have got all the room painted again, then?&rsquo; she cried, as she sprang
+      from the table. &lsquo;These people look as though they were all coming to life
+      again.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They began to laugh, but there was a nervous ring about their merriment as
+      they glanced at the nude and frisking cupids which started to life again
+      on all the panels. They no longer took those survivals of voluptuous
+      eighteenth century art to represent mere children at play. They were
+      disturbed by the sight of them, and as Albine felt Serge&rsquo;s hot breath on
+      her neck she started and left his side to seat herself on the sofa. &lsquo;They
+      frighten me,&rsquo; she murmured. &lsquo;The men are like robbers, and the women, with
+      their dying eyes, look like people who are being murdered.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge sat down in a chair, a little distance away, and began to talk of
+      other matters. But they remained uneasy. They seemed to think that all
+      those painted figures were gazing at them. It was as if the trooping
+      cupids were springing out of the panelling, casting the flowers they held
+      around them, and threatening to bind them together with the blue ribbons
+      which already enchained two lovers in one corner of the ceiling. And the
+      whole story of the nymph and her faun lover, from his first peep at her to
+      his triumph among the flowers, seemed to burst into warm life. Were all
+      those lovers, all those impudent shameless cupids about to step down from
+      their panels and crowd around them? They already seemed to hear their
+      panting sighs, and to feel their breath filling the spacious room with the
+      perfume of voluptuousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s quite suffocating, isn&rsquo;t it?&rsquo; sighed Albine. &lsquo;In spite of every
+      airing I have given it, the room has always seemed close to me!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The other night,&rsquo; said Serge, &lsquo;I was awakened by such a penetrating
+      perfume, that I called out to you, thinking you had come into the room. It
+      was just like the soft warmth of your hair when you have decked it with
+      heliotropes.... In the earlier times it seemed to be wafted to me from a
+      distance, it was like the lingering memory of a perfume; but now I can&rsquo;t
+      sleep for it, and it is so strong and penetrating that it quite stupefies
+      me. The alcove grows so hot, too, at night that I shall be obliged to lie
+      on the couch.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine laid her fingers on her lips, and whispered, &lsquo;It is the dead girl&mdash;she
+      who once lived here.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They sniffed the odorous air with forced gaiety, but in reality feeling
+      very troubled. Certainly never before had the room exhaled such a
+      disquieting aroma. The very walls seemed to be still echoing the faint
+      rustling of perfumed skirts; and the floor had retained the fragrance of
+      satin slippers dropped by the bedside, and near the head of the bed itself
+      Serge thought he could trace the imprint of a little hand, which had left
+      behind it a clinging scent of violets. Over all the furniture the phantom
+      presence of the dead girl still lingered fragrantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;See, this is the armchair where she used to sit,&rsquo; cried Albine; &lsquo;there is
+      the scent of her shoulders at the back of it yet.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat down in it herself, and bade Serge drop upon his knees and kiss
+      her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You remember the day when I first let you in and said, &ldquo;Good morrow, my
+      dear lord!&rdquo; But that wasn&rsquo;t all, was it? He kissed her hands when the door
+      was closed. There they are, my hands. They are yours.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they tried to resume their old frolics in order that they might
+      forget the Paradou, whose joyous murmur they heard ever rising outside,
+      and that they might no longer think of the pictures nor yield to the
+      languor-breathing influence of the room. Albine put on an affected manner,
+      leant back in her chair, and finally laughed at the foolish figure which
+      Serge made at her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You stupid!&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;take me round the waist, and say pretty things to
+      me, since you are supposed to be in love with me. Don&rsquo;t you know how to
+      make love then?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as soon as she felt him clasp her with eager impetuosity, she began to
+      struggle, and freed herself from his embrace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, no; leave me alone. I can&rsquo;t bear it. I feel as though I were choking
+      in this room.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that day forward they felt the same kind of fear for the room as they
+      already felt for the garden. Their one remaining harbour of refuge was now
+      a place to be shunned and dreaded, a spot where they could no longer find
+      themselves together without watching each other furtively. Albine now
+      scarcely ventured to enter it, but remained near the threshold, with the
+      door wide open behind her so as to afford her an immediate retreat. Serge
+      lived there in solitude, a prey to sickening restlessness, half-stifling,
+      lying on the couch and vainly trying to close his ears to the sighs of the
+      soughing park and his nostrils to the haunting fragrance of the old
+      furniture. At night he dreamt wild passionate dreams, which left him in
+      the morning nervous and disquieted. He believed that he was falling ill
+      again, that he would never recover plenitude of health. For days and days
+      he remained there in silence, with dark rings round his sleepy eyes, only
+      starting into wakefulness when Albine came to visit him. They would remain
+      face to face, gazing at one another sadly, and uttering but a few soft
+      words, which seemed to choke them. Albine&rsquo;s eyes were even darker than
+      Serge&rsquo;s, and were filled with an imploring gaze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, after a week had gone by, Albine&rsquo;s visit never lasted more than a
+      few minutes. She seemed to shun him. When she came to the room, she
+      appeared thoughtful, remained standing, and hurried off as soon as
+      possible. When he questioned her about this change in her demeanour
+      towards him, and reproached her for no longer being friendly, she turned
+      her head away and avoided replying. He never could get her to tell him how
+      she spent the mornings that she passed alone. She would only shake her
+      head, and talk about being very idle. If he pressed her more closely, she
+      bounded out of the room, just wishing him a hasty good-night as she
+      disappeared through the doorway. He often noticed, however, that she had
+      been crying. He observed, too, in her expression the phases of a hope that
+      was never fulfilled, the perpetual struggling of a desire eager to be
+      satisfied. Sometimes she seemed quite overwhelmed with melancholy,
+      dragging herself about with an air of utter discouragement, like one who
+      no longer had any pleasure in living. At other times she laughed lightly,
+      her face shone with an expression of triumphant hope, of which, however,
+      she would not yet speak, and her feet could not remain still, so eager was
+      she to dart away to what seemed to her some last certainty. But on the
+      following day, she would sink again into desperation, to soar afresh on
+      the morrow on the pinions of renewed hope. One thing which she could not
+      conceal from Serge was that she suffered from extreme lassitude. Even
+      during the few moments they spent together she could not prevent her head
+      from nodding, or keep herself from dozing off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge, recognising that she was unwilling to reply, had ceased to question
+      her; and, when she now entered his room, he contented himself with casting
+      an anxious glance at her, fearful lest some evening she should no longer
+      have strength enough to come to him. Where could she thus reduce herself
+      to such exhaustion? What perpetual struggle was it that brought about
+      those alternations of joy and despair? One morning he started at the sound
+      of a light footfall beneath his window. It could not be a roe venturing
+      abroad in that manner. Moreover he could recognise that light footfall.
+      Albine was wandering about the Paradou without him. It was from the
+      Paradou that she returned to him with all those hopes and fears and inward
+      wrestlings, all that lassitude which was killing her. And he could well
+      guess what she was seeking out there, alone in the woody depths, with all
+      the silent obstinacy of a woman who has vowed to effect her purpose. After
+      that he used to listen for her steps. He dared not draw aside the curtain
+      and watch her as she hurried along through the trees; but he experienced
+      strange, almost painful emotion, in listening to ascertain what direction
+      she took, whether she turned to right or to left, whether she went
+      straight on through the flower-beds, and how far her ramble extended.
+      Amidst all the noisy life of the Paradou, amidst the soughing chorus of
+      the trees, the rustling of the streams, and the ceaseless songs of the
+      birds, he could distinguish the gentle pit-pat of her shoes so plainly
+      that he could have told whether she was stepping over the gravel near the
+      rivers, the crumbling mould of the forest, or the bare ledges of the
+      rocks. In time he even learned to tell, from the sound of her nervous
+      footfall, whether she came back hopeful or depressed. As soon as he heard
+      her step on the staircase, he hurried from the window, and he never let
+      her know that he had thus followed her from afar in her wanderings. But
+      she must have guessed it, for with a glance she always afterwards told him
+      where she had been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Stay indoors, and don&rsquo;t go out,&rsquo; he begged her, with clasped hands, one
+      morning when he saw her still unrecovered from the fatigue of the previous
+      day. &lsquo;You drive me to despair.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she hastened away in irritation. The garden, now that it rang with
+      Albine&rsquo;s footfalls, seemed to have a more depressing influence than ever
+      upon Serge. The pit-pat of her feet was yet another voice that called him;
+      an imperious voice that echoed ever more and more loudly within him. He
+      closed his ears and tried to shut out the sound, but the distant footsteps
+      still echoed to him in the throbbings of his heart. And when she came
+      back, in the evening, it was the whole park that came back with her, with
+      the memories of their walks together, and of the slow dawn of their love,
+      in the midst of conniving nature. She seemed to have grown taller and
+      graver, mellowed, matured by her solitary rambles. There was nothing left
+      in her of the frolicsome child, and his teeth would suddenly set at times
+      when he looked at her and beheld her so desirable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day, about noon, Serge heard Albine returning in hot haste. He had
+      restrained himself from listening for her steps when she went away.
+      Usually, she did not return till late, and he was amazed at her
+      impetuosity as she sped along, forcing her way through the branches that
+      barred her path. As she passed beneath his window, he heard her laugh; and
+      as she mounted the stairway, she panted so heavily that he almost thought
+      he could feel her hot breath streaming against his face. She threw the
+      door wide open, and cried out: &lsquo;I have found it!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she sat down and repeated softly, breathlessly: &lsquo;I have found it! I
+      have found it!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge, distracted, laid his fingers on her lips, and stammered: &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t
+      tell me anything, I beg you. I want to know nothing of it. It will kill
+      me, if you speak.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she sank into silence with gleaming eyes and lips tightly pressed
+      lest the words she kept back should spring out in spite of her. And she
+      stayed in the room till evening, trying to meet Serge&rsquo;s glance, and
+      imparting to him, each time that their eyes met, something of that which
+      she had discovered. Her whole face beamed with radiance, she exhaled a
+      delicious odour, she was full of life; and Serge felt that she permeated
+      him through all his senses. Despairingly did he struggle against this
+      gradual invasion of his being.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the morrow she returned to his room as soon as she was up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Aren&rsquo;t you going out?&rsquo; he asked, conscious that he would be vanquished
+      should she remain there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No,&rsquo; she said; she wasn&rsquo;t going out any more. As by degrees she recovered
+      from her fatigue he felt her becoming stronger, more triumphant. She would
+      soon be able to take him by the hand and drag him to that spot, whose
+      charm her silence proclaimed so loudly. That day, however, she did not
+      speak; she contented herself with keeping him seated on a cushion at her
+      feet. It was not till the next morning that she ventured to say: &lsquo;Why do
+      you shut yourself up here? It is so pleasant under the trees.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose from her feet, and stretched out his arms entreatingly. But she
+      laughed at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, well, then, we won&rsquo;t go out, since you would rather not.... But
+      this room has such a strange scent, and we should be much more comfortable
+      in the garden. It is very wrong of you to have taken such a dislike to
+      it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had again settled himself at her feet in silence, his eyelids lowered,
+      his features quivering with passionate emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We won&rsquo;t go out,&rsquo; she repeated, &lsquo;so don&rsquo;t worry. But do you really prefer
+      these pictures to the grass and flowers in the park? Do you remember all
+      we saw together? It is these paintings which make us feel so unhappy. They
+      are a nuisance, always looking and watching us as they do.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Serge gradually leant more closely against her, she passed her arm
+      round his neck and laid his head upon her lap, while murmuring in yet a
+      lower tone: &lsquo;There is a little corner there I know, where we might be so
+      very happy. Nothing would trouble us there; the fresh air would cool your
+      feverishness.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she stopped, as she felt him quivering. She was afraid lest she might
+      again revive his old fears. But she gradually conquered him merely by the
+      caressing gaze of her blue eyes. His eyelids were now raised, and he
+      rested there quietly, wholly hers, his tremor past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! if you only knew!&rsquo; she softly breathed; and seeing that he continued
+      to smile, she went on boldly: &lsquo;It is all a lie; it is not forbidden. You
+      are a man now and ought not to be afraid. If we went there, and any danger
+      threatened me, you would protect me, you would defend me, would you not?
+      You could carry me off on your back, couldn&rsquo;t you? I am never the least
+      afraid when I have you with me. Look how strong your arms have grown. What
+      is there for any one with such strong arms as yours to be afraid of?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She caressed him beguilingly as she spoke, stroking his hair and neck and
+      shoulders with her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, it is not forbidden,&rsquo; she resumed. &lsquo;That is only a story for stupids,
+      and was invented, long ago, by some one who didn&rsquo;t want to be disturbed in
+      the most charming spot in the whole garden. As soon as you sat down on
+      that grassy carpet, you would be happy and well again. Listen, then, come
+      with me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his head but without any sign of vexation, as though indeed he
+      liked thus being teased. Then after a short silence, grieved to see her
+      pouting, and longing for a renewal of her caresses, he opened his lips and
+      asked: &lsquo;Where is it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not answer him immediately. Her eyes seemed to be wandering far
+      away: &lsquo;It is over yonder,&rsquo; she murmured at last. &lsquo;I cannot explain to you
+      clearly. One has to go down the long avenue, and then to turn to the left,
+      and then again to the left. We must have passed it at least a score of
+      times. You might look for it for ever without finding it, if I didn&rsquo;t go
+      with you to show you. I could find my way to it quite straight, though I
+      could never explain it to you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And who took you there?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t know. That morning the trees and plants seemed to drive me there.
+      The long branches pushed me on, the grass bent down before me invitingly,
+      the paths seemed to open expressly for me to take them. And I believe the
+      animals themselves helped to lead me there, for I saw a stag trotting on
+      before me as though he wanted me to follow; while a company of bullfinches
+      flitted on from tree to tree, and warned me with their cries whenever I
+      was about to take a wrong direction.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And is it very beautiful?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again she did not reply. Deep ecstasy filled her eyes; at last, when she
+      was able to speak again, she said: &lsquo;Ah! so beautiful, that I could never
+      tell you of it. I was so charmed that I was conscious only of some supreme
+      joy, which I could not name, falling from the leaves and slumbering amid
+      the grass. And I ran back here to take you along with me that I might not
+      be without you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she clasped her arms round his neck again, and entreated him
+      passionately, her lips almost pressed to his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! you will come!&rsquo; she stammered; &lsquo;you must come; you will make me so
+      miserable if you don&rsquo;t. You can&rsquo;t want me to be miserable.... And even if
+      you knew that you would die there, even if that shade should be fatal to
+      both of us, would you hesitate or cast a regretful look behind? We should
+      remain there, at the foot of the tree, and sleep on quietly for ever, in
+      one anther&rsquo;s arms. Ah! would it not be bliss indeed?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, yes!&rsquo; he stammered, transported by her passionate entreaties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But we shall not die,&rsquo; she continued, raising her voice, and laughing
+      with the laugh which proclaims woman&rsquo;s victory; &lsquo;we shall live to love
+      each other. It is a tree of life, a tree whose shadow will make us
+      stronger, more perfect, more complete. You will see that all will now go
+      happily. Some blessed joy will assuredly descend on us from heaven! Will
+      you come?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His face paled, and his eyelids quivered, as though too powerful a light
+      were suddenly beating against them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Will you come? will you come?&rsquo; she cried again, yet more passionately,
+      and already half rising to her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sprang up and followed her, at first with tottering steps and then with
+      his arm thrown round her waist, as if he could endure no separation from
+      her. He went where she went, carried along in the warm fragrance that
+      streamed from her hair. And as he thus remained slightly in the rear, she
+      turned upon him a face so radiant with love, such tempting lips and eyes,
+      which so imperiously bade him follow, that he would have gone with her
+      anywhere, trusting and unquestioning, like a dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0036" id="link2H_4_0036">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      They went down and out into the garden without the smile fading from
+      Serge&rsquo;s face. All that he saw of the greenery around him was such as was
+      reflected in the clear depths of Albine&rsquo;s eyes. As they approached, the
+      garden smiled and smiled again, a murmur of content sped from leaf to leaf
+      and from bough to bough to the furthest depths of the avenues. For days
+      and days the garden must have been hoping and expecting to see them thus,
+      clinging to one another, making their peace again with the trees and
+      searching for their lost love on the grassy banks. A solemn warning breath
+      sighed through the branches; the afternoon sky was drowsy with heat; the
+      plants raised their bowing heads to watch them pass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Listen,&rsquo; whispered Albine. &lsquo;They drop into silence as we come near them;
+      but over yonder they are expecting us, they are telling each other the way
+      they must lead us.... I told you we should have no trouble about the
+      paths, the trees themselves will direct us with their spreading arms.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole park did, indeed, appear to be impelling them gently onward. In
+      their rear it seemed as if a barrier of brush-wood had bristled up to
+      prevent them from retracing their steps; while, in front of them, the
+      grassy lawns spread out so invitingly, that they glided along the soft
+      slopes, without thought of choosing their way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And the birds are coming with us, too,&rsquo; said Albine. &lsquo;It is the tomtits
+      this time. Don&rsquo;t you see them? They are skimming over the hedges, and they
+      stop at each turning to see that we don&rsquo;t lose our way.&rsquo; Then she added:
+      &lsquo;All the living things of the park are with us. Can&rsquo;t you hear them? There
+      is a deep rustling close behind us. It is the birds in the trees, the
+      insects in the grass, the roebucks and the stags in the coppices, and even
+      the little fishes splashing the quiet water with their beating fins. Don&rsquo;t
+      turn round, or you will frighten them. Ah! I am sure we have a rare train
+      behind us.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They still walked on, unfatigued. Albine spoke only to charm Serge with
+      the music of her voice, while Serge obeyed the slightest pressure of her
+      hand. They knew not what they passed, but they were certain that they were
+      going straight towards their goal. And as they went along, the garden
+      became gradually graver, more discreet; the soughing of the branches died
+      away, the streams hushed their plashing waters, the birds, the beasts, and
+      the insects fell into silence. All around them reigned solemn stillness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Albine and Serge instinctively raised their heads. In front of them
+      they beheld a colossal mass of foliage; and, as they hesitated for a
+      moment, a roe, after gazing at them with its sweet soft eyes, bounded into
+      the thickets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is there,&rsquo; said Albine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She led the way, her face again turned towards Serge, whom she drew with
+      her, and they disappeared amid the quivering leaves, and all grew quiet
+      again. They were entering into delicious peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the centre there stood a tree covered with so dense a foliage that one
+      could not recognise its species. It was of giant girth, with a trunk that
+      seemed to breathe like a living breast, and far-reaching boughs that
+      stretched like protecting arms around it. It towered up there beautiful,
+      strong, virile, and fruitful. It was the king of the garden, the father of
+      the forest, the pride of the plants, the beloved of the sun, whose
+      earliest and latest beams smiled daily on its crest. From its green vault
+      poured all the joys of creation: fragrance of flowers, music of birds,
+      gleams of golden light, wakeful freshness of dawn, slumbrous warmth of
+      evening twilight. So strong was the sap that it burst through the very
+      bark, bathing the tree with the powers of fruitfulness, making it the
+      symbol of earth&rsquo;s virility. Its presence sufficed to give the clearing an
+      enchanting charm. The other trees built up around it an impenetrable wall,
+      which isolated it as in a sanctuary of silence and twilight. There was but
+      greenery there, not a scrap of sky, not a glimpse of horizon; nothing but
+      a swelling rotunda, draped with green silkiness of leaves, adorned below
+      with mossy velvet. And one entered, as into the liquid crystal of a
+      source, a greenish limpidity, a sheet of silver reposing beneath reflected
+      reeds. Colours, perfumes, sounds, quivers, all were vague, indeterminate,
+      transparent, steeped in a felicity amidst which everything seemed to faint
+      away. Languorous warmth, the glimmer of a summer&rsquo;s night, as it fades on
+      the bare shoulder of some fair girl, a scarce perceptible murmur of love
+      sinking into silence, lingered beneath the motionless branches, unstirred
+      by the slightest zephyr. It was hymeneal solitude, a chamber where Nature
+      lay hidden in the embraces of the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine and Serge stood there in an ecstasy of joy. As soon as the tree had
+      received them beneath its shade, they felt eased of all the anxious
+      disquiet which had so long distressed them. The fears which had made them
+      avoid each other, the fierce wrestling of spirit which had torn and
+      wounded them, without consciousness on their part of what they were really
+      contending against, vanished, and left them in perfect peace. Absolute
+      confidence, supreme serenity, now pervaded them, they yielded
+      unhesitatingly to the joy of being together in that lonely nook, so
+      completely hidden from the outside world. They had surrendered themselves
+      to the garden, they awaited in all calmness the behests of that tree of
+      life. It enveloped them in such ecstasy of love that the whole clearing
+      seemed to disappear from before their eyes, and to leave them wrapped in
+      an atmosphere of perfume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The air is like ripe fruit,&rsquo; murmured Albine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Serge whispered in his turn: &lsquo;The grass seems so full of life and
+      motion, that I could almost think I was treading on your dress.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a kind of religious feeling which made them lower their voices. No
+      sentiment of curiosity impelled them to raise their heads and scan the
+      tree. The consciousness of its majesty weighed heavily upon them. With a
+      glance Albine asked whether she had overrated the enchantment of the
+      greenery, and Serge answered her with two tears that trickled down his
+      cheeks. The joy that filled them at being there could not be expressed in
+      words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come,&rsquo; she whispered in his ear, in a voice that was softer than a sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she glided on in front of him, and seated herself at the very foot of
+      the tree. Then, with a fond smile, she stretched out her hands to him;
+      while he, standing before her, grasped them in his own with a responsive
+      smile. Then she drew him slowly towards her and he sank down by her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! do you remember,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;that wall which seemed to have grown up
+      between us? Now there is nothing to keep us apart&mdash;you are not
+      unhappy now?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, no,&rsquo; she answered; &lsquo;very happy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment they relapsed into silence whilst soft emotion stole over
+      them. Then Serge, caressing Albine, exclaimed: &lsquo;Your face is mine; your
+      eyes, your mouth, your cheeks are mine. Your arms are mine, from your
+      shoulders to the tips of your nails. You are wholly mine.&rsquo; And as he spoke
+      he kissed her lips, her eyes, her cheeks. He kissed her arms, with quick
+      short kisses, from her fingers to her shoulders. He poured upon her a rain
+      of kisses hot as a summer shower, deluging her cheeks, her forehead, her
+      lips, and her neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But if you are mine, I am yours,&rsquo; said he; &lsquo;yours for ever; for I now
+      well know that you are my queen, my sovereign, whom I must worship on
+      bended knee. I am here only to obey you, to lie at your feet, to
+      anticipate your wishes, to shelter you with my arms, to drive away
+      whatever might trouble your tranquillity. And you are my life&rsquo;s goal.
+      Since I first awoke in this garden, you have ever been before me; I have
+      grown up that I might be yours. Ever, as my end, my reward, have I gazed
+      upon your grace. You passed in the sunshine with the sheen of your golden
+      hair; you were a promise that I should some day know all the mysteries and
+      necessities of creation, of this earth, of these trees, these waters,
+      these skies, whose last secret is yet unrevealed. I belong to you; I am
+      your slave; I will listen to you and obey you, with my lips upon your
+      feet.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He said this, bowed to the ground, adoring Woman. And Albine, full of
+      pride, allowed herself to be adored. She yielded her hands, her cheeks,
+      her lips, to Serge&rsquo;s rapturous kisses. She felt herself indeed a queen as
+      she saw him, who was so strong, bending so humbly before her. She had
+      conquered him, and held him there at her mercy. With a single word she
+      could dispose of him. And that which helped her to recognise her
+      omnipotence was that she heard the whole garden rejoicing at her triumph,
+      with gradually swelling paeans of approval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! if we could fly off together, if we could but die even, in one
+      another&rsquo;s arms,&rsquo; faltered Serge, scarce able to articulate. But Albine had
+      strength enough to raise her finger as though to bid him listen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the garden that had planned and willed it all. For weeks and weeks
+      it had been favouring and encouraging their passion, and at last, on that
+      supreme day, it had lured them to that spot, and now it became the Tempter
+      whose every voice spoke of love. From the flower-beds, amid the fragrance
+      of the languid blossoms, was wafted a soft sighing, which told of the
+      weddings of the roses, the love-joys of the violets; and never before had
+      the heliotropes sent forth so voluptuous a perfume. Mingled with the soft
+      air which arose from the orchard were all the exhalations of ripe fruit,
+      the vanilla of apricots, the musk of oranges, all the luscious aroma of
+      fruitfulness. From the meadows came fuller notes, the million sighs of the
+      sun-kissed grass, the multitudinous love-plaints of legions of living
+      things, here and there softened by the refreshing caresses of the
+      rivulets, on whose banks the very willows palpitated with desire. And the
+      forest proclaimed the mighty passion of the oaks. Through the high
+      branches sounded solemn music, organ strains like the nuptial marches of
+      the ashes and the birches, the hornbeams and the planes, while from the
+      bushes and the young coppices arose noisy mirth like that of youthful
+      lovers chasing one another over banks and into hollows amid much crackling
+      and snapping of branches. From afar, too, the faint breeze wafted the
+      sounds of the rocks splitting in their passion beneath the burning heat,
+      while near them the spiky plants loved in a tragic fashion of their own,
+      unrefreshed by the neighbouring springs, which themselves glowed with the
+      love of the passionate sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What do they say?&rsquo; asked Serge, half swooning, as Albine pressed him to
+      her bosom. The voices of the Paradou were growing yet more distinct. The
+      animals, in their turn, joined in the universal song of nature. The
+      grasshoppers grew faint with the passion of their chants; the butterflies
+      scattered kisses with their beating wings. The amorous sparrows flew to
+      their mates; the rivers rippled over the loves of the fishes; whilst in
+      the depths of the forest the nightingales sent forth pearly, voluptuous
+      notes, and the stags bellowed their love aloud. Reptiles and insects,
+      every species of invisible life, every atom of matter, the earth itself
+      joined in the great chorus. It was the chorus of love and of nature&mdash;the
+      chorus of the whole wide world; and in the very sky the clouds were
+      radiant with rapture, as to those two children Love revealed the Eternity
+      of Life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0037" id="link2H_4_0037">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Albine and Serge smiled at one another.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I love you, Albine,&rsquo; said Serge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Serge, I love you,&rsquo; Albine answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And never before had those syllables &lsquo;I love you&rsquo; had for them so supreme
+      a meaning. They expressed everything. Joy pervaded those young lovers, who
+      had attained to the fulness of life. They felt that they were now on a
+      footing of equality with the forces of the world; and with their happiness
+      mingled the placid conviction that they had obeyed the universal law. And
+      Serge seemed to have awakened to life, lion-like, to rule the whole far
+      expanse under the free heavens. His feet planted themselves more firmly on
+      the ground, his chest expanded, there was pride and confidence in his gait
+      and demeanour. He took Albine by the hands, she was trembling, and he was
+      obliged to support her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t be afraid,&rsquo; he said; &lsquo;you are she whom I love.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Albine now who had become the submissive one. She drooped her head
+      upon his shoulder, glancing up at him with anxious scrutiny. Would he
+      never bear her spite for that hour of adoration in which he had called
+      himself her slave? But he smiled, and stroked her hair, while she said to
+      him: &lsquo;Let me stay like this, in your arms, for I cannot walk without you.
+      I will make myself so small and light, that you will scarcely know I am
+      there.&rsquo; Then becoming very serious she added, &lsquo;You must always love me;
+      and I will be very obedient and do whatever you wish. I will yield to you
+      in all things if you but love me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge felt more powerful and virile on seeing her so humble. &lsquo;Why are you
+      trembling so?&rsquo; he asked her; &lsquo;I can have no cause to reproach you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she did not answer him, she gazed almost sadly upon the tree and the
+      foliage and the grass around them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Foolish child!&rsquo; he said, laughing; &lsquo;are you afraid that I shall be angry
+      with you for your love? We have loved as we were meant to love. Let me
+      kiss you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, dropping her eyelids so that she might not see the tree, she said, in
+      a low whisper, &lsquo;Take me away!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge led her thence, pacing slowly and giving one last glance at the spot
+      which love had hallowed. The shadows in the clearing were growing darker,
+      and a gentle quiver coursed through the foliage. When they emerged from
+      the wood and caught sight of the sun, still shining brightly in the
+      horizon, they felt easier. Everything around Serge now seemed to bend down
+      before him and pay homage to his love. The garden was now nothing but an
+      appanage of Albine&rsquo;s beauty, and seemed to have grown larger and fairer
+      amid the love-kisses of its rulers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Albine&rsquo;s joy was still tinged with disquietude. She would suddenly
+      pause amid her laughter and listen anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What is the matter?&rsquo; asked Serge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nothing,&rsquo; she replied, casting furtive glances behind her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They did not know in what out-of-the-way corner of the park they were. To
+      lose themselves in their capricious wanderings only served to amuse them
+      as a rule; but that day they experienced anxious embarrassment. By degrees
+      they quickened their pace, plunging more and more deeply into a labyrinth
+      of bushes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t you hear?&rsquo; asked Albine, nervously, as she suddenly stopped short,
+      almost breathless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge listened, a prey, in his turn, to the anxiety which the girl could
+      no longer conceal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;All the coppice seems full of voices,&rsquo; she continued. &lsquo;It sounds as
+      though there were people deriding us. Listen! Wasn&rsquo;t that a laugh that
+      sounded from that tree? And over yonder did not the grass murmur something
+      as my dress brushed against it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, no,&rsquo; he said, anxious to reassure her, &lsquo;the garden loves us; and, if
+      it said anything, it would not be to vex or annoy us. Don&rsquo;t you remember
+      all the sweet words which sounded through the leaves? You are nervous and
+      fancy things.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she shook her head and faltered: &lsquo;I know very well that the garden is
+      our friend.... So it must be some one who has broken into it. I am certain
+      I hear some one. I am trembling all over. Oh! take me away and hide me
+      somewhere, I beseech you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they went on again, scanning every tree and bush, and imagining that
+      they could see faces peering at them from behind every trunk. Albine was
+      certain, she said, that there were steps pursuing them in the distance.
+      &lsquo;Let us hide ourselves,&rsquo; she begged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had turned quite scarlet. It was new-born modesty, a sense of shame
+      which had laid hold of her like a fever, mantling over the snowy whiteness
+      of her skin, which never previously had known that flush. Serge was
+      alarmed at seeing her thus crimson, her face full of distress, her eyes
+      brimming with tears. He tried to clasp her in his arms again and to soothe
+      her with a caress; but she slipped away from him, and, with a despairing
+      gesture, made sign that they were not alone. And her blushes grew deeper
+      as her eyes fell upon her bare arms. She shuddered when her loose hanging
+      hair stirred against her neck and shoulders. The slightest touch of a
+      waving bough or a passing insect, the softest breath of air, now made her
+      tremble as if some invisible hand were grasping at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Calm yourself,&rsquo; begged Serge, &lsquo;there is no one. You are as crimson as
+      though you had a fever. Let us rest here for a moment. Do; I beg you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had no fever at all, she said, but she wanted to get back as quickly
+      as possible, so that no one might laugh at her. And, ever increasing her
+      pace, she plucked handfuls of leaves and tendrils from the hedges, which
+      she entwined about her. She fastened a branch of mulberry over her hair,
+      twisted bindweed round her arms, and tied it to her wrists, and circled
+      her neck with such long sprays of laurustinus, that her bosom was hidden
+      as by a veil of leaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And that shame of hers proved contagious. Serge, who first had jested,
+      asking her if she were going to a ball, glanced at himself, and likewise
+      felt alarmed and ashamed, to a point that he also wound foliage about his
+      person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, they could discover no way out of the labyrinth of bushes, but
+      all at once, at the end of the path, they found themselves face to face
+      with an obstacle, a tall, grey, grave mass of stone. It was the wall of
+      the Paradou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come away! come away!&rsquo; cried Albine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she sought to drag him thence; but they had not taken another twenty
+      steps before they again came upon the wall. They then skirted it at a ran,
+      panic-stricken. It stretched along, gloomy and stern, without a break in
+      its surface. But suddenly, at a point where it fringed a meadow, it seemed
+      to fall away. A great breach gaped in it, like a huge window of light
+      opening on to the neighbouring valley. It must have been the very hole
+      that Albine had one day spoken of, which she said she had blocked up with
+      brambles and stones. But the brambles now lay scattered around like
+      severed bits of rope, the stones had been thrown some distance away, and
+      the breach itself seemed to have been enlarged by some furious hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0038" id="link2H_4_0038">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! I felt sure of it,&rsquo; cried Albine, in accents of supreme despair. &lsquo;I
+      begged you to take me away&mdash;Serge, I beseech you, don&rsquo;t look through
+      it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Serge, in spite of himself, stood rooted to the ground, on the
+      threshold of the breach through which he gazed. Down below, in the depths
+      of the valley, the setting sun cast a sheet of gold upon the village of
+      Les Artaud, which showed vision-like amidst the twilight in which the
+      neighbouring fields were already steeped. One could plainly distinguish
+      the houses that straggled along the high road; the little yards with their
+      dunghills, and the narrow gardens planted with vegetables. Higher up, the
+      tall cypress in the graveyard reared its dusky silhouette, and the red
+      tiles on the church glowed brazier-like, the dark bell looking down on
+      them like a human face, while the old parsonage at the side threw its
+      doors and windows open to the evening air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;For pity&rsquo;s sake,&rsquo; sobbed Albine, &lsquo;don&rsquo;t look out, Serge. Remember that
+      you promised you would always love me. Ah! will you ever love me enough,
+      now? Stay, let me cover your eyes with my hands. You know it was my hands
+      that cured you. You won&rsquo;t push me away.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he put her from him gently. Then, while she fell down and clung to his
+      legs, he passed his hands across his face, as though he were wiping from
+      his brow and eyes some last lingering traces of sleep. It was yonder,
+      then, that lay the unknown world, the strange land of which he had never
+      dreamed without vague fear. Where had he seen that country? From what
+      dream was he awakening, that he felt such keen anguish swelling up in his
+      breast till it almost choked him? The village was breaking out into life
+      at the close of the day&rsquo;s work. The men were coming home from the fields
+      with weary gait, their jackets thrown over their shoulders; the women,
+      standing by their doors, were beckoning to them to hasten on; while the
+      children, in noisy bands, chased the fowls about and pelted them with
+      stones. In the churchyard a couple of scapegraces, a lad and a girl, were
+      creeping along under the shelter of the wall in order to escape notice.
+      Swarms of sparrows were retiring to roost beneath the eaves of the church;
+      and, on the steps of the parsonage, a blue calico skirt had just appeared,
+      of such spreading dimensions as to quite block the doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! he is looking out! he is looking out!&rsquo; sobbed Albine. &lsquo;Listen to me.
+      It was only just now that you promised to obey me. I beg of you to turn
+      round and to look upon the garden. Haven&rsquo;t you been very happy in the
+      garden? It was the garden which gave me to you. Think of the happy days it
+      has in store for us, what lasting bliss and enjoyment. Instead of which it
+      will be death that will force its way through that hole, if you don&rsquo;t
+      quickly flee and take me with you. See, all those people yonder will come
+      and thrust themselves between us. We were so quite alone, so secluded, so
+      well guarded by the trees! Oh! the garden is our love! Look on the garden,
+      I beg it of you on my knees!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Serge was quivering. He had began to recollect. The past was
+      re-awakening. He could distinctly hear the stir of the village life. Those
+      peasants, those women and children, he knew them. There was the mayor,
+      Bambousse, returning from Les Olivettes, calculating how much the
+      approaching vintage would yield him; there were the Brichets, the husband
+      crawling along, and the wife moaning with misery. There was Rosalie
+      flirting with big Fortune behind a wall. He recognised also the pair in
+      the churchyard, that mischievous Vincent and that bold hussy Catherine,
+      who were catching big grasshoppers amongst the tombstones. Yes, and they
+      had Voriau, the black dog, with them, helping them and ferreting about in
+      the dry grass, and sniffing at every crack in the old stones. Under the
+      eaves of the church the sparrows were twittering and bickering before
+      going to roost. The boldest of them flew down and entered the church
+      through the broken windows, and, as Serge followed them with his eyes, he
+      recollected all the noise they had formerly made below the pulpit and on
+      the step by the altar rails, where crumbs were always put for them. And
+      that was La Teuse yonder, on the parsonage doorstep, looking fatter than
+      ever in her blue calico dress. She was turning her head to smile at
+      Desirée, who was coming up from the yard, laughing noisily. Then they both
+      vanished indoors, and Serge, distracted with all these revived memories,
+      stretched out his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is all over now,&rsquo; faltered Albine, as she sank down amongst the broken
+      brambles. &lsquo;You will never love me enough again.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She wept, while Serge stood rooted by the breach, straining his ears to
+      catch the slightest sound that might be wafted from the village, waiting,
+      as it were, for some voice that might fully awaken him. The bell in the
+      church-tower had begun to sway, and slowly through the quiet evening air
+      the three chimes of the <i>Angelus</i> floated up to the Paradou. It was a
+      soft and silvery summons. The bell now seemed to be alive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;O God!&rsquo; cried Serge, falling on his knees, quite overcome by the emotion
+      which the soft notes of the bell had excited in him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He bent down towards the ground, and he felt the three peals of the <i>Angelus</i>
+      pass over his neck and echo through his heart. The voice of the bell
+      seemed to grow louder. It was raised again sternly, pitilessly, for a few
+      moments which seemed to him to be years. It summoned up before him all his
+      old life, his pious childhood, his happy days at the seminary, and his
+      first Masses in that burning valley of Les Artaud, where he had dreamt of
+      a solitary, saintly life. He had always heard it speaking to him as it was
+      doing now. He recognised every inflection of that sacred voice, which had
+      so constantly fallen upon his ears, like the grave and gentle voice of a
+      mother. Why had he so long ceased to hear it? In former times it had
+      promised him the coming of Mary. Had Mary come then and taken him and
+      carried him off into those happy green fastnesses, which the sound of the
+      bell could not reach? He would never have lapsed into forgetfulness if the
+      bell had not ceased to ring. And as he bent his head still lower towards
+      the earth, the contact of his beard with his hands made him start. He
+      could not recognise his own self with that long silky beard. He twisted it
+      and fumbled about in his hair seeking for the bare circle of the tonsure,
+      but a heavy growth of curls now covered his whole head from his brow to
+      the nape of his neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! you were right,&rsquo; he said, casting a look of despair at Albine. &lsquo;It
+      was forbidden. We have sinned, and we have merited some terrible
+      punishment.... But I, indeed, I tried to reassure you, I did not hear the
+      threats which sounded in your ears through the branches.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine tried to clasp him in her arms again as she sobbed out, &lsquo;Get up,
+      and let us escape together. Perhaps even yet there is time for us to love
+      each other.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, no; I haven&rsquo;t the strength. I should stumble and fall over the
+      smallest pebble in the path. Listen to me. I am afraid of myself. I know
+      not what man dwells in me. I have murdered myself, and my hands are red
+      with blood. If you took me away, you would never see aught in my eyes save
+      tears.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She kissed his wet eyes, as she answered passionately, &lsquo;No matter! Do you
+      love me?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was too terrified to answer her. A heavy step set the pebbles rolling
+      on the other side of the wall. A growl of anger seemed to draw nigh.
+      Albine had not been mistaken. Some one was, indeed, there, disturbing the
+      woodland quiet with jealous inquisition. Then both Albine and Serge, as if
+      overwhelmed with shame, sought to bide themselves behind a bush. But
+      Brother Archangias, standing in front of the breach, could already see
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Brother remained for a moment silent, clenching his fists and looking
+      at Albine clinging round Serge&rsquo;s neck, with the disgust of a man who has
+      espied some filth by the roadside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I suspected it,&rsquo; he mumbled between his teeth. &lsquo;It was virtually certain
+      that they had hidden him here.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he took a few steps, and cried out: &lsquo;I see you. It is an abomination.
+      Are you a brute beast to go coursing through the woods with that female?
+      She has led you far astray, has she not? She has besmeared you with filth,
+      and now you are hairy like a goat.... Pluck a branch from the trees
+      wherewith to smite her on the back.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Albine whispered in an ardent, prayerful voice: &lsquo;Do you love me? Do
+      you love me?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Serge, with bowed head, kept silence, though he did not yet drive her
+      from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Fortunately, I have found you,&rsquo; continued Brother Archangias. &lsquo;I
+      discovered this hole.... You have disobeyed God, and have slain your own
+      peace. Henceforward, for ever, temptation will gnaw you with its fiery
+      tooth, and you will no longer have ignorance of evil to help you to fight
+      it. It was that creature who tempted you to your fall, was it not? Do you
+      not see the serpent&rsquo;s tail writhing amongst her hair? The mere sight of
+      her shoulders is sufficient to make one vomit with disgust.... Leave her.
+      Touch her not, for she is the beginning of hell. In the name of God, come
+      forth from that garden.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Do you love me? Oh! do you love me?&rsquo; reiterated Albine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Serge hastily drew away from her as though her bare arms and shoulders
+      really scorched him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;In the name of God! In the name of God!&rsquo; cried the Brother, in a voice of
+      thunder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge unresistingly stepped towards the breach. As soon as Brother
+      Archangias, with rough violence, had dragged him out of the Paradou,
+      Albine, who had fallen half fainting to the ground, with hands wildly
+      stretched towards the love which was deserting her, rose up again, choking
+      with sobs. And she fled, vanished into the midst of the trees, whose
+      trunks she lashed with her streaming hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0039" id="link2H_4_0039">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0040" id="link2H_4_0040">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When Abbé Mouret had said the <i>Pater</i>, he bowed to the altar, and
+      went to the Epistle side. Then he came down, and made the sign of the
+      cross over big Fortune and Rosalie, who were kneeling, side by side,
+      before the altar-rails.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Ego conjungo vos in matrimonium, in nomine Patris, et Filii, et
+      Spiritus Sancti</i>.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Amen</i>,&rsquo; responded Vincent, who was serving the mass, and glancing
+      curiously at his big brother out of the corner of his eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortune and Rosalie bent their heads, affected by some slight emotion,
+      although they had nudged each other with their elbows when they knelt
+      down, by way of making one another laugh. But Vincent went to get the
+      basin and the sprinkler. Fortune placed the ring in the basin, a thick
+      ring of solid silver. When the priest had blessed it, sprinkling it
+      crosswise, he returned it to Fortune, who slipped it upon Rosalie&rsquo;s
+      finger. Her hand was still discoloured with grass-stains, which soap had
+      not been able to remove.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti</i>,&rsquo; Abbé Mouret
+      murmured again, giving them a final benediction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Amen</i>,&rsquo; responded Vincent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was early morning. The sun was not yet shining through the big windows
+      of the church. Outside one could hear the noisy twittering of the sparrows
+      in the branches of the service tree, whose foliage shot through the broken
+      panes. La Teuse, who had not previously had time to clean the church, was
+      now dusting the altar, craning up on her sound leg to wipe the feet of the
+      ochre and lake-bedaubed Christ, and arranging the chairs as quietly as
+      possible; all the while bowing and crossing herself, and following the
+      service, but not omitting a single sweep of her feather broom. Quite
+      alone, at the foot of the pulpit, was mother Brichet, praying in a very
+      demonstrative fashion. She kept on her knees, and repeated the prayers in
+      so loud a whisper that it seemed as if a swarm of bluebottles had taken
+      possession of the nave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the other end of the church near the confessional, Catherine held an
+      infant in swaddling clothes. As it began to cry, she turned her back upon
+      the altar, and tossed it up, and amused it with the bell-rope, which
+      dangled just over its nose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Dominus vobiscum</i>,&rsquo; said the priest, turning round, and spreading
+      out his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Et cum spiritu tuo</i>,&rsquo; responded Vincent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment three big girls came into the church. They were too shy to
+      go far up, though they jostled one another to get a better view of what
+      was going on. They were three friends of Rosalie, who had dropped in for a
+      minute or two on their way to the fields, curious as they were to hear
+      what his reverence would say to the bride and bridegroom. They had big
+      scissors hanging at their waists. At last they hid themselves behind the
+      font, where they pinched each other and twisted themselves about, while
+      trying to choke their bursts of laughter with their clenched fists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well,&rsquo; whispered La Rousse, a finely built girl, with copper-coloured
+      skin and hair, &lsquo;there won&rsquo;t be any scrimmage to get out of church when
+      it&rsquo;s all over.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! old Bambousse is quite right,&rsquo; murmured Lisa, a short dark girl, with
+      gleaming eyes; &lsquo;when one has vines, one looks after them. Since his
+      reverence so particularly desired to marry Rosalie, he can very well do it
+      all alone.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other girl, Babet, who was humpbacked, tittered. &lsquo;There&rsquo;s mother
+      Brichet,&rsquo; she said; &lsquo;she is always here. She prays for the whole family.
+      Listen, do you hear how she&rsquo;s buzzing? All that will mean something in her
+      pocket. She knows very well what she is about, I can tell you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She is playing the organ for them,&rsquo; retorted La Rousse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this all three burst into a laugh. La Teuse, in the distance,
+      threatened them with her broom. At the altar, Abbé Mouret was taking the
+      sacrament. As he went from the Epistle side towards Vincent, so that the
+      water of ablution might be poured upon his thumb and fore-finger, Lisa
+      said more softly: &lsquo;It&rsquo;s nearly over. He will begin to talk to them
+      directly.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; said La Rousse, &lsquo;and so big Fortune will still be able to go to his
+      work, and Rosalie won&rsquo;t lose her day&rsquo;s pay at the vintage. It is very
+      convenient to be married so early in the morning. He looks very sheepish,
+      that big Fortune.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Of course,&rsquo; murmured Babet. &lsquo;It tires him, keeping so long on his knees.
+      You may be sure that he has never knelt so long since his first
+      communion.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the girls&rsquo; attention was suddenly distracted by the baby which
+      Catherine was dangling in her arms. It wanted to get hold of the
+      bell-rope, and was quite blue with rage, frantically stretching out its
+      little hands and almost choking itself with crying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! so the youngster is there,&rsquo; said La Rousse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The baby now burst into still louder wailing, and struggled like a little
+      Imp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Turn it over on its stomach, and let it suck,&rsquo; said Babet to Catherine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Catherine lifted up her head, and began to laugh, with the shamelessness
+      of a little minx. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s not at all amusing,&rsquo; she said, giving the baby a
+      shake. &lsquo;Be quiet, will you, little pig! My sister plumped it down on my
+      knees.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Naturally,&rsquo; said Babet, mischievously. &lsquo;You could scarcely have expected
+      her to give the brat to Monsieur le Curé to nurse.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this sally, La Rousse almost fell over in a fit of laughter. She leaned
+      against the wall, holding her sides with her hands. Lisa threw herself
+      against her, and attempted to soothe her by pinching her back and
+      shoulders; while Babet laughed with a hunchback&rsquo;s laugh, which grated on
+      the ear like the sound of a saw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If it hadn&rsquo;t been for the little one,&rsquo; she continued, &lsquo;Monsieur le Curé
+      would have lost all use for his holy water. Old Bambousse had made up his
+      mind to marry Rosalie to young Laurent, of Figuieres.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, the girls&rsquo; merriment and their chatter now came to an end, for
+      they saw La Teuse limping furiously towards them. At this the three big
+      hussies felt alarmed, stepped back, and subsided into sedateness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You worthless things!&rsquo; hissed La Teuse. &lsquo;You come to talk a lot of filth
+      here, do you? Aren&rsquo;t you ashamed of yourself, La Rousse? You ought to be
+      there, on your knees, before the altar, like Rosalie. I will throw you
+      outside if you stir again. Do you hear?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      La Rousse&rsquo;s copper cheeks were tinged with a rising blush, and Babet
+      glanced at her and tittered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And you,&rsquo; continued La Teuse, turning towards Catherine, &lsquo;just you leave
+      that baby alone. You are pinching it on purpose to make it scream. Don&rsquo;t
+      tell me you are not. Give it to me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She took the child, hushed it in her arms for a moment, and then laid it
+      upon a chair, where it went to sleep, peacefully like a cherub. The church
+      then subsided into solemn quietness, disturbed only by the chattering of
+      the sparrows on the rowan tree outside. At the altar, Vincent had carried
+      the missal to the right again, and Abbé Mouret had just folded the
+      corporal and slipped it within the burse. He was now saying the concluding
+      prayers with a solemn earnestness, which neither the screams of the baby
+      nor the giggling of the three girls had been able to disturb. He seemed to
+      hear nothing of them, but to be wholly absorbed in the prayers which he
+      was offering up to Heaven for the happiness of the pair whose union he had
+      just blessed. The sky that morning was grey with a hazy heat, which veiled
+      the sun. Through the broken windows a russet vapour streamed into the
+      church, betokening a stormy day. Along the walls the gaudily coloured
+      pictures of the Stations of the Cross displayed their red, blue, and
+      yellow patches; at the bottom of the nave the dry woodwork of the gallery
+      creaked and strained; and under the doorway the tall grass by the steps
+      thrust ripening straw, all alive with little brown grasshoppers. The
+      clock, in its wooden case, made a whirring noise, as though it were some
+      consumptive trying to clear his throat, and then huskily struck half-past
+      six.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Ite, missa est</i>,&rsquo; said the priest, turning round to the
+      congregation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Deo gratias</i>,&rsquo; responded Vincent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, having kissed the altar, Abbé Mouret once more turned round, and
+      murmured over the bent heads of the newly married pair the final
+      benediction: &lsquo;<i>Deus Abraham, Deus Isaac, et Deus Jacob vobiscum sit</i>&rsquo;&mdash;his
+      voice dying away into a gentle whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now, he&rsquo;s going to address them,&rsquo; said Babet to her friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He is very pale,&rsquo; observed Lisa. &lsquo;He isn&rsquo;t a bit like Monsieur Caffin,
+      whose fat face always seemed to be on the laugh. My little sister Rose
+      says that she daren&rsquo;t tell him anything when she goes to confess.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;All the same,&rsquo; murmured La Rousse, &lsquo;he&rsquo;s not ugly. His illness has aged
+      him a little, but it seems to suit him. He has bigger eyes, and lines at
+      the corners of his mouth which make him look like a man. Before he had the
+      fever, he was too much like a girl.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I believe he&rsquo;s got some great trouble,&rsquo; said Babet. &lsquo;He looks as though
+      he were pining away. His face is deadly pale, but how his eyes glitter!
+      When he drops his eyelids, it is just as though he were doing it to
+      extinguish the fire in his eyes.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      La Teuse again shook her broom at them. &lsquo;Hush!&rsquo; she hissed out, so
+      energetically that it seemed as if a blast of wind had burst into the
+      church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime Abbé Mouret had collected himself, and he began, in a rather low
+      voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;My dear brother, my dear sister, you are joined together in Jesus. The
+      institution of marriage symbolises the sacred union between Jesus and His
+      Church. It is a bond which nothing can break; which God wills shall be
+      eternal, so that man may not sever those whom Heaven has joined. In making
+      you flesh of each other&rsquo;s flesh, and bone of each other&rsquo;s bone, God
+      teaches you that it is your duty to walk side by side through life, a
+      faithful couple, along the paths which He, in His omnipotence, appoints
+      for you. And you must love each other with God-like love. The slightest
+      ill-feeling between you will be disobedience to the Creator, Who has
+      joined you together as a single body. Remain, then, for ever united, after
+      the likeness of the Church, which Jesus has espoused, in giving to us all
+      His body and blood.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Big Fortune and Rosalie sat listening, with their noses peaked up
+      inquisitively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What does he say?&rsquo; asked Lisa, who was a little deaf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! he says what they all say,&rsquo; answered La Rousse. &lsquo;He has a glib
+      tongue, like all the priests have.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret went on with his address, his eyes wandering over the heads of
+      the newly wedded couple towards a shadowy corner of the church. And by
+      degrees his voice became more flexible, and he put emotion into the words
+      he spoke, words which he had formerly learned by heart from a manual
+      intended for the use of young priests. He had turned slightly towards
+      Rosalie, and whenever his memory failed him, he added sentences of his
+      own:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;My dear sister, submit yourself to your husband, as the Church submits
+      itself to Jesus. Remember that you must leave everything to follow him,
+      like a faithful handmaiden. You must give up father and mother, you must
+      cleave only to your husband, and you must obey him that you may obey God
+      also. And your yoke will be a yoke of love and peace. Be his comfort, his
+      happiness, the perfume of his days of strength, the support of his days of
+      weakness. Let him find you, as a grace, ever by his side. Let him have but
+      to reach out his hand to find yours grasping it. It is thus that you will
+      step along together, never losing your way, and that you will meet with
+      happiness in the carrying out of the divine laws. Oh! my dear sister, my
+      dear daughter, your humility will hear sweet fruit; it will give birth to
+      all the domestic virtues, to the joys of the hearth, and the prosperity
+      that attends a God-fearing family. Have for your husband the love of
+      Rachel, the wisdom of Rebecca, the constant fidelity of Sarah. Tell
+      yourself that a pure life is the source of all happiness. Pray to God each
+      morning that He may give you strength to live as a woman who respects her
+      responsibilities and duties; for the punishment you would otherwise incur
+      is terrible: you would lose your love. Oh! to live loveless, to tear flesh
+      from flesh, to belong no more to the one who is half of your very self, to
+      live on in pain and agony, bereft of the one you have loved! In vain would
+      you stretch out your arms to him; he would turn away from you. You would
+      yearn for happiness, but you would find in your heart nothing but shame
+      and bitterness. Hear me, my daughter, it is in your own conduct, in your
+      obedience, in your purity, in your love, that God has established the
+      strength of your union.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Abbé Mouret spoke these words, there was a burst of laughter at the
+      other end of the church. The baby had just woke up on the chair where La
+      Teuse had laid it. But it was no longer in a bad temper. Having kicked
+      itself free of its swaddling clothes, it was laughing merrily, and shaking
+      its rosy little feet in the air. It was the sight of these little feet
+      that made it laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rosalie, who was beginning to find the priest&rsquo;s address rather tedious,
+      turned her head to smile at the child. But, when she saw it kicking about
+      on the chair, she grew alarmed, and cast an angry look at Catherine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! you can look at me as much as you like,&rsquo; said Catherine. &lsquo;I&rsquo;m not
+      going to take it any more. It would only begin to cry again.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she turned aside to ferret in an ant-hole at a corner of one of the
+      stone flags under the gallery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Monsieur Caffin didn&rsquo;t talk so long,&rsquo; now remarked La Rousse. &lsquo;When he
+      married Miette, he just gave her two taps on the cheek and told her to be
+      good.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My dear brother,&rsquo; resumed Abbé Mouret, turning towards big Fortune, &lsquo;it is
+      God who, to-day, gives you a companion, for He does not wish that man
+      should live alone. But, if He ordains that she shall be your servant, He
+      demands from you that you shall be to her a master full of gentleness and
+      love. You will love her, because she is part of your own flesh, of your
+      own blood, and your own bone. You will protect her, because God has given
+      you strong arms only that you may stretch them over her head in the hour
+      of danger. Remember that she is entrusted to you, and that you cannot
+      abuse her submission and weakness without sin. Oh! my dear brother, what
+      proud happiness should be yours! Henceforth, you will no longer live in
+      the selfish egotism of solitude. At all hours you will have a lovable duty
+      before you. There is nothing better than to love, unless it be to protect
+      those whom we love. Your heart will expand; your manly strength will
+      increase a hundredfold. Oh! to be a support and stay, to have a love given
+      into your keeping, to see a being sink her existence in yours and say,
+      &ldquo;Take me and do with me what you will! I trust myself wholly to you!&rdquo; And
+      may you be accursed if you ever abandon her! It would be a cowardly
+      desertion which God would assuredly punish. From the moment she gives
+      herself to you, she becomes yours for ever. Carry her rather in your arms,
+      and set her not upon the ground until it be certain that she will be there
+      in safety. Give up everything, my dear brother&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But here the Abbé&rsquo;s voice faltered, and only an indistinct murmur came
+      from his lips. He had quite closed his eyes, his face was deathly white,
+      and his voice betokened such deep distress that big Fortune himself shed
+      tears without knowing why.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He hasn&rsquo;t recovered yet,&rsquo; said Lisa. &lsquo;It is wrong of him to fatigue
+      himself. See, there&rsquo;s Fortune crying!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Men are softer-hearted than women,&rsquo; murmured Babet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He spoke very well, all the same,&rsquo; remarked La Rousse. &lsquo;Those priests
+      think of a lot of things that wouldn&rsquo;t occur to anybody else.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hush!&rsquo; cried La Teuse, who was already making ready to extinguish the
+      candles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Abbé Mouret still stammered on, trying to utter a few more sentences.
+      &lsquo;It is for this reason, my dear brother, my dear sister, that you must
+      live in the Catholic Faith, which alone can ensure the peace of your
+      hearth. Your families have taught you to love God, to pray to Him every
+      morning and evening, to look only for the gifts of His mercy&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was unable to finish. He turned round, took the chalice off the altar,
+      and retired, with bowed head, into the vestry, preceded by Vincent, who
+      almost let the cruets and napkin fall, in trying to see what Catherine
+      might be doing at the end of the church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! the heartless creature!&rsquo; said Rosalie, who left her husband to go and
+      take her baby in her arms. The child laughed. She kissed it, and
+      rearranged its swaddling clothes, while threatening Catherine with her
+      fist. &lsquo;If it had fallen,&rsquo; she cried out, &lsquo;I would have boxed your ears for
+      you, nicely.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Big Fortune now came slouching along. The three girls stepped towards him,
+      with compressed lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;See how proud he is,&rsquo; murmured Babet to the others. &lsquo;He is sure of
+      inheriting old Bambousse&rsquo;s money now. I used to see him creeping along
+      every night under the little wall with Rosalie.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they giggled, and big Fortune, standing there in front of them,
+      laughed even louder than they did. He pinched La Rousse, and let Lisa jeer
+      at him. He was a sturdy young blood, and cared nothing for anybody. The
+      priest&rsquo;s address had annoyed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hallo! mother, come on!&rsquo; he called in his loud voice. But mother Brichet
+      was begging at the vestry door. She stood there, tearful and wizen, before
+      La Teuse, who was slipping some eggs into the pocket of her apron. Fortune
+      didn&rsquo;t seem to feel the least sense of shame. He just winked and remarked:
+      &lsquo;She is a knowing old card, my mother is. But then the Curé likes to see
+      people at mass.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, Rosalie had grown calm again. Before leaving the church, she
+      asked Fortune if he had begged the priest to come and bless their room,
+      according to the custom of the country. So Fortune ran off to the vestry,
+      striding heavily through the church, as if it were a field. He soon
+      reappeared, shouting that his reverence would come. La Teuse, who was
+      scandalised at the noise made by all these people, who seemed to think
+      themselves in a public street, gently clapped her hands, and pushed them
+      towards the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is all over,&rsquo; said she; &lsquo;go away and get to your work.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She thought they had all gone, when her eye caught sight of Catherine,
+      whom Vincent had joined. They were bending anxiously over the ants&rsquo; nest.
+      Catherine was poking a long straw into the hole so roughly, that a swarm
+      of frightened ants had rushed out upon the floor. Vincent declared,
+      however, that she must get her straw right to the bottom if she wished to
+      find the queen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! you young imps!&rsquo; cried La Teuse, &lsquo;what are you after there? Can&rsquo;t you
+      leave the poor little things alone? That is Mademoiselle Desirée&rsquo;s ants&rsquo; 
+      nest. She would be nicely pleased if she saw you!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this the children promptly took to their heels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0041" id="link2H_4_0041">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret, now wearing his cassock but still bareheaded, had come back
+      to kneel at the foot of the altar. In the grey light that streamed through
+      the window, his tonsure showed like a large livid spot amidst his hair;
+      and a slight quiver, as if from cold, sped down his neck. With his hands
+      tightly clasped he was praying earnestly, so absorbed in his devotions
+      that he did not hear the heavy footsteps of La Teuse, who hovered around
+      without daring to disturb him. She seemed to be grieved at seeing him
+      bowed down there on his knees. For a moment, she thought that he was in
+      tears, and thereupon she went behind the altar to watch him. Since his
+      return, she had never liked to leave him in the church alone, for one
+      evening she had found him lying in a dead faint upon the flagstones, with
+      icy lips and clenched teeth, like a corpse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come in, mademoiselle!&rsquo; she said to Desirée, who was peeping through the
+      vestry-doorway. &lsquo;He is still here, and he will lay himself up. You know
+      you are the only person that he will listen to.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is breakfast-time,&rsquo; she replied softly, &lsquo;and I am very hungry.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she gently sidled up to the priest, passed an arm round his neck, and
+      kissed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good morning, brother,&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;Do you want to make me die of hunger
+      this morning?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The face he turned upon her was so intensely sad, that she kissed him
+      again on both his cheeks. He was emerging from agony. Then, on recognising
+      her, he tried to put her from him, but she kept hold of one of his hands
+      and would not release it. She would scarcely allow him to cross himself,
+      but insisted upon leading him away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come! Come! for I am very hungry. You must be hungry too.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      La Teuse had laid out the breakfast beneath two big mulberry trees, whose
+      spreading branches formed a sheltering roof at the bottom of the little
+      garden. The sun, which had at last succeeded in dissipating the
+      stormy-looking vapours of early morning, was warming the beds of
+      vegetables, while the mulberry-trees cast a broad shadow over the rickety
+      table, on which were laid two cups of milk and some thick slices of bread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You see how nice it looks,&rsquo; said Desirée, delighted at breakfasting in
+      the fresh air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was already cutting some of the bread into strips, which she ate with
+      eager appetite. And as she saw La Teuse still standing in front of them,
+      she said, &lsquo;Why don&rsquo;t you eat something?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I shall, presently,&rsquo; the old servant answered. &lsquo;My soup is warming.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, after a moment&rsquo;s silence, looking with admiration at the girl&rsquo;s big
+      bites, she said to the priest: &lsquo;It is quite a pleasure to see her. Doesn&rsquo;t
+      she make you feel hungry, Monsieur le Curé? You should force yourself.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret smiled as he glanced at his sister. &lsquo;Yes, yes,&rsquo; he murmured;
+      &lsquo;she gets on famously, she grows fatter every day.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s because I eat,&rsquo; said Desirée. &lsquo;If you would eat you would get fat,
+      too. Are you ill again? You look very melancholy. I don&rsquo;t want to have it
+      all over again, you know. I was so very lonely when they took you away to
+      cure you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She is right,&rsquo; said La Teuse. &lsquo;You don&rsquo;t behave reasonably, Monsieur le
+      Curé. You can&rsquo;t expect to be strong, living, as you do, on two or three
+      crumbs a day, as though you were a bird. You don&rsquo;t make blood; and that&rsquo;s
+      why you are so pale. Don&rsquo;t you feel ashamed of keeping as thin as a lath
+      when we are so fat; we who are only women? People will begin to think that
+      we gobble up everything and leave you nothing but the empty plates.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then both La Teuse and Desirée, brimful of health and strength, scolded
+      him affectionately. His eyes seemed very large and bright, but empty,
+      expressionless. He was still gently smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I am not ill,&rsquo; he said; &lsquo;I have nearly finished my milk.&rsquo; He had
+      swallowed two mouthfuls of it, but had not touched the bread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The animals, now,&rsquo; said Desirée, thoughtfully, &lsquo;seem to get on much more
+      comfortably than we do. The fowls never have headaches, have they? The
+      rabbits grow as fat as ever one wants them to be. And you never saw my pig
+      looking sad.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, turning towards her brother, she went on with an air of rapture:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have named it Matthew, because it is so like that fat man who brings
+      the letters. It is growing so big and strong. It is very unkind of you to
+      refuse to come and look at it as you always do. You will come to see it
+      some day, won&rsquo;t you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While she was thus talking she had laid hold of her brother&rsquo;s share of
+      bread, and was eating away at it. She had already finished one piece, and
+      was beginning the second, when La Teuse became aware of what she was
+      doing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That doesn&rsquo;t belong to you, that bread! You are actually stealing his
+      food from him now!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Let her have it,&rsquo; said Abbé Mouret, gently. &lsquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t have touched it
+      myself. Eat it all, my dear, eat it all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment Desirée fell into confusion, with her eyes fixed upon the
+      bread, whilst she struggled to check her rising tears. Then she began to
+      laugh, and finished the slice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;My cow,&rsquo; said she, continuing her remarks, &lsquo;is never as sad as you are.
+      You were not here when uncle Pascal gave her to me, on the promise that I
+      would be a good girl, or you would have seen how pleased she was when I
+      kissed her for the first time.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She paused to listen. A cock crowed in the yard, and a great uproar
+      followed, with flapping of wings and cackling, grunting, and hoarse cries
+      as if the whole yard were in a state of commotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! you know,&rsquo; resumed Desirée, clapping her hands, &lsquo;she must be in calf
+      now. I took her to the bull at Beage, three leagues from here. There are
+      very few bulls hereabouts, you know.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      La Teuse shrugged her shoulders, and glanced at the priest with an
+      expression of annoyance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It would be much better, mademoiselle,&rsquo; said she, &lsquo;if you were to go and
+      quiet your fowls. They all seem to be murdering one another.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, the uproar in the yard had now become so great that the girl was
+      already hurrying off with a great rustling of her petticoats, when the
+      priest called her back. &lsquo;The milk, my dear; you have not finished the
+      milk.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He held out his cup to her, which he had scarcely touched. And she came
+      back and drank the milk without the slightest scruple, in spite of La
+      Teuse&rsquo;s angry look. Then she again set off for the poultry-yard, where
+      they soon heard her reducing the fowls to peace and order. She had,
+      perhaps, sat down in the midst of them, for she could be heard gently
+      humming as though she were trying to lull them to sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0042" id="link2H_4_0042">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now my soup is too hot!&rsquo; grumbled La Teuse, as she returned from the
+      kitchen with a basin, from which a wooden spoon was projecting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She placed herself just in front of Abbé Mouret, and began to eat very
+      cautiously from the edge of the spoon. She wanted to enliven the Abbé and
+      to draw him out of his melancholy moodiness. Ever since he had returned
+      from the Paradou, he had declared himself well again, and had never
+      complained. Often, indeed, he smiled in so soft and sweet a fashion, that
+      his fever seemed to have increased his saintliness, at least so thought
+      the villagers. But, at intervals, he had fits of gloomy silence, and
+      appeared to be suffering torture which he strove to bear uncomplainingly.
+      It was a mute agony which bore down upon him, and, for hours at a time,
+      left him stupefied, a prey to a frightful inward struggle, the violence of
+      which could only be guessed by the sweat of anguish that streamed down his
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At such times La Teuse refused to leave him, and overwhelmed him with a
+      torrent of gossip, until he had gradually recovered tranquillity by
+      crushing the rebellion of his blood. On that particular morning, the old
+      servant foresaw a more grievous attack than usual, and poured forth an
+      amazing flood of talk, while continuing her wary manoeuvres with the
+      spoon, which threatened to burn her tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, well,&rsquo; said she, &lsquo;one has to live among a lot of wild beasts to see
+      such goings-on. Would any one ever think in a decent village of being
+      married by candlelight? It shows what a poor sort these Artauds are. When
+      I was in Normandy, I used to see weddings that threw every one into
+      commotion for a couple of leagues round. They would feast for three whole
+      days. The priest would be there, and the mayor, too; and at the marriage
+      of one of my cousins, all the firemen came as well. And didn&rsquo;t they have a
+      fine time of it! But to make a priest get up before sunrise and marry
+      people before even the chickens have left their roost, why, there&rsquo;s no
+      sense in it! If I had been your reverence, I should have refused to do it.
+      You haven&rsquo;t had your proper sleep, and you may have caught cold in the
+      church. It is that which has upset you. Besides which it would be better
+      to marry brute beasts than that Rosalie and her ugly lout. That brat of
+      theirs dirtied one of the chairs.&mdash;But you ought to tell me when you
+      feel poorly, and I could make you something warm.&mdash;Eh! Monsieur le
+      Curé, speak to me!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He answered, in a feeble voice, that he was quite well, and only needed a
+      little fresh air. He had just leant against one of the mulberry-trees, and
+      was breathing rather quickly, as if faint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! all right,&rsquo; went on La Teuse, &lsquo;do just as you like. Go on marrying
+      people when you haven&rsquo;t the strength for it, and when you know very well
+      that it&rsquo;s bound to upset you. I knew how it would be; I told you so
+      yesterday. And if you took my advice, you wouldn&rsquo;t stay where you are. The
+      smell of the yard is bad for you. It is frightful just now. I can&rsquo;t
+      imagine what Mademoiselle Desirée can be stirring about there. She&rsquo;s
+      singing away, and doesn&rsquo;t seem to mind it at all. Ah! that reminds me of
+      something I want to tell you. You know that I did all I could to keep her
+      from taking the cow to Beage; but she&rsquo;s like you, obstinate, and will go
+      her own way. Fortunately, however, for her, she&rsquo;s none the worse for it.
+      She delights to be amongst the animals and their young ones. But come now,
+      your reverence, do be reasonable. Let me take you to your room. You must
+      lie down and rest a little. What, you don&rsquo;t want to! Well, then, so much
+      the worse for you, if you suffer! Besides, it&rsquo;s absurd to keep one&rsquo;s
+      worries locked up in one&rsquo;s heart till they stifle one.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, in her indignation, she hastily swallowed a big spoonful of soup at
+      the risk of burning her throat. She rattled the handle of the spoon
+      against the bowl, muttering and grumbling to herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There never was such a man,&rsquo; said she. &lsquo;He would die rather than say a
+      word. But it&rsquo;s all very well for him to keep silent. I know quite enough,
+      and it doesn&rsquo;t require much cleverness to guess the rest. Well! well! let
+      him keep it to himself. I dare say it is better.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      La Teuse was jealous. Dr. Pascal had had a tremendous fight with her in
+      order to get her patient away at the time when he had come to the
+      conclusion that the young priest&rsquo;s case would be quite hopeless if he
+      should remain at the parsonage. He had then explained to her that the
+      sound of the bell would aggravate and intensify Serge&rsquo;s fever, that the
+      religious pictures and statuettes scattered about his room would fill his
+      brain with hallucinations, and that entirely new surroundings were
+      necessary if he was to be restored to health and strength and peacefulness
+      of mind. She, however, had vigorously shaken her head, and declared that
+      her &lsquo;dear child&rsquo; would nowhere find a better nurse than herself. Still,
+      she had ended by yielding. She had even resigned herself to seeing him go
+      to the Paradou, though protesting against this selection of the doctor&rsquo;s,
+      which astonished her. But she retained a strong feeling of hatred for the
+      Paradou; and she was hurt by the silence which Abbé Mouret maintained as
+      to the time he had spent there. She had frequently laid all sorts of
+      unsuccessful traps to induce him to talk of it. That morning, exasperated
+      by his ghastly pallor, and his obstinacy in suffering in silence, she
+      ended by waving her spoon about and crying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You should go back yonder again, Monsieur le Curé, if you were so happy
+      there&mdash;I dare say there is some one there who would nurse you better
+      than I do.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the first time she had ventured upon a direct allusion to her
+      suspicions. The blow was so painful to the priest that he could not check
+      a slight cry, as he raised his grief-racked countenance. At this La
+      Teuse&rsquo;s kindly heart was filled with regret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; she murmured, &lsquo;it is all the fault of your uncle Pascal. I told him
+      what it would be. But those clever men cling so obstinately to their own
+      ideas. Some of them would kill you, just for the sake of rummaging in your
+      body afterwards&mdash;It made me so angry that I would never speak of it
+      to any one. Yes, Monsieur le Curé, you have me to thank that nobody knew
+      where you were; I was so angry about it. I thought it abominable! When
+      Abbé Guyot, from Saint-Eutrope, who took your place during your absence,
+      came to say mass here on Sundays, I told him all sorts of stories. I said
+      you had gone to Switzerland. I don&rsquo;t even know where Switzerland is.&mdash;Well!
+      well! I surely don&rsquo;t want to say anything to pain you, but it was
+      certainly over yonder that you got your trouble. Very finely they&rsquo;ve cured
+      you indeed! It would have been very much better if they had left you with
+      me. I shouldn&rsquo;t have thought of trying to turn your head.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret, whose brow was again lowered, made no attempt to interrupt
+      her. La Teuse had seated herself upon the ground a few yards away from
+      him, in order if possible to catch his eye. And she went on again in her
+      motherly way, delighted at his seeming complacency in listening to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You would never let me tell you about Abbé Caffin. As soon as I began to
+      speak of him, you always made me stop. Well, well; Abbé Caffin had had his
+      troubles in my part of the world, at Canteleu. And yet he was a very holy
+      man, with an irreproachable character. But, you see, he was a man of very
+      delicate taste, and liked soft pretty things. Well, there was a young
+      party who was always prowling round him, the daughter of a miller, whom
+      her parents had sent to a boarding-school. Well, to put it shortly, what
+      was likely to happen did happen. When the story got about, all the
+      neighbourhood was very indignant with the Abbé. But he managed to escape
+      to Rouen, and poured out his grief to the Archbishop there. Then he was
+      sent here. The poor man was punished quite enough by being made to live in
+      this hole of a place. I heard of the girl afterwards. She had married a
+      cattle-dealer, and was very happy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      La Teuse, delighted at having been allowed to tell her story, interpreted
+      the priest&rsquo;s silence as an encouragement to continue her gossiping. So she
+      drew a little nearer to him and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He was very friendly with me, was good Monsieur Caffin, and often spoke
+      to me of his sin. It won&rsquo;t keep him out of heaven, I&rsquo;m sure. He can rest
+      quite peacefully out there under the turf, for he never harmed any one.
+      For my part, I can&rsquo;t understand why people should get so angry with a
+      priest when such a thing unhappily befalls him. Of course it&rsquo;s wrong, and
+      likely to anger God; but then one can confess and repent, and get
+      absolution. Isn&rsquo;t it so, your reverence, that when one truly repents, one
+      is saved in spite of one&rsquo;s sins?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret slowly raised his head. By a supreme effort he had overcome
+      his agony, and though his face was still very pale, he exclaimed in a firm
+      voice, &lsquo;One should never sin; never! never!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! sir,&rsquo; cried the old servant, &lsquo;you are too proud and reserved. It is
+      not a nice thing, that pride of yours.&mdash;If I were in your place, I
+      would not harden myself like that. I would talk of what was troubling me,
+      and not try to rend my heart in pieces. You should reconcile yourself to
+      the separation gradually. The worry wears off little by little. But,
+      instead of that, you won&rsquo;t even allow people&rsquo;s names to be uttered. You
+      forbid them to be mentioned. It is as though they were dead. Since you
+      came back, I have not dared to tell you the least bit of news. Well, well,
+      I am going to speak now, and I shall tell you all I know; because I see
+      quite well that it is all this silence that is preying upon your heart.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her sternly, and lifted his finger to silence her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, yes,&rsquo; she went on, &lsquo;I get news from over yonder, very often indeed,
+      and I am going to tell it to you. To begin with, there is some one there
+      who is no happier than you are.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Silence! Silence!&rsquo; said Abbé Mouret, summoning all his strength to rise
+      and move away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But La Teuse also rose and barred his way with her bulky figure. She was
+      angry, and cried out:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There, you see, you want to be off already! But you are going to listen
+      to me. You know quite well that I am not over fond of the people yonder,
+      don&rsquo;t you? If I talk to you about them, it is for your own good. Some
+      people say that I am jealous. Well, one day I mean to take you over there.
+      You would be with me, and you wouldn&rsquo;t be afraid of any harm happening.
+      Will you go?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He motioned her away from him with his hands, and his face was calm again
+      as he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I desire nothing. I wish to know nothing. There is high mass to-morrow.
+      You must see that the altar is made ready.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, as he walked away, he added, smiling:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t be uneasy, my good Teuse. I am stronger than you imagine. I shall
+      be able to cure myself without any one&rsquo;s assistance.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With these words he went off, bearing himself sturdily, with his head
+      erect, for he had vanquished his feelings. His cassock rustled very gently
+      against the borders of thyme. La Teuse, who for a moment had remained
+      rooted to the spot where she was standing, sulkily picked up her basin and
+      wooden spoon. Then, shrugging her big shoulders again and again, she
+      mumbled between her teeth:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s all bravado of his. He imagines that he is differently made from
+      other men, just because he is a priest. Well, as a matter of fact, he is
+      very firm and determined. I have known some who wouldn&rsquo;t have had to be
+      wheedled so long. And he is quite capable of crushing his heart, just as
+      one might crush a flea. It must be the Almighty who gives him his
+      strength.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she returned to the kitchen she saw Abbé Mouret standing by the gate of
+      the farmyard. Desirée had stopped him there to make him feel a capon which
+      she had been fattening for some weeks past. He told her pleasantly that it
+      was very heavy, and the big child chuckled with glee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! well,&rsquo; said La Teuse in a fury, &lsquo;that bird has got to crush its heart
+      too. But then it can&rsquo;t help itself.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0043" id="link2H_4_0043">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret spent his days at the parsonage. He shunned the long walks
+      which he had been wont to take before his illness. The scorched soil of
+      Les Artaud, the ardent heat of that valley where the vines could never
+      even grow straight, distressed him. On two occasions, in the morning, he
+      had attempted to go out and read his breviary as he strolled along the
+      road; but he had not gone beyond the village. He had returned home,
+      overcome by the perfumes, the heat, the breadth of the landscape. It was
+      only in the evening, in the cool twilight air, that he ventured to saunter
+      a little in front of the church, on the terrace which led to the
+      graveyard. In the afternoons, to fill up his time, and satisfy his craving
+      for some kind of occupation, he had imposed upon himself the task of
+      pasting paper over the broken panes of the church windows, This had kept
+      him for a week mounted on a ladder, arranging his paper panes with great
+      exactness, and laying on the paste with the most scrupulous care in order
+      to avoid any mess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      La Teuse stood at the foot of the ladder and watched him. And Desirée
+      urged that he must not fill up all the windows, or else the sparrows would
+      no longer be able to get through. To please her, the priest left a pane or
+      two in each window unfilled. Then, having completed these repairs, he was
+      seized with the ambition of decorating the church, without summoning to
+      his aid either mason or carpenter or painter. He would do it all himself.
+      This sort of handiwork would amuse him, he said, and help to bring back
+      his strength. Uncle Pascal encouraged him every time he called at the
+      parsonage, assuring him that such exercise and fatigue were better than
+      all the drugs in the world. And so Abbé Mouret began to stop up the holes
+      in the walls with plaster, to drive fresh nails into the disjoined altars,
+      and to crush and mix paints, in order that he might put a new coating on
+      the pulpit and confessional-box. It was quite an event in the district,
+      and folks talked of it for a couple of leagues round. Peasants would come
+      and stand gazing, with their hands behind their backs, at his reverence&rsquo;s
+      work. The Abbé himself, with a blue apron tied round his waist, and his
+      hands all soiled with his labour, became absorbed in it, and used it as an
+      excuse for no longer going out. He spent his days in the midst of his
+      repairs, and was more tranquil than he had been before; almost cheerful,
+      indeed, as he forgot the outer world, the trees and the sunshine and the
+      warm breezes, which had formerly disturbed him so much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Monsieur le Curé is free to do as he pleases, since the parish hasn&rsquo;t got
+      to find the money,&rsquo; said old Bambousse, who came round every evening to
+      see how the work was progressing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret spent all his savings on it. Some of his decorations, indeed,
+      were so awkward that they would have excited many people&rsquo;s smiles. The
+      replastering of the stonework soon tired him: so he contented himself with
+      patching up the church walls all round to a height of some six feet from
+      the ground. La Teuse mixed the plaster. When she talked of repairing the
+      parsonage as well, for she was continually fearing that it would topple
+      down on their heads, he told her that he did not think he could manage it,
+      that a regular workman would be necessary; a reply which led to a terrible
+      quarrel between them. La Teuse said it was quite ridiculous to go on
+      ornamenting the church, where nobody slept, while their bedrooms were in
+      such a crazy condition, for she was quite sure they would all be found,
+      one morning, crushed to death by the fallen ceilings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I shall end by bringing my bed here, and placing it behind the altar,&rsquo; 
+      she grumbled. &lsquo;I feel quite terrified sometimes at night.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, when the plaster was all used up, she said no more about
+      repairing the parsonage. The painting which the priest executed quite
+      delighted her. It was the chief charm of the improvements. The Abbé, who
+      had repaired the woodwork everywhere with bits of boards, took particular
+      pleasure in spreading his big brush, dipped in bright yellow paint, over
+      all this woodwork. The gentle, up-and-down motion of the brush lulled him,
+      left him thoughtless for hours whilst he gazed on the oily streaks of
+      paint. When everything was quite yellow, the pulpit, the confessional-box,
+      the altar rails, even the clock-case itself, he ventured to try his hand
+      at imitation marble work by way of touching up the high altar. Then,
+      growing bolder, he painted it all over. Glistening with white and yellow
+      and blue, it was pronounced superb. People who had not been to mass for
+      fifty years streamed into the church to see it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now the paint was dry. All that remained for Abbé Mouret to do was to
+      edge the panels with brown beading. So, that afternoon, he set to work at
+      it, wishing to get it done by evening; for on the following day, as he had
+      reminded La Teuse, there would be high mass. She was there ready to
+      arrange the altar. She had already placed on the credence the candlesticks
+      and the silver cross, the porcelain vases filled with artificial roses,
+      and the laced cloth which was only used on great festivals. The beading,
+      however, proved so difficult of execution, that it was not completed till
+      late in the evening. It was growing quite dark as the Abbé finished his
+      last panel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It will be really too beautiful,&rsquo; said a rough voice from amidst the
+      greyish gloom of twilight which was filling the church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      La Teuse, who had knelt down to get a better view of the Abbé&rsquo;s brush as
+      it glided along his rule, started with alarm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! it&rsquo;s Brother Archangias,&rsquo; she said, turning round. &lsquo;You came in by
+      the sacristy then? You gave me quite a turn. Your voice seemed to sound
+      from under the floor.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret had resumed his work, after greeting the Brother with a slight
+      nod. The Brother remained standing there in silence, with his fat hands
+      clasped in front of his cassock. Then, shrugging his shoulders, as he
+      observed with what scrupulous care the priest sought to make his beading
+      perfectly straight, he repeated:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It will be really too beautiful.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      La Teuse, who knelt near by in ecstasy, started again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Dear me!&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;I had quite forgotten you were there. You really
+      ought to cough before you speak. You have a voice that comes on one so
+      suddenly that one might think it was a voice from the grave.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She rose up and drew back a little the better to admire the Abbé&rsquo;s work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why too beautiful?&rsquo; she asked. &lsquo;Nothing can be too beautiful when it is
+      done for the Almighty. If his reverence had only had some gold, he would
+      have done it with gold, I&rsquo;m sure.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the priest had finished, she hastened to change the altar-cloth,
+      taking the greatest care not to smudge the beading. Then she arranged the
+      cross, the candlesticks, and the vases symmetrically. Abbé Mouret had gone
+      to lean against the wooden screen which separated the choir from the nave,
+      by the side of Brother Archangias. Not a word passed between them. Their
+      eyes were fixed upon the silver crucifix, which, in the increasing gloom,
+      still cast some glimmer of light on the feet and the left side and the
+      right temple of the big Christ. When La Teuse had finished, she came down
+      towards them, triumphantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Doesn&rsquo;t it look lovely?&rsquo; she asked. &lsquo;Just you see what a crowd there will
+      be at mass to-morrow! Those heathens will only come to God&rsquo;s house when
+      they think He is well-to-do. Now, Monsieur le Curé, we must do as much for
+      the Blessed Virgin&rsquo;s altar.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Waste of money!&rsquo; growled Brother Archangias.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But La Teuse flew into a tantrum; and, as Abbé Mouret remained silent, she
+      led them both before the altar of the Virgin, pushing them and dragging
+      them by their cassocks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Just look at it,&rsquo; said she; &lsquo;it is too shabby for anything, now that the
+      high altar is so smart. It looks as though it had never been painted at
+      all. However much I may rub it of a morning, the dust sticks to it. It is
+      quite black; it is filthy. Do you know what people will say about you,
+      your reverence? They will say that you care nothing for the Blessed
+      Virgin; that&rsquo;s what they&rsquo;ll say.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, what of it?&rsquo; queried Brother Archangias.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      La Teuse looked at him, half suffocated by indignation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What of it? It would be sinful, of course,&rsquo; she muttered. &lsquo;This altar is
+      like a neglected tomb in a graveyard. If it were not for me, the spiders
+      would spin their webs across it, and moss would soon grow over it. From
+      time to time, when I can spare a bunch of flowers, I give it to the
+      Virgin. All the flowers in our garden used to be for her once.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had mounted the altar steps, and she took up two withered bunches of
+      flowers, which had been left there, forgotten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;See! it is just as it is in the graveyards,&rsquo; she said, throwing the
+      flowers at Abbé Mouret&rsquo;s feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He picked them up, without replying. It was quite dark now, and Brother
+      Archangias stumbled about amongst the chairs and nearly fell. He growled
+      and muttered some angry words, in which the names of Jesus and Mary
+      recurred. When La Teuse, who had gone for a lamp, returned into the
+      church, she asked the priest:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So I can put the brushes and pots away in the attic, then?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; he answered. &lsquo;I have finished. We will see about the rest later
+      on.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She walked away in front of them, carrying all the things with her, and
+      keeping silence, lest she should say too much. And as Abbé Mouret had kept
+      the withered bunches of flowers in his hand, Brother Archangias said to
+      him, as they passed the farmyard: &lsquo;Throw those things away.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Abbé took a few steps more, with downcast head; and then over the
+      palings he flung the flowers upon a manure-heap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0044" id="link2H_4_0044">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The Brother, who had already had his own meal, seated himself astride a
+      chair, while the priest dined. Since Serge&rsquo;s return to Les Artaud, the
+      Brother had thus spent most of his evenings at the parsonage; but never
+      before had he imposed his presence upon the other in so rough a fashion.
+      He stamped on the tiled floor with his heavy boots, his voice thundered
+      and he smote the furniture, whilst he related how he had whipped some of
+      his pupils that morning, or expounded his moral principles in terms as
+      stern, as uncompromising as bludgeon-blows. Then feeling bored, he
+      suggested that he and La Teuse should have a game at cards. They had
+      endless bouts of &lsquo;Beggar-my-neighbour&rsquo; together, that being the only game
+      which La Teuse had ever been able to learn. Abbé Mouret would smilingly
+      glance at the first few cards flung on the table and would then gradually
+      sink into reverie, remaining for hours forgetful of his self-restraint,
+      oblivious of his surroundings, beneath the suspicious glances of Brother
+      Archangias.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That evening La Teuse felt so cross that she had talked of going to bed as
+      soon as the cloth was removed. The Brother, however, wanted his game of
+      cards. So he caught hold of her shoulders and sat her down, so roughly
+      that the chair creaked beneath her. And forthwith he began to shuffle the
+      cards. Desirée, who hated him, had gone off carrying her dessert, which
+      she generally took upstairs with her every evening to eat in bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I want the red cards,&rsquo; said La Teuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the struggle began. The old woman at first won some of the Brother&rsquo;s
+      best cards. But before long two aces fell together on the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Here&rsquo;s a battle!&rsquo; she cried, wild with excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She threw down a nine, which rather alarmed her, but as the Brother, in
+      his turn, only put down a seven, she picked up the cards with a triumphant
+      air. At the end of half an hour, however, she had only gained two aces, so
+      that the chances remained fairly equal. And a quarter of an hour later she
+      lost an ace. The knaves and kings and queens were perpetually coming and
+      going as the battle furiously progressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s a splendid game, eh?&rsquo; said Brother Archangias, turning towards Abbé
+      Mouret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when he saw him sitting there, so absorbed in his reverie, with such a
+      gentle smile playing unconsciously round his lips, he roughly raised his
+      voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why, Monsieur le Curé, you are not paying any attention to us! It isn&rsquo;t
+      polite of you. We are only playing on your account. We were trying to
+      amuse you. Come and watch the game. It would do you more good than dozing
+      and dreaming away there. Where were you just now?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest started. He said nothing, but with quivering eyelids tried to
+      force himself to look at the game. The play went on vigorously. La Teuse
+      won her ace back, and then lost it again. On some evenings they would
+      fight in this way over the aces for quite four hours, and often they would
+      go off to bed, angry at having failed to bring the contest to a decisive
+      issue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But, dear me! I&rsquo;ve only just remembered it!&rsquo; suddenly cried La Teuse, who
+      greatly feared that she was going to be beaten. &lsquo;His reverence has to go
+      out to-night. He promised Fortune and Rosalie that he would go to bless
+      their room, according to the custom. Make haste, Monsieur le Curé! The
+      Brother will go with you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret had already risen from his chair, and was looking for his hat.
+      But Brother Archangias, still holding his cards, flew into a tantrum: &lsquo;Oh!
+      don&rsquo;t bother about it,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;What does it want to be blessed for that
+      pigsty of theirs? It is a custom that you should do away with. I can&rsquo;t see
+      any sense in it. Stay here and let us finish the game. That is much the
+      best thing to do.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No,&rsquo; said the priest, &lsquo;I promised to go. Those good people might feel
+      hurt if I didn&rsquo;t. You stay here and play your game out while you are
+      waiting for me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      La Teuse glanced uneasily at Brother Archangias.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, yes, I will stay here,&rsquo; cried the Brother. &lsquo;It is really too
+      absurd.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But before Abbé Mouret could open the door, he flung his cards on the
+      table and rose to follow him. Then half turning back he called to La
+      Teuse:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I should have won. Leave the cards as they are, and we will play the game
+      out to-morrow.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! they are all mixed now,&rsquo; answered the old servant, who had lost no
+      time in shuffling them together. &lsquo;Did you suppose that I was going to put
+      your hand away under a glass case? And, besides, I might very well have
+      won, for I still had an ace left.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few strides brought Brother Archangias up with Abbé Mouret, who was
+      walking down the narrow path that led to the village. The Brother had
+      undertaken the task of keeping watch over the Abbé&rsquo;s movements. He
+      incessantly played the spy upon him, accompanying him everywhere, or, if
+      he could not go in person, sending some school urchin to follow him. With
+      that terrible laugh of his, he was wont to remark that he was &lsquo;God&rsquo;s
+      gendarme.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, in truth, the Abbé seemed like a culprit ever guarded by the black
+      shadow of the Brother&rsquo;s cassock; a culprit to be treated distrustfully,
+      since in his weakness he might well lapse into fresh crime were he left
+      free from surveillance for a single moment. Thus he was watched and
+      guarded with all the spiteful eagerness that some jealous old maid might
+      have displayed, the overreaching zeal of a gaoler who might carry
+      precautions so far as to exclude even such rays of light as might creep
+      through the chinks of the prison-house. Brother Archangias was always on
+      the watch to keep out the sunlight, to prevent even a whiff of air from
+      entering, to shut up his prison so completely that nothing from outside
+      could gain access to it. He noted the Abbé&rsquo;s slightest fits of weakness,
+      and by his glance divined his tender thoughts, which with a word he
+      pitilessly crushed, as though they were poisonous vermin. The priest&rsquo;s
+      intervals of silence, his smiles, the paling of his brow, the faint
+      quivering of his limbs, were all noted by the Brother. But he never spoke
+      openly of the transgression. His presence alone was a sufficient reproach.
+      The manner in which he uttered certain words imparted to them all the
+      sting of a whip stroke. With a mere gesture he expressed his utter disgust
+      for the priest&rsquo;s sin. Like one of those betrayed husbands who enjoy
+      torturing their wives with cruel allusions, he contented himself with
+      recalling the scene at the Paradou, in an indirect fashion, by some word
+      or phrase which sufficed to annihilate the Abbé, whenever the latter&rsquo;s
+      flesh rebelled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was nearly ten o&rsquo;clock and most of the villagers of Les Artaud had
+      retired to rest. But from a brightly lighted house at the far end, near
+      the mill, there still came sounds of merriment. While keeping the best
+      rooms for his own use, old Bambousse had given a corner of his house to
+      his daughter and son-in-law. They were all assembled there, drinking a
+      last glass, while waiting for the priest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They are drunk,&rsquo; growled Brother Archangias. &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t you hear the row they
+      are making?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret made no reply. It was a lovely night and all looked bluish in
+      the moonlight, which lent to the distant part of the valley the aspect of
+      a sleeping lake. The priest slackened his pace that he might the more
+      fully enjoy the charm of that soft radiance, and now and then he even
+      stopped as he came upon some expanse of light, experiencing the delightful
+      quiver which the proximity of fresh water brings one on a hot day. But the
+      Brother continued striding along, grumbling and calling him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come along; come along! It isn&rsquo;t good to loiter out of doors at this time
+      of night. You would be much better in bed.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All at once, however, just as they were entering the village, Archangias
+      himself stopped short in the middle of the road. He was looking towards
+      the heights, where the white lines of the roads vanished amidst black
+      patches of pine-woods, and he growled to himself, like a dog that scents
+      danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Who can be coming down so late?&rsquo; he muttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the priest, who neither saw nor heard anything, was now, in his turn,
+      anxious to press on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Stay! stay! there he is,&rsquo; eagerly added Brother Archangias. &lsquo;He has just
+      turned the corner. See! he is in the moonlight now. One can see him
+      plainly. It is a tall man, with a stick.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, after a moment&rsquo;s silence, he resumed, in a voice husky with fury:
+      &lsquo;It is he, that beggar! I felt sure it was!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereupon, the new-comer having now reached the bottom of the hill, Abbé
+      Mouret saw that it was Jeanbernat. In spite of his eighty years, the old
+      man set his feet down with such force, that his heavy, nailed boots sent
+      sparks flying from the flints on the road. And he walked along as upright
+      as an oak, without the aid of his stick, which he carried across his
+      shoulder like a musket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! the villain!&rsquo; stammered the Brother, still standing motionless. &lsquo;May
+      the fiend light all the blazes of hell under his feet!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest, who felt greatly disturbed, and despaired of inducing his
+      companion to come on, turned round to continue his journey, hoping that,
+      by a quick walk to the Bambousses&rsquo; house, he might yet manage to avoid
+      Jeanbernat. But he had not taken five strides before he heard the
+      bantering voice of the old man close behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hie! Curé! wait for me. Are you afraid of me?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as Abbé Mouret stopped, he came up and continued: &lsquo;Ah! those cassocks
+      of yours are tiresome things, aren&rsquo;t they? They prevent your getting along
+      too quickly. It&rsquo;s such a fine clear night, too, that one can recognise you
+      by your gown a long way off. When I was right at the top of the hill, I
+      said to myself, &ldquo;Surely that is the little priest down yonder.&rdquo; Oh! yes, I
+      still have very good eyes.... Well, so you never come to see us now?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have had so much to do,&rsquo; murmured the priest, who had turned very pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, well, every one&rsquo;s free to please himself. If I&rsquo;ve mentioned the
+      matter, it&rsquo;s only because I want you to know that I don&rsquo;t bear you any
+      grudge for being a priest. We wouldn&rsquo;t even talk about your religion, it&rsquo;s
+      all one and the same to me. But the little one thinks that it&rsquo;s I who
+      prevents your coming. I said to her, &ldquo;The priest is an idiot,&rdquo; and I think
+      so, indeed. Did I try to eat you during your illness? Why, I didn&rsquo;t even
+      go upstairs to see you. Every one&rsquo;s free, you know.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke on in the most unconcerned manner, pretending that he did not
+      notice the presence of Brother Archangias; but as the latter suddenly
+      broke into an angry grunt, he added, &lsquo;Why, Curé, so you bring your pig out
+      with you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Take care, you bandit!&rsquo; hissed the Brother, clenching his fists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jeanbernat, whose stick was still raised, then pretended to recognise him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hands off!&rsquo; he cried. &lsquo;Ah! it&rsquo;s you, you soul-saver! I ought to have
+      known you by your smell. We have a little account to settle together,
+      remember. I have sworn to cut off your ears in the middle of your school.
+      It will amuse the children you are poisoning.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Brother fell back before the raised staff, a flood of abuse rising to
+      his lips; but he began to stammer and went on disjointedly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I will set the gendarmes after you, scoundrel! You spat on the church; I
+      saw you. You give the plague to the poor people who merely pass your door.
+      At Saint-Eutrope you made a girl die by forcing her to chew a consecrated
+      wafer which you had stolen. At Beage you went and dug up the bodies of
+      little dead children and carried them away on your back. You are an old
+      sorcerer! Everybody knows it, you scoundrel! You are the disgrace of the
+      district. Whoever strangles you will gain heaven for the deed.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man listened with a sneer, twirling the while his staff between
+      his fingers. And between the Brother&rsquo;s successive insults he ejaculated in
+      an undertone:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Go on, go on; relieve yourself, you viper. I&rsquo;ll break your back for you
+      by-and-by.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret tried to interfere, but Brother Archangias pushed him away,
+      exclaiming: &lsquo;You are led by him yourself! Didn&rsquo;t he make you trample upon
+      the cross? Deny it, if you dare!&rsquo; Then again, turning to Jeanbernat, he
+      yelled: &lsquo;Ah! Satan, you must have chuckled and no mistake when you held a
+      priest in your grasp! May Heaven curse those who abetted you in that
+      sacrilege! What was it you did, at night, while he slept? You came and
+      moistened his tonsure with your saliva, eh? so that his hair might grow
+      more quickly. And then you breathed upon his chin and his cheeks that his
+      beard might grow a hand&rsquo;s breadth in a single night. And you rubbed all
+      your philters into his body, and breathed into his mouth the
+      lasciviousness of a dog. You turned him into a brute-beast, Satan.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He&rsquo;s idiotic,&rsquo; said Jeanbernat, resting his stick on his shoulder. &lsquo;He
+      quite bores me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Brother, however, growing bolder, thrust his fists under the old man&rsquo;s
+      nose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And that drab of yours!&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;you can&rsquo;t deny that you set her on to
+      damn the priest.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he suddenly sprang backwards, with a shriek, for the old man,
+      swinging his stick with all his strength, had just broken it over his
+      back. Retreating yet a little further, Archangias picked from a heap of
+      stones beside the road a piece of flint twice the size of a man&rsquo;s fist,
+      and threw it at Jeanbernat. It would surely have split the other&rsquo;s
+      forehead open if he had not bent down. He, however, now likewise crossed
+      over to a heap of stones, sheltered himself behind it, and provided
+      himself with missiles; and from one heap to the other a terrible combat
+      began, with a perfect hail of flints. The moon now shone very brightly,
+      and their dark shadows fell distinctly on the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, yes, you set that hussy on to ruin him!&rsquo; repeated the Brother, wild
+      with rage. &lsquo;Ah! you are astonished that I know all about it! You hope for
+      some monstrous result from it all. Every morning you make the thirteen
+      signs of hell over that minx of yours! You would like her to become the
+      mother of Antichrist. You long for Antichrist, you villain! But may this
+      stone blind you!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And may this one bung your mouth up!&rsquo; retorted Jeanbernat, who was now
+      quite calm again. &lsquo;Is he cracked, the silly fellow, with all those stories
+      of his?... Shall I have to break your head for you, before I can get on my
+      way? Is it your catechism that has turned your brain?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Catechism, indeed! Do you know what catechism is taught to accursed ones
+      like you? Ah! I will show you how to make the sign of the cross.&mdash;This
+      stone is for the Father, and this for the Son, and this for the Holy
+      Ghost. Ah! you are still standing. Wait a bit, wait a bit. Amen!&rsquo; Then he
+      threw a handful of small pebbles like a volley of grape-shot. Jeanbernat,
+      who was struck upon the shoulder, dropped the stones he was holding, and
+      quietly stepped forwards, while Brother Archangias picked two fresh
+      handfuls from the heap, blurting out:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am going to exterminate you. It is God who wills it. God is acting
+      through my arm.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Will you be quiet!&rsquo; said the old man, grasping him by the nape of the
+      neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came a short struggle amidst the dust of the road, all bluish with
+      moonlight. The Brother, finding himself the weaker of the two, tried to
+      bite. But Jeanbernat&rsquo;s sinewy limbs were like coils of rope which pinioned
+      him so tightly that he could almost feel them cutting into his flesh. He
+      panted and ceased to struggle, meditating some act of treachery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man, having got the other under him, scoffingly exclaimed: &lsquo;I have
+      a good mind to break one of your arms. You see that it isn&rsquo;t you who are
+      the stronger, but that it is I who am exterminating you.... Now I&rsquo;m going
+      to cut your ears off. You have tried my endurance too far.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jeanbernat calmly drew his knife from his pocket. But Abbé Mouret, who had
+      several times attempted to part the combatants, now raised such strenuous
+      opposition to the old man&rsquo;s design that he consented to defer the
+      operation till another time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You are acting foolishly, Curé,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;It would do this scoundrel
+      good to be well bled; but, since it seems to displease you, I&rsquo;ll wait a
+      little longer; I shall be meeting him again in some quiet corner.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as the Brother broke out into a growl, Jeanbernat cried threateningly:
+      &lsquo;If you don&rsquo;t keep still I will cut your ears off at once!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But you are sitting on his chest,&rsquo; said the priest, &lsquo;get up and let him
+      breathe.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, no; he would begin his tomfoolery again. I will give him his liberty
+      when I go away, but not before.... Well, I was telling you, Curé, when
+      this good-for-nothing interrupted us, that you would be very welcome
+      yonder. The little one is mistress, you know; I don&rsquo;t attempt to interfere
+      with her any more than I do with my salad-plants. There are only fools
+      like this croaker here who see any harm in it. Where did you see anything
+      wrong, scoundrel? It was yourself who imagined it, villain that you are!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And thereupon he gave the Brother another shaking. &lsquo;Let him get up,&rsquo; 
+      begged Abbé Mouret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;By-and-by. The little one has not been well for a long time. I did not
+      notice anything myself, but she told me; and now I am on my way to tell
+      your uncle Pascal, at Plassans. I like the night for walking; it is quiet,
+      and, as a rule, one isn&rsquo;t delayed by meeting people.... Yes, yes, the
+      little one is quite ailing.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest could not find a word to say. He staggered, and his head sank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It made her so happy to look after you,&rsquo; continued the old man. &lsquo;While I
+      smoked my pipe I used to hear her laugh. That was quite sufficient for me.
+      Girls are like the hawthorns; when they break out into blossom, they do
+      all they can. Well, now, you will come, if your heart prompts you to it. I
+      am sure it would please the little one. Good night, Curé.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He got up slowly, keeping a firm grasp of the Brother&rsquo;s wrists, to guard
+      against any treacherous attack. Then he proceeded on his way, with
+      swinging strides, without once turning his head. The Brother silently
+      crept to the heap of stones, and waited till the old man was some distance
+      off. Then, with both hands, and with mad violence, he again began flinging
+      stones, but they fell harmlessly upon the dusty road. Jeanbernat did not
+      condescend to notice them, but went his way, upright like a tree, through
+      the clear night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The accursed one!&mdash;Satan carries him on!&rsquo; shrieked Brother
+      Archangias, as he hurled his last stone. &lsquo;An old scoundrel, that the least
+      touch ought to upset! But he is baked in hell&rsquo;s fire. I smelt his claws.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Brother stamped with impotent rage on the scattered flints. Then he
+      suddenly attacked Abbé Mouret. &lsquo;It was all your fault,&rsquo; he cried; &lsquo;you
+      ought to have helped me, and, between us, we could have strangled him.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, at the other end of the village, the uproar in the Bambousses&rsquo; 
+      house had become greater than ever. The rhythmic tapping of glasses on a
+      table could be distinctly heard. The priest resumed his walk without
+      raising his head, making his way towards the flood of bright light that
+      streamed out of the window like the flare of a fire of vine-cuttings. The
+      Brother followed him gloomily; his cassock soiled with dust, and one of
+      his cheeks bleeding from a stone-cut. And, after a short interval of
+      silence, he asked, in his harsh voice: &lsquo;Shall you go?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then as Abbé Mouret did not answer, he went on: &lsquo;Take care! You are
+      lapsing into sin again. It was sufficient for that man to pass by to send
+      a thrill through your whole body. I saw you by the light of the moon
+      looking as pale as a girl. Take care! take care! Do you hear me? Another
+      time God will not pardon you&mdash;you will sink into the lowest abyss!
+      Ah! wretched piece of clay that you are, filth is mastering you!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereupon, the priest at last raised his head. Big tears were streaming
+      from his eyes, and it was in gentle heartbroken accents that he spoke:
+      &lsquo;Why do you speak to me like that?&mdash;You are always with me, and you
+      know my ceaseless struggles. Do not doubt me, leave me strength to master
+      myself.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those simple words, bathed with silent tears, fell on the night air with
+      such an expression of superhuman suffering, that even Brother Archangias,
+      in spite of all his harshness, felt touched. He made no reply, but shook
+      his dusty cassock, and wiped his bleeding cheek. When they reached the
+      Bambousses&rsquo; house, he refused to go inside. He seated himself, a few yards
+      away, on the body of an overturned cart, where he waited for the Abbé with
+      dog-like patience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! here is Monsieur le Curé!&rsquo; cried all the company of Bambousses and
+      Brichets as Serge entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They filled their glasses once more. Abbé Mouret was compelled to take
+      one, too. There had been no regular wedding-feast; but, in the evening,
+      after dinner, a ten-gallon &lsquo;Dame Jane&rsquo; had been placed upon the table, and
+      they were making it their business to empty it before going to bed. There
+      were ten of them, and old Bambousse was already with one hand tilting over
+      the jar whence only a thread of red liquor now flowed. Rosalie, in a very
+      sportive frame of mind, was dipping her baby&rsquo;s chin into her glass, while
+      big Fortune showed off his strength by lifting up the chairs with his
+      teeth. All the company passed into the bedroom. Custom required that the
+      priest should there drink the glass of wine which had been poured out for
+      him. It brought good luck, and prevented quarrels in the household. In
+      Monsieur Caffin&rsquo;s time, it had always been a very merry ceremony, for the
+      old priest loved a joke. He had even gained a reputation for the skilful
+      way in which he could drain his glass, without leaving a single drop at
+      the bottom of it; and the Artaud women pretended that every drop undrunk
+      meant a year&rsquo;s less love for the newly married pair. But with Abbé Mouret
+      they dare not joke so freely. However, he drank his wine at one gulp,
+      which seemed to greatly please old Bambousse. Mother Brichet looked at the
+      bottom of the glass and saw but a drop or two of the liquid remaining
+      there. Then, after a few jokes, they all returned to the living room,
+      where Vincent and Catherine had remained by themselves. Vincent, standing
+      upon a chair, was clasping the huge jar in his arms, and draining the last
+      drops of wine into Catherine&rsquo;s open mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We are much obliged to you, Monsieur le Curé,&rsquo; said old Bambousse, as he
+      escorted the priest to the door. &lsquo;Well, they&rsquo;re married now, so I suppose
+      you are satisfied. And they are not likely to complain, I&rsquo;m sure.... Good
+      night, sleep well, your reverence.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Brother Archangias had slowly risen from his seat on the old cart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;May the devil pile hot coals over them, and roast them!&rsquo; he murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then without again opening his lips he accompanied Abbé Mouret to the
+      parsonage. And he waited outside till the door was closed. Even then he
+      did not go off without twice looking round to make sure that the Abbé was
+      not coming out again. As for the priest, when he reached his bedroom, he
+      threw himself in his clothes upon his bed, clasping his hands to his ears,
+      and pressing his face to the pillow, in order that he might shut out all
+      sound and sight. And thus stilling his senses he fell into death-like
+      slumber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0045" id="link2H_4_0045">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The next day was Sunday. As the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
+      fell on a high mass day, Abbé Mouret desired to celebrate the festival
+      with especial solemnity. He was now full of extraordinary devotion for the
+      Cross, and had replaced the image of the Immaculate Conception in his
+      bedroom by a large crucifix of black wood, before which he spent long
+      hours in worship. To exalt the Cross, to plant it before him, above all
+      else, in a halo of glory, as the one object of his life, gave him the
+      strength he needed to suffer and to struggle. He sometimes dreamed of
+      hanging there himself, in Jesus&rsquo;s place, his head crowned with thorns,
+      nails driven through his hands and feet, and his side rent by spears. What
+      a coward he must be to complain of an imaginary wound, when God bled there
+      from His whole body, and yet preserved on His lips the blessed smile of
+      the Redemption! And however unworthy it might be, he offered up his wound
+      as a sacrifice, ended by falling into ecstasy, and believing that blood
+      did really stream from his brow and side and limbs. Those were hours of
+      relief, for he fancied that all the impurity within him flowed forth from
+      his wounds. And he then usually drew himself up with the heroism of a
+      martyr, and longed to be called upon to suffer the most frightful
+      tortures, in order that he might bear them without a quiver of the flesh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At early dawn that day he knelt before the crucifix, and grace came upon
+      him abundantly as dew. He made no effort, he simply fell upon his knees,
+      to receive it in his heart, to be permeated with it to the marrow of his
+      bones in sweetest and most refreshing fulness. On the previous day he had
+      prayed for grace in agony, and it had not come. At times it long remained
+      deaf to his entreaties, and then, when he simply clasped his hands, in
+      quite childlike fashion, it flowed down to succour him. It came upon him
+      that morning like a benediction, bringing perfect serenity, absolute
+      trusting faith. He forgot his anguish of the previous days, and
+      surrendered himself wholly to the triumphant joy of the Cross. He seemed
+      to be cased in such impenetrable armour that the world&rsquo;s most deadly blows
+      would glide off from it harmlessly. When he came down from his bedroom, he
+      stepped along with an air of serenity and victory. La Teuse was
+      astonished, and went to find Desirée, that he might kiss her; and both of
+      them clapped their hands, and said that they had not seen him looking so
+      well for the last six months.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was in the church, at high mass, that the priest felt that he had
+      really recovered divine grace. It was a long time since he had approached
+      the altar with such loving emotion; and he had to make a great effort to
+      restrain himself from weeping whilst he remained with his lips pressed to
+      the altar-cloth. It was a solemn high mass. The local rural guard, an
+      uncle of Rosalie, chanted in a deep bass voice which rumbled through the
+      low nave like a hoarse organ. Vincent, robed in a surplice much too large
+      for him, which had formerly belonged to Abbé Caffin, carried an old silver
+      censer, and was vastly amused by the tinkling of its chains; he swung it
+      to a great height, so as to produce copious clouds of smoke, and glanced
+      behind him every now and then to see if he had succeeded in making any one
+      cough. The church was almost full, for everybody wanted to see his
+      reverence&rsquo;s painting. Peasant women laughed with pleasure because the
+      place smelt so nice, while the men, standing under the gallery, jerked
+      their heads approvingly at each deeper and deeper note that came from the
+      rural guard. Filtering through the paper window panes the full morning sun
+      lighted up the brightly painted walls, on which the women&rsquo;s caps cast
+      shadows resembling huge butterflies. The artificial flowers, with which
+      the altar was decorated, almost seemed to possess the moist freshness of
+      natural ones newly gathered; and when the priest turned round to bless the
+      congregation, he felt even stronger emotion than before, as he saw his
+      church so clean, so full, and so steeped in music and incense and light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the offertory, however, a buzzing murmur sped through the peasant
+      women. Vincent inquisitively turned his head, and in doing so, almost let
+      the charcoal in his censer fall upon the priest&rsquo;s chasuble. And, wishing
+      to excuse himself, as he saw the Abbé looking at him with an expression of
+      reproof, he murmured: &lsquo;It is your reverence&rsquo;s uncle, who has just come
+      in.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of the church, standing beside one of the slender wooden
+      pillars that supported the gallery, Abbé Mouret then perceived Doctor
+      Pascal. The doctor was not wearing his usual cheerful and slightly
+      scoffing expression. Hat in hand, he stood there looking very grave, and
+      followed the service with evident impatience. The sight of the priest at
+      the altar, his solemn demeanour, his slow gestures, and the perfect
+      serenity of his countenance, appeared to gradually increase his
+      irritation. He could not stay there till the end of the mass, but left the
+      church, and walked up and down beside his horse and gig, which he had
+      secured to one of the parsonage shutters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Will that nephew of mine never have finished censing himself?&rsquo; he asked
+      of La Teuse, who was just coming out of the vestry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is all over,&rsquo; she replied. &lsquo;Won&rsquo;t you come into the drawing-room? His
+      reverence is unrobing. He knows you are here.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, unless he were blind, he couldn&rsquo;t very well help it,&rsquo; growled the
+      doctor, as he followed La Teuse into the cold-looking, stiffly furnished
+      chamber, which she pompously called the drawing-room. Here for a few
+      minutes he paced up and down. The gloomy coldness of his surroundings
+      seemed to increase his irritation. As he strode about, flourishing a stick
+      he carried, he kept on striking the well-worn chair-seats of horsehair
+      which sounded hard and dead as stone. Then, tired of walking, he took his
+      stand in front of the mantelpiece, in the centre of which a gaudily
+      painted image of Saint Joseph occupied the place of a clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! here he comes at last,&rsquo; he said, as he heard the door opening. And
+      stepping towards the Abbé he went on: &lsquo;Do you know that you made me listen
+      to half a mass? It is a very long time since that happened to me. But I
+      was bent on seeing you to-day. I have something to say to you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he stopped, and looked at the priest with an expression of surprise.
+      Silence fell. &lsquo;You at all events are quite well,&rsquo; he resumed, in a
+      different voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, I am very much better than I was,&rsquo; replied Abbé Mouret, with a
+      smile. &lsquo;I did not expect you before Thursday. Sunday isn&rsquo;t your day for
+      coming. Is there something you want to tell me?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Uncle Pascal did not give an immediate answer. He went on looking at the
+      Abbé. The latter was still fresh from the influence of the church and the
+      mass. His hair was fragrant with the perfume of the incense, and in his
+      eyes shone all the joy of the Cross. His uncle jogged his head, as he
+      noticed that expression of triumphant peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have come from the Paradou,&rsquo; he said, abruptly. &lsquo;Jeanbernat came to
+      fetch me there. I have seen Albine, and she disquiets me. She needs much
+      careful treatment.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He kept his eyes fixed upon the priest as he spoke, but he did not detect
+      so much as a quiver of Serge&rsquo;s eyelids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She took great care of you, you know,&rsquo; he added, more roughly. &lsquo;Without
+      her, my boy, you might now be in one of the cells at Les Tulettes, with a
+      strait waistcoat on.... Well, I promised that you would go to see her. I
+      will take you with me. It will be a farewell meeting. She is anxious to go
+      away.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I can do nothing more than pray for the person of whom you speak,&rsquo; said
+      Abbé Mouret, softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as the doctor, losing his temper, brought his stick down heavily upon
+      the couch, he added calmly, but in a firm voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I am a priest, and can only help with prayers.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah, well! Yes, you are right,&rsquo; said Uncle Pascal, dropping down into an
+      armchair, &lsquo;it is I who am an old fool. Yes, I wept like a child, as I came
+      here alone in my gig. That is what comes of living amongst books. One
+      learns a lot from them, but one makes a fool of oneself in the world. How
+      could I guess that it would all turn out so badly?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose from his chair and began to walk about again, looking exceedingly
+      troubled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But yes, but yes, I ought to have guessed. It was all quite natural.
+      Though with one in your position, it was bound to be abominable! You are
+      not as other men. But listen to me, I assure you that otherwise you would
+      never have recovered. It was she alone, with the atmosphere she set round
+      you, who saved you from madness. There is no need for me to tell you what
+      a state you were in. It is one of my most wonderful cures. But I can&rsquo;t
+      take any pride, any pleasure in it, for now the poor girl is dying of it!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret remained there erect, perfectly calm, his face reflecting all
+      the quiet serenity of a martyr whom nothing that man might do could
+      disturb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;God will take mercy upon her,&rsquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;God! God!&rsquo; muttered the doctor below his breath. &lsquo;Ah! He would do better
+      not to interfere. We might manage matters if we were left to ourselves.&rsquo; 
+      Then, raising his voice, he added: &lsquo;I thought I had considered everything
+      carefully, that is the most wonderful part of it. Oh! what a fool I was!
+      You would stay there, I thought, for a month to recover your strength. The
+      shade of the trees, the cheerful chatter of the girl, all the youthfulness
+      about you would quickly bring you round. And then you, on your side, it
+      seemed to me, would do something to reclaim the poor child from her wild
+      ways; you would civilise her, and, between us, we should turn her into a
+      young lady, for whom we should, by-and-by, find a suitable husband. It
+      seemed such a perfect scheme. And then how was I to guess that old
+      philosophising Jeanbernat would never stir an inch from his lettuce-beds?
+      Well! well! I myself never left my own laboratory. I had such pressing
+      work there.... And it is all my fault! Ah! I am a stupid bungler!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was choking, and wished to go off. And he began to look about him for
+      his hat, though, all the while, he had it on his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good-bye!&rsquo; he stammered; &lsquo;I am going. So you won&rsquo;t come? Do, now&mdash;for
+      my sake! You see how miserable, how upset I am. I swear to you that she
+      shall go away immediately afterwards. That is all settled. My gig is here;
+      you might be back in an hour. Come, do come, I beg you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest made a sweeping gesture; such a gesture as the doctor had seen
+      him make before the altar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;I cannot.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, as he accompanied his uncle out of the room, he added:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Tell her to fall on her knees and pray to God. God will hear her as He
+      heard me, and He will comfort her as He has comforted me. There is no
+      other means of salvation.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor looked him full in the face, and shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good-bye, then,&rsquo; he repeated. &lsquo;You are quite well now, and have no
+      further need of me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, as he was unfastening his horse, Desirée, who had heard his voice,
+      came running up. She was extremely attached to her uncle. When she had
+      been younger he had been wont to listen to her childish prattle for hours
+      without showing the least sign of weariness. And, even now, he did his
+      best to spoil her, and manifested the greatest interest in her farmyard,
+      often spending a whole afternoon with her amongst her fowls and ducks, and
+      smiling at her with his bright eyes. He seemed to consider her superior to
+      other girls. And so she now flung herself round his neck, in an impulse of
+      affection, and cried:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Aren&rsquo;t you going to stay and have some lunch with us?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But having kissed her, he said he could not remain, and unfastened her
+      arms from his neck with a somewhat pettish air. She laughed however, and
+      again clasped her arms round him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! but you must,&rsquo; she persisted. &lsquo;I have some eggs that have only just
+      been laid. I have been looking in the nests, and there are fourteen eggs
+      this morning. And, if you will stay, we can have a fowl, the white one,
+      that is always quarrelling with the others. When you were here on
+      Thursday, you know, it pecked the big spotted hen&rsquo;s eye out.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But her uncle persisted in his refusal. He was irritated to find that he
+      could not unfasten the knot in which he had tied his reins. And then she
+      began to skip round him, clapping her hands and repeating in a sing-song
+      voice: &lsquo;Yes! yes! you&rsquo;ll stay, and we will eat it up, we&rsquo;ll eat it up!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her uncle could no longer resist her blandishments; he raised his head and
+      smiled at her. She seemed so full of life and health and sincerity; her
+      gaiety was as frank and natural as the sheet of sunlight which was gilding
+      her bare arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You big silly!&rsquo; he said; and clasping her by the wrists as she continued
+      skipping gleefully about him, he went on: &lsquo;No, dear; not to-day. I have to
+      go to see a poor girl who is ill. But I will come some other morning. I
+      promise you faithfully.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;When? when?&rsquo; she persisted. &lsquo;On Thursday? The cow is in calf, you know,
+      and she hasn&rsquo;t seemed at all well these last two days. You are a doctor,
+      and you ought to be able to give her something to do her good.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret, who had calmly remained there, could not restrain a slight
+      laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor gaily got into his gig and exclaimed: &lsquo;All right, my dear, I
+      will attend to your cow. Come and let me kiss you. Ah! how nice and
+      healthy you are! And you are worth more than all the others put together.
+      Ah! if every one was like my big silly, this earth would be too
+      beautiful!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He set his horse off with a cluck of his tongue, and continued talking to
+      himself as the gig rattled down the hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, yes! there should be nothing but animals. Ah! if they were mere
+      animals, how happy and gay and strong they would all be! It has gone well
+      with the girl, who is as happy as her cow; but it has gone badly with the
+      lad, who is in torture beneath his cassock. A drop too much blood, a
+      little too much nerve, and one&rsquo;s whole life is wrecked! ... They are true
+      Rougons and true Macquarts those children there! The tail-end of the stock&mdash;its
+      final degeneracy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, urging on his horse, he drove at a trot up the hill that led to the
+      Paradou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0046" id="link2H_4_0046">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Sunday was a busy day for Abbé Mouret. He had to think of vespers, which
+      he generally said to empty seats, for even mother Brichet did not carry
+      her piety so far as to go back to church in the afternoon. Then, at four
+      o&rsquo;clock, Brother Archangias brought the little rogues from his school to
+      repeat their catechism to his reverence. This lesson sometimes lasted
+      until late. When the children showed themselves quite intractable, La
+      Teuse was summoned to frighten them with her broom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On that particular Sunday, about four o&rsquo;clock, Desirée found herself quite
+      alone in the parsonage. As she felt a little bored, she went to gather
+      some food for her rabbits in the churchyard, where there were some
+      magnificent poppies, of which rabbits are extremely fond. Dragging herself
+      about on her knees between the grave-stones, she gathered apronfuls of
+      juicy verdure on which her pets fell greedily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! what lovely plantains!&rsquo; she muttered, stooping before Abbé Caffin&rsquo;s
+      tombstone, and delighted with the discovery she had made.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were, indeed, some magnificent plantains spreading out their broad
+      leaves beside the stone. Desirée had just finished filling her apron with
+      them when she fancied she heard a strange noise behind her. A rustling of
+      branches and a rolling of small pebbles came from the ravine which skirted
+      one side of the graveyard, and at the bottom of which flowed the Mascle, a
+      stream which descended from the high lands of the Paradou. But the ascent
+      here was so rough, so impracticable, that Desirée imagined that the noise
+      could only have been made by some lost dog or straying goat. She stepped
+      quickly to the edge, and, as she looked over, she was amazed to see amidst
+      the brambles a girl who was climbing up the rocks with extraordinary
+      agility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I will give you a hand,&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;You might easily break your neck
+      there.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl, directly she saw she was discovered, started back, as though she
+      would rather go down again, but after a moment&rsquo;s hesitation she ventured
+      to take the hand that was held out to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! I know who you are,&rsquo; said Desirée, with a beaming smile, and letting
+      her apron fall that she might grasp the girl by the waist. &lsquo;You once gave
+      me some blackbirds, but they all died, poor little dears. I was so sorry
+      about it.&mdash;Wait a bit, I know your name, I have heard it before. La
+      Teuse often mentions it when Serge isn&rsquo;t there; but she told me that I was
+      not to repeat it. Wait a moment, I shall remember it directly!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She tried to recall the name, and grew quite grave in the attempt. Then,
+      having succeeded in remembering it, she became gay again, and seemingly
+      found great pleasure in dwelling upon its musical sound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Albine! Albine!&mdash;&mdash; What a sweet name it is! At first I used to
+      think you must be a tomtit, because I once had a tomtit with a name very
+      like yours, though I don&rsquo;t remember exactly what it was.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine did not smile. Her face was very pale, and there was a feverish
+      gleam in her eyes. A few drops of blood trickled from her hands. When she
+      had recovered her breath, she hastily exclaimed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No! no! leave it alone. You will only stain your handkerchief. It is
+      nothing but a scratch. I didn&rsquo;t want to come by the road, as I should have
+      been seen&mdash;so I preferred coming along the bed of the torrent&mdash;&mdash;
+      Is Serge there?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Desirée did not feel at all shocked at hearing the girl pronounce her
+      brother&rsquo;s name thus familiarly and with an expression of subdued passion.
+      She simply replied that he was in the church hearing the children say
+      their catechism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You must not speak at all loudly,&rsquo; she added, raising her finger to her
+      lips. &lsquo;Serge forbade me to talk loudly when he is catechising the
+      children, and we shall get into trouble if we don&rsquo;t keep quiet. Let us go
+      into the stable&mdash;shall we? We can talk better there.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I want to see Serge,&rsquo; said Albine, simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Desirée cast a hasty glance at the church, and then whispered, &lsquo;Yes, yes;
+      Serge will be finely caught. Come with me. We will hide ourselves, and
+      keep quite quiet. We shall have some fine fun!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had picked up the herbage which had fallen from her apron, and
+      quitting the graveyard she stole back to the parsonage, telling Albine to
+      hide herself behind her and make herself as little as possible. As they
+      stealthily glided through the farmyard, they caught sight of La Teuse, who
+      was crossing over to the vestry, but she did not appear to notice them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There! There!&rsquo; said Desirée, quite delighted, as they stowed themselves
+      away in the stable; &lsquo;keep quiet, and no one will know that we are here.
+      There is some straw there for you to lie down upon.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine seated herself on a truss of straw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And Serge?&rsquo; she asked, persisting in her one fixed idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Listen! You can hear his voice. When he claps his hands, it will be all
+      over, and the children will go away&mdash;Listen! he is telling them a
+      tale.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They could indeed just hear Abbé Mouret&rsquo;s voice, which was wafted to them
+      through the vestry doorway which La Teuse had doubtless left open. It came
+      to them like a solemn murmur, in which they could distinguish the name of
+      Jesus thrice repeated. Albine trembled. She sprang up as though to hasten
+      to that beloved voice whose caressing accents she knew so well, but all
+      sound of it suddenly died away, shut off by the closing of the door. Then
+      she sat down again, to wait, her hands tightly clasped, and her clear eyes
+      gleaming with the intensity of her thoughts. Desirée, who was lying at her
+      feet, gazed up at her with innocent admiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How beautiful you are!&rsquo; she whispered. &lsquo;You are like an image that Serge
+      used to have in his bedroom. It was quite white like you are, with great
+      curls floating about the neck; and the heart was quite bare and uncovered,
+      just in the place where I can feel yours beating&mdash;&mdash; But you are
+      not listening to me. You are looking quite sad. Let us play at something?
+      Will you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she stopped short, holding her breath and saying between her teeth:
+      &lsquo;Ah! the wretches! they will get us caught!&rsquo; She still had her apron full
+      of herbage with her, and her pets were taking it by assault. A troop of
+      fowls had surrounded her, clucking and calling each other, and pecking at
+      the hanging green stuff. The goat pushed its head slyly under her arm, and
+      began to eat the longer leaves. Even the cow, which was tethered to the
+      wall, strained at its cord and poked out its nose, kissing her with its
+      warm breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! you thieves!&rsquo; cried Desirée. &lsquo;But this is for the rabbits, not for
+      you! Leave me alone, won&rsquo;t you! You, there, will get your ears boxed, if
+      you don&rsquo;t go away! And you too will have your tail pulled if I catch you
+      at it again. The wretches! they will be eating my hands soon!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She drove the goat off, dispersed the fowls with her feet, and tapped the
+      cow&rsquo;s nose with her fists. But the creatures just shook themselves, and
+      then came back more greedily than ever, surrounding her, jumping on her,
+      and tearing open her apron. At this she whispered to Albine, as though she
+      were afraid the animals might hear her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Aren&rsquo;t they amusing, the dears? Watch them eat.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine looked on with a grave expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now, now, be good,&rsquo; resumed Desirée; &lsquo;you shall all have some, but you
+      must wait your turns. Now, big Lisa, you first. Eh! how fond you are of
+      plantain, aren&rsquo;t you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Big Lisa was the cow. She slowly munched a handful of the juicy leaves
+      which had grown beside Abbé Caffin&rsquo;s tomb. A thread of saliva hung down
+      from her mouth, and her great brown eyes shone with quiet enjoyment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There! now it&rsquo;s your turn,&rsquo; continued Desirée, turning towards the goat.
+      &lsquo;You are fond of poppies, I know; and you like the flowers best, don&rsquo;t
+      you? The buds that shine in your teeth like red-hot butterflies! See, here
+      are some splendid ones; they came from the left-hand corner, where there
+      was a burial last year.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she spoke, she gave the goat a bunch of scarlet flowers, which the
+      animal ate from her hand. When there was nothing left in her grasp but the
+      stalks, she pushed these between its teeth. Behind her, in the meanwhile,
+      the fowls were desperately pecking away at her petticoats. She threw them
+      some wild chicory and dandelions which she had gathered amongst the old
+      slabs that were ranged alongside the church walls. It was particularly
+      over the dandelions that the fowls quarrelled, so voraciously indeed, with
+      such scratchings and flapping of wings, that the other fowls in the yard
+      heard them. And then came a general invasion. The big yellow cock,
+      Alexander, was the first to appear; having seized a dandelion and torn it
+      in halves, without attempting to eat it, he called to the hens who were
+      still outside to come and peck. Then a white hen strutted in, then a black
+      one, and then a whole crowd of hens, who hustled one another, and trod on
+      one another&rsquo;s tails, and ended by forming a wild flood of feathers. Behind
+      the fowls came the pigeons, and the ducks, and the geese, and, last of
+      all, the turkeys. Desirée laughed at seeing herself thus surrounded by
+      this noisy, squabbling mob.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;This is what always happens,&rsquo; said she, &lsquo;every time that I bring any
+      green stuff from the graveyard. They nearly kill each other to get at it;
+      they must find it very nice.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she made a fight to keep a few handfuls of the leaves from the greedy
+      beaks which rose all round her, saying that something must really be saved
+      for the rabbits. She would surely get angry with them if they went on like
+      that, and give them nothing but dry bread in future. However, she was
+      obliged to give way. The geese tugged at her apron so violently that she
+      was almost pulled down upon her knees; the ducks gobbled away at her
+      ankles; two of the pigeons flew upon her head, and some of the fowls
+      fluttered about her shoulders. It was the ferocity of creatures who smell
+      flesh: the fat plantains, the crimson poppies, the milky dandelions, in
+      which remained some of the life of the dead. Desirée laughed loudly, and
+      felt that she was on the point of slipping down, and letting go of her
+      last two handfuls, when the fowls were panic-stricken by a terrible
+      grunting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! it&rsquo;s you, my fatty,&rsquo; she exclaimed, quite delighted; &lsquo;eat them up,
+      and set me at liberty.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pig waddled in; he was no longer the little pig of former days&mdash;pink
+      as a newly painted toy, with a tiny little tail, like a bit of string; but
+      a fat wobbling creature, fit to be killed, with a belly as round as a
+      monk&rsquo;s, and a back all bristling with rough hairs, that reeked of fatness.
+      His stomach had grown quite yellow from his habit of sleeping on the
+      manure heap. Waddling along on his shaky feet, he charged with lowered
+      snout at the scared fowls, and so left Desirée at liberty to escape, and
+      take the rabbits the few scraps of green stuff which she had so
+      strenuously defended. When she came back, all was peace again. The stupid,
+      ecstatic-looking geese were lazily swaying their long necks about, the
+      ducks and turkeys were waddling in ungainly fashion alongside the wall;
+      the fowls were quietly clucking and peaking at invisible grains on the
+      hard ground of the stable; while the pig, the goat, and the big cow, were
+      drowsily blinking their eyes, as though they were falling asleep. Outside
+      it had just begun to rain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! well, there&rsquo;s a shower coming on!&rsquo; cried Desirée, throwing herself
+      down on the straw. &lsquo;You had better stay where you are, my dears, if you
+      don&rsquo;t want to get soaked.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she turned to Albine and added: &lsquo;How stupid they all look, don&rsquo;t
+      they? They only wake up just to eat!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine still remained silent. The merry laughter of that buxom girl as she
+      struggled amidst those greedy necks and gluttonous beaks, which tickled
+      and kissed her, and seemed bent on devouring her very flesh, had rendered
+      the unhappy daughter of the Paradou yet paler than she had been before. So
+      much gaiety, so much vitality, so much boisterous health made her despair.
+      She strained her feverish arms to her desolate bosom, which desertion had
+      parched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And Serge?&rsquo; she asked again, in the same clear, stubborn voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hush!&rsquo; said Desirée. &lsquo;I heard him just now. He hasn&rsquo;t finished yet&mdash;&mdash;
+      We have been making a pretty disturbance; La Teuse must surely have grown
+      deaf this afternoon&mdash;&mdash; Let us keep quiet now. I like to hear
+      the rain fall.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shower beat in at the open doorway, casting big drops upon the
+      threshold. The restless fowls, after venturing out for a moment, had
+      quickly retreated to the far end of the stable; where, indeed, with the
+      exception of three ducks who remained quietly walking in the rain, all the
+      pets had now taken refuge, clustering round the girl&rsquo;s skirts. It was
+      growing very warm amongst the straw. Desirée pulled two big trusses
+      together, made a bed of them, and lay down at full length. She felt
+      extremely comfortable there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is so nice,&rsquo; she murmured. &lsquo;Come and lie down like me. It is so
+      springy and soft, all this straw; and it tickles one so funnily in the
+      neck. Do you roll about in the straw at home? There is nothing I am fonder
+      of&mdash;&mdash; Sometimes I tickle the soles of my feet with it. That is
+      very funny, too&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at that moment, the big yellow cock, who had been gravely stalking
+      towards her, jumped upon her breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Get away with you, Alexander! get away!&rsquo; she cried. &lsquo;What a tiresome
+      creature he is! The idea of his perching himself on me&mdash;&mdash; You
+      are too rough, sir, and you scratch me with your claws. Do you hear me? I
+      don&rsquo;t want you to go away, but you must be good, and mustn&rsquo;t peck at my
+      hair.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she troubled herself no further about him. The cock still maintained
+      his position, every now and then glancing inquisitively at the girl&rsquo;s chin
+      with his gleaming eye. The other birds all began to cluster round her.
+      After rolling amongst the straw, she was now lying lazily on her back with
+      her arms stretched out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! how pleasant it is,&rsquo; she said; &lsquo;but then it makes me feel so sleepy.
+      Straw always makes one drowsy, doesn&rsquo;t it? Serge doesn&rsquo;t like it. Perhaps
+      you don&rsquo;t either. What do you like? Tell me, so that I may know.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was gradually dozing off. For a moment she opened her eyes widely, as
+      though she were looking for something, and then her eyelids fell with a
+      tranquil smile of content. She seemed to be asleep, but after a few
+      minutes she opened her eyes again, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The cow is going to have a calf&mdash;&mdash; That will be so nice, and
+      will please me more than anything.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she sank into deep slumber. The fowls had ended by perching on her
+      body; she was buried beneath a wave of living plumage. Hens were brooding
+      over her feet; geese stretched their soft downy necks over her legs. The
+      pig lay against her left side, while on the right, the goat poked its
+      bearded head under her arm. The pigeons were roosting and nestling all
+      over her, on her hands, her waist, and her shoulders. And there she lay
+      asleep, in all her rosy freshness, caressed by the cow&rsquo;s warm breath,
+      while the big cock still squatted just below her bosom with gleaming comb
+      and quivering wings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside, the rain was falling less heavily. A sunbeam, escaping from
+      beneath a cloud, gilded the fine drops of water. Albine, who had remained
+      perfectly still, watched the slumber of Desirée, that big, plump girl who
+      found her great delight in rolling about in the straw. She wished that
+      she, too, could slumber away so peacefully, and feel such pleasure,
+      because a few straws had tickled her neck. And she felt jealous of those
+      strong arms, that firm bosom, all that vitality, all that purely animal
+      development which made the other like a tranquil easy-minded sister of the
+      big red and white cow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, the rain had now quite ceased. The three cats of the parsonage
+      filed out into the yard one after the other, keeping close to the wall,
+      and taking the greatest precautions to avoid wetting their paws. They
+      peeped into the stable, and then stalked up to the sleeping girl, and lay
+      down, purring, close by her. Moumou, the big black cat, curled itself up
+      close to her cheek, and gently licked her chin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And Serge?&rsquo; murmured Albine, quite mechanically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What was it that kept them apart? Who was it that prevented them from
+      being happy together? Why might she not love him, and why might she not be
+      loved, freely and in the broad sunlight, as the trees lived and loved? She
+      knew not, but she felt that she had been forsaken, and had received a
+      mortal wound. Yet she was possessed by a stubborn, determined longing, a
+      very necessity, indeed, of once more clasping her love in her arms, of
+      concealing him somewhere, that he might be hers in all felicity. She rose
+      to her feet. The vestry door had just been opened again. A clapping of
+      hands sounded, followed by the uproar of a swarm of children clattering in
+      wooden shoes over the stone flags. The catechising was over. Then Albine
+      gently glided out of the stable, where she had been waiting for an hour
+      amidst the reeking warmth that emanated from Desirée&rsquo;s pets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she quietly slipped through the passage that led to the vestry, she
+      caught sight of La Teuse, who was going to her kitchen, and who
+      fortunately did not turn her head. Certain, now, of not being seen and
+      stopped, Albine softly pushed the door which was before her, keeping hold
+      of it in order that it might make no noise as it closed again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she found herself in the church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0047" id="link2H_4_0047">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At first she could see nobody. Outside, the rain had again begun to fall
+      in fine close drops. The church looked very grey and gloomy. She passed
+      behind the high altar, and walked on towards the pulpit. In the middle of
+      the nave, there were only a number of empty benches, left there in
+      disorder by the urchins of the catechism class. Amidst all this void came
+      a low tic-tac from the swaying pendulum. She went down the church to knock
+      at the confessional-box, which she saw standing at the other end. But,
+      just as she passed the Chapel of the Dead, she caught sight of Abbé Mouret
+      prostrated before the great bleeding Christ. He did not stir; he must have
+      thought that it was only La Teuse putting the seats in order behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Albine laid her hand upon his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Serge,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;I have come for you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest raised his head with a start. His face was very pale. He
+      remained on his knees and crossed himself, while his lips still quivered
+      with the words of his prayer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have been waiting for you,&rsquo; she continued. &lsquo;Every morning and every
+      evening I looked to see if you were not coming. I have counted the days
+      till I could keep the reckoning no longer. Ah! for weeks and weeks&mdash;&mdash;
+      Then, when I grew sure that you were not coming, I set out myself, and
+      came here. I said to myself: &ldquo;I will fetch him away with me.&rdquo; Give me your
+      hand and let us go.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stretched out her hands, as though to help him to rise. But he only
+      crossed himself, afresh. He still continued his prayers as he looked at
+      her. He had succeeded in calming the first quiver of his flesh. From the
+      Divine grace which had been streaming around him since the early morning,
+      like a celestial bath, he derived a superhuman strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is not right for you to be here,&rsquo; he said, gravely. &lsquo;Go away. You are
+      aggravating your sufferings.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I suffer no longer,&rsquo; she said, with a smile. &lsquo;I am well again; I am
+      cured, now that I see you once more&mdash;&mdash; Listen! I made myself
+      out worse than I really was, to induce them to go and fetch you. I am
+      quite willing to confess it now. And that promise of going away, of
+      leaving the neighbourhood, you didn&rsquo;t suppose I should have kept it, did
+      you? No, indeed, unless I had carried you away with me on my shoulders.
+      The others don&rsquo;t know it, but you must know that I cannot now live
+      anywhere but at your side.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She grew quite cheerful again, and drew close to the priest with the
+      caressing ways of a child of nature, never noticing his cold and rigid
+      demeanour. And she became impatient, clapped her hands, and exclaimed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come, Serge; make up your mind and come. We are only losing time. There
+      is no necessity to think so much about it. It is quite simple; I am going
+      to take you with me. If you don&rsquo;t want any one to see you, we will go
+      along by the Mascle. It is not very easy walking, but I managed it all by
+      myself; and, when we are together, we can help each other. You know the
+      way, don&rsquo;t you? We cross the churchyard, we descend to the torrent, and
+      then we shall only have to follow its course right up to the garden. And
+      one is quite at home down there. Nobody can see us, there is nothing but
+      brambles and big round stones. The bed of the stream is nearly dry. As I
+      came along, I thought: &ldquo;By-and-by, when he is with me, we will walk along
+      gently together and kiss one another.&rdquo; Come, Serge, be quick; I am waiting
+      for you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest no longer appeared to hear her. He had betaken himself to his
+      prayers again, and was asking Heaven to grant him the courage of the
+      saints. Before entering upon the supreme struggle, he was arming himself
+      with the flaming sword of faith. For a moment he had feared he was
+      wavering. He had required all a martyr&rsquo;s courage and endurance to remain
+      firmly kneeling there on the flagstones, while Albine was calling him: his
+      heart had leapt out towards her, all his blood had surged passionately
+      through his veins, filling him with an intense yearning to clasp her in
+      his arms and kiss her hair. Her mere breath had awakened all the memory of
+      their love; the vast garden, their saunters beneath the trees, and all the
+      joy of their companionship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Divine grace was poured down upon him more abundantly, and the
+      torturing strife, during which all his blood seemed to quit his veins,
+      lasted but a moment. Nothing human then remained within him. He had become
+      wholly God&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine, however, again touched him on the shoulder. She was growing uneasy
+      and angry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why do you not speak to me?&rsquo; she asked. &lsquo;You can&rsquo;t refuse; you will come
+      with me? Remember that I shall die if you refuse. But no! you can&rsquo;t; it is
+      impossible. We lived together once; it was vowed that we should never
+      separate. Twenty times, at least, did you give yourself to me. You bade me
+      take you wholly, your limbs, your breath, your very life itself. I did not
+      dream it all. There is nothing of you that you have not given to me; not a
+      hair in your head which is not mine. Your hands are mine. For days and
+      days have I held them clasped in mine. Your face, your lips, your eyes,
+      your brow, all, all are mine, and I have lavished my love upon them. Do
+      you hear me, Serge?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood erect before him, full of proud assertion, with outstretched
+      arms. And, in a louder voice, she repeated:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Do you hear me, Serge? You belong to me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Abbé Mouret slowly rose to his feet. He leant against the altar, and
+      replied:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No. You are mistaken. I belong to God.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was full of serenity. His shorn face seemed like that of some stone
+      saint, whom no impulse of the flesh can disturb. His cassock fell around
+      him in straight folds like a black winding-sheet, concealing all the
+      outlines of his body. Albine dropped back at the sight of that sombre
+      phantom of her former love. She missed his freely flowing beard, his
+      freely flowing curls. And in the midst of his shorn locks she saw the
+      pallid circle of his tonsure, which disquieted her as if it had been some
+      mysterious evil, some malignant sore which had grown there, and would eat
+      away all memory of the happy days they had spent together. She could
+      recognise neither his hands, once so warm with caresses, nor his lissom
+      neck, once so sonorous with laughter; nor his agile feet, which had
+      carried her into the recesses of the woodlands. Could this, indeed, be the
+      strong youth with whom she had lived one whole season&mdash;the youth with
+      soft down gleaming on his bare breast, with skin browned by the sun&rsquo;s
+      rays, with every limb full of vibrating life? At this present hour he
+      seemed fleshless; his hair had fallen away from him, and all his virility
+      had withered within that womanish gown, which left him sexless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! you frighten me,&rsquo; she murmured. &lsquo;Did you think then that I was dead,
+      that you put on mourning? Take off that black thing; put on a blouse. You
+      can tuck up the sleeves, and we will catch crayfishes again. Your arms
+      used to be as white as mine.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She laid her hand on his cassock, as though to tear it off him; but he
+      repulsed her with a gesture, without touching her. He looked at her now
+      and strengthened himself against temptation by never allowing his eyes to
+      leave her. She seemed to him to have grown taller. She was no longer the
+      playful damsel adorned with bunches of wild-flowers, and casting to the
+      winds gay, gipsy laughter, nor was she the amorosa in white skirts,
+      gracefully bending her slender form as she sauntered lingeringly beside
+      the hedges. Now, there was a velvety bloom upon her lips; her hips were
+      gracefully rounded; her bosom was in full bloom. She had become a woman,
+      with a long oval face that seemed expressive of fruitfulness. Life
+      slumbered within her. And her cheeks glowed with luscious maturity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest, bathed in the voluptuous atmosphere that seemed to emanate
+      from all that feminine ripeness, took a bitter pleasure in defying the
+      caresses of her coral lips, the tempting smile of her eyes, the witching
+      charm of her bosom, and all the intoxication which seemed to pour from her
+      at every movement. He even carried his temerity so far as to search with
+      his gaze for the spots that he had once so hotly kissed, the corners of
+      her eyes and lips, her narrow temples, soft as satin, and the ambery nape
+      of her neck, which was like velvet. And never, even in her embrace, had he
+      tasted such felicity as he now felt in martyring himself, by boldly
+      looking in the face the love that he refused. At last, fearing lest he
+      might there yield to some new allurement of the flesh, he dropped his
+      eyes, and said, very gently:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I cannot hear you here. Let us go out, if you, indeed, persist in adding
+      to the pain of both of us. Our presence in this place is a scandal. We are
+      in God&rsquo;s house.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;God!&rsquo; cried Albine, excitedly, suddenly becoming a child of nature once
+      more. &lsquo;God! Who is He? I know nothing of your God! I want to know nothing
+      of Him if He has stolen you away from me, who have never harmed Him. My
+      uncle Jeanbernat was right then when he said that your God was only an
+      invention to frighten people, and make them weep! You are lying; you love
+      me no longer, and that God of yours does not exist.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You are in His house now,&rsquo; said Abbé Mouret, sternly. &lsquo;You blaspheme.
+      With a breath He might turn you into dust.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed with proud disdain, and raised her hands as if to defy Heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! then,&rsquo; said she, &lsquo;you prefer your God to me. You think He is stronger
+      than I am, and you imagine that He will love you better than I did. Oh!
+      but you are a child, a foolish child. Come, leave all this folly. We will
+      return to the garden together, and love each other, and be happy and free.
+      That, that is life!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This time she succeeded in throwing an arm round his waist, and she tried
+      to drag him away. But he, quivering all over, freed himself from her
+      embrace, and again took his stand against the altar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Go away!&rsquo; he faltered. &lsquo;If you still love me, go away.... O Lord, pardon
+      her, and pardon me too, for thus defiling this Thy house. Should I go with
+      her beyond the door, I might, perhaps, follow her. Here, in Thy presence,
+      I am strong. Suffer that I may remain here, to protect Thee from insult.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine remained silent for a moment. Then, in a calm voice, she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, let us stay here, then. I wish to speak to you. You cannot, surely,
+      be cruel. You will understand me. You will not let me go away alone. Oh!
+      do not begin to excuse yourself. I will not lay my hands upon you again,
+      since it distresses you. I am quite calm now as you can see. We will talk
+      quietly, as we used to do in the old days when we lost our way, and did
+      not hurry to find it again, that we might have the more time to talk
+      together.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled at that memory, and continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t know about these things myself. My uncle Jeanbernat used to
+      forbid me to go to church. &ldquo;Silly girl,&rdquo; he&rsquo;d say to me, &ldquo;why do you want
+      to go to a stuffy building when you have got a garden to run about in?&rdquo; I
+      grew up quite happy and contented. I used to look in the birds&rsquo; nests
+      without even taking the eggs. I did not even pluck the flowers, for fear
+      of hurting the plants; and you know that I could never torture an insect.
+      Why, then, should God be angry with me?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You should learn to know Him, pray to Him, and render Him the constant
+      worship which is His due,&rsquo; answered the priest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! it would please you if I did, would it not?&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;You would
+      forgive me, and love me again? Well, I will do all that you wish me. Tell
+      me about God, and I will believe in Him, and worship Him. All that you
+      tell me shall be a truth to which I will listen on my knees. Have I ever
+      had a thought that was not your own? We will begin our long walks again;
+      and you shall teach me, and make of me whatever you will. Say &ldquo;yes,&rdquo; I beg
+      of you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret pointed to his cassock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I cannot,&rsquo; he simply said. &lsquo;I am a priest.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;A priest!&rsquo; she repeated after him, the smile dying out of her eyes. &lsquo;My
+      uncle says that priests have neither wife, nor sister, nor mother. So that
+      is true, then. But why did you ever come? It was you who took me for your
+      sister, for your wife. Were you then lying?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest raised his pale face, moist with the sweat of agony. &lsquo;I have
+      sinned,&rsquo; he murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;When I saw you so free,&rsquo; the girl went on, &lsquo;I thought that you were no
+      longer a priest. I believed that all that was over, that you would always
+      remain there with me, and for my sake.&mdash;&mdash; And now, what would
+      you have me do, if you rob me of my whole life?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What I do,&rsquo; he answered; &lsquo;kneel down, suffer on your knees, and never
+      rise until God pardons you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Are you a coward, then?&rsquo; she exclaimed, her anger roused once more, her
+      lips curving scornfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He staggered, and kept silence. Agony held him by the throat; but he
+      proved stronger than pain. He held his head erect, and a smile almost
+      played about his trembling lips. Albine for a moment defied him with her
+      fixed glance; then, carried away by a fresh burst of passion, she
+      exclaimed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, answer me. Accuse me! Say it was I who came to tempt you! That will
+      be the climax! Speak, and say what you can for yourself. Strike me if you
+      like. I should prefer your blows to that corpse-like stiffness you put on.
+      Is there no blood left in your veins? Have you no spirit? Don&rsquo;t you hear
+      me calling you a coward? Yes, indeed, you are a coward. You should never
+      have loved me, since you may not be a man. Is it that black robe of yours
+      which holds you back? Tear it off! When you are naked, perhaps you will
+      remember yourself again.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest slowly repeated his former words:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have sinned. I had no excuse for my sin. I do penitence for my sin
+      without hope of pardon. If I tore off my cassock, I should tear away my
+      very flesh, for I have given myself wholly to God, soul and body. I am a
+      priest.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And I! what is to become of me?&rsquo; cried Albine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked unflinchingly at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;May your sufferings be reckoned against me as so many crimes! May I be
+      eternally punished for the desertion in which I am forced to leave you!
+      That will be only just. All unworthy though I be, I pray for you each
+      night.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She shrugged her shoulders with an air of great discouragement. Her anger
+      was subsiding. She almost felt inclined to pity him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You are mad,&rsquo; she murmured. &lsquo;Keep your prayers. It is you yourself that I
+      want. But you will never understand me. There were so many things I wanted
+      to tell you! Yet you stand there and irritate me with your chatter of
+      another world. Come, let us try to talk sensibly. Let us wait for a moment
+      till we are calmer. You cannot dismiss me in this way, I cannot leave you
+      here. It is because you are here that you are so corpse-like, so cold that
+      I dare not touch you. We won&rsquo;t talk any more just now. We will wait a
+      little.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She ceased speaking, and took a few steps, examining the little church.
+      The rain was still gently pattering against the windows; and the cold damp
+      light seemed to moisten the walls. Not a sound came from outside save the
+      monotonous plashing of the rain. The sparrows were doubtless crouching for
+      shelter under the tiles, and the rowan-tree&rsquo;s deserted branches showed but
+      indistinctly in the veiling, drenching downpour. Five o&rsquo;clock struck,
+      grated out, stroke by stroke, from the wheezy chest of the old clock; and
+      then the silence fell again, seeming to grow yet deeper, dimmer, and more
+      despairing. The priest&rsquo;s painting work, as yet scarcely dry, gave to the
+      high altar and the wainscoting an appearance of gloomy cleanliness, like
+      that of some convent chapel where the sun never shines. Grievous anguish
+      seemed to fill the nave, splashed with the blood that flowed from the
+      limbs of the huge Christ; while, along the walls, the fourteen scenes of
+      the Passion displayed their awful story in red and yellow daubs, reeking
+      with horror. It was life that was suffering the last agonies there, amidst
+      that deathlike quiver of the atmosphere, upon those altars which resembled
+      tombs, in that bare vault which looked like a sepulchre. The surroundings
+      all spoke of slaughter and gloom, terror and anguish and nothingness. A
+      faint scent of incense still lingered there, like the last expiring breath
+      of some dead girl, who had been hurriedly stifled beneath the flagstones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah,&rsquo; said Albine at last, &lsquo;how sweet it used to be in the sunshine! Don&rsquo;t
+      you remember? One morning we walked past a hedge of tall rose bushes, to
+      the left of the flower-garden. I recollect the very colour of the grass;
+      it was almost blue, shot with green. When we reached the end of the hedge
+      we turned and walked back again, so sweet was the perfume of the sunny
+      air. And we did nothing else, that morning; we took just twenty paces
+      forward and then twenty paces back. It was so sweet a spot you would not
+      leave it. The bees buzzed all around; and there was a tomtit that never
+      left us, but skipped along by our side from branch to branch. You
+      whispered to me, &ldquo;How delightful is life!&rdquo; Ah! life! it was the green
+      grass, the trees, the running waters, the sky, and the sun, amongst which
+      we seemed all fair and golden.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She mused for another moment and then continued: &lsquo;Life &lsquo;twas the Paradou.
+      How vast it used to seem to us! Never were we able to find the end of it.
+      The sea of foliage rolled freely with rustling waves as far as the eye
+      could reach. And all that glorious blue overhead! we were free to grow,
+      and soar, and roam, like the clouds without meeting more obstacles than
+      they. The very air was ours!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped and pointed to the low walls of the church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But, here, you are in a grave. You cannot stretch out your hand without
+      hurting it against the stones. The roof hides the sky from you and blots
+      out the sun. It is all so small and confined that your limbs grow stiff
+      and cramped as though you were buried alive.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No,&rsquo; answered the priest. &lsquo;The church is wide as the world.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she waved her hands towards the crosses, and the dying Christ, and the
+      pictures of the Passion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And you live in the very midst of death. The grass, the trees, the
+      springs, the sun, the sky, all are in the death throes around you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, no; all revives, all grows purified and reascends to the source of
+      light.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had now drawn himself quite erect, with flashing eyes. And feeling that
+      he was now invincible, so permeated with faith as to disdain temptation,
+      he quitted the altar, took Albine&rsquo;s hand, and led her, as though she had
+      been his sister, to the ghastly pictures of the Stations of the Cross.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;See,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;this is what God suffered! Jesus is cruelly scourged.
+      Look! His shoulders are naked; His flesh is torn; His blood flows down His
+      back.... And Jesus is crowned with thorns. Tears of blood trickle down His
+      gashed brow. On His temple is a jagged wound.... Again Jesus is insulted
+      by the soldiers. His murderers have scoffingly thrown a purple robe around
+      His shoulders, and they spit upon His face and strike Him, and press the
+      thorny crown deep into His flesh.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine turned away her head, that she might not see the crudely painted
+      pictures, in which the ochreous flesh of Christ had been plentifully
+      bedaubed with carmine wounds. The purple robe round His shoulders seemed
+      like a shred of His skin torn away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why suffer? why die?&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;O Serge, if you would only remember!...
+      You told me, that morning, that you were tired. But I knew that you were
+      only pretending, for the air was quite cool and we had only been walking
+      for a quarter of an hour. But you wanted to sit down that you might hold
+      me in your arms. Right down in the orchard, by the edge of a stream, there
+      was a cherry tree&mdash;you remember it, don&rsquo;t you?&mdash;which you never
+      could pass without wishing to kiss my hands. And your kisses ran all up my
+      arms and shoulders to my lips. Cherry time was over, and so you devoured
+      my lips.... It used to make us feel so sad to see the flowers fading, and
+      one day, when you found a dead bird in the grass, you turned quite pale,
+      and caught me to your breast, as if to forbid the earth to take me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the priest drew her towards the other Stations of the Cross.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hush! hush!&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;look here, and here! Bow down in grief and pity&mdash;&mdash;
+      Jesus falls beneath the weight of His cross. The ascent of Calvary is very
+      tiring. He has dropped down on His knees. But He does not stay to wipe
+      even the sweat from His brow, He rises up again and continues His
+      journey.... And again Jesus falls beneath the weight of His cross. At each
+      step He staggers. This time He has fallen on His side, so heavily that for
+      a moment He lies there quite breathless. His lacerated hands have relaxed
+      their hold upon the cross. His bruised and aching feet leave blood-stained
+      prints behind them. Agonising weariness overwhelms Him, for He carries
+      upon His shoulders the sins of the whole world.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine gazed at the pictured Jesus, lying in a blue shirt prostrate
+      beneath the cross, the blackness of which bedimmed the gold of His
+      aureole. Then, with her glance wandering far away, she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! those meadow-paths! Have you no memory left, Serge? Have you
+      forgotten those soft grassy walks through the meadows, amidst very seas of
+      greenery? On the afternoon I am telling you of, we had only meant to stay
+      out of doors an hour; but we went wandering on and were still wandering
+      when the stars came out above us. Ah! how velvety it was, that endless
+      carpet, soft as finest silk! It was just like a green sea whose gentle
+      waters lapped us round. And well we knew whither those beguiling paths
+      that led nowhere, were taking us! They were taking us to our love, to the
+      joy of living together, to the certainty of happiness.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With his hands trembling with anguish, Abbé Mouret pointed to the
+      remaining pictures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Jesus,&rsquo; he stammered, &lsquo;Jesus is nailed to the cross. The nails are
+      hammered through His outspread hands. A single nail suffices for his feet,
+      whose bones split asunder. He, Himself, while His flesh quivers with pain,
+      fixes His eyes upon heaven and smiles.... Jesus is crucified between two
+      thieves. The weight of His body terribly aggravates His wounds. From His
+      brow, from His limbs, does a bloody sweat stream down. The two thieves
+      insult Him, the passers-by mock at Him, the soldiers cast lots for His
+      raiment. And the shadowy darkness grows deeper and the sun hides
+      himself.... Jesus dies upon the cross. He utters a piercing cry and gives
+      up the ghost. Oh! most terrible of deaths! The veil of the temple is rent
+      in twain from top to bottom. The earth quakes, the stones are broken, and
+      the very graves open.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest had fallen on his knees, his voice choked by sobs, his eyes
+      fixed upon the three crosses of Calvary, where writhed the gaunt pallid
+      bodies of the crucified. Albine placed herself in front of the paintings
+      in order that he might no longer see them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;One evening,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;I lay through the long gloaming with my head
+      upon your lap. It was in the forest, at the end of that great avenue of
+      chestnut-trees, through which the setting sun shot a parting ray. Ah! what
+      a caressing farewell He bade us! He lingered awhile by our feet with a
+      kindly smile, as if saying &ldquo;Till to-morrow.&rdquo; The sky slowly grew paler. I
+      told you merrily that it was taking off its blue gown, and donning its
+      gold-flowered robe of black to go out for the evening. And it was not
+      night that fell, but a soft dimness, a veil of love and mystery, reminding
+      us of those dusky paths, where the foliage arches overhead, one of those
+      paths in which one hides for a moment with the certainty of finding the
+      joyousness of daylight at the other end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That evening the calm clearness of the twilight gave promise of a
+      splendid morrow. When I saw that it did not grow dark as quickly as you
+      wished, I pretended to fall asleep. I may confess it to you now, but I was
+      not really sleeping while you kissed me on the eyes. I felt your kisses
+      and tried to keep from laughing. And then, when the darkness really came,
+      it was like one long caress. The trees slept no more than I did. At night,
+      don&rsquo;t you remember, the flowers always breathed a stronger perfume.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, as he still remained on his knees, while tears streamed down his
+      face, she caught him by the wrists, and pulled him to his feet, resuming
+      passionately:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! if you knew you would bid me carry you off; you would fasten your
+      arms about my neck, lest I should go away without you.... Yesterday I had
+      a longing to see the garden once more. It seems larger, deeper, more
+      unfathomable than ever. I discovered there new scents, so sweetly aromatic
+      that they brought tears into my eyes. In the avenues I found a rain of
+      sunbeams that thrilled me with desire. The roses spoke to me of you. The
+      bullfinches were amazed at seeing me alone. All the garden broke out into
+      sighs. Oh! come! Never has the grass spread itself out more softly. I have
+      marked with a flower the hidden nook whither I long to take you. It is a
+      nest of greenery in the midst of a tangle of brushwood. And there one can
+      hear all the teeming life of the garden, of the trees and the streams and
+      the sky. The earth&rsquo;s very breathing will softly lull us to rest there. Oh!
+      come! come! and let us love one another amidst that universal loving!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he pushed her from him. He had returned to the Chapel of the Dead and
+      stood in front of the painted papier-mache Christ, big as a ten-year-old
+      boy, that writhed in such horridly realistic agony. There were real iron
+      nails driven into the figure&rsquo;s limbs, and the wounds gaped in the torn and
+      bleeding flesh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;O Jesus, Who hast died for us!&rsquo; cried the priest, &lsquo;convince her of our
+      nothingness! Tell her that we are but dust, rottenness, and damnation! Ah!
+      suffer that I may hide my head in a hair-cloth and rest it against Thy
+      feet and stay there, motionless, until I rot away in death. The earth will
+      no longer exist for me. The sun will no longer shine. I shall see nothing
+      more, feel nothing, hear nothing. Nought of all this wretched world will
+      come to turn my soul from its adoration of Thee.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was gradually becoming more and more excited, and he stepped towards
+      Albine with upraised hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You said rightly. It is Death that is present here; Death that is before
+      my eyes; Death that delivers and saves one from all rottenness. Hear me! I
+      renounce, I deny life, I wholly refuse it, I spit upon it. Those flowers
+      of yours stink; your sun dazzles and blinds; your grass makes lepers of
+      those that lie upon it; your garden is but a charnel-place where all rots
+      and putrefies. The earth reeks with abomination. You lie when you talk of
+      love and light and gladsome life in the depths of your palace of greenery.
+      There is nought but darkness there. Those trees of yours exhale a poison
+      which transforms men into beasts; your thickets are charged with the venom
+      of vipers; your streams carry pestilence in their blue waters. If I could
+      snatch away from that world of nature, which you extol, its kirtle of
+      sunshine and its girdle of greenery, you would see it hideous like a very
+      fury, a skeleton, rotting away with disease and vice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And even if you spoke the truth, even if your hands were really filled
+      with pleasures, even if you should carry me to a couch of roses and offer
+      me the dreams of Paradise, I would defend myself yet the more desperately
+      from your embraces. There is war between us; war eternal and implacable.
+      See! the church is very small; it is poverty-stricken; it is ugly; its
+      confessional-box and pulpit are made of common deal, its font is merely of
+      plaster, its altars are formed of four boards which I have painted myself.
+      But what of that? It is yet vaster than your garden, greater than the
+      valley, greater, even, than the whole earth. It is an impregnable fortress
+      which nothing can ever break down. The winds, the sun, the forests, the
+      ocean, all that is, may combine to assault it; yet it will stand erect and
+      unshaken for ever!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, let all the jungles tower aloft and assail the walls with their
+      thorny arms, let all the legions of insects swarm out of their holes in
+      the ground and gnaw at the walls; the church, ruinous though it may seem,
+      will never fall before the invasion of life. It is Death, Death the
+      inexpugnable!... And do you know what will one day happen? The tiny church
+      will grow and spread to such a colossal size, and will cast around such a
+      mighty shadow, that all that nature, you speak of, will give up the ghost.
+      Ah! Death, the Death of everything, with the skies gaping to receive our
+      souls, above the curse-stricken ruins of the world!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he shouted those last words, he pushed Albine forcibly towards the
+      door. She, extremely pale, retreated step by step. When he had finished in
+      a gasping voice she very gravely answered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is all over, then? You drive me away? Yet, I am your wife. It is you
+      who made me so. And God, since He permitted it, cannot punish us to such a
+      point as this.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was now on the threshold, and she added:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Listen! Every day, at sunset, I go to the end of the garden, to the spot
+      where the wall has fallen in. I shall wait for you there.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then she disappeared. The vestry door fell back with a sound like a
+      deep sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0048" id="link2H_4_0048">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The church was perfectly silent, except for the murmuring sound of the
+      rain, which was falling heavily once more. In that sudden change to
+      quietude the priest&rsquo;s anger subsided, and he even felt moved. It was with
+      his face streaming with tears, his frame shaken by sobs, that he went back
+      to throw himself on his knees before the great crucifix. A torrent of
+      ardent thanksgiving burst from his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thanks be to Thee, O God, for the help which Thou hast graciously
+      bestowed upon me. Without Thy grace I should have hearkened unto the
+      promptings of my flesh, and should have miserably returned to my sin. It
+      was Thy grace that girded my loins as with armour for battle; Thy grace
+      was indeed my armour, my courage, the support of my soul, that kept me
+      erect, beyond weakness. Oh! my God, Thou wert in me; it was Thy voice that
+      spoke in me, for I no longer felt the cowardice of the flesh, I could have
+      cut asunder my very heart-strings. And now, O God, I offer Thee my
+      bleeding heart. It no longer belongs to any creature of this world; it is
+      Thine alone. To give it to Thee I have wrenched it from all worldly
+      affection. But think not, O God, that I take any pride to myself for this
+      victory. I know that without Thee I am nothing; and I humbly cast myself
+      at Thy feet.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sank down upon the altar steps, unable to utter another word, while his
+      breath panted incense-like from his parted lips. The divine grace bathed
+      him in ineffable ecstasy. He sought Jesus in the recesses of his being, in
+      that sanctuary of love which he was ever preparing for His worthy
+      reception. And Jesus was now present there. The Abbé knew it by the sweet
+      influences which permeated him. And thereupon he joined with Jesus in that
+      spiritual converse which at times bore him away from earth to
+      companionship with God. He sighed out the verse from the &lsquo;Song of
+      Solomon,&rsquo; &lsquo;My beloved is mine, and I am his; He feedeth his flock among
+      the lilies, until the day be cool, and the shadows flee away.&rsquo; He pondered
+      over the words of the &lsquo;Imitation:&rsquo; &lsquo;It is a great art to know how to talk
+      with Jesus, and it requires much prudence to keep Him near one.&rsquo; And then,
+      with adorable condescension, Jesus came down to him, and spoke with him
+      for hours of his needs, his happiness, and his hopes. Their confidences
+      were not less affectionate and touching than those of two friends, who
+      meet after long separation and quietly retire to converse on the bank of
+      some lonely stream; for during those hours of divine condescension Jesus
+      deigned to be his friend, his best, most faithful friend, one who never
+      forsook him, and who in return for a little love gave him all the
+      treasures of eternal life. That day the priest was eager to prolong the
+      sweet converse, and indeed, when six o&rsquo;clock sounded through the quiet
+      church, he was still listening to the words which echoed through his soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On his side there was unreserved confession, unimpeded by the restraints
+      of language, natural effusion of the heart which spoke even more quickly
+      than the mind. Abbé Mouret told everything to Jesus, as to a God who had
+      come down in all the intimacy of the most loving tenderness, and who would
+      listen to everything. He confessed that he still loved Albine; and he was
+      surprised that he had been able to speak sternly to her and drive her
+      away, without his whole being breaking out into revolt. He marvelled at
+      it, and smiled as though it were some wonderful miracle performed by
+      another. And Jesus told him that he must not be astonished, and that the
+      greatest saints were often but unconscious instruments in the hands of
+      God. Then the Abbé gave expression to a doubt. Had he not lost merit in
+      seeking refuge in the Cross and even in the Passion of his Saviour? Had he
+      not shown that he possessed as yet but little courage, since he had not
+      dared to fight unaided? But Jesus evinced kindly tolerance, and answered
+      that man&rsquo;s weakness was God&rsquo;s continual care, and that He especially loved
+      those suffering souls, to whose assistance He went, like a friend to the
+      bedside of a sick companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But was it a sin to love Albine, a sin for which he, Serge, would be
+      damned? No; if his love was clean of all fleshly taint, and added another
+      hope to his desire for eternal life. But, then, how was he to love her? In
+      silence; without speaking a word to her, without taking a step towards
+      her; simply allowing his pure affection to breathe forth, like a sweet
+      perfume, pleasing unto heaven. And Jesus smiled with increasing
+      kindliness, drawing nearer as if to encourage confession, in such wise
+      that the priest grew bolder and began to recapitulate Albine&rsquo;s charms. She
+      had hair that was fair and golden as an angel&rsquo;s; she was very white, with
+      big soft eyes, like those of the aureoled saints. Jesus seemed to listen
+      to this in silence, though a smile still played upon His face. And the
+      priest continued: She had grown much taller. She was now like a queen,
+      with rounded form and splendid shoulders. Oh! to clasp her waist, were it
+      only for a second, and to feel her shoulders drawn close by his embrace!
+      But the smile on the divine countenance then paled and died away, as a
+      star sinks and falls beneath the horizon. Abbé Mouret now spoke all alone.
+      Ah! had he not shown himself too hard-hearted? Why had he driven her away
+      without one single word of affection, since Heaven allowed him to love
+      her?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I do love her! I do love her!&rsquo; he cried aloud, in a distracted voice,
+      that rang through the church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He thought he saw her still standing there. She was stretching out her
+      arms to him; she was beautiful enough to make him break all his vows. He
+      threw himself upon her bosom without thought of the reverence due to his
+      surroundings, he clasped her and rained kisses upon her face. It was
+      before her that he now knelt, imploring her mercy, and beseeching her to
+      forgive him his unkindness. He told her that, at times a voice which was
+      not his own spoke through his lips. Could he himself ever have treated her
+      harshly? It was the strange voice that had repulsed her. It could not,
+      surely, be he himself, for he would have been unable to touch a hair of
+      her head without loving emotion. And yet he had driven her away. The
+      church was really empty! Whither should he hasten to find her again, to
+      bring her back, and wipe her tears away with kisses? The rain was
+      streaming down more violently than ever. The roads must be rivers of mud.
+      He pictured her to himself lashed by the downpour, tottering alongside the
+      ditches, her clothes soaked and clinging to her skin. No! no! it could not
+      have been himself; it was that other voice, the jealous voice that had so
+      cruelly sought to slay his love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;O Jesus!&rsquo; he cried in desperation, &lsquo;be merciful and give her back to me!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his Lord was no longer there. Then Abbé Mouret, awaking with a start,
+      turned horribly pale. He understood it all. He had not known how to keep
+      Jesus with him. He had lost his friend, and had been left defenceless
+      against the powers of evil. Instead of that inward light, which had shone
+      so brightly within him as he received his God, he now found utter
+      darkness, a foul vapour that irritated his senses. Jesus had withdrawn His
+      grace on leaving him; and he, who since early morning had been so strong
+      with heaven-sent help, now felt utterly miserable, forsaken, weak and
+      helpless as an infant. How frightful was his fall! How galling its
+      bitterness! To have straggled so heroically, to have remained unshaken,
+      invincible, implacable, while the temptress actually stood before him,
+      with all her warm life, her swelling bosom and superb shoulders, her
+      perfume of love and passion; and then to fall so shamefully, to throb with
+      desire, when she had disappeared, leaving behind her but the echo of her
+      skirts, and the fragrance diffused from her white neck! Now, these mere
+      recollections sufficed to make her all powerful, her influence permeated
+      the church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Jesus! Jesus!&rsquo; cried the priest, once more, &lsquo;return, come back to me;
+      speak to me once again!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Jesus remained deaf to his cry. For a moment Abbé Mouret raised his
+      arms to heaven in desperate entreaty. His shoulders cracked and strained
+      beneath the wild violence of his supplications. But soon his hands fell
+      down again in discouragement. Heaven preserved that hopeless silence which
+      suppliants at times encounter. Then he once more sat down on the altar
+      steps, heart-crushed and with ashen face, pressing his elbows to his
+      sides, as though he were trying to reduce his flesh to the smallest
+      proportions possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;My God! Thou deserted me!&rsquo; he murmured. &lsquo;Nevertheless, Thy will be done!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke not another word, but sat there, panting breathlessly, like a
+      hunted beast that cowers motionless in fear of the hounds. Ever since his
+      sin, he had thus seemed to be the sport of the divine grace. It denied
+      itself to his most ardent prayers; it poured down upon him, unexpectedly
+      and refreshingly, when he had lost all hope of winning it for long years
+      to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first he had been inclined to rebel against this dispensation of
+      Heaven, complaining like a betrayed lover, and demanding the immediate
+      return of that consoling grace, whose kiss made him so strong. But
+      afterwards, after unavailing outbursts of anger, he had learned to
+      understand that humility profited him most and could alone enable him to
+      endure the withdrawal of the divine assistance. Then, for hours and for
+      days, he would humble himself and wait for comfort which came not. In vain
+      he cast himself unreservedly into the hands of God, annihilated himself
+      before the Divinity, wearied himself with the incessant repetition of
+      prayers. He could not perceive God&rsquo;s presence with him; and his flesh,
+      breaking free from all restraint, rose up in rebellious desire. It was a
+      slow agony of temptation, in which the weapons of faith fell, one by one,
+      from his faltering hands, in which he lay inert in the clutch of passion,
+      in which he beheld with horror his own ignominy, without having the
+      courage to raise his little finger to free himself from the thraldom of
+      sin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was now his life. He had felt sin&rsquo;s attacks in every form. Not a day
+      passed that he was not tried. Sin assumed a thousand guises, assailed him
+      through his eyes and ears, flew boldly at his throat, leaped treacherously
+      upon his shoulders, or stole torturingly into his bones. His transgression
+      was ever present, he almost always beheld Albine dazzling as the sunshine,
+      lighting up the greenery of the Paradou. He only ceased to see her in
+      those rare moments when the divine grace deigned to close his eyes with
+      its cool caresses. And he strove to hide his sufferings as one hides those
+      of some disgraceful disease. He wrapped himself in the endless silence,
+      which no one knew how to make him break, filling the parsonage with his
+      martyrdom and resignation, and exasperating La Teuse, who, at times, when
+      his back was turned, would shake her fist at heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This time he was alone now, and need take no care to hide his torment. Sin
+      had just struck him such an overwhelming blow, that he had not strength
+      left to move from the altar steps, where he had fallen. He remained there,
+      sighing, and groaning, parched with agony, incapable of a single tear. And
+      he thought of the calm unruffled life that had once been his. Ah! the
+      perfect peace, the full confidence of his first days at Les Artaud! The
+      path of salvation had seemed so straight and easy then! He had smiled at
+      the very mention of temptation. He had lived in the midst of wickedness,
+      without knowledge of it, without fear of it, certain of being able to
+      withstand it. He had been a model priest, so pure and chaste, so
+      inexperienced and innocent in God&rsquo;s sight, that God had led him by the
+      hand like a little child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But now, all that childlike innocence was dead, God visited him in the
+      morning, and forthwith tried him. A state of temptation became his life on
+      earth. Now that full manhood and sin had come upon him, he entered into
+      the everlasting struggle. Could it be that God really loved him more now
+      than before? The great saints have all left fragments of their torn flesh
+      upon the thorns of the way of sorrow. He tried to gather some consolation
+      from this circumstance. At each laceration of his flesh, each racking of
+      his bones, he tried to assure himself of some exceeding great reward. And
+      then, no infliction that Heaven might now cast upon him could be too
+      heavy. He even looked back with scorn on his former serenity, his easy
+      fervour, which had set him on his knees with mere girlish enthusiasm, and
+      left him unconscious even of the bruising of the hard stones. He strove
+      also to discover pleasure in pain, in plunging into it, annihilating
+      himself in it. But, even while he poured out thanks to God, his teeth
+      chattered with growing terror, and the voice of his rebellious blood cried
+      out to him that this was all falsehood, and that the only happiness worth
+      desiring was in Albine&rsquo;s arms, amongst the flowers of the Paradou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet he had put aside Mary for Jesus, sacrificing his heart that he might
+      subdue his flesh, and hoping to implant some virility in his faith. Mary
+      disquieted him too much, with her smoothly braided hair, her outstretched
+      hands, and her womanly smile. He could never kneel before her without
+      dropping his eyes, for fear of catching sight of the hem of her dress.
+      Then, too, he accused her of having treated him too tenderly in former
+      times. She had kept him sheltered so long within the folds of her robe,
+      that he had let himself slip from her arms to those of a human creature
+      without being conscious even of the change of his affection. He thought of
+      all the roughness of Brother Archangias, of his refusal to worship Mary,
+      of the distrustful glances with which he had seemed to watch her. He
+      himself despaired of ever rising to such a height of roughness, and so he
+      simply left her, hiding her images and deserting her altar. Yet she
+      remained in his heart, like some love which, though unavowed, is ever
+      present. Sin, with sacrilege whose very horror made him shudder, made use
+      of her to tempt him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whenever he still invoked her, as he did at times of irrepressible
+      emotion, it was Albine who showed herself beneath the white veil, with the
+      blue scarf knotted round her waist and the golden roses blooming on her
+      bare feet. All the representations of the Virgin, the Virgin with the
+      royal mantle of cloth-of-gold, the Virgin crowned with stars, the Virgin
+      visited by the Angel of the Annunciation, the peaceful Virgin poised
+      between a lily and a distaff, all brought him some memory of Albine, her
+      smiling eyes or her delicately curved mouth or her softly rounded cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereupon, by a supreme effort, he drove the female element from his
+      worship, and sought refuge in Jesus, though even His gentle mildness
+      sometimes proved a source of disquietude to him. What he needed was a
+      jealous God, an implacable God, the Jehovah of the Old Testament, girded
+      with thunder and manifesting Himself only to chastise the terrified world.
+      He had done with the saints and the angels and the Divine Mother; he bowed
+      down before God Himself alone, the omnipotent Master, who demanded from
+      him his every breath. And he felt the hand of this God laid heavily upon
+      him, holding him helpless at His mercy through space and time, like a
+      guilty atom. Ah! to be nothing, to be damned, to dream of hell, to wrestle
+      vainly against hideous temptations, all that was surely good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From Jesus he took but the cross. He was seized with that passion for the
+      cross which has made so many lips press themselves again and again to the
+      crucifix till they were worn away with kissing. He took up the cross and
+      followed Jesus. He sought to make it heavier, the mightiest of burdens; it
+      was great joy to him to fall beneath its weight, to drag it on his knees,
+      his back half broken. In it he beheld the only source of strength for the
+      soul, of joy for the mind, of the consummation of virtue and the
+      perfection of holiness. In it lay all that was good; all ended in death
+      upon it. To suffer and to die, those words ever sounded in his ears, as
+      the end and goal of mortal wisdom. And, when he had fastened himself to
+      the cross, he enjoyed the boundless consolation of God&rsquo;s love. It was no
+      longer, now, upon Mary that he lavished filial tenderness or lover&rsquo;s
+      passion. He loved for love&rsquo;s mere sake, with an absolute abstract love. He
+      loved God with a love that lifted him out of himself, out of all else, and
+      wrapped him round with a dazzling radiance of glory. He was like a torch
+      that burns away with blazing light. And death seemed to him to be only a
+      great impulse of love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what had he omitted to do that he was thus so sorely tried? With his
+      hand he wiped away the perspiration that streamed down his brow, and
+      reflected that, that very morning, he had made his usual self-examination
+      without finding any great guilt within him. Was he not leading a life of
+      great austerity and mortification of the flesh? Did he not love God solely
+      and blindly? Ah! how he would have blessed His Holy Name had He only
+      restored him his peace, deeming him now sufficiently punished for his
+      transgression! But, perhaps, that sin of his could never be expiated. And
+      then, in spite of himself, his mind reverted to Albine and the Paradou,
+      and all their memories.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first he tried to make excuses for himself. He had fallen, one evening,
+      senseless upon the tiled floor of his bedroom, stricken with brain fever.
+      For three weeks he had remained unconscious. His blood surged furiously
+      through his veins and raged within him like a torrent that had burst its
+      banks. His whole body, from the crown of his head to the soles of his
+      feet, was so scoured and renewed and wrought afresh by the mighty
+      labouring of his ailment, that in his delirium he had sometimes thought he
+      could hear the very hammer blows of workmen that nailed his bones together
+      again. Then, one morning, he had awakened, feeling like a new being. He
+      was born a second time, freed of all that his five-and-twenty years of
+      life had successively implanted in him. His childish piety, his education
+      at the seminary, the faith of his early priesthood, had all vanished, had
+      been carried off, and their place was bare and empty. In truth, it could
+      be hell alone that had thus prepared him for the reception of evil,
+      disarming him of all his former weapons, and reducing his body to languor
+      and softness, through which sin might readily enter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He, perfectly unconscious of it all, unknowingly surrendered himself to
+      the gradual approach of evil. When he had reopened his eyes in the
+      Paradou, he had felt himself an infant once more, with no memory of the
+      past, no knowledge of his priesthood. He experienced a gentle pleasure, a
+      glad feeling of surprise at thus beginning life afresh, as though it were
+      all new and strange to him and would be delightful to learn. Oh! the sweet
+      apprenticeship, the charming observations, the delicious discoveries! That
+      Paradou was a vast abode of felicity; and hell, in placing him there, had
+      known full well that he would be defenceless. Never, in his first youth,
+      had he known such enjoyment in growing. That first youth of his, when he
+      now thought of it, seemed quite black and gloomy, graceless, wan and
+      inactive, as if it had been spent far away from the sunlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at the Paradou, how joyfully had he hailed the sun! How admiringly had
+      he gazed at the first tree, at the first flower, at the tiniest insect he
+      had seen, at the most insignificant pebble he had picked up! The very
+      stones charmed him. The horizon was a source of never-ending amazement.
+      One clear morning, the memory of which still filled his eyes, bringing
+      back a perfume of jasmine, a lark&rsquo;s clear song, he had been so affected by
+      emotion that he felt all power desert his limbs. He had long found
+      pleasure in learning the sensations of life. And, ah! the morning when
+      Albine had been born beside him amidst the roses! As he thought of it, an
+      ecstatic smile broke out upon his face. She rose up like a star that was
+      necessary to the very sun&rsquo;s existence. She illumined everything, she made
+      everything clear. She made his life complete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then in fancy he once again walked with her through the Paradou. He
+      remembered the little curls that waved behind her neck as she ran on
+      before him. She exhaled delicious scent, and the touch of her warm swaying
+      skirts seemed like a caress. And when she clasped him with her supple
+      curving arms, he half expected to see her, so slight and slender she was,
+      twine herself around him. It was she who went foremost. She led him
+      through winding paths, where they loitered, that their walk might last the
+      longer. It was she who instilled into him love for nature; and it was by
+      watching the loves of the plants that he had learned to love her, with a
+      love that was long, indeed, in bursting into life, but whose sweetness had
+      been theirs at last. Beneath the shade of the giant tree they had reached
+      their journey&rsquo;s goal. Oh! to clasp her once again&mdash;yet once again!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A low groan suddenly came from the priest. He hastily sprang up and then
+      flung himself down again. Temptation had just assailed him afresh. Into
+      what paths were his recollections leading him? Did he not know, only too
+      well, that Satan avails himself of every wile to insinuate his
+      serpent-head into the soul, even when it is absorbed in self-examination?
+      No! no! he had no excuse. His illness had in no wise authorised him to
+      sin. He should have set strict guard upon himself, and have sought God
+      anew upon recovering from his fever. And what a frightful proof he now had
+      of his vileness: he was not even able to make calm confession of his sin.
+      Would he never be able to silence his nature? He wildly thought of
+      scooping his brains out of his skull that he might be able to think no
+      more, and of opening his veins that his blood might no longer torment him.
+      For a moment he buried his face within his hands, shuddering as though the
+      beasts that he felt prowling around him might infect him with the hot
+      breath of temptation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his thoughts strayed on in spite of himself, and his blood throbbed
+      wildly in his very heart. Though he held his clenched fists to his eyes,
+      he still saw Albine, dazzling like a sun. Every effort that he made to
+      press the vision from his sight only made her shine out before him with
+      increased brilliancy. Was God, then, utterly forsaking him, that he could
+      find no refuge from temptation? And, in spite of all his efforts to
+      control his thoughts, he espied every tiny blade of grass that thrust
+      itself up by Albine&rsquo;s skirts; he saw a little thistle-flower fastened in
+      her hair, against which he remembered that he had pricked his lips. Even
+      the perfumed atmosphere of the Paradou floated round him, and
+      well-remembered sounds came back, the repeated call of a bird, then an
+      interval of hushed silence, then a sigh floating through the trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why did not Heaven at once strike him dead with its lightning? That would
+      have been less cruel. It was with a voluptuous pang, like the pangs which
+      assail the damned, that he recalled his transgression. He shuddered when
+      he again heard in his heart the abominable words that he had spoken at
+      Albine&rsquo;s feet. Their echoes were now accusing him before the throne of
+      God. He had acknowledged Woman as his sovereign. He had yielded to her as
+      a slave, kissing her feet, longing to be the water she drank and the bread
+      she ate. He began to understand now why he could no longer recover
+      self-control. God had given him over to Woman. But he would chastise her,
+      scourge her, break her very limbs to force her to let him go! It was she
+      who was the slave; she, the creature of impurity, to whom the Church
+      should have denied a soul. Then he braced himself, and shook his fists at
+      the vision of Albine; but his fists opened and his hands glided along her
+      shoulders in a loving caress, while his lips, just now breathing out anger
+      and insult, pressed themselves to her hair, stammering forth words of
+      adoration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret opened his eyes again. The burning apparition of Albine
+      vanished. It was sudden and unexpected solace. He was able to weep. Tears
+      flowed slowly and refreshingly down his cheeks, and he drew a long breath,
+      still fearing to move, lest the Evil One should again grip him by the
+      neck, for he yet thought that he heard the snarl of a beast behind him.
+      And then he found such pleasure in the cessation of his sufferings that
+      his one thought was to prolong the enjoyment of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside the rain had ceased falling. The sun was setting in a vast crimson
+      glow, which spread across the windows like curtains of rose-coloured
+      satin. The church was quite warm and bright in the parting breath of the
+      sinking luminary. The priest thanked God for the respite He had been
+      pleased to vouchsafe to him. A broad ray of light, like a beam of
+      gold-dust, streamed through the nave and illumined the far end of the
+      building, the clock, the pulpit, and the high altar. Perhaps the Divine
+      grace was returning to him from heaven along that radiant path. He watched
+      with interest the atoms that came and went with prodigious speed through
+      the ray, like a swarm of busy messengers ever hastening with news from the
+      sun to the earth. A thousand lighted candles would not have filled the
+      church with such splendour. Curtains of cloth-of-gold seemed to hang
+      behind the high altar; treasures of the goldsmith&rsquo;s art covered all the
+      ledges; candle-holders arose in dazzling sheaves; censers glowed full of
+      burning gems; sacred vases gleamed like fiery comets; and around all there
+      seemed to be a rain of luminous flowers amidst waving lacework&mdash;beds,
+      bouquets, and garlands of roses, from whose expanding petals dropped
+      showers of stars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never had Abbé Mouret desired such magnificence for his poor church. He
+      smiled, and dreamt of how he might retain all that splendour there, and
+      then arrange it most effectively. He would have preferred to see the
+      curtains of cloth-of-gold hung rather higher; the vases, too, needed more
+      careful arrangement; and he thought that the bouquets of flowers might be
+      tied up more neatly, and the garlands be more regularly shaped. Yet how
+      wondrously magnificent it all was! He was the pontiff of a church of gold.
+      Bishops, princes, princesses, arrayed in royal mantles, multitudes of
+      believers, bending to the ground, were coming to visit it, encamping in
+      the valley, waiting for weeks at the door until they should be able to
+      enter. They kissed his feet, for even his feet had turned to gold, and
+      worked miracles. The bath of gold mounted to his knees. A golden heart was
+      beating within his golden breast, with so clear a musical pulsation that
+      the waiting crowds could hear it from outside. Then a feeling of
+      overweening pride seized upon him. He was an idol. The golden beam mounted
+      still higher, the high altar was all ablaze with glory, and the priest
+      grew certain that the Divine grace must be returning to him, such was his
+      inward satisfaction. The fierce snarl behind him had now grown gentle and
+      coaxing, and he only felt on his shoulder a soft velvety pressure, as
+      though some giant cat were lightly caressing him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He still pursued his reverie. Never before had he seen things under such a
+      favourable light. Everything seemed quite easy to him now that he once
+      more felt full of strength. Since Albine was waiting for him, he would go
+      and join her. It was only natural. On the previous morning he had married
+      Fortune and Rosalie. The Church did not forbid marriages. He saw that
+      young couple again as they knelt before him, smiling and nudging each
+      other while his hands were held over them in benediction. Then, in the
+      evening, they had shown him their room. Each word that he had spoken to
+      them echoed loudly in his ear. He had told Fortune that God had sent him a
+      companion, because He did not wish man to live alone; and he had told
+      Rosalie that she must cleave to her husband, never leaving him, but always
+      acting as his obedient helpmate. But he had said these things also for
+      Albine and himself. Was she not his companion, his obedient helpmate, whom
+      God had sent to him that his manhood might not wither up in solitude?
+      Besides, they had been joined the one to the other. He felt surprised that
+      he had not understood and recognised it at once; that he had not gone away
+      with her, as his duty plainly required that he should have done. But he
+      had quite made up his mind now; he would certainly join her in the
+      morning. He could be with her in half an hour. He would go through the
+      village, and take the road up the hill; it was much the shortest way. He
+      could do what he pleased; he was the master, and no one would presume to
+      say anything to him. If any one looked at him, a wave of his hand would
+      force them to bend their heads. He would live with Albine. He would call
+      her his wife. They would be very happy together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The golden stream mounted still higher, and played amongst his fingers.
+      Again did he seem to be immersed in a bath of gold. He would take the
+      altar-vases away to ornament his house, he would keep up a fine
+      establishment, he would pay his servants with fragments of chalices which
+      he could easily break with his fingers. He would hang his bridal-bed with
+      the cloth-of-gold that draped the altar; and he would give his wife for
+      jewels the golden hearts and chaplets and crosses that hung from the necks
+      of the Virgin and the saints. The church itself, if another storey were
+      added to it, would supply them with a palace. God would have no objection
+      to make since He had allowed them to love each other. And, besides, was it
+      not he who was now God, with the people kissing his golden miracle-working
+      feet?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret rose. He made that sweeping gesture of Jeanbernat&rsquo;s, that wide
+      gesture of negation, that took in everything as far as the horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There is nothing, nothing, nothing!&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;God does not exist.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A mighty shudder seemed to sweep through the church. The terrified priest
+      turned deadly pale and listened. Who had spoken? Who was it that had
+      blasphemed? Suddenly the velvety caress, whose gentle pressure he had felt
+      upon his shoulder, turned fierce and savage: sharp talons seemed to be
+      rending his flesh, and once more he felt his blood streaming forth. Yet he
+      remained on his feet, struggling against the sudden attack. He cursed and
+      reviled the triumphant sin that sniggered and grinned round his temples,
+      whilst all the hammers of the Evil One battered at them. Why had he not
+      been on his guard against Satan&rsquo;s wiles? Did he not know full well that it
+      was his habit to glide up softly with gentle paws that he might drive them
+      like blades into the very vitals of his victim?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His anger increased as he thought how he had been entrapped, like a mere
+      child. Was he destined, then, to be ever hurled to the ground, with sin
+      crouching victoriously on his breast? This time he had actually denied his
+      God. It was all one fatal descent. His transgression had destroyed his
+      faith, and then dogma had tottered. One single doubt of the flesh,
+      pleading abomination, sufficed to sweep heaven away. The divine ordinances
+      irritated one; the divine mysteries made one smile. Then came other
+      temptations and allurements; gold, power, unrestrained liberty, an
+      irresistible longing for enjoyment, culminating in luxuriousness,
+      sprawling on a bed of wealth and pride. And then God was robbed. His
+      vessels were broken to adorn woman&rsquo;s impurity. Ah! well, then, he was
+      damned. Nothing could make any difference to him now. Sin might speak
+      aloud. It was useless to struggle further. The monsters who had hovered
+      about his neck were battening on his vitals now. He yielded to them with
+      hideous satisfaction. He shook his fists at the church. No; he believed no
+      longer in the divinity of Christ; he believed no longer in the Holy
+      Trinity; he believed in naught but himself, and his muscles and the
+      appetites of his body. He wanted to live. He felt the necessity of being a
+      man. Oh! to speed along through the open air, to be lusty and strong, to
+      owe obedience to no jealous master, to fell one&rsquo;s enemies with stones, to
+      carry off the fair maidens that passed upon one&rsquo;s shoulders. He would
+      break out from that living tomb where cruel hands had thrust him. He would
+      awaken his manhood, which had only been slumbering. And might he die of
+      shame if he should find that it were really dead! And might the Divinity
+      be accursed if, by the touch of His finger, He had made him different from
+      the rest of mankind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest stood erect, his mind all dazed and scared. He fancied that, at
+      this fresh outburst of blasphemy, the church was falling down upon him.
+      The sunlight, which had poured over the high altar, had gradually spread
+      and mounted the walls like ruddy fire. Flames soared and licked the
+      rafters, then died away in a sanguineous, ember-like glow. And all at once
+      the church became quite black. It was as though the fires of the setting
+      sun had burst the roof asunder, pierced the walls, thrown open wide
+      breaches on every side to some exterior foe. The gloomy framework seemed
+      to shake beneath some violent assault. Night was coming on quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, in the far distance, the priest heard a gentle murmur rising from
+      the valley of Les Artaud. The time had been when he had not understood the
+      impassioned language of those burning lands, where writhed but knotted
+      vine-stocks, withered almond-trees, and decrepit olives sprawling with
+      crippled limbs. Protected by his ignorance, he had passed undisturbed
+      through all that world of passion. But, to-day, his ear detected the
+      slightest sigh of the leaves that lay panting in the heat. Afar off, on
+      the edge of the horizon, the hills, still hot with the sinking luminary&rsquo;s
+      farewell, seemed to set themselves in motion with the tramp of an army on
+      the march. Nearer at hand, the scattered rocks, the stones along the road,
+      all the pebbles in the valley, throbbed and rolled as if possessed by a
+      craving for motion. Then the tracts of ruddy soil, the few fields that had
+      been reduced to cultivation, seemed to heave and growl like rivers that
+      had burst their banks, bearing along in a blood-like flood the
+      engenderings of seeds, the births of roots, the embraces of plants. Soon
+      everything was in motion. The vine-branches appeared to crawl along like
+      huge insects; the parched corn and the dry grass formed into dense,
+      lance-waving battalions; the trees stretched out their boughs like
+      wrestlers making ready for a contest; the fallen leaves skipped forward;
+      the very dust on the road rolled on. It was a moving multitude reinforced
+      by fresh recruits at every step; a legion, the sound of whose coming went
+      on in front of it; an outburst of passionate life, sweeping everything
+      along in a mighty whirlwind of fruitfulness. And all at once the assault
+      began. From the limits of the horizon, the whole countryside, the hills
+      and stones and fields and trees, rushed upon the church. At the first
+      shock, the building quivered and cracked. The walls were pierced and the
+      tiles on the roof were thrown down. But the great Christ, although shaken,
+      did not fall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A short respite followed. Outside, the voices sounded more angrily, and
+      the priest could now distinguish human ones amongst them. The Artauds,
+      those bastards who sprang up out of the rocky soil with the persistence of
+      brambles, were now in their turn blowing a blast that reeked of teeming
+      life. They had planted everywhere forests of humanity that swallowed up
+      all around them. They came up to the church, they shattered the door with
+      a push, and threatened to block up the very nave with the invading scions
+      of their race. Behind them came the beasts; the oxen that tried to batter
+      down the walls with their horns, the flocks of asses, goats, and sheep,
+      that dashed against the ruined church like living waves, while swarms of
+      wood-lice and crickets attacked the foundations and reduced them to dust
+      with their sawlike teeth. Yet again, on the other side, there was
+      Desirée&rsquo;s poultry-yard, where the dunghill reeked with suffocating fumes.
+      Here the big cock, Alexander, sounded the assault, and the hens loosened
+      the stones with their beaks, and the rabbits burrowed under the very
+      altars; whilst the pig, too fat to stir, grunted and waited till all the
+      sacred ornaments should be reduced to warm ashes in which he might wallow
+      at his ease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A great roar ascended, and a second assault was delivered. The villagers,
+      the animals, all that overflowing sea of life assailed the church with
+      such impetuosity that the rafters bent and curved. This time a part of the
+      walls tottered and fell down, the ceiling shook, the woodwork of the
+      windows was carried away, and the grey mist of the evening streamed in
+      through the frightful gaping breaches. The great Christ now only clung to
+      His cross by the nail that pierced His left hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A mighty shout hailed the downfall of the block of wall. Yet the church
+      still stood there firmly, in spite of the injuries it had received. It
+      offered a stern, silent, unflinching resistance, clutching desperately to
+      the tiniest stones of its foundations. It seemed as though, to keep itself
+      from falling, it required only the support of its slenderest pillar,
+      which, by some miracle of equilibration, held up the gaping roof. Then
+      Abbé Mouret beheld the rude plants of the plateau, the dreadful-looking
+      growths that had become hard as iron amidst the arid rocks, that were
+      knotted like snakes and bossy with muscles, set themselves to work. The
+      rust-hued lichens gnawed away at the rough plasterwork like fiery leprosy.
+      Then the thyme-plants thrust their roots between the bricks like so many
+      iron wedges. The lavenders insinuated hooked fingers into the loosened
+      stonework, and by slow persistent efforts tore the blocks asunder. The
+      junipers, the rosemaries, the prickly holly bushes, climbed higher and
+      battered the walls with irresistible blows; and even the grass, the grass
+      whose dry blades slipped beneath the great door, stiffened itself into
+      steel-like spears and made its way down the nave, where it forced up the
+      flagstones with powerful levers. It was a victorious revolt, it was
+      revolutionary nature constructing barricades out of the overturned altars,
+      and wrecking the church which had for centuries cast too deep a shadow
+      over it. The other combatants had fallen back, and let the plants, the
+      thyme and the lavender and the lichens, complete the overthrow of the
+      building with their ceaseless little blows, their constant gnawing, which
+      proved more destructive than the heavier onslaught of the stronger
+      assailants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, suddenly, the end came. The rowan-tree, whose topmost branches had
+      already forced their way through the broken windows under the vaulted
+      roof, rushed in violently with its formidable stream of greenery. It
+      planted itself in the centre of the nave and grew there monstrously. Its
+      trunk expanded till its girth became so colossal that it seemed as though
+      it would burst the church asunder like a girdle spanning it too closely.
+      Its branches shot out in knotted arms, each one of which broke down a
+      piece of the wall or thrust off a strip of the roof, and they went on
+      multiplying without cessation, each branch ramifying, till a fresh tree
+      sprang out of each single knot, with such impetuosity of growth that the
+      ruins of the church, pierced through and through like a sieve, flew into
+      fragments, scattering a fine dust to the four quarters of the heavens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the giant tree seemed to reach the stars; its forest of branches was a
+      forest of legs, arms, and breasts full of sap; the long locks of women
+      streamed down from it; men&rsquo;s heads burst out from the bark; and up aloft
+      pairs of lovers, lying languid by the edges of their nests, filled the air
+      with the music of their delights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A final blast of the storm which had broken over the church swept away the
+      dust of its remains: the pulpit and the confessional-box, which had been
+      ground into powder, the lacerated holy pictures, the shattered sacred
+      vessels, all the litter at which the legion of sparrows that had once
+      dwelt amongst the tiles was eagerly pecking. The great Christ, torn from
+      the cross, hung for a moment from one of the streaming women&rsquo;s curls, and
+      then was whirled away into the black darkness, in the depths of which it
+      sank with a loud crash. The Tree of Life had pierced the heavens; it
+      overtopped the stars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret was filled with the mad joy of an accursed spirit at the sight
+      before him. The church was vanquished; God no longer had a house. And
+      thenceforward God could no longer trouble him. He was free to rejoin
+      Albine, since it was she who triumphed. He laughed at himself for having
+      declared, an hour previously, that the church would swallow up the whole
+      earth with its shadow. The earth, indeed, had avenged itself by consuming
+      the church. The mad laughter into which he broke had the effect of
+      suddenly awakening him from his hallucination. He gazed stupidly round the
+      nave, which the evening shadows were slowly darkening. Through the windows
+      he could see patches of star-spangled sky; and he was about to stretch out
+      his arms to feel the walls, when he heard Desirée calling to him from the
+      vestry-passage:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Serge! Serge! Are you there? Why don&rsquo;t you answer? I have been looking
+      for you for this last half-hour.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She came in; she was holding a lighted lamp; and the priest then saw that
+      the church was still standing. He could no longer understand anything, but
+      remained in a horrible state of doubt betwixt the unconquerable church,
+      springing up again from its ashes, and Albine, the all-powerful, who could
+      shake the very throne of God by a single breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0049" id="link2H_4_0049">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      X
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Desirée came up to him, full of merry chatter.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Are you there? Are you there?&rsquo; she cried. &lsquo;Why are you playing at
+      hide-and-seek? I called out to you at the top of my voice at least a dozen
+      times. I thought you must have gone out.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She pried into all the gloomy corners with an inquisitive glance, and even
+      stepped up to the confessional-box, as though she had expected to surprise
+      some one hiding there. Then she came back to Serge, disappointed, and
+      continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So you are quite alone? Have you been asleep? What amusement do you find
+      in shutting yourself up all alone in the dark? Come along; it is time we
+      went to dinner.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Abbé drew his feverish hands across his brow to wipe away the traces
+      of the thoughts which he feared were plain for all the world to read. He
+      fumbled mechanically at the buttons of his cassock, which seemed to him
+      all disarranged. Then he followed his sister with stern-set face and never
+      a sign of emotion, stiffened by that priestly energy which throws the
+      dignity of sacerdotalism like a veil over the agonies of the flesh.
+      Desirée did not even suspect that there was anything the matter with him.
+      She simply said as they entered the dining-room:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have had such a good sleep; but you have been talking too much, and
+      have made yourself quite pale.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the evening, after dinner, Brother Archangias came in to have his game
+      of cards with La Teuse. He was in a very merry mood that night; and, when
+      the Brother was merry, it was his habit to prod La Teuse in the sides with
+      his big fists, an attention which she returned by heartily boxing his
+      ears. This skirmishing made them both laugh, with a laughter that shook
+      the very ceiling. The Brother, too, when he was in these gay humours,
+      would devise all kinds of pranks. He would try to smash plates with his
+      nose, and would offer to wager that he could break through the dining-room
+      door in battering-ram fashion. He would also empty the snuff out of his
+      box into the old servant&rsquo;s coffee, or would thrust a handful of pebbles
+      down her neck. The merest trifle would give rise to these noisy outbursts
+      of gaiety in the very midst of his wonted surliness. Some little incident,
+      at which nobody else laughed, often sufficed to throw him into a state of
+      wild hilarity, make him stamp his feet, twirl himself round like a top,
+      and hold in his splitting sides.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What is it that makes you so gay to-night?&rsquo; La Teuse inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made no reply, bestriding a chair and galloping round the table on it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well! well! go on making a baby of yourself!&rsquo; said the old woman; &lsquo;and,
+      my gracious, what a big baby you are! If the Lord is looking at you, He
+      must be very well pleased with you!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Brother had just slipped off the chair and was lying on the floor,
+      with his legs in the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He does see me, and is pleased to see me as I am. It is His wish that I
+      should be gay. When He wishes me to be merry for a time, He rings a bell
+      in my body, and then I begin to roll about; and all Paradise smiles as it
+      watches me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He dragged himself on his back to the wall, and then, supporting himself
+      on the nape of his neck, he hoisted up his body as high as he could and
+      began drumming on the wall with his heels. His cassock slipped down and
+      exposed to view his black breeches, which were patched at the knees with
+      green cloth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Look, Monsieur le Curé,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;you see how high I can reach with my
+      heels. I dare bet that you couldn&rsquo;t do as much. Come! look amused and
+      laugh a little. It is better to drag oneself along on one&rsquo;s back than to
+      think about a hussy as you are always doing. You know what I mean. For my
+      part, when I take to scratching myself I imagine myself to be God&rsquo;s dog,
+      and that&rsquo;s what makes me say that all Paradise looks out of the windows to
+      smile at me. You might just as well laugh too, Monsieur le Curé. It&rsquo;s all
+      done for the saints and you. See! here&rsquo;s a turn-over for Saint Joseph;
+      here&rsquo;s another for Saint Michael, and another for Saint John, and another
+      for Saint Mark, and another for Saint Matthew&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So he went on, enumerating a whole string of saints, and turning
+      somersaults all round the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret, who had been sitting in perfect silence, with his hands
+      resting on the edge of the table, was at last constrained to smile. As a
+      rule, the Brother&rsquo;s sportiveness only disquieted him. La Teuse, as
+      Archangias rolled within her reach, kicked at him with her foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come!&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;are we to have our game to-night?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His only reply was a grunt. Then, upon all fours, he sprang towards La
+      Teuse as if he meant to bite her. But in lieu thereof he spat upon her
+      petticoats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Let me alone! will you?&rsquo; she cried. &lsquo;What are you up to now? I begin to
+      think you have gone crazy. What it is that amuses you so much I can&rsquo;t
+      conceive.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What makes me gay is my own affair,&rsquo; he replied, rising to his feet and
+      shaking himself. &lsquo;It is not necessary to explain it to you, La Teuse.
+      However, as you want a game of cards, let us have it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the game began. It was a terrible struggle. The Brother hurled his
+      cards upon the table. Whenever he cried out the windows shook sonorously.
+      La Teuse at last seemed to be winning. She had secured three aces for some
+      time already, and was casting longing eyes at the fourth. But Brother
+      Archangias began to indulge in fresh outbursts of gaiety. He pushed up the
+      table, at the risk of breaking the lamp. He cheated outrageously, and
+      defended himself by means of the most abominable lies, &lsquo;Just for a joke,&rsquo; 
+      said he. Then he suddenly began to sing the &lsquo;Vespers,&rsquo; beating time on the
+      palm of his left hand with his cards. When his gaiety reached a climax,
+      and he could find no adequate means of expressing it, he always took to
+      chanting the &lsquo;Vespers,&rsquo; which he repeated for hours at a time. La Teuse,
+      who well knew his habits, cried out to him, amidst the bellowing with
+      which he shook the room:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Make a little less noise, do! It is quite distracting. You are much too
+      lively to-night.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he set to work on the &lsquo;Complines.&rsquo; Abbé Mouret had now seated himself
+      by the window. He appeared to pay no attention to what went on around him,
+      apparently neither hearing nor seeing anything of it. At dinner he had
+      eaten with his ordinary appetite and had even managed to reply to
+      Desirée&rsquo;s everlasting rattle of questions. But now he had given up the
+      struggle, his strength at an end, racked, exhausted as he was by the
+      internal tempest that still raged within him. He even lacked the courage
+      to rise from his seat and go upstairs to his own room. Moreover, he was
+      afraid that if he turned his face towards the lamplight, the tears, which
+      he could no longer keep from his eyes, would be noticed. So he pressed his
+      face close to the window and gazed out into the darkness, growing
+      gradually more drowsy, sinking into a kind of nightmare stupor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Brother Archangias, still busy at his psalm-singing, winked and nodded in
+      the direction of the dozing priest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What&rsquo;s the matter?&rsquo; asked La Teuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Brother replied by a yet more significant wink.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, what do you mean? Can&rsquo;t you speak? Ah! there&rsquo;s a king. That&rsquo;s
+      capital!&mdash;so I take your queen.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Brother laid down his cards, bent over the table, and whispered close
+      to La Teuse&rsquo;s face: &lsquo;That hussy has been here.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I know that well enough,&rsquo; answered La Teuse. &lsquo;I saw her go with
+      mademoiselle into the poultry-yard.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this he gave her a terrible look, and shook his fist in her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You saw her, and you let her come in! You ought to have called me, and we
+      would have hung her up by the feet to a nail in your kitchen.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at this the old woman lost her temper, and, lowering her voice solely
+      in order that she might not awaken Abbé Mouret, she replied: &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t you go
+      talking about hanging people up in my kitchen! I certainly saw her, and I
+      even kept my back turned when she went to join his reverence in the church
+      when the catechising was over. But all that was no business of mine. I had
+      my cooking to attend to! As for the girl herself, I detest her. But if his
+      reverence wishes to see her&mdash;why, she is welcome to come whenever she
+      pleases. I&rsquo;d let her in myself!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If you were to do that, La Teuse,&rsquo; retorted the Brother ragefully, &lsquo;I
+      would strangle you, that I would.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she laughed at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t talk any of your nonsense to me, my man! Don&rsquo;t you know that it is
+      forbidden you to lay your hands upon a woman, just as it&rsquo;s forbidden for a
+      donkey to have anything to do with the <i>Pater Noster</i>? Just you try
+      to strangle me and you&rsquo;ll see what I&rsquo;ll do! But do be quiet now, and let
+      us finish the game. See, here&rsquo;s another king.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Brother, holding up a card, went on growling:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She must have come by some road that the devil alone knows for me to have
+      missed her to-day. Every afternoon I go and keep guard up yonder by the
+      Paradou. If ever I find them together again, I will acquaint the hussy
+      with a stout dogwood stick which I have cut expressly for her benefit. And
+      I shall keep a watch in the church as well now.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He played his card, which La Teuse took with a knave. Then he threw
+      himself back in his chair and again burst into one of his loud laughs. He
+      did not seem to be able to work himself up into a genuine rage that
+      evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, well,&rsquo; he grumbled, &lsquo;never mind, even if she did see him, she had a
+      smacking fall on her nose. I&rsquo;ll tell you all about it, La Teuse. It was
+      raining, you know. I was standing by the school-door when I caught sight
+      of her coming down from the church. She was walking along quite straight
+      and upright, in her stuck-up fashion, in spite of the pouring rain. But
+      when she got into the road, she tumbled down full length, no doubt because
+      the ground was so slippery. Oh! how I did laugh! How I did laugh! I
+      clapped my hands, too. When she picked herself up again, I saw she was
+      bleeding at the wrist. I shall feel happy over it for a week. I cannot
+      think of her lying there on the ground without feeling the greatest
+      delight.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, turning his attention to the game, he puffed out his cheeks and
+      began to chant the <i>De profundis</i>. When he had got to the end of it,
+      he began it all over again. The game came to a conclusion in the midst of
+      this dirge. It was he who was beaten, but his defeat did not seem to vex
+      him in the least.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When La Teuse had locked the door behind him, after first awakening Abbé
+      Mouret, his voice could still be heard, as he went his way through the
+      black night, singing the last verse of the psalm, <i>Et ipse redimet
+      Israel ex omnibus iniquitatibus ejus</i>, with extraordinary jubilation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0050" id="link2H_4_0050">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      That night Abbé Mouret slept very heavily. When he opened his eyes in the
+      morning, later than usual, his face and hands were wet with tears. He had
+      been weeping all through the night while he slept. He did not say his mass
+      that day. In spite of his long rest, he had not recovered from his
+      excessive weariness of the previous evening, and he remained in his
+      bedroom till noon, sitting in a chair at the foot of his bed. The
+      condition of stupor into which he more and more deeply sank, took all
+      sensation of suffering away from him. He was conscious only of a great
+      void and blank as he sat there overpowered and benumbed. Even to read his
+      breviary cost him a great effort. Its Latin seemed to him a barbarous
+      language, which he would never again be able to pronounce.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having tossed the book upon his bed he gazed for hours through his open
+      window at the surrounding country. In the far distance he saw the long
+      wall of the Paradou, creeping like a thin white line amongst the gloomy
+      patches of the pine plantations to the crest of the hills. On the left,
+      hidden by one of those plantations, was the breach. He could not see it,
+      but he knew it was there. He remembered every bit of bramble scattered
+      among the stones. On the previous night he would not have thus dared to
+      gaze upon that dreaded scene. But now with impunity he allowed himself to
+      trace the whole line of the wall, as it emerged again and again from the
+      clumps of verdure which here and there concealed it. His blood pulsed none
+      the faster for this scrutiny. Temptation, as though disdaining his present
+      weakness, left him free from attack. Forsaken by the Divine grace, he was
+      incapable of entering upon any struggle, the thought of sin could no
+      longer even impassion him; it was sheer stupor alone that now rendered him
+      willing to accept that which he had the day before so strenuously refused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At one moment he caught himself talking aloud and saying that, since the
+      breach in the wall was still open, he would go and join Albine at sunset.
+      This decision brought him a slight feeling of worry, but he did not think
+      that he could do otherwise. She was expecting him to go, and she was his
+      wife. When he tried to picture her face, he could only imagine her as very
+      pale and a long way off. Then he felt a little uneasy as to their future
+      manner of life together. It would be difficult for them to remain in the
+      neighbourhood; they would have to go away somewhere, without any one
+      knowing anything about it. And then, when they had managed to conceal
+      themselves, they would need a deal of money in order to live happily and
+      comfortably. He tried a score of times to hit upon some scheme by which
+      they could get away and live together like happy lovers, but he could
+      devise nothing satisfactory. Now that he was no longer wild with passion,
+      the practical side of the situation alarmed him. He found himself, in all
+      his weakness, face to face with a complicated problem with which he was
+      incompetent to grapple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where could they get horses for their escape? And if they went away on
+      foot, would they not be stopped and detained as vagabonds? Was he capable
+      of securing any employment by which he could earn bread for his wife? He
+      had never been taught any kind of trade. He was quite ignorant of actual
+      life. He ransacked his memory, and he could remember nothing but strings
+      of prayers, details of ceremonies, and pages of Bouvier&rsquo;s &lsquo;Instruction
+      Theologique,&rsquo; which he had learned by heart at the seminary. He worried
+      too over matters of no real concern. He asked himself whether he would
+      dare to give his arm to his wife in the street. He certainly could not
+      walk with a woman clinging to his arm. He would surely appear so strange
+      and awkward that every one would turn round to stare at him. They would
+      guess that he was a priest and would insult Albine. It would be vain for
+      him to try to obliterate the traces of his priesthood. He would always
+      wear that mournful pallor and carry the odour of incense about with him.
+      And what if he should have children some day? As this thought suddenly
+      occurred to him, he quite started. He felt a strange repugnance at the
+      very idea. He felt sure that he should not care for any children that
+      might be born to him. Suppose there were two of them, a little boy and a
+      little girl. He could never let them get on his knees; it would distress
+      him to feel their hands clutching at his clothes. The thought of the
+      little girl troubled him the most; he could already see womanly tenderness
+      shining in the depths of her big, childish eyes. No! no! he would have no
+      children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless he resolved that he would flee with Albine that evening. But
+      when the evening came, he felt too weary. So he deferred his flight till
+      the next morning. And the next morning he made a fresh pretext for delay.
+      He could not leave his sister alone with La Teuse. He would prepare a
+      letter, directing that she should be taken to her uncle Pascal&rsquo;s. For
+      three days he was ever on the point of writing that letter, and the paper
+      and pen and ink were lying ready on the table in his room. Then, on the
+      third day, he went off, leaving the letter unwritten. He took up his hat
+      quite suddenly and set off for the Paradou in a state of mingled stupor
+      and resignation, as though he were unwillingly performing some compulsory
+      task which he saw no means of avoiding. Albine&rsquo;s image was now effaced
+      from his memory; he no longer beheld her, but he was driven on by old
+      resolves whose lingering influence, though they themselves were dead,
+      still worked upon him in his silence and loneliness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took no pains to escape notice when he set foot out of doors. He
+      stopped at the end of the village to talk for a moment to Rosalie. She
+      told him that her baby was suffering from convulsions; but she laughed, as
+      she spoke, with the laugh that was natural to her. Then he struck out
+      through the rocks, and walked straight on towards the breach in the wall.
+      By force of habit he had brought his breviary with him. Finding the way
+      long, he opened the book and read the regulation prayers. When he put it
+      back again under his arm, he had forgotten the Paradou. He went on walking
+      steadily, thinking about a new chasuble that he wished to purchase to
+      replace the old gold-broidered one, which was certainly falling into
+      shreds. For some time past he had been saving up twenty-sous pieces, and
+      he calculated that by the end of seven months he would have got the
+      necessary amount of money together. He had reached the hills when the song
+      of a peasant in the distance reminded him of a canticle which had been
+      familiar to him at the seminary. He tried to recall the first lines of it,
+      but his recollection failed him. It vexed him to find that his memory was
+      so poor. And when, at last, he succeeded in remembering the words, he
+      found a soothing pleasure in humming the verses, which came back to his
+      mind one by one. It was a hymn of homage to Mary. He smiled as though some
+      soft breath from the days of his childhood were playing upon his face. Ah!
+      how happy he had then been! Why shouldn&rsquo;t he be as happy again? He had not
+      grown any bigger, he wanted nothing more than the same old happiness,
+      unruffled peace, a nook in the chapel, where his knees marked his place, a
+      life of seclusion, enlivened by the delightful puerilities of childhood.
+      Little by little he raised his voice, singing the canticle in flutelike
+      tones, when he suddenly became aware of the breach immediately in front of
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment he seemed surprised. Then, the smile dying from his face, he
+      murmured quietly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Albine must be expecting me. The sun is already setting.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But just as he was about to push some stones aside to make himself a
+      passage, he was startled by a snore. He sprang down again: he had only
+      just missed setting his foot upon the very face of Brother Archangias, who
+      was lying on the ground there sleeping soundly. Slumber had overtaken him
+      while he kept guard over the entrance to the Paradou. He barred the
+      approach to it, lying at full length before its threshold, with arms and
+      legs spread out. His right hand, thrown back behind his head, still
+      clutched his dogwood staff, which he seemed to brandish like a fiery
+      sword. And he snored loudly in the midst of the brambles, his face exposed
+      to the sun, without a quiver on his tanned skin. A swarm of big flies was
+      hovering over his open mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret looked at him for a moment. He envied the slumber of that
+      dust-wallowing saint. He wished to drive the flies away, but they
+      persistently returned, and clung around the purple lips of the Brother,
+      who was quite unconscious of their presence. Then the Abbé strode over his
+      big body and entered the Paradou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0051" id="link2H_4_0051">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Albine was seated on a patch of grass a few paces away from the wall. She
+      sprang up as she caught sight of Serge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! you have come!&rsquo; she cried, trembling from head to foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; he answered calmly, &lsquo;I have come.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She flung herself upon his neck, but she did not kiss him. To her bare
+      arms the beads of his neckband seemed very cold. She scrutinised him,
+      already feeling uneasy, and resuming:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What is the matter with you? Why don&rsquo;t you kiss my cheeks as you used to
+      do? Oh! if you are ill, I will cure you once again. Now that you are here,
+      all our old happiness will return. There will be no more wretchedness....
+      See! I am smiling. You must smile, too, Serge.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his face remained grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have been troubled, too,&rsquo; she went on. &lsquo;I am still quite pale, am I
+      not? For a whole week I have been living on that patch of grass, where you
+      found me. I wanted one thing only, to see you coming back through the
+      breach in the wall. At every sound I sprang up and rushed to meet you.
+      But, alas! it was not you I heard. It was only the leaves rustling in the
+      wind. But I was sure that you would come. I should have waited for you for
+      years.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she asked him:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Do you still love me?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; he answered, &lsquo;I love you still.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They stood looking at each other, feeling rather ill at ease. And deep
+      silence fell between them. Serge, who evinced perfect calmness, did not
+      attempt to break it. Albine twice opened her mouth to speak, but closed it
+      immediately, surprised at the words that rose to her lips. She could
+      summon up nothing but expressions tinged with bitterness. She felt tears
+      welling into her eyes. What could be the matter with her that she did not
+      feel happy now that her love had come back?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Listen to me,&rsquo; she said at last. &lsquo;We must not stay here. It is that hole
+      that freezes us! Let us go back to our old home. Give me your hand.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They plunged into the depths of the Paradou. Autumn was fast approaching,
+      and the trees seemed anxious as they stood there with their yellowing
+      crests from which the leaves were falling one by one. The paths were
+      already littered with dead foliage soaked with moisture, which gave out a
+      sound as of sighing beneath one&rsquo;s tread. And away beyond the lawns misty
+      vapour ascended, throwing a mourning veil over the blue distance. And the
+      whole garden was wrapped in silence, broken only by some sorrowful moans
+      that sounded quiveringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge began to shiver beneath the avenue of tall trees, along which they
+      were walking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How cold it is here!&rsquo; said he in an undertone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You are cold indeed,&rsquo; murmured Albine, sadly. &lsquo;My hand is no longer able
+      to warm you. Shall I wrap you round with part of my dress? Come, all our
+      love will now be born afresh.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She led him to the parterre, the flower-garden. The great thicket-like
+      rosary was still fragrant with perfume, but there was a tinge of
+      bitterness in the scent of the surviving blossoms, and their foliage,
+      which had expanded in wild profusion, lay strewn upon the ground. Serge
+      displayed such unwillingness to enter the tangled jungle, that they
+      lingered on its borders, trying to detect in the distance the paths along
+      which they had passed in the spring-time. Albine recollected every little
+      nook. She pointed to the grotto where the marble woman lay sleeping; to
+      the hanging screens of honeysuckle and clematis; the fields of violets;
+      the fountain that spurted out crimson carnations; the steps down which
+      flowed golden gilliflowers; the ruined colonnade, in the midst of which
+      the lilies were rearing a snowy pavilion. It was there that they had been
+      born again beneath the sunlight. And she recapitulated every detail of
+      that first day together, how they had walked, and how fragrant had been
+      the air beneath the cool shade. Serge seemed to be listening, but he
+      suddenly asked a question which showed that he had not understood her. The
+      slight shiver which made his face turn pale never left him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she led him towards the orchard, but they could not reach it. The
+      stream was too much swollen. Serge no longer thought of taking Albine upon
+      his back and lightly bounding across with her to the other side. Yet there
+      the apple-trees and the pear-trees were still laden with fruit, and the
+      vines, now with scantier foliage, bent beneath the weight of their
+      gleaming clusters, each grape freckled by the sun&rsquo;s caress. Ah! how they
+      had gambolled beneath the appetising shade of those ancient trees! What
+      merry children had they then been! Albine smiled as she thought of how she
+      had clambered up into the cherry-tree that had broken down beneath her.
+      He, Serge, must at least remember what a quantity of plums they had eaten.
+      He only answered by a nod. He already seemed quite weary. The orchard,
+      with its green depths and chaos of mossy trunks, disquieted him and
+      suggested to his mind some dark, dank spot, teeming with snakes and
+      nettles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she led him to the meadow-lands, where he had to take a few steps
+      amongst the grass. It reached to his shoulders now, and seemed to him like
+      a swarm of clinging arms that tried to bind his limbs and pull him down
+      and drown him beneath an endless sea of greenery. He begged Albine to go
+      no further. She was walking on in front, and at first she did not stop;
+      but when she saw how distressed he appeared, she halted and came back and
+      stood beside him. She also was growing gradually more low-spirited, and at
+      last she shuddered like himself. Still she went on talking. With a
+      sweeping gesture she pointed out to him the streams, the rows of willows,
+      the grassy expanse stretching far away towards the horizon. All that had
+      formerly been theirs. For whole days they had lived there. Over yonder,
+      between those three willows by the water&rsquo;s edge, they had played at being
+      lovers. And they would then have been delighted if the grass had been
+      taller than themselves so that they might have lost themselves in its
+      depths, and have been the more secluded, like larks nesting at the bottom
+      of a field of corn. Why, then, did he tremble so to-day, when the tip of
+      his foot just sank into the grass?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she led him to the forest. But the huge trees seemed to inspire Serge
+      with still greater dread. He did not know them again, so sternly solemn
+      seemed their bare black trunks. Here, more than anywhere else, amidst
+      those austere columns, through which the light now freely streamed, the
+      past seemed quite dead. The first rains had washed the traces of their
+      footsteps from the sandy paths, the winds had swept every other lingering
+      memorial into the underbrush. But Albine, with grief at her throat, shot
+      out a protesting glance. She could still plainly see their lightest
+      footprints on the sandy gravel, and, as they passed each bush, the warmth
+      with which they had once brushed against it surged to her cheeks. With
+      eyes full of soft entreaty, she still strove to awaken Serge&rsquo;s memory. It
+      was along that path that they had walked in silence, full of emotion, but
+      as yet not daring to confess that they loved one another. It was in that
+      clearing that they had lingered one evening till very late watching the
+      stars, which had rained upon them like golden drops of warmth. Farther,
+      beneath that oak they had exchanged their first kiss. Its fragrance still
+      clung to the tree, and the very moss still remembered it. It was false to
+      say that the forest had become voiceless and bare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge, however, turned away his head, that he might escape the gaze of
+      Albine&rsquo;s eyes, which oppressed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she led him to the great rocks. There, perhaps, he would no longer
+      shudder with that appearance of debility which so distressed her. At that
+      hour the rocks were still warm with the red glow of the setting sun. They
+      still wore an aspect of tragic passion, with their hot ledges of stone
+      whereon the fleshy plants writhed monstrously. Without speaking a word,
+      without even turning her head, Albine led Serge up the rough ascent,
+      wishing to take him ever higher and higher, far up beyond the springs,
+      till they should emerge into the full light on the summit. They would
+      there see the cedar, beneath whose shade they had first felt the thrill of
+      desire, and there amidst the glowing stones they would assuredly find
+      passion once more. But Serge soon began to stumble pitiably. He could walk
+      no further. He fell a first time on his knees. Albine, by a mighty effort,
+      raised him and for a moment carried him along, but afterwards he fell
+      again, and remained, quite overcome, on the ground. In front of him,
+      beneath him, spread the vast Paradou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You have lied!&rsquo; cried Albine. &lsquo;You love me no longer!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She burst into tears as she stood there by his side, feeling that she
+      could not carry him any higher. There was no sign of anger in her now. She
+      was simply weeping over their dying love. Serge lay dazed and stupefied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The garden is all dead. I feel so very cold,&rsquo; he murmured. But she took
+      his head between her hands, and showed him the Paradou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Look at it! Ah! it is your eyes that are dead; your ears and your limbs
+      and your whole body. You have passed by all the scenes of our happiness
+      without seeing them or hearing them or feeling their presence. You have
+      done nothing but slip and stumble, and now you have fallen down here in
+      sheer weariness and boredom.... You love me no more.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He protested, but in a gentle, quiet fashion. Then, for the first time,
+      she spoke out passionately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Be quiet! As if the garden could ever die! It will sleep for the winter,
+      but it will wake up again in May, and will restore to us all the love we
+      have entrusted to its keeping. Our kisses will blossom again amongst the
+      flower-beds, and our vows will bud again with the trees and plants. If you
+      could only see it and understand it, you would know that it throbs with
+      even deeper passion, and loves even more absorbingly at this autumn-time,
+      when it falls asleep in its fruitfulness.... But you love me no more, and
+      so you can no longer understand.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He raised his eyes to her as if begging her not to be angry. His face was
+      pinched and pale with an expression of childish fear. The sound of her
+      voice made him tremble. He ended by persuading her to rest a little while
+      by his side. They could talk quietly and discuss matters. Then, with the
+      Paradou spreading out in front of them, they began to speak of their love,
+      but without even touching one another&rsquo;s fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I love you; indeed I love you,&rsquo; said Serge, in his calm, quiet voice. &lsquo;If
+      I did not love you, I should not be here: I should not have come. I am
+      very weary, it is true. I don&rsquo;t know why. I thought I should find that
+      pleasant warmth again, of which the mere memory was so delightful. But I
+      am cold, the garden seems quite black. I cannot see anything of what I
+      left here. But it is not my fault. I am trying hard to be as you would
+      wish me and to please you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You love me no longer!&rsquo; Albine repeated once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, I do love you. I suffered grievously the other day after I had
+      driven you away.... Oh! I loved you with such passion that, had you come
+      back and thrown yourself in my arms, I should almost have crushed you to
+      death.... And for hours your image remained present before me. When I shut
+      my eyes, you gleamed out with all the brightness of the sun and threw a
+      flame around me.... Then I trampled down every obstacle, and came here.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He remained silent for a moment, as if in thought. Then he spoke again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And now my arms feel as though they were broken. If I tried to clasp you,
+      I could not hold you; I should let you fall.... Wait till this shudder has
+      passed away. Give me your hands, and let me kiss them again. Be gentle and
+      do not look at me with such angry eyes. Help me to find my heart again.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke with such genuine sadness, such evident longing to begin the past
+      anew, that Albine was touched. For a moment all her wonted gentleness
+      returned to her, and she questioned him anxiously:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What is the matter with you? What makes you so ill?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I do not know. It is as though all my blood had left my veins. Just now,
+      as I was coming here, I felt as if some one had flung a robe of ice around
+      my shoulders, which turned me into stone from head to foot.... I have felt
+      it before, but where I don&rsquo;t remember.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She interrupted him with a kindly laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You are a child. You have caught cold, that&rsquo;s all. At any rate, it is not
+      I that you are afraid of, is it? We won&rsquo;t stop in the garden during the
+      winter, like a couple of wild things. We will go wherever you like, to
+      some big town. We can love each other there, amongst all the people, as
+      quietly as amongst the trees. You will see that I can be something else
+      than a wilding, for ever bird&rsquo;s-nesting and tramping about for hours. When
+      I was a little girl, I used to wear embroidered skirts and fine stockings
+      and laces and all kinds of finery. I dare say you never heard of that.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was not listening to her. He suddenly gave vent to a little cry, and
+      said: &lsquo;Ah! now I recollect!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She asked him what he meant, but he would not answer her. He had just
+      remembered the feeling he had long ago experienced in the chapel of the
+      seminary. That was the icy robe enwrapping his shoulders and turning him
+      to stone. And then his life as a priest took complete possession of his
+      thoughts. The vague recollections which had haunted him as he walked from
+      Les Artaud to the Paradou became more and more distinct and assumed
+      complete mastery over him. While Albine talked on of the happy life that
+      they would lead together, he heard the tinkling of the sanctuary bell that
+      signalled the elevation of the Host, and he saw the monstrance trace
+      gleaming crosses over the heads of kneeling multitudes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And for your sake,&rsquo; Albine was saying, &lsquo;I will put on my broidered skirts
+      again.... I want you to be bright and gay. We will try to find something
+      to make you lively. Perhaps you will love me better when you see me
+      looking beautiful and prettily dressed, like a fine lady. I will wear my
+      comb properly and won&rsquo;t let my hair fall wildly about my neck any more.
+      And I won&rsquo;t roll my sleeves up over my elbows; I will fasten my dress so
+      as to hide my shoulders. I still know how to bow and how to walk along
+      quite properly. Yes, I will make you a nice little wife, as I walk through
+      the streets leaning on your arm.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Did you ever go to church when you were a little girl?&rsquo; he asked her in
+      an undertone, as if, in spite of himself, he were continuing aloud the
+      reverie which prevented him from hearing her. &lsquo;I could never pass a church
+      without entering it. As soon as the door closed silently behind me, I felt
+      as though I were in Paradise itself, with the angels whispering stories of
+      love in my ears and the saints caressing me with their breath. Ah! I would
+      have liked to live there for ever, in that absorbing beatitude.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him with steady eyes, a passing blaze kindling in her loving
+      glance. Nevertheless, submissive still, she answered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I will do as you may fancy. I learned music once. I was quite a clever
+      young lady and was taught all the accomplishments. I will go back to
+      school and start music again. If there is any tune you would like to hear
+      me play, you will only have to tell me, and I will practise it for months
+      and months, so as to play it to you some evening in our own home when we
+      are by ourselves in some snug little room, with the curtains closely
+      drawn. And you will pay me with just one kiss, won&rsquo;t you? A kiss right on
+      the lips, which will awaken all your love again!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, yes,&rsquo; he murmured, answering his own thoughts only; &lsquo;my great
+      pleasure at first was to light the candles, prepare the cruets, and carry
+      the missal. Then, afterwards, I was filled with bliss at the approach of
+      God, and felt as though I could die of sheer love. Those are my only
+      recollections. I know of nothing else. When I raise my hand, it is to give
+      a benediction. When my lips protrude it is to kiss the altar. If I look
+      for my heart, I can no longer find it. I have offered it to God, and He
+      has taken it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine grew very pale and her eyes gleamed like fire. In a quivering voice
+      she resumed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I should not like my little girl to leave me. You can send the boy to
+      college, if you wish, but the little girl must always keep with me. I
+      myself will teach her to read. Oh! I shall remember everything, and if
+      indeed there be anything that I find I have forgotten, I will have masters
+      to teach me.... Yes, we will keep our dear little ones always about our
+      knees. You will be happy so, won&rsquo;t you? Speak to me; tell me that you will
+      then feel warm again, and will smile, and feel no regrets for anything you
+      have left behind.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Serge continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have often thought of the stone-saints that have been censed in their
+      niches for centuries past. They must have become quite saturated with
+      incense; and I am like one of them. I have the fragrance of incense in the
+      inmost parts of my being. It is that embalmment that gives me serenity,
+      deathlike tranquillity of body, and the peace which I enjoy in no longer
+      living.... Ah! may nothing ever disturb my quiescence! May I ever remain
+      cold and rigid, with a ceaseless smile on my granite lips, incapable of
+      descending among men! That is my one, my only desire!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this Albine sprang to her feet, exasperated, threatening. She shook
+      Serge and cried:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What are you saying? What is it you are dreaming aloud? Am I not your
+      wife? Haven&rsquo;t you come here to be my husband?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He recoiled, trembling yet more violently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No! Leave me! I am afraid!&rsquo; he faltered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But our life together, our happiness, the children we shall have?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, no; I am afraid.&rsquo; And he broke out into a supreme cry: &lsquo;I cannot! I
+      cannot!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment Albine remained silent, gazing at the unhappy man who lay
+      shivering at her feet. Her face flared. She opened her arms as if to seize
+      him and strain him to her breast with wild angry passion. But another idea
+      came to her, and she merely took him by the hand and raised him to his
+      feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come!&rsquo; said she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She led him away to that giant tree, to the very spot where their love had
+      reigned supreme. There was the same bliss-inspiring shade, there was the
+      same trunk as of yore, the same branches spreading far around, like
+      sheltering and protecting arms. The tree still towered aloft, kindly,
+      robust, powerful, and fertile. As on the day of their nuptials, languorous
+      warmth, the glimmer of a summer&rsquo;s night fading on the bare shoulder of
+      some fair girl, a sob of love dying away into passionate silence, lingered
+      about the clearing as it lay there bathed in dim green light. And, in the
+      distance, the Paradou, in spite of the first chills of autumn, sighed once
+      more with passion, again becoming love&rsquo;s accomplice. From the parterre,
+      from the orchard, from the meadow-lands, from the forest, from the great
+      rocks, from the spreading heavens, came back a ripple of voluptuous joy.
+      Never had the garden, even on the warmest evenings of spring-time, shown
+      such deep tenderness as now, on this fair autumn evening, when the plants
+      and trees seemed to be bidding one another goodnight ere they sank to
+      sleep. And the scent of ripened germs wafted the intoxication of desire
+      athwart the scanty leaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Do you hear? Do you hear?&rsquo; faltered Albine in Serge&rsquo;s ear, when she had
+      let him slip upon the grass at the foot of the tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge was weeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You see that the Paradou is not dead,&rsquo; she added. &lsquo;It is crying out to us
+      to love each other. It still desires our union. Oh, do remember! Clasp me
+      to your heart!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge still wept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albine said nothing more. She flung her arms around him; she pressed her
+      warm lips to his corpse-like face; but tears were still his only answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, after a long silence, Albine spoke. She stood erect, full of
+      contempt and determination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Away with you! Go!&rsquo; she said, in a low voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Serge rose with difficulty. He picked up his breviary, which had fallen
+      upon the grass. And he walked away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Away with you! Go!&rsquo; repeated Albine, in louder tones, as she followed and
+      drove him before her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus she urged him on from bush to bush till she had driven him back to
+      the breach in the wall, in the midst of the stern-looking trees. And
+      there, as she saw Serge hesitate, with lowered head she cried out
+      violently:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Away with you Go!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And slowly she herself went back into the Paradou, without even turning
+      her head. Night was fast falling, and the garden was but a huge bier of
+      shadows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0052" id="link2H_4_0052">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Brother Archangias, aroused from his slumber, stood erect in the breach,
+      striking the stones with his stick and swearing abominably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;May the devil break their legs for them! May he drag them to hell by
+      their feet, with their noses trailing in their abomination!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when he saw Albine driving away the priest, he stopped for a moment in
+      surprise. Then he struck the stones yet more vigorously, and burst into a
+      roar of laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good-bye, you hussy! A pleasant journey to you! Go back to your mates the
+      wolves! A priest is no fit companion for such as you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, looking at Abbé Mouret, he growled:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I knew you were in there. I saw that the stones had been disturbed....
+      Listen to me, Monsieur le Curé. Your sin has made me your superior, and
+      God tells you, through my mouth, that hell has no torments severe enough
+      for a priest who lets himself succumb to the lusts of the flesh. If He
+      were to pardon you now, He would be too indulgent, it would be contrary to
+      His own justice.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They slowly walked down the hill towards Les Artaud. The priest had not
+      opened his lips; but gradually he raised his head erect: he was no longer
+      trembling. As in the distance he caught sight of the Solitaire looming
+      blackly against the purplish sky, and the ruddy glow of the tiles on the
+      church, a faint smile came to his lips, while to his calm eyes there rose
+      an expression of perfect serenity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime the Brother was every now and then giving a vicious kick at the
+      stones that came in his way. Presently he turned to his companion:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Is it all over this time?&rsquo; he asked. &lsquo;When I was your age I was possessed
+      too. A demon was ever gnawing at me. But, after a time, he grew weary of
+      it, and took himself off. Now that he has gone I live quietly enough....
+      Oh! I knew very well that you would go. For three weeks past I have been
+      keeping watch upon you. I used to look into the garden through the breach
+      in the wall. I should have liked to cut the trees down. I have often
+      hurled stones at them; it was delightful to break the branches. Tell me,
+      now, is it so very nice to be there?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made Abbé Mouret stop in the middle of the road, and glared at him with
+      a terrible expression of jealousy. The thought of the priest&rsquo;s life in the
+      Paradou tortured him. But the Abbé kept perfect silence, so Archangias set
+      off again, jeering as he went. Then, in a louder voice, he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You see, when a priest behaves as you have done, he scandalises every
+      other priest. I myself felt sullied by your conduct. However, you are now
+      behaving more sensibly. There is no need for you to make any confession. I
+      know what has happened well enough. Heaven has broken your back for you,
+      as it has done for so many others. So much the better! So much the
+      better!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He clapped his hands triumphantly. But Abbé Mouret, immersed in deep
+      reverie, with a smile spreading over his whole face, did not even hear
+      him. When the Brother quitted him at the parsonage door, he went round and
+      entered the church. It was grey and gloomy, as on that terrible rainy
+      evening when temptation had racked him so violently. And it still remained
+      poverty-stricken and meditative, bare of all that gleaming gold and
+      sighing passion that had seemed to him to sweep in from the countryside.
+      It preserved solemn silence. But a breath of mercy seemed to fill it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kneeling before the great Christ and bursting into tears, which he let
+      flow down his cheeks as though they were so many blessings, the priest
+      murmured:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;O God, it is not true that Thou art pitiless. I know it, I feel it: Thou
+      hast already pardoned me. I feel it in the outpouring of Thy grace, which,
+      for hours now, has been flowing through me in a sweet stream, bringing me
+      back, slowly but surely, perfect peace and spiritual health. O God, it was
+      at the very moment when I was about to forsake Thee that Thou didst
+      protect me most effectually. Thou didst hide Thyself from me, the better
+      to rescue me from evil. Thou didst allow my flesh to run its course, that
+      I might be convinced of its nothingness. And now, O God, I see that Thou
+      hast for ever marked me with Thy seal, that awful seal, pregnant with
+      blessings, which sets a man apart from other men, and whose mark is so
+      ineffaceable that, sooner or later, it makes itself manifest even upon
+      those who sin. Thou hast broken me with sin and temptation. Thou hast
+      ravaged me with Thy flames. Thou hast willed that there should be nought
+      left of me save ruins wherein Thou mightest safely descend. I am an empty
+      tabernacle wherein Thou may&rsquo;st dwell. Blessed art Thou, O God!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He prostrated himself and continued stammering in the dust. The church
+      triumphed. It remained firm and unshaken over the priest&rsquo;s head, with its
+      altars and its confessional, its pulpit, its crosses, and its holy images.
+      The world had ceased to exist. Temptation was extinguished like a fire
+      that was henceforth unnecessary for the Abbé&rsquo;s purification. He was
+      entering into supernatural peace. And he raised this supreme cry:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;To the exclusion of life and its creatures and of everything that be in
+      it, I belong to Thee, O God; to Thee, Thee alone, through all eternity!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0053" id="link2H_4_0053">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At that moment Albine was still wandering about the Paradou with all the
+      mute agony of a wounded animal. She had ceased to weep. Her face was very
+      white and a deep crease showed upon her brow. Why did she have to suffer
+      that deathlike agony? Of what fault had she been guilty, that the garden
+      no longer kept the promises it had held out to her since her childhood&rsquo;s
+      days? She questioned herself as she walked along, never heeding the
+      avenues through which the gloom was slowly stealing. She had always obeyed
+      the voices of the trees. She could not remember having injured a single
+      flower. She had ever been the beloved daughter of the greenery, hearkening
+      to it submissively, yielding to it with full belief in the happiness which
+      it promised to her. And when, on that supreme day, the Paradou had cried
+      to her to cast herself beneath the giant-tree, she had done so in
+      compliance with its voice. If she then had nothing to reproach herself
+      with, it must be the garden which had betrayed her; the garden which was
+      torturing her for the mere sake of seeing her suffer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She halted and looked around her. The great gloomy masses of foliage
+      preserved deep silence. The paths were blocked with black walls of
+      darkness. The distant lawns were lulling to sleep the breezes that kissed
+      them. And she thrust out her hands with a gesture of hopelessness and
+      raised a cry of protest. It could not all end thus. But her voice choked
+      beneath the silent trees. Thrice did she implore the Paradou to answer
+      her, but never an explanation fell from its lofty branches, not a leaf
+      seemed to be moved with pity for her. Then she resumed her weary
+      wandering, and felt that she was entering into the fatal sternness of
+      winter. Now that she had ceased to rebelliously question the earth, she
+      caught sound of a gentle murmur speeding along the ground. It was the
+      farewell of the plants, wishing one another a happy death. To have drunk
+      in the sunshine for a whole season, to have lived ever blossoming, to have
+      breathed continual perfume, and then, at the first blast, to depart, with
+      the hope of springing up again elsewhere, was not that sufficiently long
+      and full a life which obstinate craving for further existence would mar?
+      Ah! how sweet death must be; how sweet to have an endless night before
+      one, wherein to dream of the short days of life and to recall eternally
+      its fugitive joys!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stayed her steps once more; but she no longer protested as she stood
+      there amidst the deep stillness of the Paradou. She now believed that she
+      understood everything. The garden doubtless had death in store for her as
+      a supreme culminating happiness. It was to death that it had all along
+      been leading her in its tender fashion. After love, there could be nought
+      but death. And never had the garden loved her so much as it did now; she
+      had shown herself ungrateful in accusing it, for all the time she had
+      remained its best beloved child. The motionless boughs, the paths blocked
+      up with darkness, the lawns where the breezes fell asleep, had only become
+      mute in order that they might lure her on to taste the joys of long
+      silence. They wished her to be with them in their winter rest, they dreamt
+      of carrying her off, swathed in their dry leaves with her eyes frozen like
+      the waters of the springs, her limbs stiffened like the bare branches, and
+      her blood sleeping the sleep of the sap. And, yes, she would live their
+      life to the very end, and die their death. Perhaps they had already willed
+      that she should spring up next summer as a rose in the flower-garden, or a
+      pale willow in the meadow-lands, or a tender birch in the forest. Yes, it
+      was the great law of life; she was about to die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, for the last time, she resumed her walk through the Paradou in quest
+      of death. What fragrant plant might need her sweet-scented tresses to
+      increase the perfume of its leaves? What flower might wish the gift of her
+      satinlike skin, the snowy whiteness of her arms, the tender pink of her
+      bosom? To what weakly tree should she offer her young blood? She would
+      have liked to be of service to the weeds vegetating beside the paths, to
+      slay herself there so that from her flesh some huge greenery might spring,
+      lofty and sapful, laden with birds at May-time, and passionately caressed
+      by the sun. But for a long while the Paradou still maintained silence as
+      if it had not yet made up its mind to confide to her in what last kiss it
+      would spirit away her life. She had to wander all over it again, seeking,
+      pilgrim-like, for her favourite spots. Night was now more swiftly
+      approaching, and it seemed to her as if she were being gradually sucked
+      into the earth. She climbed to the great rocks and questioned them, asking
+      whether it was upon their stony beds that she must breathe her last
+      breath. She crossed the forest with lingering steps, hoping that some oak
+      would topple down and bury her beneath the majesty of its fall. She
+      skirted the streams that flowed through the meadows, bending down at
+      almost every step she took so as to peep into the depths and see whether a
+      couch had not been prepared for her amongst the water lilies. But nowhere
+      did Death call her; nowhere did he offer her his cold hands. Yet, she was
+      not mistaken. It was, indeed, the Paradou that was about to teach her to
+      die, as, indeed, it had taught her to love. She again began to scour the
+      bushes, more eagerly even than on those warm mornings of the past when she
+      had gone searching for love. And, suddenly, just as she was reaching the
+      parterre, she came upon death, amidst all the evening fragrance. She ran
+      forward, breaking out into a rapturous laugh. She was to die amongst the
+      flowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First she hastened to the thicket-like rosary. There, in the last
+      flickering of the gloaming, she searched the beds and gathered all the
+      roses that hung languishing at the approach of winter. She plucked them
+      from down below, quite heedless of their thorns; she plucked them in front
+      of her, with both hands; she plucked them from above, rising upon tip-toes
+      and pulling down the boughs. So eager was she, so desperate was her haste,
+      that she even broke the branches, she, who had ever shown herself tender
+      to the tiniest blades of grass. Soon her arms were full of roses, she
+      tottered beneath her burden of flowers. And having quite stripped the rose
+      trees, carrying away even the fallen petals, she turned her steps to the
+      pavilion; and when she had let her load of blossoms slip upon the floor of
+      the room with the blue ceiling, she again went down to the garden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This time she sought the violets. She made huge bunches of them, which she
+      pressed one by one against her breast. Then she sought the carnations,
+      plucking them all, even to the buds; massing them together in big sheaves
+      of white blossoms that suggested bowls of milk, and big sheaves of the red
+      ones, that seemed like bowls of blood. Then, too, she sought the stocks,
+      the patches of mirabilis, the heliotropes and the lilies. She tore the
+      last blossoming stocks off by the handful, pitilessly crumpling their
+      satin ruches; she devastated the beds of mirabilis, whose flowers were
+      scarcely opening to the evening air; she mowed down the field of
+      heliotropes, piling her harvest of blooms into a heap; and she thrust
+      bundles of lilies under her arms like handles of reeds. When she was again
+      laden with as much as she could carry, she returned to the pavilion to
+      cast the violets, the carnations, the lilies, the stocks, the heliotrope,
+      and the mirabilis by the side of the roses. And then, without stopping to
+      draw breath, she went down yet again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This time she repaired to that gloomy corner which seemed like the
+      graveyard of the flower-garden. A warm autumn had there brought on a
+      second crop of spring flowers. She raided the borders of tuberoses and
+      hyacinths; going down upon her knees, and gathering her harvest with all a
+      miser&rsquo;s care, lest she should miss a single blossom. The tuberoses seemed
+      to her to be extremely precious flowers, which would distil drops of gold
+      and wealth and wondrous sweetness. The hyacinths, beaded with pearly
+      blooms, were like necklets, whose every pearl would pour forth joys
+      unknown to man. And although she almost buried herself beneath the mass of
+      tuberoses and hyacinths which she plucked, she next stripped a field of
+      poppies, and even found means to crop an expanse of marigolds farther on.
+      All these she heaped over the tuberoses and hyacinths, and then ran back
+      to the room with the blue ceiling, taking the greatest care as she went
+      that the breeze should not rob her of a single pistil. And once more did
+      she come downstairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what was she to gather now? She had stripped the parterre bare. As she
+      rose upon the tips of her shoes in the dim gloom, she could only see the
+      garden lying there naked and dead, deprived of the tender eyes of its
+      roses, the crimson smile of its carnations, and the perfumed locks of its
+      heliotropes. Nevertheless, she could not return with empty arms. So she
+      laid hands upon the herbs and leafy plants. She crawled over the ground,
+      as though she would have carried off the very soil itself in a clutch of
+      supreme passion. She filled her skirt with a harvest of aromatic plants,
+      southernwood, mint, verbenas. She came across a border of balm, and left
+      not a leaf of it unplucked. She even broke off two big fennels which she
+      threw over her shoulders like a couple of trees. Had she been able, she
+      would have carried all the greenery of the garden away with her between
+      her teeth. When she reached the threshold of the pavilion, she turned
+      round and gave a last look at the Paradou. It was quite dark now. The
+      night had fully come and cast a black veil over everything. Then for the
+      last time she went up the stairs, never more to step down them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The spacious room was quickly decked. She had placed a lighted lamp upon
+      the table. She sorted out the flowers heaped upon the floor and arranged
+      them in big bunches, which she distributed about the room. First she
+      placed some lilies behind the lamp on the table, forming with them a lofty
+      lacelike screen which softened the light with its snowy purity. Then she
+      threw handfuls of carnations and stocks over the old sofa, which was
+      already strewn with red bouquets that had faded a century ago, till all
+      these were hidden, and the sofa looked like a huge bed of stocks bristling
+      with carnations. Next she placed the four armchairs in front of the
+      alcove. On the first one she piled marigolds, on the second poppies, on
+      the third mirabilis, and on the fourth heliotrope. The chairs were
+      completely buried in bloom, with nothing but the tips of their arms
+      visible. At last she thought of the bed. She pushed a little table near
+      the head of it, and reared thereon a huge pile of violets. Then she
+      covered the whole bed with the hyacinths and tuberoses she had plucked.
+      They were so abundant that they formed a thick couch overflowing all
+      around, so that the bed now looked like one colossal bloom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The roses still remained. And these she scattered chancewise all over the
+      room, without even looking to see where they fell. Some of them dropped
+      upon the table, the sofa, and the chairs; and a corner of the bed was
+      inundated with them. For some minutes there was a rain of roses, a real
+      downpour of heavy blossoms, which settled in flowery pools in the hollows
+      of the floor. But as the heap seemed scarcely diminished, she finished by
+      weaving garlands of roses which she hung upon the walls. She twined
+      wreaths around the necks and arms and waists of the plaster cupids that
+      sported over the alcove. The blue ceiling, the oval panels, edged with
+      flesh-coloured ribbon, the voluptuous paintings, preyed upon by time, were
+      all hung with a mantle, a drapery of roses. The big room was fully decked
+      at last. Now she could die there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment she remained standing, glancing around her. She was looking
+      to see if death was there. And she gathered up the aromatic greenery, the
+      southernwood, the mint, the verbenas, the balm, and the fennel. She broke
+      them and twisted them and made wedges of them with which to stop up every
+      little chink and cranny about the windows and the door. Then she drew the
+      white coarsely sewn calico curtains and, without even a sigh, laid herself
+      upon the bed, on all the florescence of hyacinths and tuberoses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then a final rapture was granted her. With her eyes wide open she
+      smiled at the room. Ah! how she had loved there! And how happily she was
+      there going to die! At that supreme moment the plaster cupids suggested
+      nothing impure to her; the amorous paintings disturbed her no more. She
+      was conscious of nothing beneath that blue ceiling save the intoxicating
+      perfume of the flowers. And it seemed to her as if this perfume was none
+      other than the old love-fragrance which had always warmed the room, now
+      increased a hundredfold, till it had become so strong and penetrating that
+      it would surely suffocate her. Perchance it was the breath of the lady who
+      had died there a century ago. In perfect stillness, with her hands clasped
+      over her heart, she continued smiling, while she listened to the whispers
+      of the perfumes in her buzzing head. They were singing to her a soft
+      strange melody of fragrance, which slowly and very gently lulled her to
+      sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first there was a prelude, bright and childlike; her hands, that had
+      just now twisted and twined the aromatic greenery, exhaled the pungency of
+      crushed herbage, and recalled her old girlish ramblings through the
+      wildness of the Paradou. Then there came a flutelike song, a song of short
+      musky notes, rising from the violets that lay upon the table near the head
+      of the bed; and this flutelike strain, trilling melodiously to the soft
+      accompaniment of the lilies on the other table, sang to her of the first
+      joys of love, its first confession, and first kiss beneath the trees of
+      the forest. But she began to stifle as passion drew nigh with the
+      clove-like breath of the carnations, which burst upon her in brazen notes
+      that seemed to drown all others. She thought that death was nigh when the
+      poppies and the marigolds broke into a wailing strain, which recalled the
+      torment of desire. But suddenly all grew quieter; she felt that she could
+      breathe more freely; she glided into greater serenity, lulled by a
+      descending scale that came from the throats of the stocks, and died away
+      amidst a delightful hymn from the heliotropes, which, with their
+      vanilla-like breath, proclaimed the approach of nuptial bliss. Here and
+      there the mirabilis gently trilled. Then came a hush. And afterwards the
+      roses languidly made their entry. Their voices streamed from the ceiling,
+      like the strains of a distant choir. It was a chorus of great breadth, to
+      which she at first listened with a slight quiver. Then the volume of the
+      strain increased, and soon her whole frame vibrated with the mighty sounds
+      that burst in waves around her. The nuptials were at hand, the trumpet
+      blasts of the roses announced them. She pressed her hands more closely to
+      her heart as she lay there panting, gasping, dying. When she opened her
+      lips for the kiss which was to stifle her, the hyacinths and tuberoses
+      shot out their perfume and enveloped her with so deep, so great a sigh
+      that the chorus of the roses could be heard no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, amidst the final gasp of the flowers, Albine died.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0054" id="link2H_4_0054">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      About three o&rsquo;clock the next afternoon, La Teuse and Brother Archangias,
+      who were chatting on the parsonage-steps, saw Doctor Pascal&rsquo;s gig come at
+      full gallop through the village. The whip was being vigorously brandished
+      from beneath the lowered hood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Where can he be off to at that rate?&rsquo; murmured the old servant. &lsquo;He will
+      break his neck.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gig had just reached the rising ground on which the church was built.
+      Suddenly, the horse reared and stopped, and the doctor&rsquo;s head, with its
+      long white hair all dishevelled appeared from under the hood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Is Serge there?&rsquo; he cried, in a voice full of indignant excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      La Teuse had stepped to the edge of the hill. &lsquo;Monsieur le Curé is in his
+      room,&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;He must be reading his breviary. Do you want to speak to
+      him? Shall I call him?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Uncle Pascal, who seemed almost distracted, made an angry gesture with his
+      whip hand. Bending still further forward, at the risk of falling out, he
+      replied:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! he&rsquo;s reading his breviary, is he? No! no! don&rsquo;t call him. I should
+      strangle him, and that would do no good. I wanted to tell him that Albine
+      was dead. Dead! do you hear me? Tell him, from me, that she is dead!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he drove off, lashing his horse so fiercely that it almost bolted.
+      But, twenty paces away, he pulled up again, and once more stretching out
+      his head, cried loudly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Tell him, too, from me, that she was <i>enceinte</i>! It will please him
+      to know that.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the gig rolled on wildly again, jolting dangerously as it ascended
+      the stony hill that led to the Paradou. La Teuse was quite dumbfounded.
+      But Brother Archangias sniggered and looked at her with savage delight
+      glittering in his eyes. She noticed this at last, and thrust him away from
+      her, almost making him fall down the steps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Be off with you!&rsquo; she stammered, full of anger, seeking to relieve her
+      feelings by abusing him. &lsquo;I shall grow to hate you. Is it possible to
+      rejoice at any one&rsquo;s death? I wasn&rsquo;t fond of the girl, myself; but it is
+      very sad to die at her age. Be off with you, and don&rsquo;t go on sniggering
+      like that, or I will throw my scissors in your face!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was only about one o&rsquo;clock that a peasant, who had gone to Plassans to
+      sell vegetables, had told Doctor Pascal of Albine&rsquo;s death, and had added
+      that Jeanbernat wished to see him. The doctor now was feeling a little
+      relieved by what he had just shouted as he passed the parsonage. He had
+      gone out of his way expressly to give himself that satisfaction. He
+      reproached himself for the death of the girl as for a crime in which he
+      had participated. All along the road he had never ceased overwhelming
+      himself with insults, and though he wiped the tears from his eyes that he
+      might see where to guide his horse, he ever angrily drove his gig over
+      heaps of stones, as if hoping that he would overturn himself and break one
+      of his limbs. However, when he reached the long lane that skirted the
+      endless wall of the park, a glimmer of hope broke upon him. Perhaps Albine
+      was only in a dead faint. The peasant had told him that she had suffocated
+      herself with flowers. Ah! if he could only get there in time, if he could
+      only save her! And he lashed his horse ferociously as though he were
+      lashing himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a lovely day. The pavilion was all bathed in sunlight, just as it
+      had been in the fair spring-time. But the leaves of the ivy which mounted
+      to the roof were spotted and patched with rust, and bees no longer buzzed
+      round the tall gilliflowers. Doctor Pascal hastily tethered his horse and
+      pushed open the gate of the little garden. All around still prevailed that
+      perfect silence amidst which Jeanbernat had been wont to smoke his pipe;
+      but, to-day, the old man was no longer seated on his bench watching his
+      lettuces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Jeanbernat!&rsquo; called the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one answered. Then, on entering the vestibule, he saw something that he
+      had never seen before. At the end of the passage, below the dark
+      staircase, was a door opening into the Paradou, and he could see the vast
+      garden spreading there beneath the pale sunlight, with all its autumn
+      melancholy, its sere and yellow foliage. The doctor hurried through the
+      doorway and took a few steps over the damp grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! it is you, doctor!&rsquo; said Jeanbernat in a calm voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man was digging a hole at the foot of a mulberry-tree. He had
+      straightened his tall figure on hearing the approach of footsteps. But he
+      promptly betook himself to his task again, throwing out at each effort a
+      huge mass of rich soil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What are you doing there?&rsquo; asked Doctor Pascal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jeanbernat straightened himself again and wiped the sweat off his face
+      with the sleeve of his jacket. &lsquo;I am digging a hole,&rsquo; he answered simply.
+      &lsquo;She always loved the garden, and it will please her to sleep here.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor nearly choked with emotion. For a moment he stood by the edge
+      of the grave, incapable of speaking, but watching Jeanbernat as the other
+      sturdily dug on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Where is she?&rsquo; he asked at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Up there, in her room. I left her on the bed. I should like you to go and
+      listen to her heart before she is put away in here. I listened myself, but
+      I couldn&rsquo;t hear anything at all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor went upstairs. The room had not been disturbed. Only a window
+      had been opened. There the withered flowers, stifled by their own
+      perfumes, exhaled but the faint odour of dead beauty. Within the alcove,
+      however, there still hung an asphyxiating warmth, which seemed to trickle
+      into the room and gradually disperse in tiny puffs. Albine, snowy-pale,
+      with her hands upon her heart and a smile playing over her face, lay
+      sleeping on her couch of hyacinths and tuberoses. And she was quite happy,
+      since she was quite dead. Standing by the bedside, the doctor gazed at her
+      for a long time, with a keen expression such as comes into the eyes of
+      scientists who attempt to work resurrections. But he did not even disturb
+      her clasped hands. He kissed her brow, on the spot where her latent
+      maternity had already set a slight shadow. Below, in the garden,
+      Jeanbernat was still driving his spade into the ground in heavy, regular
+      fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A quarter of an hour later, however, the old man came upstairs. He had
+      completed his work. He found the doctor seated by the bedside, buried in
+      such a deep reverie that he did not seem conscious of the heavy tears that
+      were trickling down his cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men only glanced at each other. Then, after an interval of
+      silence, Jeanbernat slowly said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, was I not right? There is nothing, nothing, nothing. It is all mere
+      nonsense.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He remained standing and began to pick up the roses that had fallen from
+      the bed, throwing them, one by one, upon Albine&rsquo;s skirts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The flowers,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;live only for a day, while the rough nettles,
+      like me, wear out the very stones amidst which they spring.... Now it&rsquo;s
+      all over; I can kick the bucket; I am nearly distracted. My last ray of
+      sunlight has been snuffed out. It&rsquo;s all nonsense, as I said before.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He threw himself upon one of the chairs in his turn. He did not shed a
+      tear; he bore himself with rigid despair, like some automaton whose
+      mechanism is broken. Mechanically he reached out his hand and took a book
+      that lay on the little table strewn with violets. It was one of the books
+      stored away in the loft, an odd volume of Holbach,* which he had been
+      reading since the morning, while watching by Albine&rsquo;s body. As the doctor
+      still remained silent, buried in distressful thought, he began to turn its
+      pages over. But a sadden idea occurred to him.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  * Doubtless Holbach&rsquo;s now forgotten <i>Catechism of Nature</i>, into
+    which M. Zola himself may well have peeped whilst writing this
+    story.&mdash;ED.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If you will help me,&rsquo; he said to the doctor, &lsquo;we will carry her
+      downstairs, and bury her with all her flowers.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Uncle Pascal shuddered. Then he explained to the old man that it was not
+      allowed for one to keep the dead in that fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What! it isn&rsquo;t allowed!&rsquo; cried Jeanbernat. &lsquo;Well, then, I will allow it
+      myself! Doesn&rsquo;t she belong to me? Isn&rsquo;t she mine? Do you think I am going
+      to let the priests walk off with her? Let them try, if they want to get a
+      shot from my gun!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sprang to his feet and waved his book about with a terrible gesture.
+      But the doctor caught hold of his hands and clasped them within his own,
+      beseeching him to be calm. And for a long time he talked to him, saying
+      all that he had upon his mind. He blamed himself, made fragmentary
+      confessions of his fault, and vaguely hinted at those who had killed
+      Albine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Listen,&rsquo; he said in conclusion, &lsquo;she is yours no longer; you must give
+      her up.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Jeanbernat shook his head, and again waved his hand in token of
+      refusal. However, his obstinate resolution was shaken; and at last he
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, well, let them take her, and may she break their arms for them! I
+      only wish that she could rise up out of the ground and kill them all with
+      fright.... By the way. I have a little business to settle over there. I
+      will go to-morrow.... Good-bye, then, doctor. The hole will do for me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, when the doctor had left, he again sat down by the dead girl&rsquo;s side,
+      and gravely resumed the perusal of his book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0055" id="link2H_4_0055">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      That morning there was great commotion in the yard at the parsonage. The
+      Artaud butcher had just slaughtered Matthew, the pig, in the shed.
+      Desirée, quite enthusiastic about it all, had held Matthew&rsquo;s feet, while
+      he was being bled, kissing him on the back that he might feel the pain of
+      the knife less, and telling him that it was absolutely necessary that he
+      should be killed, now that he had got so fat. No one could cut off a
+      goose&rsquo;s neck with a single stroke of the hatchet more unconcernedly than
+      she could, or gash open a fowl&rsquo;s throat with a pair of scissors. However
+      much she loved her charges, she looked upon their slaughter with great
+      equanimity. It was quite necessary, she would say. It made room for the
+      young ones who were growing up. And that morning she was very gay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Mademoiselle,&rsquo; grumbled La Teuse every minute, &lsquo;you will end by making
+      yourself ill. There is no sense in working yourself up into such a state,
+      just because a pig has been slaughtered. You are as red as if you had been
+      dancing a whole night.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Desirée only clapped her hands and turned away and bustled about
+      again. La Teuse, for her part, complained that her legs were sinking under
+      her. Since six o&rsquo;clock in the morning her big carcass had been perpetually
+      rolling between the kitchen and the yard, for she had black puddings to
+      make. It was she who had whisked the blood in two large earthenware pans,
+      and she had thought that she would never get finished, since mademoiselle
+      was for ever calling her away for mere nothings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It must be admitted that, at the very moment when the butcher was bleeding
+      Matthew, Desirée had been thrilled with wild excitement, for Lisa, the
+      cow, was about to calve. And the girl&rsquo;s delight at this had quite turned
+      her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;One goes and another comes!&rsquo; she cried, skipping and twirling round.
+      &lsquo;Come here, La Teuse! come here!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was eleven o&rsquo;clock. Every now and then the sound of chanting was wafted
+      from the church. A confused murmur of doleful voices, a muttering of
+      prayers could be heard amidst scraps of Latin pronounced in louder and
+      clearer tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come! oh, do come!&rsquo; repeated Desirée for the twentieth time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I must go and toll the bell, now,&rsquo; muttered the old servant. &lsquo;I shall
+      never get finished really. What is it that you want now, mademoiselle?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she did not wait for an answer. She threw herself upon a swarm of
+      fowls, who were greedily drinking the blood from the pans. And having
+      angrily kicked them away, and then covered up the pans, she called to
+      Desirée:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It would be a great deal better if, instead of tormenting me, you only
+      came to look after these wretched birds. If you let them do as they like
+      there will be no black-pudding for you. Do you hear?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Desirée only laughed. What of it, if the fowls did drink a few drops of
+      the blood? It would fatten them. Then she again tried to drag La Teuse off
+      to the cow, but the old servant refused to go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I must go and toll the bell. The procession will be coming out of church
+      directly. You know that quite well.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment the voices in the church rose yet more loudly, and a sound
+      of steps could be distinctly heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No! no!&rsquo; insisted Desirée, dragging La Teuse towards the stable. &lsquo;Just
+      come and look at her, and tell me what ought to be done.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      La Teuse shrugged her shoulders. All that the cow wanted was to be left
+      alone and not bothered. Then she set off towards the vestry, but, as she
+      passed the shed, she raised a fresh cry:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There! there!&rsquo; she shrieked, shaking her fist. &lsquo;Ah! the little wretch!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Matthew was lying at full length on his back, with his feet in the air,
+      under the shed, waiting to be singed.* The gash which the knife had made
+      in his neck was still quite fresh, and was beaded with drops of blood. And
+      a little white hen was very delicately picking off these drops of blood
+      one by one.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  * In some parts of France pigs, when killed, are singed, not scalded,
+    as is, I think, the usual practice in England.&mdash;ED.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why, of course,&rsquo; quietly remarked Desirée, &lsquo;she&rsquo;s regaling herself.&rsquo; And
+      the girl stooped and patted the pig&rsquo;s plump belly, saying: &lsquo;Eh! my fat
+      fellow, you have stolen their food too often to grudge them a wee bit of
+      your neck now!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      La Teuse hastily doffed her apron and threw it round Matthew&rsquo;s neck. Then
+      she hurried away and disappeared within the church. The great door had
+      just creaked on its rusty hinges, and a burst of chanting rose in the open
+      air amidst the quiet sunshine. Suddenly the bell began to toll with slow
+      and regular strokes. Desirée, who had remained kneeling beside the pig
+      patting his belly, raised her head to listen, while still continuing to
+      smile. When she saw that she was alone, having glanced cautiously around,
+      she glided away into the cow&rsquo;s stable and closed the door behind her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little iron gate of the graveyard, which had been opened quite wide to
+      let the body pass, hung against the wall, half torn from its hinges. The
+      sunshine slept upon the herbage of the empty expanse, into which the
+      funeral procession passed, chanting the last verse of the <i>Miserere</i>.
+      Then silence fell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Requiem ternam dona ei, Domine</i>,&rsquo; resumed Abbé Mouret, in solemn
+      tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Et lux perpetua luceat ei</i>,&rsquo; Brother Archangias bellowed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the head walked Vincent, wearing a surplice and bearing the cross, a
+      large copper cross, half the silver plating of which had come off. He
+      lifted it aloft with both his hands. Then followed Abbé Mouret, looking
+      very pale in his black chasuble, but with his head erect, and without a
+      quiver on his lips as he chanted the office, gazing into the distance with
+      fixed eyes. The flame of the lighted candle which he was carrying scarcely
+      showed in the daylight. And behind him, almost touching him, came Albine&rsquo;s
+      coffin, borne by four peasants on a sort of litter, painted black. The
+      coffin was clumsily covered with too short a pall, and at the lower end of
+      it the fresh deal of which it was made could be seen, with the heads of
+      the nails sparkling with a steely glitter. Upon the pall lay flowers:
+      handfuls of white roses, hyacinths, and tuberoses, taken from the dead
+      girl&rsquo;s very bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Just be careful!&rsquo; cried Brother Archangias to the peasants, as they
+      slightly tilted the litter in order to get it through the gateway. &lsquo;You
+      will be upsetting everything on to the ground!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He kept the coffin in its place with one of his fat hands. With the other&mdash;as
+      there was no second clerk&mdash;he was carrying the holy-water vessel, and
+      he likewise represented the choirman, the rural guard, who had been unable
+      to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come in, too, you others,&rsquo; he exclaimed, turning round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a second funeral, that of Rosalie&rsquo;s baby, who had died the
+      previous day from an attack of convulsions. The mother, the father, old
+      mother Brichet, Catherine, and two big girls, La Rousse and Lisa, were
+      there. The two last were carrying the baby&rsquo;s coffin, one supporting each
+      end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly all voices were hushed again, and there came another interval
+      whilst the bell continued tolling in slow and desolate accents. The
+      funeral procession crossed the entire burial-ground, going towards the
+      corner which was formed by the church and the wall of Desirée&rsquo;s
+      poultry-yard. Swarms of grasshoppers leaped away at the approaching
+      footsteps, and lizards hurried into their holes. A heavy warmth hung over
+      this corner of the loamy cemetery. The crackling of the dry grass beneath
+      the tramp of the mourners sounded like choking sobs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There! stop where you are!&rsquo; cried the Brother, barring the way before the
+      two big girls who were carrying the baby&rsquo;s coffin. &lsquo;Wait for your turn.
+      Don&rsquo;t be getting in our legs here.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two girls laid the baby on the ground. Rosalie, Fortune, and old
+      mother Brichet were lingering in the middle of the graveyard, while
+      Catherine slyly followed Brother Archangias. Albine&rsquo;s grave was on the
+      left hand of Abbé Caffin&rsquo;s tomb, whose white stone seemed in the sunshine
+      to be flecked with silvery spangles. The deep cavity, freshly dug that
+      morning, yawned amidst thick tufts of grass. Big weeds, almost uprooted,
+      drooped over the edges, and a fallen flower lay at the bottom, staining
+      the dark soil with its crimson petals. When Abbé Mouret came forward, the
+      soft earth crumbled and gave way beneath his feet; he was obliged to step
+      back to keep himself from slipping into the grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Ego sum</i>&mdash;&rsquo; he began in a full voice, which rose above the
+      mournful tolling of the bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the anthem, those who were present instinctively cast furtive
+      glances towards the bottom of the empty grave. Vincent, who had planted
+      the cross at the foot of the cavity opposite the priest, pushed the loose
+      earth with his foot, and amused himself by watching it fall. This drew a
+      laugh from Catherine, who was leaning forward from behind him to get a
+      better view. The peasants had set the litter on the grass and were
+      stretching their arms, while Brother Archangias prepared the sprinkler.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come here, Voriau!&rsquo; called Fortune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The big black dog, who had gone to sniff at the coffin, came back sulkily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why has the dog been brought?&rsquo; exclaimed Rosalie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh! he followed us,&rsquo; said Lisa, smiling quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were all chatting together in subdued tones round the baby&rsquo;s coffin.
+      The father and mother occasionally forgot all about it, but on catching
+      sight of it again, lying between them at their feet, they relapsed into
+      silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And so old Bambousse wouldn&rsquo;t come?&rsquo; said La Rousse. Mother Brichet
+      raised her eyes to heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He threatened to break everything to pieces yesterday when the little one
+      died,&rsquo; said she. &lsquo;No, no, I must say that he is not a good man. Didn&rsquo;t he
+      nearly strangle me, crying out that he had been robbed, and that he would
+      have given one of his cornfields for the little one to have died three
+      days before the wedding?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;One can never tell what will happen,&rsquo; remarked Fortune with a knowing
+      look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What&rsquo;s the good of the old man putting himself out about it? We are
+      married, all the same, now,&rsquo; added Rosalie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they exchanged a smile across the little coffin while Lisa and La
+      Rousse nudged each other with their elbows. But afterwards they all became
+      very serious again. Fortune picked up a clod of earth to throw at Voriau,
+      who was now prowling about amongst the old tombstones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! they&rsquo;ve nearly finished over there, now!&rsquo; La Rousse whispered very
+      softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abbé Mouret was just concluding the <i>De profundis</i> in front of
+      Albine&rsquo;s grave. Then, with slow steps, he approached the coffin, drew
+      himself up erect, and gazed at it for a moment without a quiver in his
+      glance. He looked taller, his face shone with a serenity that seemed to
+      transfigure him. He stooped and picked up a handful of earth, and
+      scattered it over the coffin crosswise. Then, in a voice so steady and
+      clear that not a syllable was lost, he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Revertitur in terrain suam unde erat, et spiritus redit ad Deum qui
+      dedit illum</i>.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A shudder ran through those who were present. Lisa seemed to reflect for a
+      moment, and then remarked with an expression of worry: &lsquo;It is not very
+      cheerful, eh, when one thinks that one&rsquo;s own turn will come some day or
+      other.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Brother Archangias had now handed the sprinkler to the priest, who
+      took it and shook it several times over the corpse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Requiescat in pace</i>,&rsquo; he murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;<i>Amen</i>,&rsquo; responded Vincent and the Brother together, in tones so
+      respectively shrill and deep that Catherine had to cram her fist into her
+      mouth to keep from laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, indeed, it is certainly not cheerful,&rsquo; continued Lisa. &lsquo;There really
+      was nobody at all at that funeral. The graveyard would be quite empty
+      without us.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve heard say that she killed herself,&rsquo; said old mother Brichet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, I know,&rsquo; interrupted La Rousse. &lsquo;The Brother didn&rsquo;t want to let her
+      be buried amongst Christians, but Monsieur le Curé said that eternity was
+      for everybody. I was there. But all the same the Philosopher might have
+      come.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that very moment Rosalie reduced them all to silence by murmuring:
+      &lsquo;See! there he is, the Philosopher.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jeanbernat was, indeed, just entering the graveyard. He walked straight to
+      the group that stood around Albine&rsquo;s grave; and he stepped along with so
+      lithe, so springy a gait, that none of them heard him coming. When he was
+      close to them, he remained for a moment behind Brother Archangias and
+      seemed to fix his eyes, for an instant, on the nape of the Brother&rsquo;s neck.
+      Then, just as the Abbé Mouret was finishing the office, he calmly drew a
+      knife from his pocket, opened it, and with a single cut sliced off the
+      Brother&rsquo;s right ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There had been no time for any one to interfere. The Brother gave a
+      terrible yell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The left one will be for another occasion,&rsquo; said Jeanbernat quietly, as
+      he threw the ear upon the ground. Then he went off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So great and so general was the stupefaction that nobody followed him.
+      Brother Archangias had dropped upon the heap of fresh soil which had been
+      thrown out of the grave. He was staunching his bleeding wound with his
+      handkerchief. One of the four peasants who had carried the coffin, wanted
+      to lead him away, conduct him home; but he refused with a gesture and
+      remained where he was, fierce and sullen, wishing to see Albine lowered
+      into the pit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There! it&rsquo;s our turn at last!&rsquo; said Rosalie with a little sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Abbé Mouret still lingered by the grave, watching the bearers who were
+      slipping cords under Albine&rsquo;s coffin in order that they might let it down
+      gently. The bell was still tolling; but La Teuse must have been getting
+      tired, for it tolled irregularly, as though it were becoming a little
+      irritated at the length of the ceremony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun was growing hotter and the Solitaire&rsquo;s shadow crept slowly over
+      the grass and the grave mounds. When Abbé Mouret was obliged to step back
+      in order to give the bearers room, his eyes lighted upon the marble
+      tombstone of Abbé Caffin, that priest who also had loved, and who was now
+      sleeping there so peacefully beneath the wild-flowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, all at once, even as the coffin descended, supported by the cords,
+      whose knots made it strain and creak, a tremendous uproar arose in the
+      poultry-yard on the other side of the wall. The goat began to bleat. The
+      ducks, the geese, and the turkeys raised their loudest calls and flapped
+      their wings. The fowls all cackled at once. The yellow cock, Alexander,
+      crowed forth his trumpet notes. The rabbits could even be heard leaping in
+      their hutches and shaking their wooden floors. And, above all this lifeful
+      uproar of the animal creation, a loud laugh rang out. There was a rustling
+      of skirts. Desirée, with her hair streaming, her arms bare to the elbows,
+      and her face crimson with triumph, burst into sight, her hands resting
+      upon the coping of the wall. She had doubtless climbed upon the
+      manure-heap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Serge! Serge!&rsquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment Albine&rsquo;s coffin had reached the bottom of the grave. The
+      cords had just been withdrawn. One of the peasants was throwing the first
+      shovelful of earth into the cavity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Serge! Serge!&rsquo; Desirée cried, still more loudly, clapping her hands, &lsquo;the
+      cow has got a calf!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                              THE END
+</pre>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ABBÉ MOURET'S TRANSGRESSION ***</div>
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diff --git a/old/old/14200.txt b/old/old/14200.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Abbe Mouret's Transgression, by Emile Zola
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Abbe Mouret's Transgression
+       La Faute De L'abbe Mouret
+
+Author: Emile Zola
+
+Editor: Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
+
+Release Date: November 28, 2004 [EBook #14200]
+Posting Date: May 29, 2009
+[This file last updated January 9, 2011]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ABBE MOURET'S TRANSGRESSION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny; and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ABBE MOURET'S TRANSGRESSION
+
+
+By Emile Zola
+
+
+Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+'LA FAUTE DE L'ABBE MOURET' was, with respect to the date of
+publication, the fourth volume of M. Zola's 'Rougon-Macquart' series;
+but in the amended and final scheme of that great literary undertaking,
+it occupies the ninth place. It proceeds from the sixth volume of the
+series, 'The Conquest of Plassans;' which is followed by the two works
+that deal with the career of Octave Mouret, Abbe Serge Mouret's elder
+brother. In 'The Conquest of Plassans,' Serge and his half-witted
+sister, Desiree, are seen in childhood at their home in Plassans, which
+is wrecked by the doings of a certain Abbe Faujas and his relatives.
+Serge Mouret grows up, is called by an instinctive vocation to the
+priesthood, and becomes parish priest of Les Artaud, a well-nigh pagan
+hamlet in one of those bare, burning stretches of country with which
+Provence abounds. And here it is that 'La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret' opens
+in the old ruinous church, perched upon a hillock in full view of the
+squalid village, the arid fields, and the great belts of rock which shut
+in the landscape all around.
+
+There are two elements in this remarkable story, which, from the
+standpoint of literary style, has never been excelled by anything that
+M. Zola has since written; and one may glance at it therefore from two
+points of view. Taking it under its sociological and religious aspect,
+it will be found to be an indirect indictment of the celibacy of the
+priesthood; that celibacy, contrary to Nature's fundamental law, which
+assuredly has largely influenced the destinies of the Roman Catholic
+Church. To that celibacy, and to all the evils that have sprang from
+it, may be ascribed much of the irreligion current in France to-day.
+The periodical reports on criminality issued by the French Ministers of
+Justice since the foundation of the Republic in 1871, supply materials
+for a most formidable indictment of that vow of perpetual chastity which
+Rome exacts from her clergy. Nowadays it is undoubtedly too late for
+Rome to go back upon that vow and thereby transform the whole of her
+sacerdotal organisation; but, perhaps, had she done so in past times,
+before the spirit of inquiry and free examination came into being, she
+might have assured herself many more centuries of supremacy than have
+fallen to her lot. But she has ever sought to dissociate the law of the
+Divinity from the law of Nature, as though indeed the latter were but
+the invention of the Fiend.
+
+Abbe Mouret, M. Zola's hero, finds himself placed between the law of
+the Divinity and the law of Nature: and the struggle waged within him by
+those two forces is a terrible one. That which training has implanted
+in his mind proves the stronger, and, so far as the canons of the Church
+can warrant it, he saves his soul. But the problem is not quite frankly
+put by M. Zola; for if Abbe Mouret transgresses he does so unwittingly,
+at a time when he is unconscious of his priesthood and has no memory of
+any vow. When the truth flashes upon him he is horrified with himself,
+and forthwith returns to the Church. A further struggle between the
+contending forces then certainly ensues, and ends in the final victory
+of the Church. But it must at least be said that in the lapses which
+occur in real life among the Roman priesthood, the circumstances are
+altogether different from those which M. Zola has selected for his
+story.
+
+The truth is that in 'La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret,' betwixt lifelike
+glimpses of French rural life, the author transports us to a realm of
+poesy and imagination. This is, indeed, so true that he has introduced
+into his work all the ideas on which he had based an early unfinished
+poem called 'Genesis.' He carries us to an enchanted garden,
+the Paradou--a name which one need hardly say is Provencal for
+Paradise*--and there Serge Mouret, on recovering from brain fever,
+becomes, as it were, a new Adam by the side of a new Eve, the fair and
+winsome Albine. All this part of the book, then, is poetry in prose.
+The author has remembered the ties which link Rousseau to the realistic
+school of fiction, and, as in the pages of Jean-Jacques, trees, springs,
+mountains, rocks, and flowers become animated beings and claim their
+place in the world's mechanism. One may indeed go back far beyond
+Rousseau, even to Lucretius himself; for more than once we are
+irresistibly reminded of Lucretian scenes, above which through M. Zola's
+pages there seems to hover the pronouncement of Sophocles:
+
+     No ordinance of man shall override
+     The settled laws of Nature and of God;
+     Not written these in pages of a book,
+     Nor were they framed to-day, nor yesterday;
+     We know not whence they are; but this we know,
+     That they from all eternity have been,
+     And shall to all eternity endure.
+
+
+  * There is a village called Paradou in Provence, between
+    Les Baux and Arles.
+
+And if we pass to the young pair whose duo of love is sung amidst the
+varied voices of creation, we are irresistibly reminded of the Paul
+and Virginia of St. Pierre, and the Daphnis and Chloe of Longus. Beside
+them, in their marvellous garden, lingers a memory too of Manon and
+Des Grieux, with a suggestion of Lauzun and a glimpse of the art of
+Fragonard. All combine, all contribute--from the great classics to the
+eighteenth century _petits maitres_--to build up a story of love's rise
+in the human breast in answer to Nature's promptings.
+
+M. Zola wrote 'La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret' one summer under the trees of
+his garden, mindful the while of gardens that he had known in childhood:
+the flowery expanse which had stretched before his grandmother's home
+at Pont-au-Beraud and the wild estate of Galice, between Roquefavour and
+Aix-en-Provence, through which he had roamed as a lad with friends then
+boys like himself: Professor Baille and Cezanne, the painter. And into
+his description of the wondrous Paradou he has put all his remembrance
+of the gardens and woods of Provence, where many a plant and flower
+thrive with a luxuriance unknown to England. True, in order to refresh
+his memory and avoid mistakes, he consulted various horticultural
+manuals whilst he was writing; of which circumstance captious critics
+have readily laid hold, to proclaim that the description of the Paradou
+is a mere florist's catalogue.
+
+But it is nothing of the kind. The florist who might dare to offer
+such a catalogue to the public would be speedily assailed by all the
+horticultural journalists of England and all the customers of villadom.
+For M. Zola avails himself of a poet's license to crowd marvel upon
+marvel, to exaggerate nature's forces, to transform the tiniest blooms
+into giant examples of efflorescence, and to mingle even the seasons
+one with the other. But all this was premeditated; there was a picture
+before his mind's eye, and that picture he sought to trace with his pen,
+regardless of all possible objections. It is the poet's privilege to
+do this and even to be admired for it. It would be easy for some leaned
+botanist, some expert zoologist, to demolish Milton from the standpoint
+of their respective sciences, but it would be absurd to do so. We ask of
+the poet the flowers of his imagination, and the further he carries us
+from the sordid realities, the limited possibilities of life, the more
+are we grateful to him.
+
+And M. Zola's Paradou is a flight of fancy, even as its mistress, the
+fair, loving, guileless Albine, whose smiles and whose tears alike go
+to our hearts, is the daughter of imagination. She is a flower--the very
+flower of life's youth--in the midst of all the blossoms of her
+garden. She unfolds to life and to love even as they unfold; she loves
+rapturously even as they do under the sun and the azure; and she dies
+with them when the sun's caress is gone and the chill of winter has
+fallen. At the thought of her, one instinctively remembers Malherbe's
+'Ode A Du Perrier:'
+
+     She to this earth belonged, where beauty fast
+          To direst fate is borne:
+     A rose, she lasted, as the roses last,
+          Only for one brief morn.
+
+
+French painters have made subjects of many episodes in M. Zola's
+works, but none has been more popular with them than Albine's pathetic,
+perfumed death amidst the flowers. I know several paintings of great
+merit which that touching incident has inspired.
+
+Albine, if more or less unreal, a phantasm, the spirit as it were of
+Nature incarnate in womanhood, is none the less the most delightful of
+M. Zola's heroines. She smiles at us like the vision of perfect beauty
+and perfect love which rises before us when our hearts are yet young and
+full of illusions. She is the ideal, the very quintessence of woman.
+
+In Serge Mouret, her lover, we find a man who, in more than one respect,
+recalls M. Zola's later hero, the Abbe Froment of 'Lourdes' and 'Rome.'
+He has the same loving, yearning nature; he is born--absolutely like
+Abbe Froment--of an unbelieving father and a mother of mystical mind.
+But unlike Froment he cannot shake off the shackles of his priesthood.
+Reborn to life after his dangerous illness, he relapses into the
+religion of death, the religion which regards life as impurity, which
+denies Nature's laws, and so often wrecks human existence, as if
+indeed that had been the Divine purpose in setting man upon earth. His
+struggles suggest various passages in 'Lourdes' and 'Rome.' In fact, in
+writing those works, M. Zola must have had his earlier creation in
+mind. There are passages in 'La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret' culled from the
+writings of the Spanish Jesuit Fathers and the 'Imitation' of Thomas
+a Kempis that recur almost word for word in the Trilogy of the Three
+Cities. Some might regard this as evidence of the limitation of M.
+Zola's powers, but I think differently. I consider that he has in both
+instances designedly taken the same type of priest in order to show how
+he may live under varied circumstances; for in the earlier instance
+he has led him to one goal, and in the later one to another. And the
+passages of prayer, entreaty, and spiritual conflict simply recur
+because they are germane, even necessary, to the subject in both cases.
+
+Of the minor characters that figure in 'La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret' the
+chief thing to be said is that they are lifelike. If Serge is almost
+wholly spiritual, if Albine is the daughter of poesy, they, the others,
+are of the earth earthy. As a result of their appearance on the scene,
+there are some powerful contrasting passages in the book. Archangias,
+the coarse and brutal Christian Brother who serves as a foil to Abbe
+Mouret; La Teuse, the priest's garrulous old housekeeper; Desiree, his
+'innocent' sister, a grown woman with the mind of a child and an almost
+crazy affection for every kind of bird and beast, are all admirably
+portrayed. Old Bambousse, though one sees but little of him, stands
+out as a genuine type of the hard-headed French peasant, who invariably
+places pecuniary considerations before all others. And Fortune and
+Rosalie, Vincent and Catherine, and their companions, are equally true
+to nature. It need hardly be said that there is many a village in France
+similar to Les Artaud. That hamlet's shameless, purely animal life has
+in no wise been over-pictured by M. Zola. Those who might doubt him need
+not go as far as Provence to find such communities. Many Norman hamlets
+are every whit as bad, and, in Normandy, conditions are aggravated by a
+marked predilection for the bottle, which, as French social-scientists
+have been pointing out for some years now, is fast hastening the
+degenerescence of the peasantry, both morally and physically.
+
+With reference to the English version of 'La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret'
+herewith presented, I may just say that I have subjected it to
+considerable revision and have retranslated all the more important
+passages myself.
+
+     MERTON, SURREY.                                    E. A. V.
+
+
+
+
+
+ABBE MOURET'S TRANSGRESSION
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+As La Teuse entered the church she rested her broom and feather-brush
+against the altar. She was late, as she had that day began her
+half-yearly wash. Limping more than ever in her haste and hustling the
+benches, she went down the church to ring the _Angelus_. The bare, worn
+bell-rope dangled from the ceiling near the confessional, and ended in a
+big knot greasy from handling. Again and again, with regular jumps, she
+hung herself upon it; and then let her whole bulky figure go with it,
+whirling in her petticoats, her cap awry, and her blood rushing to her
+broad face.
+
+Having set her cap straight with a little pat, she came back breathless
+to give a hasty sweep before the altar. Every day the dust persistently
+settled between the disjoined boards of the platform. Her broom rummaged
+among the corners with an angry rumble. Then she lifted the altar cover
+and was sorely vexed to find that the large upper cloth, already darned
+in a score of places, was again worn through in the very middle, so
+as to show the under cloth, which in its turn was so worn and so
+transparent that one could see the consecrated stone, embedded in the
+painted wood of the altar. La Teuse dusted the linen, yellow from long
+usage, and plied her feather-brush along the shelf against which she set
+the liturgical altar-cards. Then, climbing upon a chair, she removed the
+yellow cotton covers from the crucifix and two of the candlesticks. The
+brass of the latter was tarnished.
+
+'Dear me!' she muttered, 'they really want a clean! I must give them a
+polish up!'
+
+Then hopping on one leg, swaying and stumping heavily enough to drive in
+the flagstones, she hastened to the sacristy for the Missal, which
+she placed unopened on the lectern on the Epistle side, with its edges
+turned towards the middle of the altar. And afterwards she lighted the
+two candles. As she went off with her broom, she gave a glance round
+her to make sure that the abode of the Divinity had been put in proper
+order. All was still, save that the bell-rope near the confessional
+still swung between roof and floor with a sinuous sweep.
+
+Abbe Mouret had just come down to the sacristy, a small and chilly
+apartment, which a passage separated from his dining-room.
+
+'Good morning, Monsieur le Cure,' said La Teuse, laying her broom aside.
+'Oh! you have been lazy this morning! Do you know it's a quarter past
+six?' And without allowing the smiling young priest sufficient time to
+reply, she added 'I've a scolding to give you. There's another hole in
+the cloth again. There's no sense in it. We have only one other, and
+I've been ruining my eyes over it these three days in trying to mend it.
+You will leave our poor Lord quite bare, if you go on like this.'
+
+Abbe Mouret was still smiling. 'Jesus does not need so much linen, my
+good Teuse,' he cheerfully replied. 'He is always warm, always royally
+received by those who love Him well.'
+
+Then stepping towards a small tap, he asked: 'Is my sister up yet? I
+have not seen her.'
+
+'Oh, Mademoiselle Desiree has been down a long time,' answered the
+servant, who was kneeling before an old kitchen sideboard in which the
+sacred vestments were kept. 'She is already with her fowls and rabbits.
+She was expecting some chicks to be hatched yesterday, and it didn't
+come off. So you can guess her excitement.' Then the worthy woman broke
+off to inquire: 'The gold chasuble, eh?'
+
+The priest, who had washed his hands and stood reverently murmuring a
+prayer, nodded affirmatively. The parish possessed only three chasubles:
+a violet one, a black one, and one in cloth-of-gold. The last had to be
+used on the days when white, red, or green was prescribed by the ritual,
+and it was therefore an all important garment. La Teuse lifted it
+reverently from the shelf covered with blue paper, on which she laid
+it after each service; and having placed it on the sideboard, she
+cautiously removed the fine cloths which protected its embroidery. A
+golden lamb slumbered on a golden cross, surrounded by broad rays of
+gold. The gold tissue, frayed at the folds, broke out in little slender
+tufts; the embossed ornaments were getting tarnished and worn. There was
+perpetual anxiety, fluttering concern, at seeing it thus go off spangle
+by spangle. The priest had to wear it almost every day. And how on earth
+could it be replaced--how would they be able to buy the three chasubles
+whose place it took, when the last gold threads should be worn out?
+
+Upon the chasuble La Teuse next laid out the stole, the maniple, the
+girdle, alb and amice. But her tongue still wagged while she crossed
+the stole with the maniple, and wreathed the girdle so as to trace the
+venerated initial of Mary's holy name.
+
+'That girdle is not up to much now,' she muttered; 'you will have to
+make up your mind to get another, your reverence. It wouldn't be very
+hard; I could plait you one myself if I only had some hemp.'
+
+Abbe Mouret made no answer. He was dressing the chalice at a small
+table. A large old silver-gilt chalice it was with a bronze base, which
+he had just taken from the bottom of a deal cupboard, in which the
+sacred vessels and linen, the Holy Oils, the Missals, candlesticks, and
+crosses were kept. Across the cup he laid a clean purificator, and on
+this set the silver-gilt paten, with the host in it, which he covered
+with a small lawn pall. As he was hiding the chalice by gathering
+together the folds in the veil of cloth of gold matching the chasuble,
+La Teuse exclaimed:
+
+'Stop, there's no corporal in the burse. Last night I took all the
+dirty purificators, palls, and corporals to wash them--separately, of
+course--not with the house-wash. By-the-bye, your reverence, I didn't
+tell you: I have just started the house-wash. A fine fat one it will be!
+Better than the last.'
+
+Then while the priest slipped a corporal into the burse and laid the
+latter on the veil, she went on quickly:
+
+'By-the-bye, I forgot! that gadabout Vincent hasn't come. Do you wish me
+to serve your mass, your reverence?'
+
+The young priest eyed her sternly.
+
+'Well, it isn't a sin,' she continued, with her genial smile. 'I did
+serve a mass once, in Monsieur Caffin's time. I serve it better, too,
+than ragamuffins who laugh like heathens at seeing a fly buzzing about
+the church. True I may wear a cap, I may be sixty years old, and as
+round as a tub, but I have more respect for our Lord than those imps of
+boys whom I caught only the other day playing at leap-frog behind the
+altar.'
+
+The priest was still looking at her and shaking his head.
+
+'What a hole this village is!' she grumbled. 'Not a hundred and fifty
+people in it! There are days, like to-day, when you wouldn't find a
+living soul in Les Artaud. Even the babies in swaddling clothes are
+gone to the vineyards! And goodness knows what they do among such
+vines--vines that grow under the pebbles and look as dry as thistles! A
+perfect wilderness, three miles from any highway! Unless an angel comes
+down to serve your mass, your reverence, you've only got me to help you,
+on my honour! or one of Mademoiselle Desiree's rabbits, no offence to
+your reverence!'
+
+Just at that moment, however, Vincent, the Brichets' younger son, gently
+opened the door of the sacristy. His shock of red hair and his little,
+glistening, grey eyes exasperated La Teuse.
+
+'Oh! the wretch!' she cried. 'I'll bet he's just been up to some
+mischief! Come on, you scamp, since his reverence is afraid I might
+dirty our Lord!'
+
+On seeing the lad, Abbe Mouret had taken up the amice. He kissed the
+cross embroidered in the centre of it, and for a second laid the cloth
+upon his head; then lowering it over the collar-band of his cassock, he
+crossed it and fastened the tapes, the right one over the left. He next
+donned the alb, the symbol of purity, beginning with the right sleeve.
+Vincent stooped and turned around him, adjusting the alb, in order
+that it should fall evenly all round him to a couple of inches from
+the ground. Then he presented the girdle to the priest, who fastened
+it tightly round his loins, as a reminder of the bonds wherewith the
+Saviour was bound in His Passion.
+
+La Teuse remained standing there, feeling jealous and hurt and
+struggling to keep silence; but so great was the itching of her tongue,
+that she soon broke out once more: 'Brother Archangias has been here.
+He won't have a single child at school to-day. He went off again like a
+whirlwind to pull the brats' ears in the vineyards. You had better see
+him. I believe he has got something to say to you.'
+
+Abbe Mouret silenced her with a wave of the hand. Then he repeated the
+usual prayers while he took the maniple--which he kissed before slipping
+it over his left forearm, as a symbol of the practice of good works--and
+while crossing on his breast the stole, the symbol of his dignity
+and power. La Teuse had to help Vincent in the work of adjusting the
+chasuble, which she fastened together with slender tapes, so that it
+might not slip off behind.
+
+'Holy Virgin! I had forgotten the cruets!' she stammered, rushing to the
+cupboard. 'Come, look sharp, lad!'
+
+Thereupon Vincent filled the cruets, phials of coarse glass, while
+she hastened to take a clean finger-cloth from a drawer. Abbe Mouret,
+holding the chalice by its stem with his left hand, the fingers of his
+right resting meanwhile on the burse, then bowed profoundly, but without
+removing his biretta, to a black wooden crucifix, which hung over the
+side-board. The lad bowed too, and, bearing the cruets covered with the
+finger-cloth, led the way out of the sacristy, followed by the priest,
+who walked on with downcast eyes, absorbed in deep and prayerful
+meditation.
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+The empty church was quite white that May morning. The bell-rope near
+the confessional hung motionless once more. The little bracket light,
+with its stained glass shade, burned like a crimson splotch against the
+wall on the right of the tabernacle. Vincent, having set the cruets on
+the credence, came back and knelt just below the altar step on the left,
+while the priest, after rendering homage to the Holy Sacrament by a
+genuflexion, went up to the altar and there spread out the corporal,
+on the centre of which he placed the chalice. Then, having opened the
+Missal, he came down again. Another bend of the knee followed, and,
+after crossing himself and uttering aloud the formula, 'In the name of
+the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,' he raised his joined hands to
+his breast, and entered on the great divine drama, with his countenance
+blanched by faith and love.
+
+'_Introibo ad altare Dei_.'
+
+'_Ad Deum qui loetificat juventutem meam_,' gabbled Vincent, who,
+squatting on his heels, mumbled the responses of the antiphon and the
+psalm, while watching La Teuse as she roved about the church.
+
+The old servant was gazing at one of the candles with a troubled look.
+Her anxiety seemed to increase while the priest, bowing down with hands
+joined again, recited the _Confiteor_. She stood still, in her turn
+struck her breast, her head bowed, but still keeping a watchful eye on
+the taper. For another minute the priest's grave voice and the server's
+stammers alternated:
+
+'_Dominus vobiscum_.'
+
+'_Et cum spiritu tuo_.'
+
+Then the priest, spreading out his hands and afterwards again joining
+them, said with devout compunction: '_Oremus_' (Let us pray).
+
+La Teuse could now stand it no longer, but stepped behind the altar,
+reached the guttering candle, and trimmed it with the points of her
+scissors. Two large blobs of wax had already been wasted. When she came
+back again putting the benches straight on her way, and making sure that
+there was holy-water in the fonts, the priest, whose hands were resting
+on the edge of the altar-cloth, was praying in subdued tones. And at
+last he kissed the altar.
+
+Behind him, the little church still looked wan in the pale light of
+early morn. The sun, as yet, was only level with the tiled roof. The
+_Kyrie Eleisons_ rang quiveringly through that sort of whitewashed
+stable with flat ceiling and bedaubed beams. On either side three lofty
+windows of plain glass, most of them cracked or smashed, let in a raw
+light of chalky crudeness.
+
+The free air poured in as it listed, emphasising the naked poverty of
+the God of that forlorn village. At the far end of the church, above
+the big door which was never opened and the threshold of which was
+green with weeds, a boarded gallery--reached by a common miller's
+ladder--stretched from wall to wall. Dire were its creakings on festival
+days beneath the weight of wooden shoes. Near the ladder stood the
+confessional, with warped panels, painted a lemon yellow. Facing it,
+beside the little door, stood the font--a former holy-water stoup
+resting on a stonework pedestal. To the right and to the left, halfway
+down the church, two narrow altars stood against the wall, surrounded
+by wooden balustrades. On the left-hand one, dedicated to the Blessed
+Virgin, was a large gilded plaster statue of the Mother of God, wearing
+a regal gold crown upon her chestnut hair; while on her left arm sat
+the Divine Child, nude and smiling, whose little hand raised the
+star-spangled orb of the universe. The Virgin's feet were poised on
+clouds, and beneath them peeped the heads of winged cherubs. Then the
+right-hand altar, used for the masses for the dead, was surmounted by a
+crucifix of painted papier-mache--a pendant, as it were, to the Virgin's
+effigy. The figure of Christ, as large as a child of ten years old,
+showed Him in all the horror of His death-throes, with head thrown back,
+ribs projecting, abdomen hollowed in, and limbs distorted and splashed
+with blood. There was a pulpit, too--a square box reached by a five-step
+block--near a clock with running weights, in a walnut case, whose thuds
+shook the whole church like the beatings of some huge heart concealed,
+it might be, under the stone flags. All along the nave the fourteen
+Stations of the Cross, fourteen coarsely coloured prints in narrow black
+frames, bespeckled the staring whiteness of the walls with the yellow,
+blue, and scarlet of scenes from the Passion.
+
+'_Deo Gratias_,' stuttered out Vincent at the end of the Epistle.
+
+The mystery of love, the immolation of the Holy Victim, was about
+to begin. The server took the Missal and bore it to the left, or
+Gospel-side, of the altar, taking care not to touch the pages of the
+book. Each time he passed before the tabernacle he made a genuflexion
+slantwise, which threw him all askew. Returning to the right-hand side
+once more, he stood upright with crossed arms during the reading of the
+Gospel. The priest, after making the sign of the cross upon the Missal,
+next crossed himself: first upon his forehead--to declare that he
+would never blush for the divine word; then on his mouth--to show his
+unchanging readiness to confess his faith; and finally on his heart--to
+mark that it belonged to God alone.
+
+'_Dominus vobiscum_,' said he, turning round and facing the cold white
+church.
+
+'_Et cum spiritu tuo_,' answered Vincent, who once more was on his
+knees.
+
+The Offertory having been recited, the priest uncovered the chalice. For
+a moment he held before his breast the paten containing the host, which
+he offered up to God, for himself, for those present, and for all the
+faithful, living and dead. Then, slipping it on to the edge of the
+corporal without touching it with his fingers, he took up the chalice
+and carefully wiped it with the purificator. Vincent had in the
+meanwhile fetched the cruets from the credence table, and now presented
+them in turn, first the wine and then the water. The priest then offered
+up on behalf of the whole world the half-filled chalice, which he next
+replaced upon the corporal and covered with the pall. Then once again
+he prayed, and returned to the side of the altar where the server let a
+little water dribble over his thumbs and forefingers to purify him
+from the slightest sinful stain. When he had dried his hands on
+the finger-cloth, La Teuse--who stood there waiting--emptied the
+cruet-salver into a zinc pail at the corner of the altar.
+
+'_Orate, fratres_,' resumed the priest aloud as he faced the empty
+benches, extending and reclasping his hands in a gesture of appeal to
+all men of good-will. And turning again towards the altar, he continued
+his prayer in a lower tone, while Vincent began to mutter a long Latin
+sentence in which he eventually got lost. Now it was that the yellow
+sunbeams began to dart through the windows; called, as it were, by the
+priest, the sun itself had come to mass, throwing golden sheets of light
+upon the left-hand wall, the confessional, the Virgin's altar, and the
+big clock.
+
+A gentle creak came from the confessional; the Mother of God, in a halo,
+in the dazzlement of her golden crown and mantle smiled tenderly with
+tinted lips upon the infant Jesus; and the heated clock throbbed out
+the time with quickening strokes. It seemed as if the sun peopled the
+benches with the dusty motes that danced in his beams, as if the
+little church, that whitened stable, were filled with a glowing throng.
+Without, were heard the sounds that told of the happy waking of the
+countryside, the blades of grass sighed out content, the damp leaves
+dried themselves in the warmth, the birds pruned their feathers and took
+a first flit round. And indeed the countryside itself seemed to enter
+with the sun; for beside one of the windows a large rowan tree shot
+up, thrusting some of its branches through the shattered panes and
+stretching out leafy buds as if to take a peep within; while through
+the fissures of the great door the weeds on the threshold threatened to
+encroach upon the nave. Amid all this quickening life, the big Christ,
+still in shadow, alone displayed signs of death, the sufferings of
+ochre-daubed and lake-bespattered flesh. A sparrow raised himself up for
+a moment at the edge of a hole, took a glance, then flew away; but
+only to reappear almost immediately when with noiseless wing he
+dropped between the benches before the Virgin's altar. A second sparrow
+followed; and soon from all the boughs of the rowan tree came others
+that calmly hopped about the flags.
+
+'_Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth_,' said the priest in
+a low tone, whilst slightly stooping.
+
+Vincent rang the little bell thrice; and the sparrows, scared by the
+sudden tinkling, flew off with such a mighty buzz of wings that La
+Teuse, who had just gone back into the sacristy, came out again,
+grumbling; 'The little rascals! they will mess everything. I'll bet that
+Mademoiselle Desiree has been here again to scatter bread-crumbs for
+them.'
+
+The dread moment was at hand. The body and the blood of a God were about
+to descend upon the altar. The priest kissed the altar-cloth, clasped
+his hands, and multiplied signs of the cross over host and chalice.
+The prayers of the canon of the mass now fell from his lips in a very
+ecstasy of humility and gratitude. His attitude, his gestures, the
+inflections of his voice, all expressed his consciousness of his
+littleness, his emotion at being selected for so great a task. Vincent
+came and knelt beside him, lightly lifted the chasuble with his left
+hand, the bell ready in his right; and the priest, his elbows resting on
+the edge of the altar, holding the host with the thumbs and forefingers
+of both hands, pronounced over it the words of consecration: _Hoc est
+enim corpus meum_. Then having bowed the knee before it, he raised it
+slowly as high as his hands could reach, following it upwards with
+his eyes, while the kneeling server rang the bell thrice. Then he
+consecrated the wine--_Hic est enim calix_--leaning once more upon his
+elbows, bowing, raising the cup aloft, his right hand round the stem,
+his left holding its base, and his eyes following it aloft. Again the
+server rang the bell three times. The great mystery of the Redemption
+had once more been repeated, once more had the adorable Blood flowed
+forth.
+
+'Just you wait a bit,' growled La Teuse, as she tried to scare away the
+sparrows with outstretched fist.
+
+But the sparrows were now fearless. They had come back even while the
+bell was ringing, and, unabashed, were fluttering about the benches. The
+repeated tinklings even roused them into liveliness, and they answered
+back with little chirps which crossed amid the Latin words of prayer,
+like the rippling laughs of free urchins. The sun warmed their plumage,
+the sweet poverty of the church captivated them. They felt at home
+there, as in some barn whose shutters had been left open, and screeched,
+fought, and squabbled over the crumbs they found upon the floor. One
+flew to perch himself on the smiling Virgin's golden veil; another,
+whose daring put the old servant in a towering rage, made a hasty
+reconnaissance of La Teuse's skirts. And at the altar, the priest, with
+every faculty absorbed, his eyes fixed upon the sacred host, his thumbs
+and forefingers joined, did not even hear this invasion of the warm
+May morning, this rising flood of sunlight, greenery and birds, which
+overflowed even to the foot of the Calvary where doomed nature was
+wrestling in the death-throes.
+
+'_Per omnia soecula soeculorum_,' he said.
+
+'Amen,' answered Vincent.
+
+The _Pater_ ended, the priest, holding the host over the chalice,
+broke it in the centre. Detaching a particle from one of the halves, he
+dropped it into the precious blood, to symbolise the intimate union into
+which he was about to enter with God. He said the _Agnus Dei_ aloud,
+softly recited the three prescribed prayers, and made his act of
+unworthiness, and then with his elbows resting on the altar, and with
+the paten beneath his chin, he partook of both portions of the host
+at once. After a fervent meditation, with his hands clasped before
+his face, he took the paten and gathered from the corporal the sacred
+particles of the host that had fallen, and dropped them into the
+chalice. One particle which had adhered to his thumb he removed with his
+forefinger. And, crossing himself, chalice in hand, with the paten once
+again below his chin, he drank all the precious blood in three draughts,
+never taking his lips from the cup's rim, but imbibing the divine
+Sacrifice to the last drop.
+
+Vincent had risen to fetch the cruets from the credence table. But
+suddenly the door of the passage leading to the parsonage flew open
+and swung back against the wall, to admit a handsome child-like girl of
+twenty-two, who carried something hidden in her apron.
+
+'Thirteen of them,' she called out. 'All the eggs were good.' And she
+opened out her apron and revealed a brood of little shivering chicks,
+with sprouting down and beady black eyes. 'Do just look,' said she;
+'aren't they sweet little pets, the darlings! Oh, look at the little
+white one climbing on the others' backs! and the spotted one already
+flapping his tiny wings! The eggs were a splendid lot; not one of them
+unfertile.'
+
+La Teuse, who was helping to serve the mass in spite of all
+prohibitions, and was at that very moment handing the cruets to Vincent
+for the ablutions, thereupon turned round and loudly exclaimed: 'Do be
+quiet, Mademoiselle Desiree! Don't you see we haven't finished yet?'
+
+Through the open doorway now came the strong smell of a farmyard,
+blowing like some generative ferment into the church amidst the warm
+sunlight that was creeping over the altar. Desiree stood there for a
+moment delighted with the little ones she carried, watching Vincent
+pour, and her brother drink, the purifying wine, in order that nought of
+the sacred elements should be left within his mouth. And she stood there
+still when he came back to the side of the altar, holding the chalice in
+both hands, so that Vincent might pour over his forefingers and thumbs
+the wine and water of ablution, which he likewise drank. But when the
+mother hen ran up clucking with alarm to seek her little ones, and
+threatened to force her way into the church, Desiree went off,
+talking maternally to her chicks, while the priest, after pressing the
+purificator to his lips, wiped first the rim and next the interior of
+the chalice.
+
+Then came the end, the act of thanksgiving to God. For the last time the
+server removed the Missal, and brought it back to the right-hand side.
+The priest replaced the purificator, paten, and pall upon the chalice;
+once more pinched the two large folds of the veil together, and laid
+upon it the burse containing the corporal. His whole being was now one
+act of ardent thanksgiving. He besought from Heaven the forgiveness of
+his sins, the grace of a holy life, and the reward of everlasting
+life. He remained as if overwhelmed by this miracle of love, the
+ever-recurring immolation, which sustained him day by day with the blood
+and flesh of his Savior.
+
+Having read the final prayers, he turned and said: '_Ite, missa est_.'
+
+'_Deo gratias_,' answered Vincent.
+
+And having turned back to kiss the altar, the priest faced round anew,
+his left hand just below his breast, his right outstretched whilst
+blessing the church, which the gladsome sunbeams and noisy sparrows
+filled.
+
+'_Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus, Pater et Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus_.'
+
+'_Amen_,' said the server, as he crossed himself.
+
+The sun had risen higher, and the sparrows were growing bolder. While
+the priest read from the left-hand altar-card the passage of the Gospel
+of St. John, announcing the eternity of the Word, the sunrays set the
+altar ablaze, whitened the panels of imitation marble, and dimmed the
+flame of the two candles, whose short wicks were now merely two dull
+spots. The victorious orb enveloped with his glory the crucifix, the
+candlesticks, the chasuble, the veil of the chalice--all the gold work
+that paled beneath his beams. And when at last the priest, after taking
+the chalice in his hands and making a genuflexion, covered his head and
+turned from the altar to follow the server, laden with the cruets and
+finger-cloth, to the sacristy, the planet remained sole master of the
+church. Its rays in turn now rested on the altar-cloth, irradiating the
+tabernacle-door with splendour, and celebrating the fertile powers
+of May. Warmth rose from the stone flags. The daubed walls, the tall
+Virgin, the huge Christ, too, all seemed to quiver as with shooting sap,
+as if death had been conquered by the earth's eternal youth.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Le Teuse hastily put out the candles, but lingered to make one last
+attempt to drive away the sparrows, and so when she returned to the
+sacristy with the Missal she no longer found Abbe Mouret there. Having
+washed his hands and put away the sacred vessels and vestments, he was
+now standing in the dining room, breakfasting off a cup of milk.
+
+'You really ought to prevent your sister from scattering bread in the
+church,' said La Teuse on coming in. 'It was last winter she hit upon
+that pretty prank. She said the sparrows were cold, and that God might
+well give them some food. You see, she'll end by making us sleep with
+all her fowls and rabbits.'
+
+'We should be all the warmer,' pleasantly replied the young priest. 'You
+are always grumbling, La Teuse. Do let our poor Desiree pet her animals.
+She has no other pleasure, poor innocent!'
+
+The servant took her stand in the centre of the room.
+
+'I do believe you yourself wouldn't mind a bit if the magpies actually
+built their nests in the church. You never can see anything, everything
+seems just what it ought to be to you. Your sister is precious lucky
+in having had you to take charge of her when you left the seminary. No
+father, no mother. I should like to know who would let her mess about as
+she does in a farmyard.'
+
+Then softening, she added in a gentler tone: 'To be sure, it would be
+a pity to cross her. She hasn't a touch of malice in her. She's like
+a child of ten, although she's one of the finest grown girls in the
+neighbourhood. And I have to put her to bed, as you know, every night,
+and send her to sleep with stories, just like a little child.'
+
+Abbe Mouret had remained standing, finishing the cup of milk he
+held between his fingers, which were slightly reddened by the chill
+atmosphere of the dining-room--a large room with painted grey walls, a
+floor of square tiles, and having no furniture beyond a table and a few
+chairs. La Teuse picked up a napkin which she had laid at a corner of
+the table in readiness for breakfast.
+
+'It isn't much linen you dirty,' she muttered. 'One would think you
+could never sit down, that you are always just about to start off. Ah!
+if you had known Monsieur Caffin, the poor dead priest whose place
+you have taken! What a man he was for comfort! Why, he couldn't have
+digested his food, if he had eaten standing. A Norman he was, from
+Canteleu, like myself. I don't thank him, I tell you, for having brought
+me to such a wild-beast country as this. When first we came, O, Lord!
+how bored we were! But the poor priest had had some uncomfortable tales
+going about him at home.... Why, sir, didn't you sweeten your milk,
+then? Aren't those the two lumps of sugar?'
+
+The priest put down his cup.
+
+'Yes, I must have forgotten, I believe,' he said.
+
+La Teuse stared at him and shrugged her shoulders. She folded up inside
+the napkin a slice of stale home-made bread which had also been left
+untouched on the table. Then just as the priest was about to go out,
+she ran after him and knelt down at his feet, exclaiming: 'Stop, your
+shoe-laces are not even fastened. I cannot imagine how your feet can
+stand those peasant shoes, you're such a little, tender man and look as
+if you had been preciously spoilt! Ah, the bishop must have known a deal
+about you, to go and give you the poorest living in the department.'
+
+'But it was I who chose Les Artaud,' said the priest, breaking into
+another smile. 'You are very bad-tempered this morning, La Teuse. Are we
+not happy here? We have got all we want, and our life is as peaceful as
+if in paradise.'
+
+She then restrained herself and laughed in her turn, saying: 'You are a
+holy man, Monsieur le Cure. But come and see what a splendid wash I have
+got. That will be better than squabbling with one another.'
+
+The priest was obliged to follow, for she might prevent him going out
+at all if he did not compliment her on her washing. As he left the
+dining-room he stumbled over a heap of rubbish in the passage.
+
+'What is this?' he asked.
+
+Oh, nothing,' said La Teuse in her grimest tone. 'It's only the
+parsonage coming down. However, you are quite content, you've got all
+you want. Good heavens! there are holes and to spare. Just look at that
+ceiling, now. Isn't it cracked all over? If we don't get buried alive
+one of these days, we shall owe a precious big taper to our guardian
+angel. However, if it suits you--It's like the church. Those broken
+panes ought to have been replaced these two years. In winter our Lord
+gets frozen with the cold. Besides, it would keep out those rascally
+sparrows. I shall paste paper over the holes. You see if I don't.'
+
+'A capital idea,' murmured the priest, 'they might very well be pasted
+over. As to the walls, they are stouter than we think. In my room, the
+floor has only given way slightly in front of the window. The house will
+see us all buried.'
+
+On reaching the little open shed near the kitchen, in order to please
+La Teuse he went into ecstasies over the washing; he even had to dip
+his fingers into it and feel it. This so pleased the old woman that
+her attentions became quite motherly. She no longer scolded, but ran
+to fetch a clothes-brush, saying: 'You surely are not going out with
+yesterday's mud on your cassock! If you had left it out on the banister,
+it would be clean now--it's still a good one. But do lift it up well
+when you cross any field. The thistles tear everything.'
+
+While speaking she kept turning him round like a child, shaking him from
+head to foot with her energetic brushing.
+
+'There, there, that will do,' he said, escaping from her at last. 'Take
+care of Desiree, won't you? I will tell her I am going out.'
+
+But at this minute a fresh clear voice called to him: 'Serge! Serge!'
+
+Desiree came flying up, her cheeks ruddy with glee, her head bare,
+her black locks twisted tightly upon her neck, and her hands and arms
+smothered up to the elbows with manure. She had been cleaning out her
+poultry house. When she caught sight of her brother just about to go out
+with his breviary under his arm, she laughed aloud, and kissed him on
+his mouth, with her arms thrown back behind her to avoid soiling him.
+
+'No, no,' she hurriedly exclaimed, 'I should dirty you. Oh! I am having
+such fun! You must see the animals when you come back.'
+
+Thereupon she fled away again. Abbe Mouret then said that he would be
+back about eleven for luncheon, and as he started, La Teuse, who had
+followed him to the doorstep, shouted after him her last injunctions.
+
+'Don't forget to see Brother Archangias. And look in also at the
+Brichets'; the wife came again yesterday about that wedding. Just
+listen, Monsieur le Cure! I met their Rosalie. She'd ask nothing better
+than to marry big Fortune. Have a talk with old Bambousse; perhaps he
+will listen to you now. And don't come back at twelve o'clock, like the
+other day. Come, say you'll be back at eleven, won't you?'
+
+But the priest turned round no more. So she went in again, growling
+between her teeth:
+
+'When does he ever listen to me? Barely twenty-six years old and does
+just as he likes. To be sure, he's an old man of sixty for holiness; but
+then he has never known life; he knows nothing, it's no trouble to him
+to be as good as a cherub!'
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+When Abbe Mouret had got beyond all hearing of La Teuse he stopped,
+thankful to be alone at last. The church was built on a hillock, which
+sloped down gently to the village. With its large gaping windows and
+bright red tiles, it stretched out like a deserted sheep-cote. The
+priest turned round and glanced at the parsonage, a greyish building
+springing from the very side of the church; but as if fearful that
+he might again be overtaken by the interminable chatter that had been
+buzzing in his ears ever since morning, he turned up to the right again,
+and only felt safe when he at last stood before the great doorway, where
+he could not be seen from the parsonage. The front of the church, quite
+bare and worn by the sunshine and rain of years, was crowned by a narrow
+open stone belfry, in which a small bell showed its black silhouette,
+whilst its rope disappeared through the tiles. Six broken steps, on
+one side half buried in the earth, led up to the lofty arched door, now
+cracked, smothered with dust and rust and cobwebs, and so frailly hung
+upon its outwrenched hinges that it seemed as if the first slight puff
+would secure free entrance to the winds of heaven. Abbe Mouret, who had
+an affection for this dilapidated door, leaned against one of its leaves
+as he stood upon the steps. Thence he could survey the whole country
+round at a glance. And shading his eyes with his hands he scanned the
+horizon.
+
+In the month of May exuberant vegetation burst forth from that stony
+soil. Gigantic lavenders, juniper bushes, patches of rank herbage
+swarmed over the church threshold, and scattered clumps of dark greenery
+even to the very tiles. It seemed as if the first throb of shooting sap
+in the tough matted underwood might well topple the church over. At that
+early hour, amid all the travail of nature's growth, there was a hum of
+vivifying warmth, and the very rocks quivered as with a long and silent
+effort. But the Abbe failed to comprehend the ardour of nature's painful
+labour; he simply thought that the steps were tottering, and thereupon
+leant against the other side of the door.
+
+The countryside stretched away for a distance of six miles, bounded by
+a wall of tawny hills speckled with black pine-woods. It was a fearful
+landscape of arid wastes and rocky spurs rending the soil. The few
+patches of arable ground were like scattered pools of blood, red fields
+with rows of lean almond trees, grey-topped olive trees and long lines
+of vines, streaking the soil with their brown stems. It was as if some
+huge conflagration had swept by there, scattering the ashes of forests
+over the hill-tops, consuming all the grass of the meadow lands, and
+leaving its glare and furnace-like heat behind in the hollows. Only here
+and there was the softer note of a pale green patch of growing corn. The
+landscape generally was wild, lacking even a threadlet of water, dying
+of thirst, and flying away in clouds of dust at the least breath of
+wind. But at the farthest point where the crumbling hills on the horizon
+had left a breach one espied some distant fresh moist greenery, a
+stretch of the neighbouring valley fertilised by the Viorne, a river
+flowing down from the gorges of the Seille.
+
+The priest lowered his dazzled glance upon the village, whose few
+scattered houses straggled away below the church--wretched hovels they
+were of rubble and boards strewn along a narrow path without sign of
+streets. There were about thirty of them altogether, some squatting
+amidst muck-heaps, and black with woeful want; others roomier and more
+cheerful-looking with their roofs of pinkish tiles. Strips of garden,
+victoriously planted amidst stony soil, displayed plots of vegetables
+enclosed by quickset hedges. At this hour Les Artaud was empty, not a
+woman was at the windows, not a child was wallowing in the dust; parties
+of fowls alone went to and fro, ferreting among the straw, seeking food
+up to the very thresholds of the houses, whose open doors gaped in the
+sunlight. A big black dog seated on his haunches at the entrance to the
+village seemed to be mounting guard over it.
+
+Languor slowly stole over Abbe Mouret. The rising sun steeped him in
+such warmth that he leant back against the church door pervaded by a
+feeling of happy restfulness. His thoughts were dwelling on that hamlet
+of Les Artaud, which had sprung up there among the stones like one of
+the knotty growths of the valley. All its inhabitants were related,
+all bore the same name, so that from their very cradle they were
+distinguished among themselves by nicknames. An Artaud, their ancestor,
+had come hither and settled like a pariah in this waste. His family had
+grown with all the wild vitality of the herbage that sucked life from
+the rocky boulders. It had at last become a tribe, a rural community,
+in which cousin-ships were lost in the mists of centuries. They
+intermarried with shameless promiscuity. Not an instance could be cited
+of any Artaud taking himself a wife from any neighbouring village; only
+some of the girls occasionally went elsewhere. The others were born and
+died fixed to that spot, leisurely increasing and multiplying on their
+dunghills with the irreflectiveness of trees, and with no definite
+notion of the world that lay beyond the tawny rocks, in whose midst they
+vegetated. And yet there were already rich and poor among them; fowls
+having at times disappeared, the fowl-houses were now closed at night
+with stout padlocks; moreover one Artaud had killed another Artaud one
+evening behind the mill. These folk, begirt by that belt of desolate
+hills, were truly a people apart--a race sprung from the soil, a
+miniature replica of mankind, three hundred souls all told, beginning
+the centuries yet once again.
+
+Over the priest the sombre shadows of seminary life still hovered. For
+years he had never seen the sun. He perceived it not even now, his
+eyes closed and gazing inwards on his soul, and with no feeling for
+perishable nature, fated to damnation, save contempt. For a long time
+in his hours of devout thought he had dreamt of some hermit's desert,
+of some mountain hole, where no living thing--neither being, plant,
+nor water--should distract him from the contemplation of God. It was an
+impulse springing from the purest love, from a loathing of all physical
+sensation. There, dying to self, and with his back turned to the light
+of day, he would have waited till he should cease to be, till nothing
+should remain of him but the sovereign whiteness of the soul. To him
+heaven seemed all white, with a luminous whiteness as if lilies there
+snowed down upon one, as if every form of purity, innocence, and
+chastity there blazed. But his confessor reproved him whenever he
+related his longings for solitude, his cravings for an existence of
+Godlike purity; and recalled him to the struggles of the Church, the
+necessary duties of the priesthood. Later on, after his ordination, the
+young priest had come to Les Artaud at his own request, there hoping to
+realise his dream of human annihilation. In that desolate spot, on that
+barren soil, he might shut his ears to all worldly sounds, and live the
+dreamy life of a saint. For some months past, in truth, his existence
+had been wholly undisturbed, rarely had any thrill of the village-life
+disturbed him; and even the sun's heat scarcely brought him any glow
+of feeling as he walked the paths, his whole being wrapped in heaven,
+heedless of the unceasing travail of life amidst which he moved.
+
+The big black dog watching over Les Artaud had determined to come up to
+Abbe Mouret, and now sat upon its haunches at the priest's feet; but the
+unconscious man remained absorbed amidst the sweetness of the morning.
+On the previous evening he had begun the exercises of the Rosary, and
+to the intercession of the Virgin with her Divine Son he attributed the
+great joy which filled his soul. How despicable appeared all the good
+things of the earth! How thankfully he recognised his poverty! When he
+entered into holy orders, after losing on the same day both his father
+and his mother through a tragedy the fearful details of which were even
+now unknown to him,* he had relinquished all his share of their property
+to an elder brother. His only remaining link with the world was
+his sister; he had undertaken the care of her, stirred by a kind of
+religious affection for her feeble intelligence. The dear innocent was
+so childish, such a very little girl, that she recalled to him the poor
+in spirit to whom the Gospel promises the kingdom of heaven. Of late,
+however, she had somewhat disturbed him; she was growing too lusty, too
+full of health and life. But his discomfort was yet of the slightest.
+His days were spent in that inner life he had created for himself, for
+which he had relinquished all else. He closed the portals of his senses,
+and sought to free himself from all bodily needs, so that he might be
+but a soul enrapt in contemplation. To him nature offered only snares
+and abominations; he gloried in maltreating her, in despising her, in
+releasing himself from his human slime. And as the just man must be
+a fool according to the world, he considered himself an exile on this
+earth; his thoughts were solely fixed upon the favours of Heaven,
+incapable as he was of understanding how an eternity of bliss could be
+weighed against a few hours of perishable enjoyment. His reason
+duped him and his senses lied; and if he advanced in virtue it was
+particularly by humility and obedience. His wish was to be the last of
+all, one subject to all, in order that the divine dew might fall upon
+his heart as upon arid sand; he considered himself overwhelmed with
+reproach and with confusion, unworthy of ever being saved from sin. He
+no longer belonged to himself--blind, deaf, dead to the world as he was.
+He was God's thing. And from the depth of the abjectness to which he
+sought to plunge, Hosannahs suddenly bore him aloft, above the happy and
+the mighty into the splendour of never-ending bliss.
+
+  * This forms the subject of M. Zola's novel, _The Conquest of
+    Plassans_. ED.
+
+Thus, at Les Artaud, Abbe Mouret had once more experienced, each time he
+read the 'Imitation,' the raptures of the cloistered life which he had
+longed for at one time so ardently. As yet he had not had to fight
+any battle. From the moment that he knelt down, he became perfect,
+absolutely oblivious of the flesh, unresisting, undisturbed, as if
+overpowered by the Divine grace. Such ecstasy at God's approach is well
+known to some young priests: it is a blissful moment when all is hushed,
+and the only desire is but a boundless craving for purity. From no human
+creature had he sought his consolations. He who believes a certain thing
+to be all in all cannot be troubled: and he did believe that God was all
+in all, and that humility, obedience, and chastity were everything.
+He could remember having heard temptation spoken of as an abominable
+torture that tries the holiest. But he would only smile: God had
+never left him. He bore his faith about him thus like a breast-plate
+protecting him from the slightest breath of evil. He could recall how
+he had hidden himself and wept for very love; he knew not whom he loved,
+but he wept for love, for love of some one afar off. The recollection
+never failed to move him. Later on he had decided on becoming a priest
+in order to satisfy that craving for a superhuman affection which was
+his sole torment. He could not see where greater love could be. In that
+state of life he satisfied his being, his inherited predisposition, his
+youthful dreams, his first virile desires. If temptation must come, he
+awaited it with the calmness of the seminarist ignorant of the world. He
+felt that his manhood had been killed in him: it gladdened him to feel
+himself a creature set apart, unsexed, turned from the usual paths of
+life, and, as became a lamb of the Lord, marked with the tonsure.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+While the priest pondered the sun was heating the big church-door.
+Gilded flies buzzed round a large flower that was blooming between two
+of the church-door steps. Abbe Mouret, feeling slightly dazed, was
+at last about to move away, when the big black dog sprang, barking
+violently, towards the iron gate of the little graveyard on the left of
+the church. At the same time a harsh voice called out: 'Ah! you young
+rascal! So you stop away from school, and I find you in the graveyard!
+Oh, don't say no: I have been watching you this quarter of an hour.'
+
+As the priest stepped forward he saw Vincent, whom a Brother of
+the Christian Schools was clutching tightly by the ear. The lad was
+suspended, as it were, over a ravine skirting the graveyard, at the
+bottom of which flowed the Mascle, a mountain torrent whose crystal
+waters plunged into the Viorne, six miles away.
+
+'Brother Archangias!' softly called the priest, as if to appease the
+fearful man.
+
+The Brother, however, did not release the boy's ear.
+
+'Oh, it's you, Monsieur le Cure?' he growled. 'Just fancy, this rascal
+is always poking his nose into the graveyard. I don't know what he can
+be up to here. I ought to let go of him and let him smash his skull down
+there. It would be what he deserves.'
+
+The lad remained dumb, with his cunning eyes tight shut as he clung to
+the bushes.
+
+'Take care, Brother Archangias,' continued the priest, 'he might slip.'
+
+And he himself helped Vincent to scramble up again.
+
+'Come, my young friend, what were you doing there?' he asked. 'You must
+not go playing in graveyards.'
+
+The lad had opened his eyes, and crept away, fearfully, from the
+Brother, to place himself under the priest's protection.
+
+'I'll tell you,' he said in a low voice, as he raised his bushy head.
+'There is a tomtit's nest in the brambles there, under that rock.
+For over ten days I've been watching it, and now the little ones are
+hatched, so I came this morning after serving your mass.'
+
+'A tomtit's nest!' exclaimed Brother Archangias. 'Wait a bit! wait a
+bit!'
+
+Thereupon he stepped aside, picked a clod of earth off a grave and flung
+it into the brambles. But he missed the nest. Another clod, however,
+more skilfully thrown upset the frail cradle, and precipitated the
+fledglings into the torrent below.
+
+'Now, perhaps,' he continued, clapping his hands to shake off the earth
+that soiled them, 'you won't come roaming here any more, like a heathen;
+the dead will pull your feet at night if you go walking over them
+again.'
+
+Vincent, who had laughed at seeing the nest dive into the stream, looked
+round him and shrugged his shoulders like one of strong mind.
+
+'Oh, I'm not afraid,' he said. 'Dead folk don't stir.'
+
+The graveyard, in truth, was not a place to inspire fear. It was a
+barren piece of ground whose narrow paths were smothered by rank weeds.
+Here and there the soil was bossy with mounds. A single tombstone, that
+of Abbe Caffin, brand-new and upright, could be perceived in the centre
+of the ground. Save this, all around there were only broken fragments
+of crosses, withered tufts of box, and old slabs split and moss-eaten.
+There were not two burials a year. Death seemed to make no dwelling in
+that waste spot, whither La Teuse came every evening to fill her apron
+with grass for Desiree's rabbits. A gigantic cypress tree, standing
+near the gate, alone cast shadow upon the desert field. This cypress,
+a landmark visible for nine miles around, was known to the whole
+countryside as the Solitaire.
+
+'It's full of lizards,' added Vincent, looking at the cracks of the
+church-wall. 'One could have a fine lark--'
+
+But he sprang out with a bound on seeing the Brother lift his foot. The
+latter proceeded to call the priest's attention to the dilapidated state
+of the gate, which was not only eaten up with rust, but had one hinge
+off, and the lock broken.
+
+'It ought to be repaired,' said he.
+
+Abbe Mouret smiled, but made no reply. Addressing Vincent, who was
+romping with the dog: 'I say, my boy,' he asked, 'do you know where old
+Bambousse is at work this morning?'
+
+The lad glanced towards the horizon. 'He must be at his Olivettes field
+now,' he answered, pointing towards the left. 'But Voriau will show
+your reverence the way. He's sure to know where his master is.' And he
+clapped his hands and called: 'Hie! Voriau! hie!'
+
+The big black dog paused a moment, wagging his tail, and seeking to read
+the urchin's eyes. Then, barking joyfully, he set off down the slope to
+the village. Abbe Mouret and Brother Archangias followed him, chatting.
+A hundred yards further Vincent surreptitiously bolted, and again glided
+up towards the church, keeping a watchful eye upon them, and ready
+to dart behind a bush if they should look round. With adder-like
+suppleness, he once more glided into the graveyard, that paradise full
+of lizards, nests, and flowers.
+
+Meantime, while Voriau led the way before them along the dusty road,
+Brother Archangias was angrily saying to the priest: 'Let be! Monsieur
+le Cure, they're spawn of damnation, those toads are! They ought to
+have their backs broken, to make them pleasing to God. They grow up in
+irreligion, like their fathers. Fifteen years have I been here, and
+not one Christian have I been able to turn out. The minute they quit
+my hands, good-bye! They think of nothing but their land, their vines,
+their olive-trees. Not one ever sets foot in church. Brute beasts they
+are, struggling with their stony fields! Guide them with the stick,
+Monsieur le Cure, yes, the stick!'
+
+Then, after drawing breath, he added with a terrific wave of his hands:
+
+'Those Artauds, look you, are like the brambles over-running these
+rocks. One stem has been enough to poison the whole district. They cling
+on, they multiply, they live in spite of everything. Nothing short of
+fire from heaven, as at Gomorrha, will clear it all away.'
+
+'We should never despair of sinners,' said Abbe Mouret, all inward
+peacefulness, as he leisurely walked on.
+
+'But these are the devil's own,' broke in the Brother still more
+violently. 'I've been a peasant, too. Up to eighteen I dug the earth;
+and later on, when I was at the Training College, I had to sweep, pare
+vegetables, do all the heavy work. It's not their toilsome labour I find
+fault with. On the contrary, for God prefers the lowly. But the Artauds
+live like beasts! They are like their dogs, they never attend mass, and
+make a mock of the commandments of God and of the Church. They think of
+nothing but their plots of lands, so sweet they are on them!'
+
+Voriau, his tail wagging, kept stopping and moving on again as soon as
+he saw that they still followed him.
+
+'There certainly are some grievous things going on,' said Abbe Mouret.
+'My predecessor, Abbe Caffin--'
+
+'A poor specimen,' interrupted the Brother. 'He came here to us from
+Normandy owing to some disreputable affair. Once here, his sole thought
+was good living; he let everything go to rack and ruin.'
+
+'Oh, no, Abbe Caffin certainly did what he could; but I must own
+that his efforts were all but barren in results. My own are mostly
+fruitless.'
+
+Brother Archangias shrugged his shoulders. He walked on for a minute
+in silence, swaying his tall bony frame, which looked as if it had
+been roughly fashioned with a hatchet. The sun beat down upon his neck,
+shadowing his hard, sword-edged peasant's face.
+
+'Listen to me, Monsieur le Cure,' he said at last. 'I am too much
+beneath you to lecture you; but still, I am almost double your age, I
+know this part, and therefore I feel justified in telling you that you
+will gain nothing by gentleness. The catechism, understand, is enough.
+God has no mercy on the wicked. He burns them. Stick to that.'
+
+Then, as Abbe Mouret, whose head remained bowed, did not open his mouth,
+he went on: 'Religion is leaving the country districts because it
+is made over indulgent. It was respected when it spoke out like an
+unforgiving mistress. I really don't know what they can teach you now
+in the seminaries. The new priests weep like children with their
+parishioners. God no longer seems the same. I dare say, Monsieur le
+Cure, that you don't even know your catechism by heart now?'
+
+But the priest, wounded by the imperiousness with which the Brother so
+roughly sought to dominate him, looked up and dryly rejoined:
+
+'That will do, your zeal is very praiseworthy. But haven't you something
+to tell me? You came to the parsonage this morning, did you not?'
+
+Thereupon Brother Archangias plumply answered: 'I had to tell you just
+what I have told you. The Artauds live like pigs. Only yesterday I
+learned that Rosalie, old Bambousse's eldest daughter, is in the family
+way. It happens with all of them before they get married. And they
+simply laugh at reproaches, as you know.'
+
+'Yes,' murmured Abbe Mouret, 'it is a great scandal. I am just on my way
+to see old Bambousse to speak to him about it; it is desirable that they
+should be married as soon as possible. The child's father, it seems, is
+Fortune, the Brichets' eldest son. Unfortunately the Brichets are poor.'
+
+'That Rosalie, now,' continued the Brother, 'is just eighteen. Not four
+years since I still had her under me at school, and she was already a
+gadabout. I have now got her sister Catherine, a chit of eleven, who
+seems likely to become even worse than her elder. One comes across her
+in every corner with that little scamp, Vincent. It's no good, you may
+pull their ears till they bleed, the woman always crops up in them.
+They carry perdition about with them and are only fit to be thrown on a
+muck-heap. What a splendid riddance if all girls were strangled at their
+birth!'
+
+His loathing, his hatred of woman made him swear like a carter. Abbe
+Mouret, who had been listening to him with unmoved countenance, smiled
+at last at his rabid utterances. He called Voriau, who had strayed into
+a field close by.
+
+'There, look there!' cried Brother Archangias, pointing to a group of
+children playing at the bottom of a ravine, 'there are my young devils,
+who play the truant under pretence of going to help their parents among
+the vines! You may be certain that jade of a Catherine is among them....
+There, didn't I tell you! Till to-night, Monsieur le Cure. Oh, just you
+wait, you rascals!'
+
+Off he went at a run, his dirty neckband flying over his shoulder, and
+his big greasy cassock tearing up the thistles. Abbe Mouret watched him
+swoop down into the midst of the children, who scattered like frightened
+sparrows. But he succeeded in seizing Catherine and one boy by the ears
+and led them back towards the village, clutching them tightly with his
+big hairy fingers, and overwhelming them with abuse.
+
+The priest walked on again. Brother Archangias sometimes aroused strange
+scruples in his mind. With his vulgarity and coarseness the Brother
+seemed to him the true man of God, free from earthly ties, submissive in
+all to Heaven's will, humble, blunt, ready to shower abuse upon sin. He,
+the priest, would then feel despair at his inability to rid himself
+more completely of his body; he regretted that he was not ugly, unclean,
+covered with vermin like some of the saints. Whenever the Brother had
+wounded him by some words of excessive coarseness, or by some over-hasty
+churlishness, he would blame himself for his refinement, his innate
+shrinking, as if these were really faults. Ought he not to be dead to
+all the weaknesses of this world? And this time also he smiled sadly as
+he thought how near he had been to losing his temper at the Brother's
+roughly put lesson. It was pride, it seemed to him, seeking to work his
+perdition by making him despise the lowly. However, in spite of himself,
+he felt relieved at being alone again, at being able to walk on gently,
+reading his breviary, free at last from the grating voice that had
+disturbed his dream of heavenly love.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+The road wound on between fallen rocks, among which the peasants had
+succeeded here and there in reclaiming six or seven yards of chalky
+soil, planted with old olive trees. Under the priest's feet the dust in
+the deep ruts crackled lightly like snow. At times, as he felt a warmer
+puff upon his face, he would raise his eyes from his book, as if to seek
+whence came this soft caress; but his gaze was vacant, straying without
+perception over the glowing horizon, over the twisted outlines of that
+passion-breathing landscape as it stretched out in the sun before him,
+dry, barren, despairing of the fertilisation for which it longed. And
+he would lower his hat over his forehead to protect himself against
+the warm breeze and tranquilly resume his reading, his cassock raising
+behind him a cloudlet of dust which rolled along the surface of the
+road.
+
+'Good morning, Monsieur le Cure,' a passing peasant said to him.
+
+Sounds of digging alongside the cultivated strips of ground again
+roused him from his abstraction. He turned his head and perceived big
+knotty-limbed old men greeting him from among the vines. The Artauds
+were eagerly satisfying their passion for the soil, in the sun's full
+blaze. Sweating brows appeared from behind the bushes, heaving chests
+were slowly raised, the whole scene was one of ardent fructification,
+through which he moved with the calm step born of ignorance. No
+discomfort came to him from the great travail of love that permeated
+that splendid morning.
+
+'Steady! Voriau, you mustn't eat people!' some one gaily shouted in a
+powerful voice by way of silencing the dog's loud barks.
+
+Abbe Mouret looked up.
+
+'Oh! it's you. Fortune?' he said, approaching the edge of the field in
+which the young peasant was at work. 'I was just on my way to speak to
+you.'
+
+Fortune was of the same age as the priest: a bigly built, bold-looking
+young fellow, with skin already hardened. He was clearing a small plot
+of stony heath.
+
+'What about, Monsieur le Cure?' he asked.
+
+'About Rosalie and you,' replied the priest.
+
+Fortune began to laugh. Perhaps he thought it droll that a priest should
+interest himself in such a matter.
+
+'Well,' he muttered, 'I'm not to blame in it nor she either. So much the
+worse if old Bambousse refuses to let me have her. You saw yourself how
+his dog was trying to bite me just now; he sets him on me.'
+
+Then, as Abbe Mouret was about to continue, old Artaud, called Brichet,
+whom he had not previously perceived, emerged from the shadow of a bush
+behind which he and his wife were eating. He was a little man, withered
+by age, with a cringing face.
+
+'Your reverence must have been told a pack of lies,' he exclaimed.
+'The youngster is quite ready to marry Rosalie. What's happened isn't
+anybody's fault. It has happened to others who got on all right just the
+same. The matter doesn't rest with us. You ought to speak to Bambousse.
+He's the one who looks down on us because he's got money.'
+
+'Yes, we are very poor,' whined his wife, a tall lachrymose woman, who
+also rose to her feet. 'We've only this scrap of ground where the very
+devil seems to have been hailing stones. Not a bite of bread from it,
+even. Without you, your reverence, life would be impossible.'
+
+Brichet's wife was the one solitary devotee of the village. Whenever she
+had been to communion, she would hang about the parsonage, well knowing
+that La Teuse always kept a couple of loaves for her from her last
+baking. At times she was even able to carry off a rabbit or a fowl given
+her by Desiree.
+
+'There's no end to the scandals,' continued the priest. 'The marriage
+must take place without delay.'
+
+'Oh! at once! as soon as the others are agreeable,' said the old woman,
+alarmed about her periodical presents. 'What do you say, Brichet? we are
+not such bad Christians as to go against his reverence?'
+
+Fortune sniggered.
+
+'Oh, I'm quite ready,' he said, 'and so is Rosalie. I saw her yesterday
+at the back of the mill. We haven't quarrelled. We stopped there to have
+a bit of a laugh.'
+
+But Abbe Mouret interrupted him: 'Very well, I am now going to speak to
+Bambousse. He is over there, at Les Olivettes, I believe.'
+
+The priest was going off when the mother asked him what had become of
+her younger son Vincent, who had left in the early morning to serve
+mass. There was a lad now who badly needed his reverence's admonitions.
+And she walked by the priest's side for another hundred yards, bemoaning
+her poverty, the failure of the potato crop, the frost which had nipped
+the olive trees, the hot weather which threatened to scorch up the
+scanty corn. Then, as she left him, she solemnly declared that her son
+Fortune always said his prayers, both morning and evening.
+
+Voriau now ran on in front, and suddenly, at a turn in the road, he
+bolted across the fields. The priest then struck into a small path
+leading up a low hill. He was now at Les Olivettes, the most fertile
+spot in the neighbourhood, where the mayor of the commune, Artaud,
+otherwise Bambousse, owned several fields of corn, olive plantations,
+and vines. The dog was now romping round the skirts of a tall brunette,
+who burst into a loud laugh as she caught sight of the priest.
+
+'Is your father here, Rosalie?' the latter asked.
+
+'Yes, just across there,' she said, pointing with her hand and still
+smiling.
+
+Leaving the part of the field she had been weeding, she walked on before
+him with the vigorous springiness of a hard-working woman, her head
+unshielded from the sun, her neck all sunburnt, her hair black and
+coarse like a horse's mane. Her green-stained hands exhaled the odour of
+the weeds she had been pulling up.
+
+'Father,' she called out, 'here's Monsieur le Cure asking for you.'
+
+And there she remained, bold, unblushing, with a sly smile still
+hovering over her features. Bambousse, a stout, sweating, round-faced
+man, left his work and gaily came towards the priest.
+
+'I'd take my oath you are going to speak to me about the repairs of
+the church,' he exclaimed, as he clapped his earthy hands. 'Well, then,
+Monsieur le Cure, I can only say no, it's impossible. The commune hasn't
+got the coin. If the Lord provides plaster and tiles, we'll provide the
+workmen.'
+
+At this jest of his the unbelieving peasant burst into a loud guffaw,
+slapped his thighs, coughed, and almost choked himself.
+
+'It was not for the church I came,' replied the Abbe Mouret. 'I wanted
+to speak to you about your daughter Rosalie.'
+
+'Rosalie? What has she done to you, then?' inquired Bambousse, his eyes
+blinking.
+
+The girl was boldly staring at the young priest, scrutinising his white
+hands and slender, feminine neck, as if trying to make him redden.
+He, however, bluntly and with unruffled countenance, as if speaking of
+something quite indifferent, continued:
+
+'You know what I mean, Bambousse. She must get married.'
+
+'Oh, that's it, is it?' muttered the old man, with a bantering look.
+'Many thanks for the message. The Brichets sent you, didn't they? Mother
+Brichet goes to mass, and so you give her a helping hand to marry her
+son--it's all very fine. But, I've got nothing to do with that. It
+doesn't suit me. That's all.'
+
+Thereupon the astonished priest represented to him that the scandal
+must be stopped, and that he ought to forgive Fortune, as the latter was
+willing to make reparation for his transgression, and that, lastly, his
+daughter's reputation demanded a speedy marriage.
+
+'Ta, ta, ta,' replied Bambousse, what a lot of words! I shall keep my
+daughter, please understand it. All that's got nothing to do with me.
+That Fortune is a beggarly pauper, without a brass farthing. What an
+easy job, if one could marry a girl like that! At that rate we should
+have all the young things marrying off morning and night. Thank Heaven!
+I'm not worried about Rosalie: everybody knows what has happened; but
+it makes no difference. She can marry any one she chooses in the
+neighbourhood.'
+
+'But the child?' interrupted the priest.
+
+'The child indeed! There'll be time enough to think of that when it's
+born.'
+
+Rosalie, perceiving the turn the priest's application was taking, now
+thought it proper to ram her fists into her eyes and whimper. And she
+even let herself fall upon the ground.
+
+'Shut up, will you, you hussy!' howled her father in a rage. And he
+proceeded to revile her in the coarsest terms, which made her laugh
+silently behind her clenched fists.
+
+'You won't shut up? won't you? Just wait a minute then, you jade!'
+continued old Bambousse. And thereupon he picked up a clod of earth and
+flung it at her. It burst upon her knot of hair, crumbling down her neck
+and smothering her in dust. Dizzy from the blow, she bounded to her feet
+and fled, sheltering her head between her hands. But Bambousse had time
+to fling two more clods at her, and if the first only grazed her left
+shoulder, the next caught her full on the base of the spine, with such
+force that she fell upon her knees.
+
+'Bambousse!' cried the priest, as he wrenched from the peasant's hand a
+number of stones which he had just picked up.
+
+'Let be, Monsieur le Cure,' said the other. 'It was only soft earth.
+I ought to have thrown these stones at her. It's easy to see that you
+don't know girls. Hard as nails, all of them. I might duck that one in
+the well, I might break all her bones with a cudgel, and she'd still be
+just the same. But I've got my eye on her, and if I catch her!... Ah!
+well, they are all like that.'
+
+He was already comforted. He took a good pull at a big flat bottle of
+wine, encased in wicker-work, which lay warming on the hot ground.
+And breaking once more into a laugh, he said: 'If I only had a glass,
+Monsieur le Cure, I would offer you some with pleasure.'
+
+'So then,' again asked the priest, 'this marriage?'
+
+'No, it can't be; I should get laughed at. Rosalie is a stout wench.
+She's worth a man to me. I shall have to hire a lad the day she goes
+off.... We can have another talk about it after the vintage. Besides, I
+don't want to be robbed. Give and take, say I. That's fair. What do you
+think?'
+
+Nevertheless for another long half-hour did the priest remain there
+preaching to Bambousse, speaking to him of God, and plying him with all
+the reasons suited to the circumstances. But the old man had resumed
+his work; he shrugged his shoulders, jested, and grew more and more
+obstinate. At last, he broke out: 'But if you asked me for a sack of
+corn, you would give me money, wouldn't you? So why do you want me to
+let my daughter go for nothing?'
+
+Much discomfited, Abbe Mouret left him. As he went down the path he saw
+Rosalie rolling about under an olive tree with Voriau, who was licking
+her face. With her arms whirling, she kept on repeating: 'You tickle me,
+you big stupid. Leave off!'
+
+When she perceived the priest, she made an attempt at a blush, settled
+her clothes, and once more raised her fists to her eyes. He, on his
+part, sought to console her by promising to attempt some fresh efforts
+with her father, adding that, in the meantime, she should do nothing
+to aggravate her sin. And then, as she impudently smiled at him, he
+pictured hell, where wicked women burn in torment. And afterwards he
+left her, his duty done, his soul once more full of the serenity which
+enabled him to pass undisturbed athwart the corruptions of the world.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+The morning was becoming terribly hot. In that huge rocky amphitheatre
+the sun kindled a furnace-like glare from the moment when the first
+fine weather began. By the planet's height in the sky Abbe Mouret now
+perceived that he had only just time to return home if he wished to
+get there by eleven o'clock and escape a scolding from La Teuse. Having
+finished reading his breviary and made his application to Bambousse, he
+swiftly retraced his steps, gazing as he went at his church, now a grey
+spot in the distance, and at the black rigid silhouette which the
+big cypress-tree, the Solitaire, set against the blue sky. Amidst the
+drowsiness fostered by the heat, he thought of how richly that evening
+he might decorate the Lady chapel for the devotions of the month of
+Mary. Before him the road offered a carpet of dust, soft to the tread
+and of dazzling whiteness.
+
+At the Croix-Verte, as the Abbe was about to cross the highway leading
+from Plassans to La Palud, a gig coming down the hill compelled him
+to step behind a heap of stones. Then, as he crossed the open space, a
+voice called to him: 'Hallo, Serge, my boy!'
+
+The gig had pulled up and from it a man leant over. The priest
+recognised him--he was an uncle of his, Doctor Pascal Rougon, or
+Monsieur Pascal, as the poor folk of Plassans, whom he attended for
+nothing, briefly styled him. Although barely over fifty, he was already
+snowy white, with a big beard and abundant hair, amidst which his
+handsome regular features took an expression of shrewdness and
+benevolence.*
+
+  * See M. Zola's novels, _Dr. Pascal_ and _The Fortune of the
+    Rougons_.--ED.
+
+'So you potter about in the dust at this hour of the day?' he said
+gaily, as he stooped to grasp the Abbe's hands. 'You're not afraid of
+sunstroke?'
+
+'No more than you are, uncle,' answered the priest, laughing.
+
+'Oh, I have the hood of my trap to shield me. Besides, sick folks won't
+wait. People die at all times, my boy.' And he went on to relate that
+he was now on his way to old Jeanbernat, the steward of the Paradou, who
+had had an apoplectic stroke the night before. A neighbour, a peasant on
+his way to Plassans market, had summoned him.
+
+'He must be dead by this time,' the doctor continued. 'However, we must
+make sure.... Those old demons are jolly tough, you know.'
+
+He was already raising his whip, when Abbe Mouret stopped him.
+
+'Stay! what o'clock do you make it, uncle?'
+
+'A quarter to eleven.'
+
+The Abbe hesitated; he already seemed to hear La Teuse's terrible voice
+bawling in his ears that his luncheon was getting cold. But he plucked
+up courage and added swiftly: 'I'll go with you, uncle. The unhappy man
+may wish to reconcile himself to God in his last hour.'
+
+Doctor Pascal could not restrain a laugh.
+
+'What, Jeanbernat!' he said; 'ah, well! if ever you convert him! Never
+mind, come all the same. The sight of you is enough to cure him.'
+
+The priest got in. The doctor, apparently regretting his jest, displayed
+an affectionate warmth of manner, whilst from time to time clucking his
+tongue by way of encouraging his horse. And out of the corner of his eye
+he inquisitively observed his nephew with the keenness of a scientist
+bent on taking notes. In short kindly sentences he inquired about his
+life, his habits, and the peaceful happiness he enjoyed at Les Artaud.
+And at each satisfactory reply he murmured, as if to himself in a tone
+of reassurance: 'Come, so much the better; that's just as it should be!'
+
+He displayed peculiar anxiety about the young priest's state of health.
+And Serge, greatly surprised, assured him that he was in splendid
+trim, and had neither fits of giddiness or of nausea, nor headaches
+whatsoever.
+
+'Capital, capital,' reiterated his uncle Pascal. 'In spring, you see,
+the blood is active. But you are sound enough. By-the-bye, I saw your
+brother Octave at Marseilles last month. He is off to Paris, where he
+will get a fine berth in a high-class business. The young beggar, a nice
+life he leads.'
+
+'What life?' innocently inquired the priest.
+
+To avoid replying the doctor chirruped to his horse, and then went on:
+'Briefly, everybody is well--your aunt Felicite, your uncle Rougon, and
+the others. Still, that does not hinder our needing your prayers. You
+are the saint of the family, my lad; I rely upon you to save the whole
+lot.'
+
+He laughed, but in such a friendly, good-humoured way that Serge himself
+began to indulge in jocularity.
+
+'You see,' continued Pascal, 'there are some among the lot whom it won't
+be easy to lead to Paradise. Some nice confessions you'd hear if all
+came in turn. For my part, I can do without their confessions; I
+watch them from a distance; I have got their records at home among my
+botanical specimens and medical notes. Some day I shall be able to draw
+up a wondrously interesting diagram. We shall see; we shall see!'
+
+He was forgetting himself, carried away by his enthusiasm for science. A
+glance at his nephew's cassock pulled him up short.
+
+'As for you, you're a parson,' he muttered; 'you did well; a parson's a
+very happy man. The calling absorbs you, eh? And so you've taken to the
+good path. Well! you would never have been satisfied otherwise. Your
+relatives, starting like you, have done a deal of evil, and still they
+are unsatisfied. It's all logically perfect, my lad. A priest completes
+the family. Besides, it was inevitable. Our blood was bound to run
+to that. So much the better for you; you have had the most luck.'
+Correcting himself, however, with a strange smile, he added: 'No, it's
+your sister Desiree who has had the best luck of all.'
+
+He whistled, whipped up his horse, and changed the conversation. The
+gig, after climbing a somewhat steep slope, was threading its way
+through desolate ravines; at last it reached a tableland, where the
+hollow road skirted an interminable and lofty wall. Les Artaud had
+disappeared; they found themselves in the heart of a desert.
+
+'We are getting near, are we not?' asked the priest.
+
+'This is the Paradou,' replied the doctor, pointing to the wall.
+'Haven't you been this way before, then? We are not three miles from Les
+Artaud. A splendid property it must have been, this Paradou. The park
+wall this side alone is quite a mile and a half long. But for over a
+hundred years it's all been running wild.'
+
+'There are some fine trees,' observed the Abbe, as he looked up in
+astonishment at the luxuriant mass of foliage which jutted over.
+
+'Yes, that part is very fertile. In fact, the park is a regular forest
+amidst the bare rocks which surround it. The Mascle, too, rises there; I
+have heard four or five springs mentioned, I fancy.'
+
+In short sentences, interspersed with irrelevant digressions, he then
+related the story of the Paradou, according to the current legend of
+the countryside. In the time of Louis XV., a great lord had erected
+a magnificent palace there, with vast gardens, fountains, trickling
+streams, and statues--a miniature Versailles hidden away among the
+stones, under the full blaze of the southern sun. But he had there spent
+but one season with a lady of bewitching beauty, who doubtless died
+there, as none had ever seen her leave. Next year the mansion was
+destroyed by fire, the park doors were nailed up, the very loopholes of
+the walls were filled with mould; and thus, since that remote time, not
+a glance had penetrated that vast enclosure which covered the whole of
+one of the plateaux of the Garrigue hills.
+
+'There can be no lack of nettles there,' laughingly said Abbe Mouret.
+'Don't you find that the whole wall reeks of damp, uncle?'
+
+A pause followed, and he asked:
+
+'And whom does the Paradou belong to now?'
+
+'Why, nobody knows,' the doctor answered. 'The owner did come here once,
+some twenty years ago. But he was so scared by the sight of this
+adders' nest that he has never turned up since. The real master is the
+caretaker, that old oddity, Jeanbernat, who has managed to find quarters
+in a lodge where the stones still hang together. There it is, see--that
+grey building yonder, with its windows all smothered in ivy.'
+
+The gig passed by a lordly iron gate, ruddy with rust, and lined inside
+with a layer of boards. The wide dry throats were black with brambles. A
+hundred yards further on was the lodge inhabited by Jeanbernat. It stood
+within the park, which it overlooked. But the old keeper had apparently
+blocked up that side of his dwelling, and had cleared a little garden
+by the road. And there he lived, facing southwards, with his back
+turned upon the Paradou, as if unaware of the immensity of verdure that
+stretched away behind him.
+
+The young priest jumped down, looking inquisitively around him and
+questioning the doctor, who was hurriedly fastening the horse to a ring
+fixed in the wall.
+
+'And the old man lives all alone in this out-of-the-way hole?' he asked.
+
+'Yes, quite alone,' replied his uncle, adding, however, the next minute:
+'Well, he has with him a niece whom he had to take in, a queer girl,
+a regular savage. But we must make haste. The whole place looks
+death-like.'
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+The house with its shutters closed seemed wrapped in slumber as it stood
+there in the midday sun, amidst the hum of the big flies that swarmed
+all up the ivy to the roof tiles. The sunlit ruin was steeped in happy
+quietude. When the doctor had opened the gate of the narrow garden,
+which was enclosed by a lofty quickset hedge, there, in the shadow cast
+by a wall, they found Jeanbernat, tall and erect, and calmly smoking his
+pipe, as in the deep silence he watched his vegetables grow.
+
+'What, are you up then, you humbug?' exclaimed the astonished doctor.
+
+'So you were coming to bury me, were you?' growled the old man harshly.
+'I don't want anybody. I bled myself.'
+
+He stopped short as he caught sight of the priest, and assumed so
+threatening an expression that the doctor hastened to intervene.
+
+'This is my nephew,' he said; 'the new Cure of Les Artaud--a good
+fellow, too. Devil take it, we haven't been bowling over the roads at
+this hour of the day to eat you, Jeanbernat.'
+
+The old man calmed down a little.
+
+'I don't want any shavelings here,' he grumbled. 'They're enough to make
+one croak. Mind, doctor, no priests, and no physics when I go off, or we
+shall quarrel. Let him come in, however, as he is your nephew.'
+
+Abbe Mouret, struck dumb with amazement, could not speak a word. He
+stood there in the middle of the path scanning that strange solitaire,
+with scorched, brick-tinted face, and limbs all withered and twisted
+like a bundle of ropes, who seemed to bear the burden of his eighty
+years with a scornful contempt for life. When the doctor attempted to
+feel his pulse, his ill-humour broke out afresh.
+
+'Do leave me in peace! I bled myself with my knife, I tell you. It's all
+over, now. Who was the fool of a peasant who disturbed you? The doctor
+here, and the priest as well, why not the mutes too! Well, it can't be
+helped, people will be fools. It won't prevent us from having a drink,
+eh?'
+
+He fetched a bottle and three glasses, and stood them on an old table
+which he brought out into the shade. Then, having filled the glasses
+to the brim, he insisted on clinking them. His anger had given place to
+jeering cheerfulness.
+
+'It won't poison you, Monsieur le Cure,' he said. 'A glass of good
+wine isn't a sin. Upon my word, however, this is the first time I ever
+clinked a glass with a cassock, but no offence to you. That poor Abbe
+Caffin, your predecessor, refused to argue with me. He was afraid.'
+
+Jeanbernat gave vent to a hearty laugh, and then went on: 'Just fancy,
+he had pledged himself that he would prove to me that God exists.
+So, whenever I met him, I defied him to do it; and he sloped off
+crestfallen, I can tell you.'
+
+'What, God does not exist!' cried Abbe Mouret, roused from his silence.
+
+'Oh! just as you please,' mockingly replied Jeanbernat. 'We'll begin
+together all over again, if it's any pleasure to you. But I warn you
+that I'm a tough hand at it. There are some thousands of books in one of
+the rooms upstairs, which were rescued from the fire at the Paradou: all
+the philosophers of the eighteenth century, a whole heap of old books
+on religion. I've learned some fine things from them. I've been reading
+them these twenty years. Marry! you'll find you've got some one who can
+talk, Monsieur le Cure.'
+
+He had risen, slowly waving his hand towards the surrounding horizon,
+to the earth and to the sky, and repeating solemnly: 'There's nothing,
+nothing, nothing. When the sun is snuffed out, all will be at an end.'
+
+Doctor Pascal nudged Abbe Mouret with his elbow. With blinking eyes he
+was curiously observing the old man and nodding approvingly in order to
+induce him to talk. 'So you are a materialist, Jeanbernat?' he said.
+
+'Oh, I am only a poor man,' replied the old fellow, relighting his pipe.
+'When Count de Corbiere, whose foster-brother I was, died from a fall
+from his horse, his children sent me here to look after this park of the
+Sleeping Beauty, in order to get rid of me. I was sixty years old then,
+and I thought I was about done. But death forgot me; and I had to make
+myself a burrow. If one lives all alone, look you, one gets to see
+things in rather a queer fashion. The trees are no longer trees, the
+earth puts on the ways of a living being, the stones seem to tell you
+tales. A parcel of rubbish, eh? But I know some secrets that would
+fairly stagger you. Besides, what do you think there is to do in
+this devilish desert? I read the old books; it was more amusing than
+shooting. The Count, who used to curse like a heathen, was always saying
+to me: "Jeanbernat, my boy, I fully expect to meet you again in the hot
+place, so that you will be able to serve me there as you have up here."'
+
+Once more he waved his hand to the horizon and added: 'You hear,
+nothing; there's nothing. It's all foolery.'
+
+Dr. Pascal began to laugh.
+
+'A pleasant piece of foolery, at any rate,' he said. 'Jeanbernat, you
+are a deceiver. I suspect you are in love, in spite of your affectation
+of being _blase_. You were speaking very tenderly of the trees and
+stones just now.'
+
+'Oh, no, I assure you,' murmured the old man, 'I have done with that.
+At one time, it's true, when I first knew you and used to go herborising
+with you, I was stupid enough to love all sorts of things I came across
+in that huge liar, the country. Fortunately, the old volumes have killed
+all that. I only wish my garden was smaller; I don't go out into the
+road twice a year. You see that bench? That's where I spend all my time,
+just watching my lettuces grow.'
+
+'And what about your rounds in the park?' broke in the doctor.
+
+'In the park!' repeated Jeanbernat, with a look of profound surprise.
+'Why, it's more than twelve years since I set foot in it! What do you
+suppose I could do inside that cemetery? It's too big. It's stupid, what
+with those endless trees and moss everywhere and broken statues, and
+holes in which one might break one's neck at every step. The last time I
+went in there, it was so dark under the trees, there was such a stink of
+wild flowers, and such queer breezes blew along the paths, that I felt
+almost afraid. So I have shut myself up to prevent the park coming in
+here. A patch of sunlight, three feet of lettuce before me, and a
+big hedge shutting out all the view, why, that's more than enough for
+happiness. Nothing, that's what I'd like, nothing at all, something so
+tiny that nothing from outside could come to disturb me. Seven feet of
+earth, if you like, just to be able to croak on my back.'
+
+He struck the table with his fist, and suddenly raised his voice to call
+out to Abbe Mouret: 'Come, just another glass, your reverence. The old
+gentleman isn't at the bottom of the bottle, you know.'
+
+The priest felt ill at ease. To lead back to God that singular old man,
+whose reason seemed to him to be strangely disordered, appeared a task
+beyond his powers. He now remembered certain bits of gossip he had
+heard from La Teuse about the Philosopher, as the peasants of Les Artaud
+dubbed Jeanbernat. Scraps of scandalous stories vaguely floated in his
+memory. He rose, making a sign to the doctor that he wished to leave
+this house, where he seemed to inhale an odour of damnation. But, in
+spite of his covert fears, a strange feeling of curiosity made him
+linger. He simply walked to the end of the garden, throwing a searching
+glance into the vestibule, as if to see beyond it, behind the walls. All
+he could perceive, however, through the gaping doorway, was the black
+staircase. So he came back again, and sought for some hole, some glimpse
+of that sea of foliage which he knew was near by the mighty murmur that
+broke upon the house, like the sound of waves.
+
+'And is the little one well?' asked the doctor, taking up his hat.
+
+'Pretty well,' answered Jeanbernat. 'She's never here. She often
+disappears all day long--still, she may be in the upstair rooms.'
+
+He raised his head and called: 'Albine! Albine!' Then with a shrug of
+his shoulders, he added: 'Yes, my word, she is a nice hussy.... Well,
+till next time, Monsieur le Cure. I'm always at your disposal.'
+
+Abbe Mouret, however, had no time to accept the Philosopher's challenge.
+A door suddenly opened at the end of the vestibule; a dazzling breach
+was made in the black darkness of the wall, and through the breach came
+a vision of a virgin forest, a great depth of woodland, beneath a
+flood of sunbeams. In that sudden blaze of light the priest distinctly
+perceived certain far-away things: a large yellow flower in the middle
+of a lawn, a sheet of water falling from a lofty rock, a colossal tree
+filled with a swarm of birds; and all this steeped, lost, blazing in
+such a tangle of greenery, such riotous luxuriance of vegetation, that
+the whole horizon seemed one great burst of shooting foliage. The door
+banged to, and everything vanished.
+
+'Ah! the jade!' cried Jeanbernat, 'she was in the Paradou again!'
+
+Albine was now laughing on the threshold of the vestibule. She wore
+an orange-coloured skirt, with a large red kerchief fastened round her
+waist, thus looking like some gipsy in holiday garb. And she went on
+laughing, her head thrown back, her bosom swelling with mirth, delighted
+with her flowers, wild flowers which she had plaited into her fair hair,
+fastened to her neck, her bodice, and her bare slender golden arms. She
+seemed like a huge nosegay, exhaling a powerful perfume.
+
+'Ay, you are a beauty!' growled the old man. 'You smell of weeds enough
+to poison one--would any one think she was sixteen, that doll?'
+
+Albine remained unabashed, however, and laughed still more heartily.
+Doctor Pascal, who was her great friend, let her kiss him.
+
+'So you are not frightened in the Paradou?' he asked.
+
+'Frightened? What of?' she said, her eyes wide open with astonishment.
+'The walls are too high, no one can get in. There's only myself. It is
+my garden, all my very own. A fine big one, too. I haven't found out
+where it ends yet.'
+
+'And the animals?' interrupted the doctor.
+
+'The animals? Oh! they don't hurt; they all know me well.'
+
+'But it is very dark under the trees?'
+
+'Course! there's shade: if there were none, the sun would burn my face
+up. It is very pleasant in the shade among the leaves.'
+
+She flitted about, filling the little garden with the rustling sweep of
+her skirts, and scattering round the pungent odour of wild flowers which
+clung to her. She had smiled at Abbe Mouret without trace of shyness,
+without heed of the astonished look with which he observed her. The
+priest had stepped aside. That fair-haired maid, with long oval face,
+glowing with life, seemed to him to be the weird mysterious offspring of
+the forest of which he had caught a glimpse in a sheet of sunlight.
+
+'I say, I have got some blackbird nestlings; would you like them?'
+Albine asked the doctor.
+
+'No, thanks,' he answered, laughing. 'You should give them to the Cure's
+sister; she is very fond of pets. Good day, Jeanbernat.'
+
+Albine, however, had fastened on the priest.
+
+'You are the vicar of Les Artaud, aren't you? You have a sister? I'll go
+and see her. Only you must not speak to me about God. My uncle will not
+have it.'
+
+'You bother us, be off,' exclaimed Jeanbernat, shrugging his shoulders.
+Then bounding away like a goat, dropping a shower of flowers behind her,
+she disappeared. The slam of a door was heard, and from behind the
+house came bursts of laughter, which died away in the distance like the
+scampering rush of some mad animal let loose among the grass.
+
+'You'll see, she will end by sleeping in the Paradou,' muttered the old
+man with indifference.
+
+And as he saw his visitors off, he added: 'If you should find me dead
+one of these fine days, doctor, just do me the favour of pitching me
+into the muck-pit there, behind my lettuces. Good evening, gentlemen.'
+
+He let the wooden gate which closed the hedge fall to again, and the
+house assumed once more its aspect of happy peacefulness in the noonday
+sunlight, amidst the buzzing of the big flies that swarmed all up the
+ivy even to the roof tiles.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+The gig once more rolled along the road skirting the Paradou's
+interminable wall. Abbe Mouret, still silent, scanned with upturned eyes
+the huge boughs which stretched over that wall, like the arms of giants
+hidden there. All sorts of sounds came from the park: rustling of wings,
+quivering of leaves, furtive bounds at which branches snapped, mighty
+sighs that bowed the young shoots--a vast breath of life sweeping over
+the crests of a nation of trees. At times, as he heard a birdlike note
+that seemed like a human laugh, the priest turned his head, as if he
+felt uneasy.
+
+'A queer girl!' said his uncle as he eased the reins a little. 'She was
+nine years old when she took up her quarters with that old heathen. Some
+brother of his had ruined himself, though in what I can't remember. The
+little one was at school somewhere when her father killed himself. She
+was even quite a little lady, up to reading, embroidery, chattering, and
+strumming on the piano. And such a coquette too! I saw her arrive with
+open-worked stockings, embroidered skirts, frills, cuffs, a heap of
+finery. Ah, well! the finery didn't last long!'
+
+He laughed. A big stone nearly upset the gig.
+
+'It will be lucky if I don't leave a wheel in this cursed road!' he
+muttered. 'Hold on, my boy.'
+
+The wall still stretched beside them: the priest still listened.
+
+'As you may well imagine,' continued the doctor, 'the Paradou, what with
+its sun, its stones, and its thistles, would wreck a whole outfit every
+day. Three or four mouthfuls, that's all it made of all the little one's
+beautiful dresses. She used to come back naked. Now she dresses like
+a savage. To-day she was rather presentable; but sometimes she has
+scarcely anything on beyond her shoes and chemise. Did you hear her? The
+Paradou is hers. The very day after she came she took possession of it.
+She lives in it; jumps out of the window when Jeanbernat locks the door,
+bolts off in spite of all, goes nobody knows whither, buries herself in
+some invisible burrows known only to herself. She must have a fine time
+in that wilderness.'
+
+'Hark, uncle!' interrupted Abbe Mouret. 'Isn't that some animal running
+behind the wall?'
+
+Uncle Pascal listened.
+
+'No,' he said after a minute's silence, 'it is the rattle of the trap on
+the stones. No, the child doesn't play the piano now. I believe she has
+even forgotten how to read. Just picture to yourself a young lady gone
+back to a state of primevalness, turned out to play on a desert island.
+My word, if ever you get to know of a girl who needs proper bringing up,
+I advise you not to entrust her to Jeanbernat. He has a most primitive
+way of letting nature alone. When I ventured to speak to him about
+Albine he answered me that he must not prevent trees from growing
+as they pleased. He says he is for the normal development of
+temperaments.... All the same, they are very interesting, both of them.
+I never come this way without paying them a visit.'
+
+The gig was now emerging from the hollowed road. At this point the wall
+of the Paradou turned and wound along the crest of the hills as far
+as one could see. As Abbe Mouret turned to take a last look at that
+grey-hued barrier, whose impenetrable austerity had at last begun to
+annoy him, a rustling of shaken boughs was heard and a clump of young
+birch trees seemed to bow in greeting from above the wall.
+
+'I knew some animal was running behind,' said the priest.
+
+But, although nobody could be seen, though nothing was visible in the
+air above save the birches rocking more and more violently, they heard a
+clear, laughing voice call out: 'Good-bye, doctor! good-bye, Monsieur le
+Cure! I am kissing the tree, and the tree is sending you my kisses.'
+
+'Why! it is Albine,' exclaimed Doctor Pascal. 'She must have followed
+the trap at a run. Jumping over bushes is mere play to her, the little
+elf!'
+
+And he in his turn shouted out:
+
+'Good-bye, my pet! How tall you must be to bow like that.'
+
+The laughter grew louder, the birches bowed still lower, scattering
+their leaves around even on the hood of the gig.
+
+'I am as tall as the trees; all the leaves that fall are kisses,'
+replied the voice now mellowed by distance, so musical, so merged into
+the rippling whispers of the park, that the young priest was thrilled.
+
+The road grew better. On coming down the slope Les Artaud reappeared in
+the midst of the scorched plain. When the gig reached the turning to
+the village, Abbe Mouret would not let his uncle drive him back to the
+vicarage. He jumped down, saying:
+
+'No, thanks, I prefer to walk: it will do me good.'
+
+'Well, just as you like,' at last answered the doctor. And with a clasp
+of the hand, he added: 'Well, if you only had such parishioners as that
+old brute Jeanbernat, you wouldn't often be disturbed. However, you
+yourself wanted to come. And mind you keep well. At the slightest ache,
+night or day, send for me. You know I attend all the family gratis....
+There, good-bye, my boy.'
+
+
+
+
+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.'
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+And there, indeed, the sunlight was. When Albine had opened the
+shutters, behind the large curtains, the genial yellow glow once more
+warmed a patch of the white calico. But that which impelled Serge to sit
+up in bed was the sight of the shadowy bough, the branch that for him
+heralded the return of life. All the resuscitated earth, with its wealth
+of greenery, its waters, and its belts of hills, was in that greenish
+blur that quivered with the faintest breath of air. It no longer
+disturbed him; he greedily watched it rocking, and hungered for the
+fortified powers of the vivifying sap which to him it symbolised.
+Albine, happy once more, exclaimed, as she supported him in her arms:
+'Ah! my dear Serge, the winter is over. Now we are saved.'
+
+He lay down again, his eyes already brighter, and his voice clearer.
+'To-morrow I shall be very strong,' he said. 'You shall draw back the
+curtains. I want to see everything.'
+
+But on the morrow he was seized with childish fear. He would not hear of
+the windows being opened wide. 'By-and-by,' he muttered, 'later on.' He
+was fearful, he dreaded the first beam of light that would flash upon
+his eyes. Evening came on, and still he had been unable to make up
+his mind to look upon the sun. He remained thus all day long, his face
+turned towards the curtains, watching on their transparent tissue the
+pallor of morn, the glow of noon, the violet tint of twilight, all
+the hues, all the emotions of the sky. There were pictured even the
+quiverings of the warm air at the light stroke of a bird's wing, even
+the delight of earth's odours throbbing in a sunbeam. Behind that veil,
+behind that softened phantasm of the mighty life without, he could hear
+the rise of spring. He even felt stifled at times when in spite of the
+curtains' barrier the rush of the earth's new blood came upon him too
+strongly.
+
+The following morning he was still asleep when Albine, to hasten his
+recovery, cried out to him:
+
+'Serge! Serge! here's the sun!'
+
+She swiftly drew back the curtains and threw the windows wide open. He
+raised himself and knelt upon his bed, oppressed, swooning, his hands
+tightly pressed against his breast to keep his heart from breaking.
+Before him stretched the broad sky, all blue, a boundless blue; and
+in it he washed away his sufferings, surrendering himself to it, and
+drinking from it sweetness and purity and youth. The bough whose shadow
+he had noted jutted across the window and alone set against the azure
+sea its vigorous growth of green; but even this was too much for his
+sickly fastidiousness; it seemed to him that the very swallows flying
+past besmeared the purity of the azure. He was being born anew. He
+raised little involuntary cries, as he felt himself flooded with light,
+assailed by waves of warm air, while a whirling, whelming torrent of
+life flowed within him. As last with outstretched hands he sank back
+upon his pillow in a swoon of joy.
+
+What a happy, delicious day that was! The sun came in from the right,
+far away from the alcove. Throughout the morning Serge watched it
+creeping onward. He could see it coming towards him, yellow as gold,
+perching here and there on the old furniture, frolicking in corners,
+at times gliding along the ground like a strip of ribbon. It was a slow
+deliberate march, the approach of a fond mistress stretching her golden
+limbs, drawing nigh to the alcove with rhythmic motion, with voluptuous
+lingering, which roused intense desire. At length, towards two o'clock,
+the sheet of sunlight left the last armchair, climbed along the
+coverlet, and spread over the bed like loosened locks of hair. To its
+glowing fondling Serge surrendered his wasted hands: with his eyes
+half-closed, he could feel fiery kisses thrilling each of his fingers;
+he lay in a bath of light, in the embrace of a glowing orb. And when
+Albine leaned over smiling, 'Let me be,' he stammered, his eyes now
+shut; 'don't hold me so tightly. How do you manage to hold me like this
+in your arms?'
+
+But the sun crept down the bed again and slowly retreated to the left;
+and as Serge watched it bend once more and settle on chair after chair,
+he bitterly regretted that he had not kept it to his breast. Albine
+still sat upon the side of the bed, and the pair of them, an arm round
+each other's neck, watched the slow paling of the sky. At times a mighty
+thrill seemed to make it blanch. Serge's languid eyes now wandered over
+it more freely and detected in it exquisite tints of which he had never
+dreamed. It was not all blue, but rosy blue, lilac blue, tawny blue,
+living flesh, vast and spotless nudity heaving like a woman's bosom
+in the breeze. At every glance into space he found a fresh
+surprise--unknown nooks, coy smiles, bewitching rounded outlines, gauzy
+veils which were cast over the mighty, glorious forms of goddesses
+in the depths of peeping paradises. And with his limbs lightened by
+suffering he winged his way amid that shimmering silk, that stainless
+down of azure. The sun sank lower and lower, the blue melted into purest
+gold, the sky's living flesh gleamed fairer still, and then was slowly
+steeped in all the hues of gloom. Not a cloud--nought but gradual
+disappearance, a disrobing which left behind it but a gleam of modesty
+on the horizon. And at last the broad sky slumbered.
+
+'Oh, the dear baby!' exclaimed Albine, as she looked at Serge, who had
+fallen asleep upon her neck at the same time as the heavens.
+
+She laid him down in bed and shut the windows. Next morning, however,
+they were opened at break of day. Serge could no longer live without the
+sunlight. His strength was growing, he was becoming accustomed to the
+gusts of air which sent the alcove curtains flying. Even the azure, the
+everlasting azure, began to pall upon him. He grew weary of being white
+and swanlike, of ever swimming on heaven's limpid lake. He came to wish
+for a pack of black clouds, some crumbling of the skies, that would
+break upon the monotony of all that purity. And as his health returned,
+he hungered for keener sensations. He now spent hours in gazing at the
+verdant bough: he would have liked to see it grow, expand, and throw
+out its branches to his very bed. It no longer satisfied him, but
+only roused desires, speaking to him as it did of all the trees whose
+deep-sounding call he could hear although their crests were hidden from
+his sight. An endless whispering of leaves, a chattering as of running
+water, a fluttering as of wings, all blended in one mighty, long-drawn,
+quivering voice, resounded in his ears.
+
+'When you are able to get up,' said Albine, 'you shall sit at the
+window. You will see the lovely garden!'
+
+He closed his eyes and murmured gently:
+
+'Oh! I can see it, I hear it; I know where the trees are, where the
+water runs, where the violets grow.'
+
+And then he added: 'But I can't see it clearly, I see it without any
+light. I must be very strong before I shall be able to get as far as the
+window.'
+
+At times when Albine thought him asleep, she would vanish for hours. And
+on coming in again, she would find him burning with impatience, his eyes
+gleaming with curiosity.
+
+'Where have you been?' he would call to her, taking hold of her arms,
+and feeling her skirts, her bodice, and her cheeks. 'You smell of all
+sorts of nice things. Ah! you have been walking on the grass?'
+
+At this she would laugh and show him her shoes wet with dew.
+
+'You have been in the garden! you have been in the garden!' he then
+exclaimed delightedly. 'I knew it. When you came in you seemed like a
+large flower. You have brought the whole garden in your skirt.'
+
+He would keep her by him, inhaling her like a nosegay. Sometimes she
+came back with briars, leaves, or bits of wood entangled in her clothes.
+These he would remove and hide under his pillow like relics. One day she
+brought him a bunch of roses. At the sight of them he was so affected
+that he wept. He kissed them and went to sleep with them in his arms.
+But when they faded, he felt so keenly grieved that he forbade Albine to
+gather any more. He preferred her, said he, for she was as fresh and as
+balmy; and she never faded, her hands, her hair, her cheeks were always
+fragrant. At last he himself would send her into the garden, telling her
+not to come back before an hour.
+
+'In that way,' he said, 'I shall get sunlight, fresh air, and roses till
+to-morrow.'
+
+Often, when he saw her coming in out of breath, he would cross-examine
+her. Which path had she taken? Had she wandered among the trees, or had
+she gone round the meadow side? Had she seen any nests? Had she sat down
+behind a bush of sweetbriar, or under an oak, or in the shade of a clump
+of poplars? But when she answered him and tried to describe the garden
+to him, he would put his hand to her lips.
+
+'No, no,' he said gently. 'It is wrong of me. I don't want to know. I
+would rather see it myself.'
+
+Then he would relapse into his favourite dream of all the greenery which
+he could feel only a step away. For several days he lived on that
+dream alone. At first, he said, he had perceived the garden much more
+distinctly. As he gained strength, the surging blood that warmed
+his veins seemed to blur his dreamy imaginings. His uncertainties
+multiplied. He could no longer tell whether the trees were on the right,
+whether the water flowed at the bottom of the garden, or whether some
+great rocks were not piled below his windows. He talked softly of all
+this to himself. On the slightest indication he would rear wondrous
+plans, which the song of a bird, the creaking of a bough, the scent of a
+flower, would suddenly make him modify, impelling him to plant a thicket
+of lilac in one spot, and in another to place flower-beds where formerly
+there had been a lawn. Every hour he designed some new garden, much to
+the amusement of Albine, who, whenever she surprised him at it, would
+exclaim with a burst of laughter: 'That's not it, I assure you. You
+can't have any idea of it. It's more beautiful than all the beautiful
+things you ever saw. So don't go racking your head about it. The
+garden's mine, and I will give it to you. Be easy, it won't run away.'
+
+Serge, who had already been so afraid of the light, felt considerable
+trepidation when he found himself strong enough to go and rest his
+elbows on the window-sill. Every evening he once more repeated,
+'To-morrow,' and 'To-morrow.' He would turn away in his bed with
+a shudder when Albine came in, and would cry out that she smelt of
+hawthorn, that she had scratched her hands in burrowing a hole through
+a hedge to bring him all its odour. One morning, however, she suddenly
+took him up in her arms, and almost carrying him to the window, held him
+there and forced him to look out and see.
+
+'What a coward you are!' she exclaimed with her fine ringing laugh.
+
+And waving one hand all round the landscape, she repeated with an air of
+triumph, full of tender promise: 'The Paradou! The Paradou!'
+
+Serge looked out upon it, speechless.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+A sea of verdure, in front, to right, to left, everywhere. A sea rolling
+its surging billows of leaves as far as the horizon, unhindered by
+house, or screen of wall, or dusty road. A desert, virgin, hallowed
+sea, displaying its wild sweetness in the innocence of solitude. The
+sun alone came thither, weltering in the meadows in a sheet of gold,
+threading the paths with the frolicsome scamper of its beams, letting
+its fine-spun, flaming locks droop through the trees, sipping from the
+springs with amber lips that thrilled the water. Beneath that flaming
+dust the vast garden ran riot like some delighted beast let loose at
+the world's very end, far from everything and free from everything.
+So prodigal was the luxuriance of foliage, so overflowing the tide of
+herbage, that from end to end it all seemed hidden, flooded, submerged.
+Nought could be seen but slopes of green, stems springing up like
+fountains, billowy masses, woodland curtains closely drawn, mantles of
+creepers trailing over the ground, and flights of giant boughs swooping
+down upon every side.
+
+Amidst that tremendous luxuriance of vegetation even lengthy scrutiny
+could barely make out the bygone plan of the Paradou. In the foreground,
+in a sort of immense amphitheatre, must have lain the flower garden,
+whose fountains were now sunken and dry, its stone balustrades
+shattered, its flight of steps all warped, and its statues overthrown,
+patches of their whiteness gleaming amidst the dusky stretches of turf.
+Farther back, behind the blue line of a sheet of water, stretched a maze
+of fruit-trees; farther still rose towering woodland, its dusky, violet
+depths streaked with bands of light. It was a forest which had regained
+virginity, an endless stretch of tree-tops rising one above the other,
+tinged with yellowish green and pale green and vivid green, according to
+the variety of the species.
+
+On the right, the forest scaled some hills, dotting them with little
+clumps of pine-trees, and dying away in straggling brushwood, while a
+huge barrier of barren rock, heaped together like the fallen wreckage of
+a mountain, shut out all view beyond. Flaming growths there cleaved the
+rugged soil, monstrous plants lay motionless in the heat, like drowsing
+reptiles; a silvery streak, a foamy splash that glistened in the
+distance like a cloud of pearls, revealed the presence of a waterfall,
+the source of those tranquil streams that lazily skirted the
+flower-garden. Lastly, on the left the river flowed through a vast
+stretch of meadowland, where it parted into four streamlets which winded
+fitfully beneath the rushes, between the willows, behind the taller
+trees. And far away into the distance grassy patches prolonged the
+lowland freshness, forming a landscape steeped in bluish haze, where
+a gleam of daylight slowly melted into the verdant blue of sunset. The
+Paradou--its flower-garden, forest, rocks, streams, and meadows--filled
+the whole breadth of sky.
+
+'The Paradou!' stammered Serge, stretching out his arms as if to clasp
+the entire garden to his breast.
+
+He tottered, and Albine had to seat him in an armchair. There he sat
+for two whole hours intently gazing, without opening his lips, his chin
+resting on his hands. At times his eyelids fluttered and a flush rose
+to his cheeks. Slowly he looked, profoundly amazed. It was all too vast,
+too complex, too overpowering.
+
+'I cannot see, I cannot understand,' he cried, stretching out his hands
+to Albine with a gesture of uttermost weariness.
+
+The girl came and leant over the back of his armchair. Taking his head
+between her hands, she compelled him to look again, and softly said:
+
+'It's all our own. Nobody will ever come in. When you are well again, we
+will go for walks there. We shall have room enough for walking all our
+lives. We'll go wherever you like. Where would you like to go?'
+
+He smiled.
+
+'Oh! not far,' he murmured. 'The first day only two steps or so beyond
+the door. I should surely fall---- See, I'll go over there, under that
+tree close to the window.'
+
+But she resumed: 'Would you like to go into the flower-garden, the
+parterre? You shall see the roses--they have over-run everything, even
+the old paths are all covered with them. Or would you like the orchard
+better? I can only crawl into it on my hands and knees, the boughs are
+so bowed down with fruit. But we'll go even farther if you feel strong
+enough. We'll go as far as the forest, right into the depths of shade,
+far, far away; so far that we'll sleep out there when night steals over
+us. Or else, some morning, we can climb up yonder to the summit of
+those rocks. You'll see the plants which make me quake; you'll see the
+springs, such a shower of water! What fun it will be to feel the spray
+all over our faces!... But if you prefer to walk along the hedges,
+beside a brook, we must go round by the meadows. It is so nice under
+the willows in the evening, at sunset. One can lie down on the grass and
+watch the little green frogs hopping about on the rushes.'
+
+'No, no,' said Serge, 'you weary me, I don't want to go so far.... I
+will only go a couple of steps, that will be more than enough.'
+
+'Even I,' she still continued, 'even I have not yet been able to go
+everywhere. There are many nooks I don't know. I have walked and walked
+in it for years, and still I feel sure there are unknown spots around,
+places where the shade must be cooler and the turf softer. Listen, I
+have always fancied there must be one especially in which I should like
+to live for ever. I know it's somewhere; I must have passed it by, or
+perhaps it's hidden so far away that I have never even got as far, with
+all my rambles. But we'll look for it together, Serge, won't we? and
+live there.'
+
+'No, no, be quiet,' stammered the young man. 'I don't understand what
+you are saying. You're killing me.'
+
+For a moment she let him sob in her arms. It troubled and grieved her
+that she could find no words to soothe him.
+
+'Isn't the Paradou as beautiful, then, as you fancied it?' she asked at
+last.
+
+He raised his face and answered:
+
+'I don't know. It was quite little, and now it is ever growing bigger
+and bigger---- Take me away, hide me.'
+
+She led him back to bed, soothing him like a child, lulling him with a
+fib.
+
+'There, there! it's not true, there is no garden. It was only a story
+that I told you. Go, sleep in peace.'
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+Every day in this wise she made him sit at the window during the cool
+hours of morning. He would now attempt to take a few steps, leaning the
+while on the furniture. A rosy tint appeared upon his cheeks, and his
+hands began to lose their waxy transparency. But, while he thus regained
+health, his senses remained in a state of stupor which reduced him to
+the vegetative life of some poor creature born only the day before.
+Indeed, he was nothing but a plant; his sole perception was that of
+the air which floated round him. He lacked the blood necessary for
+the efforts of life, and remained, as it were, clinging to the soil,
+imbibing all the sap he could. It was like a slow hatching in the warm
+egg of springtide. Albine, remembering certain remarks of Doctor
+Pascal, felt terrified at seeing him remain in this state, 'innocent,'
+dull-witted like a little boy. She had heard it said that certain
+maladies left insanity behind them. And she spent hours in gazing at him
+and trying her utmost, as mothers do, to make him smile. But as yet he
+had not laughed. When she passed her hand across his eyes, he never
+saw, he never followed the shadow. Even when she spoke to him, he barely
+turned his head in the direction whence the sound came. She had but one
+consolation: he thrived splendidly, he was quite a handsome child.
+
+For another whole week she lavished the tenderest care on him. She
+patiently waited for him to grow. And as she marked various symptoms
+of awakening perception, her fears subsided and she began to think
+that time might make a man of him. When she touched him now he started
+slightly. Another time, one night, he broke into a feeble laugh. On the
+morrow, when she had seated him at the window, she went down into the
+garden, and ran about in it, calling to him the while. She vanished
+under the trees, flitted across the sunny patches, and came back
+breathless and clapping her hands. At first his wavering eyes failed
+to perceive her. But as she started off again, perpetually playing at
+hide-and-seek, reappearing behind every other bush, he was at last
+able to follow the white gleam of her skirt; and when she suddenly came
+forward and stood with upraised face below his window, he stretched out
+his arms and seemed anxious to go down to her. But she came upstairs
+again, and embraced him proudly: 'Ah! you saw me, you saw me!' she
+cried. 'You would like to come into the garden with me, would you
+not?---- If you only knew how wretched you have made me these last few
+days, with your stupid ways, never seeing me or hearing me!'
+
+He listened to her, but apparently with some slight sensation of pain
+that made him bend his neck in a shrinking way.
+
+'You are better now, however,' she went on. 'Well enough to come down
+whenever you like---- Why don't you say anything? Have you lost your
+tongue? Oh, what a baby! Why, I shall have to teach him how to talk!'
+
+And thereupon she really did amuse herself by telling him the names of
+the things he touched. He could only stammer, reiterating the syllables,
+and failing to utter a single word plainly. However, she began to walk
+him about the room, holding him up and leading him from the bed to the
+window--quite a long journey. Two or three times he almost fell on the
+way, at which she laughed. One day he fairly sat down on the floor, and
+she had all the trouble in the world to get him up on his feet again.
+Then she made him undertake the round of the room, letting him rest by
+the way on the sofa and the chairs--a tour round a little world which
+took up a good hour. At last he was able to venture on a few steps
+alone. She would stand before him with outstretched hands, and move
+backwards, calling him, so that he should cross the room in search of
+her supporting arms. If he sulked and refused to walk, she would take
+the comb from her hair and hold it out to him like a toy. Then he would
+come to her and sit still in a corner for hours, playing with her comb,
+and gently scratching his hands with its teeth.
+
+At last one morning she found him up. He had already succeeded in
+opening one of the shutters, and was attempting to walk about without
+leaning on the furniture.
+
+'Good gracious, we are active this morning!' she exclaimed gleefully.
+'Why, he will be jumping out of the window to-morrow if he has his own
+way---- So you are quite strong now, eh?'
+
+Serge's answer was a childish laugh. His limbs were regaining the
+strength of adolescence, but more perceptive sensations remained
+unroused. He spent whole afternoons in gazing out on the Paradou,
+pouting like a child that sees nought but whiteness and hears but the
+vibration of sounds. He still retained the ignorance of urchinhood--his
+sense of touch as yet so innocent that he failed to tell Albine's gown
+from the covers of the old armchairs. His eyes still stared wonderingly;
+his movements still displayed the wavering hesitation of limbs which
+scarce knew how to reach their goal; his state was one of incipient,
+purely instinctive existence into which entered no knowledge of
+surroundings. The man was not yet born within him.
+
+'That's right, you'll act the silly, will you?' muttered Albine. 'We'll
+see.'
+
+She took off her comb, and held it out to him.
+
+'Will you have my comb?' she said. 'Come and fetch it.'
+
+When she had got him out of the room, by retreating before him all the
+way, she put her arm round his waist and helped him down each stair,
+amusing him while she put her comb back, even tickling his neck with
+a lock of her hair, so that he remained unaware that he was going
+downstairs. But when he was in the hall, he became frightened at the
+darkness of the passage.
+
+'Just look!' she cried, throwing the door wide open.
+
+It was like a sudden dawn, a curtain of shadow snatched aside, revealing
+the joyousness of early day. The park spread out before them verdantly
+limpid, freshly cool and deep as a spring. Serge, entranced, lingered
+upon the threshold, with a hesitating desire to feel that luminous lake
+with his foot.
+
+'One would think you were afraid of wetting yourself,' said Albine.
+'Don't be frightened, the ground is safe enough.'
+
+He had ventured to take one step, and was astonished at encountering the
+soft resistance of the gravel. The first touch of the soil gave him a
+shock; life seemed to rebound within him and to set him for a moment
+erect, with expanding frame, while he drew long breaths.
+
+'Come now, be brave,' insisted Albine. 'You know you promised me to
+take five steps. We'll go as far as the mulberry tree there under the
+window---- There you can rest.'
+
+It took him a quarter of an hour to make those five steps. After each
+effort he stopped as if he had been obliged to tear up roots that held
+him to the ground.
+
+The girl, pushing him along, said with a laugh: 'You look just like a
+walking tree.'
+
+Having placed him with his back leaning against the mulberry tree, in
+the rain of sunlight falling from its boughs, she bounded off and left
+him, calling out to him that he must not stir. Serge, standing
+there with drooping hands, slowly turned his head towards the park.
+Terrestrial childhood met his gaze. The pale greenery was steeped in the
+very milk of youth, flooded with golden brightness. The trees were still
+in infancy, the flowers were as tender-fleshed as babes, the streams
+were blue with the artless blue of lovely infantile eyes. Beneath every
+leaf was some token of a delightful awakening.
+
+Serge had fixed his eyes upon a yellow breach which a wide path made in
+front of him amidst a dense mass of foliage. At the very end, eastward,
+some meadows, steeped in gold, looked like the luminous field upon which
+the sun would descend, and he waited for the morn to take that path and
+flow towards him. He could feel it coming in a warm breeze, so faint
+at first that it barely brushed across his skin, but rising little by
+little, and growing ever brisker till he was thrilled all over. He could
+also taste it coming with a more and more pronounced savour, bringing
+the healthful acridity of the open air, holding to his lips a feast of
+sugary aromatics, sour fruits, and milky shoots. Further, he could smell
+it coming with the perfumes which it culled upon its way--the scent of
+earth, the scent of the shady woods, the scent of the warm plants, the
+scent of living animals, a whole posy of scents, powerful enough to
+bring on dizziness. He could likewise hear it coming with the rapid
+flight of a bird skimming over the grass, waking the whole garden from
+silence, giving voice to all it touched, and filling his ears with the
+music of things and beings. Finally, he could see it coming from the end
+of the path, from the meadows steeped in gold--yes, he could see that
+rosy air, so bright that it lighted the way it took with a gleaming
+smile, no bigger in the distance than a spot of daylight, but in a few
+swift bounds transformed into the very splendour of the sun. And the
+morn flowed up and beat against the mulberry tree against which Serge
+was leaning. And he himself resuscitated amidst the childhood of the
+morn.
+
+'Serge! Serge!' cried Albine, lost to sight behind the high shrubs of
+the flower garden. 'Don't be afraid, I am here.'
+
+But Serge no longer felt frightened. He was being born anew in the
+sunshine, in that pure bath of light which streamed upon him. He was
+being born anew at five-and-twenty, his senses hurriedly unclosing,
+enraptured with the mighty sky, the joyful earth, the prodigy of
+loveliness spread out around him. This garden, which he knew not only
+the day before, now afforded him boundless delight. Everything filled
+him with ecstasy, even the blades of grass, the pebbles in the paths,
+the invisible puffs of air that flitted over his cheeks. His whole body
+entered into possession of this stretch of nature; he embraced it
+with his limbs, he drank it in with his lips, he inhaled it with his
+nostrils, he carried it in his ears and hid it in the depths of his
+eyes. It was his own. The roses of the flower garden, the lofty boughs
+of the forest, the resounding rocks of the waterfall, the meadows which
+the sun planted with blades of light, were his. Then he closed his eyes
+and slowly reopened them that he might enjoy the dazzle of a second
+wakening.
+
+'The birds have eaten all the strawberries,' said Albine disconsolately,
+as she ran up to him. 'See, I have only been able to find these two!'
+
+But she stopped short a few steps away, heart-struck and gazing at Serge
+with rapturous astonishment. 'How handsome you are!' she cried.
+
+She drew a little nearer; then stood there, absorbed in her
+contemplation, and murmuring: 'I had never, never seen you before.'
+
+He had certainly grown taller. Clothed in a loose garment, he stood
+erect, still somewhat slender, with finely moulded limbs, square chest,
+and rounded shoulders. His head, slightly thrown back, was poised upon
+a flexible and snowy neck, rimmed with brown behind. Health and strength
+and power were on his face. He did not smile, his expression was that of
+repose, with grave and tender mouth, firm cheeks, large nose, and grey,
+clear, commanding eyes. The long locks that thickly covered his head
+fell upon his shoulders in jetty curls; while a slender growth of hair,
+through which gleamed his white skin, curled upon his upper lip and
+chin.
+
+'Oh! how handsome, how handsome you are!' lingeringly repeated Albine,
+crouching at his feet and gazing up at him with loving eyes. 'But why
+are you sulking with me? Why don't you speak to me?'
+
+Still he stood there and made no answer. His eyes were far away; he
+never even saw that child at his feet. He spoke to himself in the
+sunlight, and said: 'How good the light is!'
+
+That utterance sounded like a vibration of the sunlight itself. It fell
+amid the silence in the faintest of whispers like a musical sigh, a
+quiver of warmth and of life. For several days Albine had never heard
+his voice, and now, like himself, it had altered. It seemed to her to
+course through the park more sweetly than the melody of birds, more
+imperiously than the wind that bends the boughs. It reigned, it ruled.
+The whole garden heard it, though it had been but a faint and passing
+breath, and the whole garden was thrilled with the joyousness it
+brought.
+
+'Speak to me,' implored Albine. 'You have never spoken to me like that.
+When you were upstairs in your room, when you were not dumb, you talked
+the silly prattle of a child. How is it I no longer know your voice?
+Just now I thought it had come down from the trees, that it reached me
+from every part of the garden, that it was one of those deep sighs that
+used to worry me at night before you came. Listen, everything is keeping
+silence to hear you speak again.'
+
+But still he failed to recognise her presence. Tenderer grew her tones.
+'No, don't speak if it tires you. Sit down beside me, and we will
+remain here on the grass till the sun wanes. And look, I have found two
+strawberries. Such trouble I had too! The birds eat up everything. One's
+for you, both if you like; or we can halve them, and taste each of them.
+You'll thank me, and then I shall hear you.'
+
+But he would not sit down, he refused the strawberries, which Albine
+pettishly threw away. She did not open her lips again. She would rather
+have seen him ill, as in those earlier days when she had given him her
+hand for a pillow, and had felt him coming back to life beneath the
+cooling breath she blew upon his face. She cursed the returning health
+which now made him stand in the light like a young unheeding god. Would
+he be ever thus then, with never a glance for her? Would he never be
+further healed, and at last see her and love her? And she dreamed of
+once again being his healer, of accomplishing by the sole power of her
+little hands the cure of the second childhood in which he remained.
+She could clearly see that there was no spark in the depths of his grey
+eyes, that his was but a pallid beauty like that of the statues which
+had fallen among the nettles of the flower-garden. She rose and clasped
+him, breathing on his neck to rouse him. But that morning Serge never
+even felt the breath that lifted his silky beard. The sun got low, it
+was time to go indoors. On reaching his room, Albine burst into tears.
+
+From that morning forward the invalid took a short walk in the garden
+every day. He went past the mulberry tree, as far as the edge of the
+terrace, where a wide flight of broken steps descended to the flowery
+parterre. He grew accustomed to the open air, each bath of sunlight
+brought him fresh vigour. A young chestnut tree, which had sprung from
+some fallen nut between two stones of the balustrade, burst the resin
+of its buds, and unfolded its leafy fans with far less vigour than he
+progressed. One day, indeed, he even attempted to descend the steps,
+but in this his strength failed him, and he sat down among the dane-wort
+which had grown up between the cracks in the stone flags. Below, to the
+left, he could see a small wood of roses. It was thither that he dreamt
+of going.
+
+'Wait a little longer,' said Albine. 'The scent of the roses is too
+strong for you yet. I have never been able to sit long under the
+rose-trees without feeling exhausted, light-headed, with a longing to
+cry. Don't be afraid, I will some day lead you to the rose-trees, and I
+shall surely weep among them, for you make me very sad.'
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+One morning she at last succeeded in helping him to the foot of the
+steps, trampling down the grass before him with her feet, and clearing
+a way for him through the briars, whose supple arms barred the last few
+yards. Then they slowly entered the wood of roses. It was indeed a very
+wood, with thickets of tall standard roses throwing out leafy clumps as
+big as trees, and enormous rose bushes impenetrable as copses of young
+oaks. Here, formerly, there had been a most marvellous collection
+of plants. But since the flower garden had been left in abandonment,
+everything had run wild, and a virgin forest had arisen, a forest of
+roses over-running the paths, crowded with wild offshoots, so mingled,
+so blended, that roses of every scent and hue seemed to blossom on the
+same stem. Creeping roses formed mossy carpets on the ground, while
+climbing roses clung to others like greedy ivy plants, and ascended in
+spindles of verdure, letting a shower of their loosened petals fall
+at the lightest breeze. Natural paths coursed through the wood--narrow
+footways, broad avenues, enchanting covered walks in which one strolled
+in the shade and scent. These led to glades and clearings, under bowers
+of small red roses, and between walls hung with tiny yellow ones. Some
+sunny nooks gleamed like green silken stuff embroidered with bright
+patterns; other shadier corners offered the seclusion of alcoves and an
+aroma of love, the balmy warmth, as it were, of a posy languishing on a
+woman's bosom. The rose bushes had whispering voices too. And the rose
+bushes were full of songbirds' nests.
+
+'We must take care not to lose ourselves,' said Albine, as she entered
+the wood. 'I did lose myself once, and the sun had set before I was
+able to free myself from the rose bushes which caught me by the skirt at
+every step.'
+
+They had barely walked a few minutes, however, before Serge, worn out
+with fatigue, wished to sit down. He stretched himself upon the ground,
+and fell into deep slumber. Albine sat musing by his side. They were on
+the edge of a glade, near a narrow path which stretched away through the
+wood, streaked with flashes of sunlight, and, through a small round blue
+gap at its far end, revealed the sky. Other little paths led from the
+clearing into leafy recesses. The glade was formed of tall rose bushes
+rising one above the other with such a wealth of branches, such a tangle
+of thorny shoots, that big patches of foliage were caught aloft, and
+hung there tent-like, stretching out from bush to bush. Through the tiny
+apertures in the patches of leaves, which were suggestive of fine lace,
+the light filtered like impalpable sunny dust. And from the vaulted roof
+hung stray branches, chandeliers, as it were, thick clusters suspended
+from green thread-like stems, armfuls of flowers that reached to the
+ground, athwart some rent in the leafy ceiling, which trailed around
+like a tattered curtain.
+
+Albine meanwhile was gazing at Serge asleep. She had never seen him so
+utterly prostrated in body as now, his hands lying open on the turf, his
+face deathly. So dead indeed he was to her that she thought she could
+kiss his face without his even feeling it. And sadly, absently, she
+busied her hands with shredding all the roses within her reach. Above
+her head drooped an enormous cluster which brushed against her hair, set
+roses on her twisted locks, her ears, her neck, and even threw a mantle
+of the fragrant flowers across her shoulders. Higher up, under
+her fingers, other roses rained down with large and tender petals
+exquisitely formed, which in hue suggested the faintly flushing purity
+of a maiden's bosom. Like a living snowfall these roses already hid her
+feet in the grass. And they climbed her knees, covered her skirt,
+and smothered her to her waist; while three stray petals, which had
+fluttered on to her bodice, just above her bosom, there looked like
+three glimpses of her bewitching skin.
+
+'Oh! the lazy fellow!' she murmured, feeling bored and picking up two
+handfuls of roses, which she flung in Serge's face to wake him.
+
+He did not stir, however, but still lay there with the roses on his eyes
+and mouth. This made Albine laugh. She stooped down, and with her whole
+heart kissed both his eyes and his mouth, blowing as she kissed to drive
+the rose petals away; but they remained upon his lips, and she broke
+into still louder laughter, intensely amused at this flowery caressing.
+
+Serge slowly raised himself. He gazed at her with amazement, as if
+startled at finding her there.
+
+'Who are you? where do you come from? what are you doing here beside
+me?' he asked her. And still she smiled, transported with delight
+at marking this awakening of his senses. Then he seemed to remember
+something, and continued with a gesture of happy confidence:
+
+'I know, you are my love, flesh of my flesh, you are waiting for me that
+we may be one for ever. I was dreaming of you. You were in my breast,
+and I gave you my blood, my muscles, my bones. I felt no pain. You took
+half my heart so tenderly that I experienced keen inward delight at thus
+dividing myself. I sought all that was best and most beautiful within
+me to give it to you. You might have carried off everything, and still
+I should have thanked you. And I woke when you went out of me. You
+left through my eyes and mouth; ay, I felt it. You were all warm, all
+fragrant, so sweet that it was the thrill from you that has made me
+awake.'
+
+Albine listened to his words with ecstasy. At last he saw her; at last
+his birth was accomplished, his cure begun. With outstretched hands she
+begged him to go on.
+
+'How have I managed to live without you?' he murmured. 'No, I did not
+live, I was like a slumbering animal. And now you are mine! and you are
+no one but myself! Listen, you must never leave me; for you are my very
+breath, and in leaving me you would rob me of my life. We will remain
+within ourselves. You will be mine even as I shall be yours. Should I
+ever forsake you, may I be accursed, may my body wither like a useless
+and noxious weed!'
+
+He caught hold of her hands, and exclaimed in a voice quivering with
+admiration: 'How beautiful you are!'
+
+In the falling dust of sunshine Albine's skin looked milky white, scarce
+gilded here and there by the sunny sheen. The shower of roses around and
+on her steeped her in pinkness.
+
+Her fair hair, loosely held together by her comb, decked her head as
+with a setting planet whose last bright sparks shone upon the nape of
+her neck. She wore a white gown; her arms, her throat, her stainless
+skin bloomed unabashed as a flower, musky with a goodly fragrance. Her
+figure was slender, not too tall, but supple as a snake's, with softly
+rounded, voluptuously expanding outlines, in which the freshness of
+childhood mingled with womanhood's nascent charms. Her oval face, with
+its narrow brow and rather full mouth, beamed with the tender living
+light of her blue eyes. And yet she was grave, too, her cheeks
+unruffled, her chin plump--as naturally lovely as are the trees.
+
+'And how I love you!' said Serge, drawing her to himself.
+
+They were wholly one another's now, clasped in each other's arms! They
+did not kiss, but held each other round the waist, cheek to cheek,
+united, dumb, delighted with their oneness. Around them bloomed the
+roses with a mad, amorous blossoming, full of crimson and rosy and white
+laughter. The living, opening flowers seemed to bare their very bosoms.
+Yellow roses were there showing the golden skin of barbarian maidens:
+straw-coloured roses, lemon-coloured roses, sun-coloured roses--every
+shade of the necks which are ambered by glowing skies. Then there was
+skin of softer hue: among the tea roses, bewitchingly moist and cool,
+one caught glimpses of modest, bashful charms, with skin as fine as silk
+tinged faintly with a blue network of veins. Farther on all the smiling
+life of the rose expanded: there was the blush white rose, barely
+tinged with a dash of carmine, snowy as the foot of a maid dabbling in a
+spring; there was the silvery pink, more subdued than even the glow
+with which a youthful arm irradiates a wide sleeve; there was the clear,
+fresh rose, in which blood seemed to gleam under satin as in the bare
+shoulders of a woman bathed in light; and there was the bright pink rose
+with its buds like the nipples of virgin bosoms, and its opening flowers
+that suggested parted lips, exhaling warm and perfumed breath. And
+the climbing roses, the tall cluster roses with their showers of white
+flowers, clothed all these others with the lacework of their bunches,
+the innocence of their flimsy muslin; while, here and there, roses dark
+as the lees of wine, sanguineous, almost black, showed amidst the bridal
+purity like passion's wounds. Verily, it was like a bridal--the bridal
+of the fragrant wood, the virginity of May led to the fertility of
+July and August; the first unknowing kiss culled like a nosegay on
+the wedding morn. Even in the grass, moss roses, clad in close-fitting
+garments of green wool, seemed to be awaiting the advent of love.
+Flowers rambled all along the sun-streaked path, faces peeped out
+everywhere to court the passing breezes. Bright were the smiles under
+the spreading tent of the glade. Not a flower that bloomed the same: the
+roses differed in the fashion of their wooing. Some, shy and blushing,
+would show but a glimpse of bud, while others, panting and wide open,
+seemed consumed with infatuation for their persons. There were pert,
+gay little things that filed off, cockade in cap; there were huge ones,
+bursting with sensuous charms, like portly, fattened-up sultanas; there
+were impudent hussies, too, in coquettish disarray, on whose petals the
+white traces of the powder-puff could be espied; there were virtuous
+maids who had donned low-necked garb like demure _bourgeoises_; and
+aristocratic ladies, graceful and original, who contrived attractive
+deshabilles. And the cup-like roses offered their perfume as in precious
+crystal; the drooping, urn-shaped roses let it drip drop by drop; the
+round, cabbage-like roses exhaled it with the even breath of slumbering
+flowers; while the budding roses tightly locked their petals and only
+sent forth as yet the faint sigh of maidenhood.
+
+'I love you, I love you,' softly repeated Serge.
+
+Albine, too, was a large rose, a pallid rose that had opened since the
+morning. Her feet were white, her arms were rosy pink, her neck was fair
+of skin, her throat bewitchingly veined, pale and exquisite. She was
+fragrant, she proffered lips which offered as in a coral cup a perfume
+that was yet faint and cool. Serge inhaled that perfume, and pressed her
+to his breast. Albine laughed.
+
+The ring of that laugh, which sounded like a bird's rhythmic notes,
+enraptured Serge.
+
+'What, that lovely song is yours?' he said. 'It is the sweetest I ever
+heard. You are indeed my joy.'
+
+Then she laughed yet more sonorously, pouring forth rippling scales of
+high-pitched, flute-like notes that melted into deeper ones. It was an
+endless laugh, a long-drawn cooing, then a burst of triumphant music
+celebrating the delight of awakening love. And everything--the roses,
+the fragrant wood, the whole of the Paradou--laughed in that laugh of
+woman just born to beauty and to love. Till now the vast garden had
+lacked one charm--a winning voice which should prove the living mirth
+of the trees, the streams, and the sunlight. Now the vast garden was
+endowed with that charm of laughter.
+
+'How old are you?' asked Albine, when her song had ended in a faint
+expiring note.
+
+'Nearly twenty-six,' Serge answered.
+
+She was amazed. What! he was twenty-six! He, too, was astonished at
+having made that answer so glibly, for it seemed to him that he had not
+yet lived a day--an hour.
+
+'And how old are you?' he asked in his turn.
+
+'Oh, I am sixteen.'
+
+Then she broke into laughter again, quivering from head to foot,
+repeating and singing her age. She laughed at her sixteen years with a
+fine-drawn laugh that flowed on with rhythmic trilling like a streamlet.
+Serge scanned her closely, amazed at the laughing life that transfigured
+her face. He scarcely knew her now with those dimples in her cheeks,
+those bow-shaped lips between which peeped the rosy moistness of her
+mouth, and those eyes blue like bits of sky kindling with the rising of
+the sun. As she threw back her head, she sent a glow of warmth through
+him.
+
+He put out his hand, and fumbled mechanically behind her neck.
+
+'What do you want?' she asked. And suddenly remembering, she exclaimed:
+'My comb! my comb! that's it.'
+
+She gave him her comb, and let fall her heavy tresses. A cloth of gold
+suddenly unrolled and clothed her to her hips. Some locks which flowed
+down upon her breast gave, as it were a finishing touch to her
+regal raiment. At the sight of that sudden blaze, Serge uttered an
+exclamation; he kissed each lock, and burned his lips amidst that
+sunset-like refulgence.
+
+But Albine now relieved herself of her long silence, and chatted and
+questioned unceasingly.
+
+'Oh, how wretched you made me! You no longer took any notice of me, and
+day after day I found myself useless and powerless, worried out of my
+wits like a good-for-nothing.... And yet the first few days I had done
+you good. You saw me and spoke to me.... Do you remember when you were
+lying down, and went to sleep on my shoulder, and murmured that I did
+you good?'
+
+'No!' said Serge, 'no, I don't remember it. I had never seen you before.
+I have only just seen you for the first time--lovely, radiant, never to
+be forgotten.'
+
+She clapped her hands impatiently, exclaiming: 'And my comb? You must
+remember how I used to give you my comb to keep you quiet when you were
+a little child? Why, you were looking for it just now.'
+
+'No, I don't remember. Your hair is like fine silk. I have never kissed
+your hair before.'
+
+At this, with some vexation, she recounted certain particulars of his
+convalescence in the room with the blue ceiling. But he only laughed
+at her, and at last closed her lips with his hand, saying with anxious
+weariness: 'No, be quiet, I don't know; I don't want to know any
+more.... I have only just woke up, and found you there, covered with
+roses. That is enough.'
+
+And he drew her once more towards him and held her there, dreaming
+aloud, and murmuring: 'Perhaps I have lived before. It must have been a
+long, long time ago.... I loved you in a painful dream. You had the same
+blue eyes, the same rather long face, the same youthful mien. But your
+hair was carefully hidden under a linen cloth, and I never dared to
+remove that cloth, because your locks seemed to me fearsome and
+would have made me die. But to-day your hair is the very sweetness of
+yourself. It preserves your scent, and when I kiss it, when I bury my
+face in it like this, I drink in your very life.'
+
+He kept on passing the long curls through his hands, and pressing them
+to his lips, as if to squeeze from them all Albine's blood. And after
+an interval of silence, he continued: 'It's strange, before one's birth,
+one dreams of being born.... I was buried somewhere. I was very cold.
+I could hear all the life of the world outside buzzing above me. But I
+shut my ears despairingly, for I was used to my gloomy den, and enjoyed
+some fearful delights in it, so that I never sought to free myself from
+all the earth weighing upon my chest. Where could I have been then? Who
+was it gave me light?'
+
+He struggled to remember, while Albine now waited in fear and trembling
+lest he should really do so. Smiling, she took a handful of her hair and
+wound it round the young man's neck, thus fastening him to herself. This
+playful act roused him from his musings.
+
+'You're right,' he said, 'I am yours, what does the rest matter? It was
+you, was it not, who drew me out of the earth? I must have been under
+this garden. What I heard were your steps rattling the little pebbles
+in the path. You were looking for me, you brought down upon my head the
+songs of the birds, the scent of the pinks, the warmth of the sun. I
+fancied that you would find me at last. I waited a long time for you.
+But I never expected that you would give yourself to me without your
+veil, with your hair undone--the terrible hair which has become so
+soft.'
+
+He sat her on his lap, placing his face beside hers.
+
+'Do not let us talk any more. We are alone for ever. We love each
+other.'
+
+And thus in all innocence they lingered in each other's arms; for a
+long, long time did they remain there forgetfully. The sun rose higher;
+and the dust of light fell hotter from the lofty boughs. The yellow and
+white and crimson roses were now only a ray of their delight, a sign
+of their smiles to one another. They had certainly caused buds to open
+around them. The roses crowned their heads and threw garlands about
+their waists. And the scent of the roses became so penetrating, so
+strong with amorous emotion, that it seemed to be the scent of their own
+breath.
+
+At last Serge put up Albine's hair. He raised it in handfuls with
+delightful awkwardness, and stuck her comb askew in the enormous
+knot that he had heaped upon her head. And as it happened she looked
+bewitching thus. Then, rising from the ground, he held out his hands to
+her, and supported her waist as she got up. They still smiled without
+speaking a word, and slowly they went down the path.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Albine and Serge entered the flower garden. She was watching him
+with tender anxiety, fearing lest he should overtire himself; but he
+reassured her with a light laugh. He felt strong enough indeed to carry
+her whithersoever she listed. When he found himself once more in the
+full sunlight, he drew a sigh of content. At last he lived; he was no
+longer a plant subject to the terrible sufferings of winter. And how he
+was moved with loving gratitude! Had it been within his power, he would
+have spared Albine's tiny feet even the roughness of the paths; he
+dreamed of carrying her, clinging round his neck, like a child lulled
+to sleep by her mother. He already watched over her with a guardian's
+watchful care, thrusting aside the stones and brambles, jealous lest the
+breeze should waft a fleeting kiss upon those darling locks which were
+his alone. She on her side nestled against his shoulder and serenely
+yielded to his guidance.
+
+Thus Albine and Serge strolled on together in the sunlight for the first
+time. A balmy fragrance floated in their wake, the very path on which
+the sun had unrolled a golden carpet thrilled with delight under their
+feet. Between the tall flowering shrubs they passed like a vision of
+such wondrous charm that the distant paths seemed to entreat their
+presence and hail them with a murmur of admiration, even as crowds hail
+long-expected sovereigns. They formed one sole, supremely lovely being.
+Albine's snowy skin was but the whiteness of Serge's browner skin.
+And slowly they passed along clothed with sunlight--nay, they were
+themselves the sun--worshipped by the low bending flowers.
+
+A tide of emotion now stirred the Paradou to its depths. The old flower
+garden escorted them--that vast field bearing a century's untrammelled
+growth, that nook of Paradise sown by the breeze with the choicest
+flowers. The blissful peace of the Paradou, slumbering in the broad
+sunlight, prevented the degeneration of species. It could boast of a
+temperature ever equable, and a soil which every plant had long enriched
+to thrive therein in the silence of its vigour. Its vegetation was
+mighty, magnificent, luxuriantly untended, full of erratic growths
+decked with monstrous blossoming, unknown to the spade and watering-pot
+of gardeners. Nature left to herself, free to grow as she listed, in the
+depths of that solitude protected by natural shelters, threw restraint
+aside more heartily at each return of spring, indulged in mighty
+gambols, delighted in offering herself at all seasons strange nosegays
+not meant for any hand to pluck. A rabid fury seemed to impel her to
+overthrow whatever the effort of man had created; she rebelliously cast
+a straggling multitude of flowers over the paths, attacked the rockeries
+with an ever-rising tide of moss, and knotted round the necks of marble
+statues the flexible cords of creepers with which she threw them down;
+she shattered the stonework of the fountains, steps, and terraces with
+shrubs which burst through them; she slowly, creepingly, spread over the
+smallest cultivated plots, moulding them to her fancy, and planting on
+them, as ensign of rebellion, some wayside spore, some lowly weed which
+she transformed into a gigantic growth of verdure. In days gone by the
+parterre, tended by a master passionately fond of flowers, had displayed
+in its trim beds and borders a wondrous wealth of choice blossoms. And
+the same plants could still be found; but perpetuated, grown into such
+numberless families, and scampering in such mad fashion throughout the
+whole garden, that the place was now all helter-skelter riot to its very
+walls, a very den of debauchery, where intoxicated nature had hiccups of
+verbena and pinks.
+
+Though to outward seeming Albine had yielded her weaker self to the
+guidance of Serge, to whose shoulder she clung, it was she who really
+led him. She took him first to the grotto. Deep within a clump of
+poplars and willows gaped a cavern, formed by rugged bits of rocks which
+had fallen over a basin where tiny rills of water trickled between the
+stones. The grotto was completely lost to sight beneath the onslaught of
+vegetation. Below, row upon row of hollyhocks seemed to bar all entrance
+with a trellis-work of red, yellow, mauve, and white-hued flowers, whose
+stems were hidden among colossal bronze-green nettles, which calmly
+exuded blistering poison. Above them was a mighty swarm of creepers
+which leaped aloft in a few bounds; jasmines starred with balmy flowers;
+wistarias with delicate lacelike leaves; dense ivy, dentated and
+resembling varnished metal; lithe honeysuckle, laden with pale coral
+sprays; amorous clematideae, reaching out arms all tufted with white
+aigrettes. And among them twined yet slenderer plants, binding them
+more and more closely together, weaving them into a fragrant woof.
+Nasturtium, bare and green of skin, showed open mouths of ruddy gold;
+scarlet runners, tough as whipcord, kindled here and there a fire of
+gleaming sparks; convolvuli opened their heart-shaped leaves, and with
+thousands of little bells rang a silent peal of exquisite colours;
+sweetpeas, like swarms of settling butterflies, folded tawny or rosy
+wings, ready to be borne yet farther away by the first breeze. It
+was all a wealth of leafy locks, sprinkled with a shower of flowers,
+straying away in wild dishevelment, and suggesting the head of some
+giantess thrown back in a spasm of passion, with a streaming of
+magnificent hair, which spread into a pool of perfume.
+
+'I have never dared to venture into all that darkness,' Albine whispered
+to Serge.
+
+He urged her on, carried her over the nettles; and as a great boulder
+barred the way into the grotto, he held her up for a moment in his arms
+so that she might be able to peer through the opening that yawned at a
+few feet from the ground.
+
+'A marble woman,' she whispered, 'has fallen full length into the
+stream. The water has eaten her face away.'
+
+Then he, too, in his turn wanted to look, and pulled himself up. A cold
+breeze played upon his cheeks. In the pale light that glided through the
+hole, he saw the marble woman lying amidst the reeds and the duckweed.
+She was naked to the waist. She must have been drowning there for the
+last hundred years. Some grief had probably flung her into that spring
+where she was slowly committing suicide. The clear water which flowed
+over her had worn her face into a smooth expanse of marble, a mere white
+surface without a feature; but her breasts, raised out of the water by
+what appeared an effort of her neck, were still perfect and lifelike,
+throbbing even yet with the joys of some old delight.
+
+'She isn't dead yet,' said Serge, getting down again. 'One day we will
+come and get her out of there.'
+
+But Albine shuddered and led him away. They passed out again into the
+sunlight and the rank luxuriance of beds and borders. They wandered
+through a field of flowers capriciously, at random. Their feet trod a
+carpet of lovely dwarf plants, which had once neatly fringed the walks,
+and now spread about in wild profusion. In succession they passed
+ankle-deep through the spotted silk of soft rose catchflies, through the
+tufted satin of feathered pinks, and the blue velvet of forget-me-nots,
+studded with melancholy little eyes. Further on they forced their way
+through giant mignonette, which rose to their knees like a bath of
+perfume; then they turned through a patch of lilies of the valley in
+order that they might spare an expanse of violets, so delicate-looking
+that they feared to hurt them. But soon they found themselves surrounded
+on all sides by violets, and so with wary, gentle steps they passed over
+their fresh fragrance inhaling the very breath of springtide. Beyond the
+violets, a mass of lobelias spread out like green wool gemmed with
+pale mauve. The softly shaded stars of globularia, the blue cups of
+nemophila, the yellow crosses of saponaria, the white and purple ones
+of sweet rocket, wove patches of rich tapestry, stretching onward and
+onward, a fabric of royal luxury, so that the young couple might enjoy
+the delights of that first walk together without fatigue. But the
+violets ever reappeared; real seas of violets that rolled all round
+them, shedding the sweetest perfumes beneath their feet and wafting in
+their wake the breath of their leaf-hidden flowerets.
+
+Albine and Serge quite lost themselves. Thousands of loftier plants
+towered up in hedges around them, enclosing narrow paths which they
+found it delightful to thread. These paths twisted and turned, wandered
+maze-like through dense thickets. There were ageratums with sky-blue
+tufts of bloom; woodruffs with soft musky perfume; brazen-throated
+mimuluses, blotched with bright vermilion; lofty phloxes, crimson and
+violet, throwing up distaffs of flowers for the breezes to spin; red
+flax with sprays as fine as hair; chrysanthemums like full golden moons,
+casting short faint rays, white and violet and rose, around them. The
+young couple surmounted all the obstacles that lay in their path and
+continued their way betwixt the walls of verdure. To the right of
+them sprang up the slim fraxinella, the centranthus draped with
+snowy blossoms, and the greyish hounds-tongue, in each of whose tiny
+flowercups gleamed a dewdrop. To their left was a long row of columbines
+of every variety; white ones, pale rose ones, and some of deep violet
+hues, almost black, that seemed to be in mourning, the blossoms that
+drooped from their lofty, branching stems being plaited and goffered
+like crape. Then, as they advanced further on, the character of the
+hedges changed. Giant larkspurs thrust up their flower-rods, between the
+dentated foliage of which gaped the mouths of tawny snapdragons, while
+the schizanthus reared its scanty leaves and fluttering blooms, that
+looked like butterflies' wings of sulphur hue splashed with soft lake.
+The blue bells of campanulae swayed aloft, some of them even over the
+tall asphodels, whose golden stems served as their steeples. In one
+corner was a giant fennel that reminded one of a lace-dressed lady
+spreading out a sunshade of sea-green satin. Then the pair suddenly
+found their way blocked. It was impossible to advance any further;
+a mass of flowers, a huge sheaf of plants stopped all progress. Down
+below, a mass of brank-ursine formed as it were a pedestal, from the
+midst of which sprang scarlet geum, rhodanthe with stiff petals, and
+clarkia with great white carved crosses, that looked like the insignia
+of some barbarous order. Higher up still, bloomed the rosy viscaria,
+the yellow leptosiphon, the white colinsia, and the lagurus, whose dusty
+green bloom contrasted with the glowing colours around it. Towering over
+all these growths scarlet foxgloves and blue lupins, rising in slender
+columns, formed a sort of oriental rotunda gleaming vividly with crimson
+and azure; while at the very summit, like a surmounting dome of dusky
+copper, were the ruddy leaves of a colossal castor-bean.
+
+As Serge reached out his hands to try to force a passage, Albine stopped
+him and begged him not to injure the flowers. 'You will break the stems
+and crush the leaves,' she said. 'Ever since I have been here, I have
+always taken care to hurt none of them. Come, and I will show you the
+pansies.'
+
+She made him turn and led him from the narrow paths to the centre of the
+parterre, where, once upon a time, great basins had been hollowed
+out. But these had now fallen into ruin, and were nothing but gigantic
+_jardinieres_, fringed with stained and cracked marble. In one of the
+largest of them, the wind had sown a wonderful basketful of pansies.
+The velvety blooms seemed almost like living faces, with bands of violet
+hair, yellow eyes, paler tinted mouths, and chins of a delicate flesh
+colour.
+
+When I was younger they used to make me quite afraid,' murmured Albine.
+'Look at them. Wouldn't you think that they were thousands of little
+faces looking up at you from the ground? And they turn, too, all in
+the same direction. They might be a lot of buried dolls thrusting their
+heads out of the ground.'
+
+She led him still further on. They went the round of all the other
+basins. In the next one a number of amaranthuses had sprung up, raising
+monstrous crests which Albine had always shrunk from touching, such was
+their resemblance to big bleeding caterpillars. Balsams of all colours,
+now straw-coloured, now the hue of peach-blossom, now blush-white, now
+grey like flax, filled another basin where their seed pods split with
+little snaps. Then in the midst of a ruined fountain, there flourished
+a colony of splendid carnations. White ones hung over the moss-covered
+rims, and flaked ones thrust a bright medley of blossom between the
+chinks of the marble; while from the mouth of the lion, whence formerly
+the water-jets had spurted, a huge crimson clove now shot out so
+vigorously that the decrepit beast seemed to be spouting blood. Near by,
+the principal piece of ornamental water, a lake, on whose surface swans
+had glided, had now become a thicket of lilacs, beneath whose shade
+stocks and verbenas and day-lilies screened their delicate tints, and
+dozed away, all redolent of perfume.
+
+'But we haven't seen half the flowers yet,' said Albine, proudly. 'Over
+yonder there are such huge ones that I can quite bury myself amongst
+them like a partridge in a corn-field.'
+
+They went thither. They tripped down some broad steps, from whose fallen
+urns still flickered the violet fires of the iris. All down the steps
+streamed gilliflowers, like liquid gold. The sides were flanked with
+thistles, that shot up like candelabra, of green bronze, twisted and
+curved into the semblance of birds' heads, with all the fantastic
+elegance of Chinese incense-burners. Between the broken balustrades
+drooped tresses of stonecrop, light greenish locks, spotted as with
+mouldiness. Then at the foot of the steps another parterre spread out,
+dotted over with box-trees that were vigorous as oaks; box-trees which
+had once been carefully pruned and clipped into balls and pyramids and
+octagonal columns, but which were now revelling in unrestrained freedom
+of untidiness, breaking out into ragged masses of greenery, through
+which blue patches of sky were visible.
+
+And Albine led Serge straight on to a spot that seemed to be the
+graveyard of the flower-garden. There the scabious mourned, and
+processions of poppies stretched out in line, with deathly odour,
+unfolding heavy blooms of feverish brilliance. Sad anemones clustered in
+weary throngs, pallid as if infected by some epidemic. Thick-set daturas
+spread out purplish horns, from which insects, weary of life, sucked
+fatal poison. Marigolds buried with choking foliage their writhing
+starry flowers, that already reeked of putrefaction. And there were
+other melancholy flowers also: fleshy ranunculi with rusty tints,
+hyacinths and tuberoses that exhaled asphyxia and died from their own
+perfume. But the cinerarias were most conspicuous, crowding thickly in
+half-mourning robes of violet and white. In the middle of this gloomy
+spot a mutilated marble Cupid still remained standing, smiling beneath
+the lichens which overspread his youthful nakedness, while the arm with
+which he had once held his bow lay low amongst the nettles.
+
+Then Albine and Serge passed on through a rank growth of peonies,
+reaching to their waists. The white flowers fell to pieces as they
+passed, with a rain of snowy petals which was as refreshing to their
+hands as the heavy drops of a thunder shower. And the red ones grinned
+with apoplectical faces which perturbed them. Next they passed through
+a field of fuchsias, forming dense, vigorous shrubs that delighted them
+with their countless bells. Then they went on through fields of purple
+veronicas and others of geraniums, blazing with all the fiery tints of
+a brasier, which the wind seemed to be ever fanning into fresh heat. And
+they forced their way through a jungle of gladioli, tall as reeds, which
+threw up spikes of flowers that gleamed in the full daylight with all
+the brilliance of burning torches. They lost themselves too in a forest
+of sunflowers, with stalks as thick as Albine's wrist, a forest darkened
+by rough leaves large enough to form an infant's bed, and peopled with
+giant starry faces that shone like so many suns. And thence they passed
+into another forest, a forest of rhododendrons so teeming with blossom
+that the branches and leaves were completely hidden, and nothing but
+huge nosegays, masses of soft calyces, could be seen as far as the eye
+could reach.
+
+'Come along; we have not got to the end yet,' cried Albine. 'Let us push
+on.'
+
+But Serge stopped. They were now in the midst of an old ruined
+colonnade. Some of the columns offered inviting seats as they lay
+prostrate amongst primroses and periwinkles. Further away, among the
+columns that still remained upright, other flowers were growing in
+profusion. There were expanses of tulips showing brilliant streaks like
+painted china; expanses of calceolarias dotted with crimson and gold;
+expanses of zinnias like great daisies; expanses of petunias with petals
+like soft cambric through which rosy flesh tints gleamed; and other
+fields, with flowers they could not recognise spreading in carpets
+beneath the sun, in a motley brilliance that was softened by the green
+of their leaves.
+
+'We shall never be able to see it all,' said Serge, smiling and waving
+his hand. 'It would be very nice to sit down here, amongst all this
+perfume.'
+
+Near them there was a large patch of heliotropes, whose vanilla-like
+breath permeated the air with velvety softness. They sat down upon one
+of the fallen columns, in the midst of a cluster of magnificent lilies
+which had shot up there. They had been walking for more than an hour.
+They had wandered on through the flowers from the roses to the lilies.
+These offered them a calm, quiet haven after their lovers' ramble amid
+the perfumed solicitations of luscious honeysuckle, musky violets,
+verbenas that breathed out the warm scent of kisses, and tuberoses that
+panted with voluptuous passion. The lilies, with their tall slim stems,
+shot up round them like a white pavilion and sheltered them with snowy
+cups, gleaming only with the gold of their slender pistils. And
+there they rested, like betrothed children in a tower of purity; an
+impregnable ivory tower, where all their love was yet perfect innocence.
+
+Albine and Serge lingered amongst the lilies till evening. They felt
+so happy there, and seemed to break out into a new life. Serge felt the
+last trace of fever leave his hands, while Albine grew quite white, with
+a milky whiteness untinted by any rosy hue. They were unconscious
+that their arms and necks and shoulders were bare, and their straying
+unconfined hair in nowise troubled them. They laughed merrily one at the
+other, with frank open laughter. The expression of their eyes retained
+the limpid calmness of clear spring water. When they quitted the lilies,
+their feelings were but those of children ten years old; it seemed to
+them that they had just met each other in that garden so that they might
+be friends for ever and amuse themselves with perpetual play. And as
+they returned through the parterre, the very flowers bore themselves
+discreetly, as though they were glad to see their childishness, and
+would do nothing that might corrupt them. The forests of peonies, the
+masses of carnations, the carpets of forget-me-nots, the curtains
+of clematis now steeped in the atmosphere of evening, slumbering in
+childlike purity akin to their own, no longer spread suggestions of
+voluptuousness around them. The pansies looked up at them with their
+little candid faces, like playfellows; and the languid mignonette, as
+Albine's white skirt brushed by it, seemed full of compassion, and held
+its breath lest it should fan their love prematurely into life.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+At dawn the next day it was Serge who called Albine. She slept in a room
+on the upper floor. He looked up at her window and saw her throw open
+the shutters just as she had sprung out of bed. They laughed merrily as
+their eyes met.
+
+'You must not go out to-day,' said Albine, when she came down. 'We must
+stay indoors and rest. To-morrow I will take you a long, long way off,
+to a spot where we can have a very jolly time.'
+
+'But sha'n't we grow tired of stopping here?' muttered Serge.
+
+'Oh, dear no! I will tell you stories.'
+
+They passed a delightful day. The windows were thrown wide open, and all
+the beauty of the Paradou came in and rejoiced with them in the room.
+Serge now really took possession of that delightful room, where he
+imagined he had been born. He insisted upon seeing everything, and upon
+having everything explained to him. The plaster Cupids who sported
+round the alcove amused him so much that he mounted upon a chair to tie
+Albine's sash round the neck of the smallest of them, a little bit of a
+man who was turning somersaults with his head downward. Albine clapped
+her hands, and said that he looked like a cockchafer fastened by a
+string. Then, as though seized by an access of pity, she said, 'No, no,
+unfasten him. It prevents him from flying.'
+
+But it was the Cupids painted over the doors that more particularly
+attracted Serge's attention. He fidgeted at not being able to make out
+what they were playing at, for the paintings had grown very dim. Helped
+by Albine, he dragged a table to the wall, and when they both had
+climbed upon it, Albine began to explain things to him.
+
+'Look, now, those are throwing flowers. Under the flowers you can only
+see some bare legs. It seems to me that when first I came here I could
+make out a lady reposing there. But she has been gone for a long time
+now.'
+
+They examined all the panels in turn; but they had faded to such a
+degree that little more could be distinguished than the knees and elbows
+of infants. The details which had doubtless delighted the eyes of
+those whose old-time passion seemed to linger round the alcove, had so
+completely disappeared under the influence of the fresh air, that the
+room, like the park, seemed restored to pristine virginity beneath the
+serene glory of the sun.
+
+'Oh! they are only some little boys playing,' said Serge, as he
+descended from the table. 'Do you know how to play at "hot cockles"?'
+
+There was no game that Albine did not know how to play at. But, for
+'hot cockles,' at least three players are necessary, and that made them
+laugh. Serge protested, however, that they got on too well together ever
+to desire a third there, and they vowed that they would always remain by
+themselves.
+
+'We are quite alone here; one cannot hear a sound,' said the young
+man, lolling on the couch. 'And all the furniture has such a pleasant
+old-time smell. The place is as snug as a nest. We ought to be very
+happy in this room.'
+
+The girl shook her head gravely.
+
+'If I had been at all timid,' she murmured, 'I should have been very
+much frightened at first.... That is one of the stories I want to tell
+you. The people in the neighbourhood told it to me. Perhaps it isn't
+true, but it will amuse us, at any rate.'
+
+Then she came and sat down by Serge's side.
+
+'It is years and years since it all happened. The Paradou belonged to
+a rich lord, who came and shut himself up in it with a very beautiful
+lady. The gates of the mansion were kept so tightly closed, and the
+garden walls were built so very high, that no one ever caught sight even
+of the lady's skirts.'
+
+'Ah! I know,' Serge interrupted; 'the lady was never seen again.'
+
+Then, as Albine looked at him in surprise, somewhat annoyed to find that
+he knew her story already, he added in a low voice, apparently a little
+astonished himself: 'You told me the story before, you know.'
+
+She declared that she had never done so; but all at once she seemed to
+change her mind, and allowed herself to be convinced. However, that did
+not prevent her from finishing her tale in these words: 'When the lord
+went away his hair was quite white. He had all the gates barricaded up,
+so that no one might get inside and disturb the lady. It was in this
+room that she died.'
+
+'In this room!' cried Serge. 'You never told me that! Are you quite sure
+that it was really in this room she died?'
+
+Albine seemed put out. She repeated to him what every one in the
+neighbourhood knew. The lord had built the pavilion for the reception of
+this unknown lady, who looked like a princess. The servants employed at
+the mansion afterwards declared that he spent all his days and nights
+there. Often, too, they saw him in one of the walks, guiding the tiny
+feet of the mysterious lady towards the densest coppices. But for all
+the world they would never have ventured to spy upon the pair, who
+sometimes scoured the park for weeks together.
+
+'And it was here she died?' repeated Serge, who felt touched with
+sorrow. 'And you have taken her room; you use her furniture, and you
+sleep in her bed.'
+
+Albine smiled.
+
+'Ah! well, you know, I am not timid. Besides, it is so long since it all
+happened. You said what a delightful room it was.'
+
+Then they both dropped into silence, and glanced, for a moment, towards
+the alcove, the lofty ceiling, and the corners, steeped in grey gloom.
+The faded furniture seemed to speak of long past love. A gentle sigh, as
+of resignation, passed through the room.
+
+'No, indeed,' murmured Serge, 'one could not feel afraid here. It is too
+peaceful.'
+
+But Albine came closer to him and said: 'There is something else
+that only a few people know, and that is that the lord and the lady
+discovered in the garden a certain spot where perfect happiness was to
+be found, and where they afterwards spent all their time. I have been
+told that by a very good authority. It is a cool, shady spot, hidden
+away in the midst of an impenetrable jungle, and it is so marvellously
+beautiful that anyone who reaches it forgets all else in the world. The
+poor lady must have been buried there.'
+
+'Is it anywhere about the parterre?' asked Serge curiously.
+
+'Ah! I cannot tell, I cannot tell,' said the young girl with an
+expression of discouragement. 'I know nothing about it. I have searched
+everywhere, but I have never been able to find the least sign of that
+lovely clearing. It is not amongst the roses, nor the lilies, nor the
+violets.'
+
+'Perhaps it is hidden somewhere away amongst those mournful-looking
+flowers, where you showed me the figure of a boy standing with his arm
+broken off.'
+
+'No, no, indeed.'
+
+'Perhaps, then, it is in that grotto, near that clear stream, where the
+great marble woman, without a face, is lying.'
+
+'No, no.'
+
+Albine seemed to reflect for a moment. Then, as though speaking to
+herself, she went on: 'As soon as ever I came here, I began to hunt for
+it. I spent whole days in the Paradou, and ferreted about in all the
+out-of-the-way green corners, to have the pleasure of sitting for an
+hour in that happy spot. What mornings have I not wasted in groping
+under the brambles and peeping into the most distant nooks of the park!
+Oh! I should have known it at once, that enchanting retreat, with the
+mighty tree that must shelter it with a canopy of foliage, with its
+carpet of soft silky turf, and its walls of tangled greenery, which the
+very birds themselves cannot penetrate.
+
+She raised her voice, and threw one of her arms round Serge's neck, as
+she continued: 'Tell me, now; shall we search for it together? We shall
+surely find it. You, who are strong, will push aside the heavy branches,
+while I crawl underneath and search the brakes. When I grow weary, you
+can carry me; you can help me to cross the streams; and if we happen
+to lose ourselves, you can climb the trees and try to discover our way
+again. Ah! and how delightful it will be for us to sit, side by side,
+beneath the green canopy in the centre of the clearing! I have been told
+that in one minute one may there live the whole of life. Tell me, my
+dear Serge, shall we set off to-morrow and scour the park, from bush to
+bush, until we have found what we want?'
+
+Serge shrugged his shoulders, and smiled. 'What would be the use?' he
+said. 'Is it not pleasant in the parterre? Don't you think we ought to
+remain among the flowers, instead of seeking a greater happiness that
+lies so far away?'
+
+'It is there that the dead lady lies buried,' murmured Albine, falling
+back into her reverie. 'It was the joy of being there that killed her.
+The tree casts a shade, whose charm is deathly.... I would willingly die
+so. We would clasp one another there, and we would die, and none would
+ever find us again.'
+
+'Don't talk like that,' interrupted Serge. 'You make me feel so unhappy.
+I would rather that we should live in the bright sunlight, far away from
+that fatal shade. Your words distress me, as though they urged us to
+some irreparable misfortune. It must be forbidden to sit beneath a tree
+whose shade can thus affect one.'
+
+'Yes,' Albine gravely declared, 'it is forbidden. All the folks of the
+countryside have told me that it is forbidden.'
+
+Then silence fell. Serge rose from the couch where he had been lolling,
+and laughed, and pretended that he did not care about stories. The sun
+was setting, however, before Albine would consent to go into the garden
+for even a few minutes. She led Serge to the left, along the enclosing
+wall, to a spot strewn with fragments of stone, and woodwork, and
+ironwork, bristling too with briars and brambles. It was the site of the
+old mansion, still black with traces of the fire which had destroyed
+the building. Underneath the briars lay rotting timbers and fire-split
+masonry. The spot was like a little ravined, hillocky wilderness of
+sterile rocks, draped with rude vegetation, clinging creepers that
+twined and twisted through every crevice like green serpents. The young
+folks amused themselves by wandering across this chaos, groping about in
+the holes, turning over the debris, trying to reconstruct something
+of the past out of the ruins before them. They did not confess their
+curiosity as they chased one another through the midst of fallen
+floorings and overturned partitions; but they were indeed, all the time,
+secretly pondering over the legend of those ruins, and of that lady,
+lovelier than day, whose silken skirt had rustled down those steps,
+where now lizards alone were idly crawling.
+
+Serge ended by climbing the highest of the ruinous masses; and, looking
+round at the park which unfolded its vast expanse of greenery, he sought
+the grey form of the pavilion through the trees. Albine was standing
+silent by his side, serious once more.
+
+'The pavilion is yonder, to the right,' she said at last, without
+waiting for Serge to ask her. 'It is the only one of the buildings
+that is left. You can see it quite plainly at the end of that grove of
+lime-trees.'
+
+They fell into silence again; and then Albine, as though pursuing aloud
+the reflections which were passing through their minds, exclaimed: 'When
+he went to see her, he must have gone down yonder path, then past those
+big chestnut trees, and then under the limes. It wouldn't take him a
+quarter of an hour.'
+
+Serge made no reply. But as they went home, they took the path which
+Albine had pointed out, past the chestnuts and under the limes. It was a
+path that love had consecrated. And as they walked over the grass, they
+seemed to be seeking footmarks, or a fallen knot of ribbon, or a whiff
+of ancient perfume--something that would clearly satisfy them that they
+were really travelling along the path that led to the joy of union.
+
+'Wait out here,' said Albine, when they once more stood before the
+pavilion; 'don't come up for three minutes.'
+
+Then she ran off merrily, and shut herself up in the room with the blue
+ceiling. And when she had let Serge knock at the door twice, she softly
+set it ajar, and received him with an old-fashioned courtesy.
+
+'Good morrow, my dear lord,' she said as she embraced him.
+
+This amused them extremely. They played at being lovers with childish
+glee. In stammering accents they would have revived the passion which
+had once throbbed and died there. But it was like a first effort at
+learning a lesson. They knew not how to kiss each other's lips, but
+sought each other's cheeks, and ended by dancing around each other,
+with shrieks of laughter, from ignorance of any other way of showing the
+pleasure they experienced from their mutual love.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+The next morning Albine was anxious to start at sunrise upon the grand
+expedition which she had planned the night before. She tapped her feet
+gleefully on the ground, and declared that they would not come back
+before nightfall.
+
+'Where are you going to take me?' asked Serge.
+
+'You will see, you will see.'
+
+But he caught her by the hands and looked her very earnestly in the
+face. 'You must not be foolish, you know. I won't have you hunting for
+that glade of yours, or for the tree, or for the grassy couch where one
+droops and dies. You know that it is forbidden.'
+
+She blushed slightly, protesting that she had no such idea in her head.
+Then she added: 'But if we should come across them, just by chance, you
+know, and without really seeking them, you wouldn't mind sitting down,
+would you? Else you must love me very little.'
+
+They set off, going straight through the parterre without stopping to
+watch the awakening of the flowers which were all dripping after their
+dewy bath. The morning had a rosy hue, the smile of a beautiful child,
+just opening its eyes on its snowy pillow.
+
+'Where are you taking me?' repeated Serge.
+
+But Albine only laughed and would not answer. Then, on reaching the
+stream which ran through the garden at the end of the flower-beds, she
+halted in great distress. The water was swollen with the late rains.
+
+'We shall never be able to get across,' she murmured. 'I can generally
+manage it by taking off my shoes and stockings, but, to-day, the water
+would reach to our waists.'
+
+They walked for a moment or two along the bank to find some fordable
+point; but the girl said it was hopeless; she knew the stream quite
+well. Once there had been a bridge across, but it had fallen in, and had
+strewn the river bed with great blocks of stone, between which the water
+rushed along in foaming eddies.
+
+'Get on to my back, then,' said Serge.
+
+'No, no; I'd rather not. If you were to slip, we should both of us get a
+famous wetting. You don't know how treacherous those stones are.'
+
+'Get on to my back,' repeated Serge.
+
+She was tempted to do so. She stepped back for a spring, and then jumped
+up, like a boy; but she felt that Serge was tottering; and crying out
+that she was not safely seated, she got down again. However, after two
+more attempts, she managed to settle herself securely on Serge's back.
+
+'When you are quite ready,' said the young man, laughing, 'we will
+start. Now, hold on tightly. We are off.'
+
+And, with three light strides, he crossed the stream, scarcely wetting
+even his toes. Midway, however, Albine thought that he was slipping. She
+broke out into a little scream, and hugged him tightly round his neck.
+But he sprang forward, and carried her at a gallop over the fine sand on
+the other side.
+
+'Gee up!' she cried, quite calm again, and delighted with this novel
+game.
+
+He ran along with her for some distance, she clucking her tongue, and
+guiding him to right or left by some locks of his hair.
+
+'Here--here we are,' she said at last, tapping him gently on the cheeks.
+
+Then she jumped to the ground; while he, hot and perspiring, leaned
+against a tree to draw breath. Albine thereupon began to scold him, and
+threatened that she would not nurse him if he made himself ill again.
+
+'Stuff!' he cried, 'it's done me good. When I have grown quite strong
+again, I will carry you about all day. But where are you taking me?'
+
+'Here,' she said, as she seated herself beneath a huge pear-tree.
+
+They were in the old orchard of the park. A hawthorn hedge, a real wall
+of greenery with here and there a gap, separated it from everything
+else. There was quite a forest of fruit trees, which no pruning knife
+had touched for a century past. Some of the trees had been strangely
+warped and twisted by the storms which had raged over them; while
+others, bossed all over with huge knots and full of deep holes, seemed
+only to hold on to the soil with their bark. The high branches, bent
+each year by weight of fruit, stretched out like big rackets; and each
+tree helped to keep its fellows erect. The trunks were like twisted
+pillars supporting a roof of greenery; and sometimes narrow cloisters,
+sometimes light halls were formed, while now and again the verdure swept
+almost to the ground and left scarcely room to pass. Round each colossus
+a crowd of wild and self-sown saplings had grown up, thicket-like with
+the entanglement of their young shoots. In the greenish light which
+filtered like tinted water through the foliage, in the deep silence
+of the mossy soil, one only heard the dull thud of the fruit as it was
+culled by the wind.
+
+And there were patriarchal apricot trees that bore their great age
+quite bravely. Though decayed on one side, where they showed a perfect
+scaffolding of dead wood, they were so youthful, so full of life, that,
+on the other, young shoots were ever bursting through their rough bark.
+There were cherry trees, that formed complete towns with houses of
+several stories, that threw out staircases and floors of branches, big
+enough for half a score of families. Then there were the apple trees,
+with their limbs twisted like old cripples, with bark gnarled and
+knotted, and all stained with lichen-growth. There were also smooth pear
+trees, that shot up mast-like with long slender spars. And there were
+rosy-blossomed peach-trees that won a place amid this teeming growth as
+pretty maids do amidst a human crowd by dint of bright smiles and gentle
+persistence. Some had been formerly trained as espaliers, but they had
+broken down the low walls which had once supported them, and now spread
+abroad in wild confusion, freed from the trammels of trellis work,
+broken fragments of which still adhered to some of their branches. They
+grew just as they listed, and resembled well-bred trees, once neat and
+prim, which, having gone astray, now flaunted but vestiges of whilom
+respectability. And from tree to tree, and from bough to bough, vine
+branches hung in confusion. They rose like wild laughter, twined for
+an instant round some lofty knot, then started off again with yet more
+sonorous mirth, splotching all the foliage with the merry ebriety of
+their tendrils. Their pale sun-gilt green set a glow of bacchanalianism
+about the weather-worn heads of the old orchard giants.
+
+Then towards the left were trees less thickly planted. Thin-foliaged
+almonds allowed the sun's rays to pass and ripen the pumpkins, which
+looked like moons that had fallen to the earth. Near the edge of a
+stream which flowed through the orchard there also grew various kinds of
+melons, some rough with knotty warts, some smooth and shining, as oval
+as the eggs of ostriches. At every step, too, progress was barred by
+currant bushes, showing limpid bunches of fruit, rubies in one and all
+of which there sparkled liquid sunlight. And hedges of raspberry
+canes shot up like wild brambles, while the ground was but a carpet
+of strawberry plants, teeming with ripe berries which exhaled a slight
+odour of vanilla.
+
+But the enchanted corner of the orchard was still further to the left,
+near a tier of rocks which there began to soar upwards. There you found
+yourself in a veritable land of fire, in a natural hot-house, on which
+the sun fell freely. At first, you had to make your way through huge,
+ungainly fig trees, which stretched out grey branches like arms weary of
+lying still, and whose villose leather-like foliage was so dense that
+in order to pass one constantly had to snap off twigs that had sprouted
+from the old wood. Next you passed on through groves of strawberry trees
+with verdure like that of giant box-plants, and with scarlet berries
+which suggested maize plants decked out with crimson ribbon. Then
+there came a jungle of nettle-trees, medlars and jujube trees, which
+pomegranates skirted with never-fading verdure. The fruit of the latter,
+big as a child's fist, was scarcely set as yet; and the purple blossoms,
+fluttering at the ends of the branches, looked like the palpitating
+wings of the humming birds, which do not even bend the shoots on which
+they perch. Lastly, there was a forest of orange and lemon trees growing
+vigorously in the open air. Their straight trunks stood like rows of
+brown columns, while their shiny leaves showed brightly against the
+blue of the sky, and cast upon the ground a network of light and shadow,
+figuring the palms of some Indian fabric. Here there was shade beside
+which that of the European orchard seemed colourless, insipid; the warm
+joy of sunlight, softened into flying gold-dust; the glad certainty
+of evergreen foliage; the penetrating perfume of blossom, and the more
+subdued fragrance of fruit; all helping to fill the body with the soft
+languor of tropical lands.
+
+'And now let us breakfast,' cried Albine, clapping her hands. 'It must
+be at least nine o'clock, and I am very hungry.'
+
+She had risen from the ground. Serge confessed that he, too, would find
+some food acceptable.
+
+'You goose!' she said, 'you didn't understand, then, that I brought you
+here to breakfast. We sha'n't die of hunger here. We can help ourselves
+to all there is.'
+
+They went along under the trees, pushing aside the branches and making
+their way to the thickest of the fruit. Albine, who went first, turned,
+and in her flute-like voice asked her companion: 'What do you like best?
+Pears, apricots, cherries, or currants? I warn you that the pears are
+still green; but they are very nice all the same.'
+
+Serge decided upon having cherries, and Albine agreed it would be as
+well to start with them; but when she saw him foolishly beginning to
+scramble up the first cherry tree he found, she made him go on for
+another ten minutes through a frightful entanglement of branches. The
+cherries on this tree, she said, were small and good for nothing; those
+on that were sour; those on another would not be ripe for at least a
+week. She knew all the trees.
+
+'Stop, climb this one,' she said at last, as she stopped at the foot of
+a tree, so heavily laden with fruit that clusters of it hung down to the
+ground, like strings of coral beads.
+
+Serge settled himself comfortably between two branches and began his
+breakfast. He no longer paid attention to Albine. He imagined she was in
+another tree, a few yards away, when, happening to cast his eyes towards
+the ground, he saw her calmly lying on her back beneath him. She had
+thrown herself there, and, without troubling herself to use her hands,
+was plucking with her teeth the cherries which dangled over her mouth.
+
+When she saw she was discovered, she broke out into a peal of laughter,
+and twisted about on the grass like a fish taken from the water. And
+finally, crawling along on her elbows, she gradually made the circuit of
+the tree, snapping up the plumpest cherries as she went along.
+
+'They tickle me so,' she cried. 'See, there's a beauty just fallen on my
+neck. They are so deliciously fresh and juicy. They get into my ears,
+my eyes, my nose, everywhere. They are much sweeter down here than up
+there.'
+
+'Ah!' said Serge, laughing, 'you say that because you daren't climb up.'
+
+She remained for a moment silent with indignation. 'Daren't!--I!--' she
+stammered.
+
+Then, having gathered up her skirts, she tightly grasped the tree and
+pulled herself up the trunk with a single effort of her strong wrists.
+And afterwards she stepped lightly along the branches, scarcely using
+her hands to steady herself. She had all the agile nimbleness of a
+squirrel, and made her way onward, maintaining her equilibrium only by
+the swaying poise of her body. When she was quite aloft at the end of
+a frail branch, which shook dangerously beneath her weight, she cried;
+'Now you see whether I daren't climb.'
+
+'Come down at once,' implored Serge, full of alarm for her. 'I beg of
+you to come down. You will be injuring yourself.'
+
+But she, enjoying her triumph, began to mount still higher. She crawled
+along to the extreme end of a branch, grasping its leaves in her hands
+to maintain her hold.
+
+'The branch will break!' cried Serge, thoroughly frightened.
+
+'Let it break,' she answered, with a laugh; 'it will save me the trouble
+of getting down.'
+
+And the branch did break, but only slowly, with such deliberation that,
+as it gradually settled towards the ground, it let Albine slip down in
+very gentle fashion. She did not appear in the least degree frightened;
+but gave herself a shake, and said: 'That was really nice. It was quite
+like being in a carriage.'
+
+Serge had jumped down from the tree to catch her in his arms. As he
+stood there, quite pale from fright, she laughed at him. 'One tumbles
+down from trees every day,' she exclaimed, 'but there is never any harm
+done. Look more cheerful, you great stupid! Stay, just wet your finger
+and rub it upon my neck. I have scratched it.'
+
+Serge wetted his finger and touched her neck with it.
+
+'There, I am all right again now,' she cried, as she bounded off. 'Let
+us play at hide and seek, shall we?'
+
+She was the first to hide. She disappeared, and presently from the
+depths of the greenery, which she alone knew, and where Serge could not
+possibly find her, she called, 'Cuckoo, cuckoo.' But this game of hide
+and seek did not put a stop to the onslaught upon the fruit trees.
+Breakfasting went on in all the nooks and corners where the two big
+children sought each other. Albine, while gliding beneath the branches,
+would stretch out her hand to pluck a green pear or fill her skirt with
+apricots. Then in some of her lurking-places she would come upon such
+rich discoveries as would make her careless of the game, content to
+sit upon the ground and remain eating. Once, however, she lost sound of
+Serge's movements. So, in her turn, she set about seeking him; and she
+was surprised, almost vexed, when she discovered him under a plum-tree,
+of whose existence she herself had been ignorant, and whose ripe fruit
+had a delicious musky perfume. She soundly rated him. Did he want to eat
+everything himself, that he hadn't called to her to come? He pretended
+to know nothing about the trees, but he evidently had a very keen scent
+to be able to find all the good things. She was especially indignant
+with the poor tree itself--a stupid tree which no one had known of, and
+which must have sprung up in the night on purpose to put people out. As
+she stood there pouting, refusing to pluck a single plum, it occurred to
+Serge to shake the tree violently. And then a shower, a regular hail, of
+plums came down. Albine, standing in the midst of the downfall, received
+plums on her arms, plums on her neck, plums on the very tip of her nose.
+At this she could no longer restrain her laughter; she stood in the
+midst of the deluge, crying 'More! more!' amused as she was by the round
+bullet-like fruit which fell around her as she squatted there, with
+hands and mouth open, and eyes closed.
+
+It was a morning of childish play, of wild gambols in the Paradou.
+Albine and Serge spent hours, scampering up and down, shouting and
+sporting with each other, their thoughts still all innocence. And in
+what a delicious spot they found themselves! Depths of greenery, with
+undiscoverable hiding-places; paths, along whose windings it was never
+possible to be serious, such greedy laughter fell from the very hedges.
+In this happy orchard, there was such a playful straggling of bushes,
+such fresh and appetising shade, such a wealth of old trees laden like
+kindly grandfathers with sweet dainties. Even in the depths of the
+recesses green with moss, beneath the broken trunks which compelled them
+to creep the one behind the other, in the narrow leafy alleys, the young
+folks never succumbed to the perilous reveries of silence. No trouble
+touched them in that happy wood.
+
+And when they had grown weary of the apricot-trees and the plum-trees
+and the cherry-trees, they ran beneath the slender almond-trees; eating
+green almonds, scarcely yet as big as peas, hunting for strawberries in
+the grassy carpet, and regretting that the melons were not already ripe.
+Albine finished by running as fast as she could go, pursued by Serge,
+who was unable to overtake her. She rushed amongst the fig-trees,
+leaping over their heavy branches, and pulling off the leaves to throw
+them behind her in her companion's face. In a few strides she had
+cleared the clumps of arbutus, whose red berries she tasted on her way;
+and it was in the jungle of nettle-trees, medlars, and jujube-trees that
+Serge lost her. At first he thought she was hiding behind a pomegranate;
+but found that he had mistaken two clustering blossoms for the rosy
+roundness of her wrists. Then he scoured the plantation of orange-trees,
+rejoicing in their beauty and perfume, and thinking that he must have
+reached the abode of the fairies of the sun. In the midst of them he
+caught sight of Albine, who, not believing him so near her, was peering
+inquisitively into the green depths.
+
+'What are you looking for?' he cried. 'You know very well that is
+forbidden.'
+
+She sprang up hastily, and slightly blushed for the first time that day.
+Then sitting down by the side of Serge, she told him of the fine times
+there would be when the oranges should be ripe. The wood would then
+be all golden, all bright with those round stars, dotting with yellow
+sparks the arching green.
+
+When at last they really set off homeward she halted at every
+wild-growing fruit tree, and filled her pockets with sour pears and
+bitter plums, saying that they world be good to eat on their way. They
+would prove a hundred times more enjoyable than anything they had tasted
+before. Serge was obliged to swallow some of them, in spite of the
+grimaces he made at each bite. And eventually they found themselves
+indoors again, tired out but feeling very happy.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+A week later there was another expedition to the park. They had planned
+to extend their rambles beyond the orchard, striking out to the left
+through the meadows watered by the four streams. They would travel
+several miles over the thick grass, and they might live on fish, if they
+happened to lose themselves.
+
+'I will take my knife,' said Albine, holding up a broad-bladed peasant's
+knife.
+
+She crammed all kinds of things into her pockets, string, bread,
+matches, a small bottle of wine, some rags, a comb, and some needles.
+Serge took a rug, but by the time they had passed the lime-trees and
+reached the ruins of the chateau, he found it such an encumbrance that
+he hid it beneath a piece of fallen wall.
+
+The sun was hotter than before, Albine had delayed their departure by
+her extensive preparations. Thus in the heat of the morning they stepped
+along side by side, almost quietly. They actually managed to take twenty
+paces at a time without pushing one another or laughing. They began to
+talk.
+
+'I never can wake up,' began Albine. 'I slept so soundly last night. Did
+you?'
+
+'Yes, indeed, very soundly,' replied Serge.
+
+'What does it mean when you dream of a bird that talks to you?' the girl
+resumed.
+
+'I don't know. What did your bird say to you?'
+
+'Oh, I have forgotten. But it said all kinds of things, and many of
+them sounded very comical. Stop, look at that big poppy over there. You
+sha'n't get it, you sha'n't get it!'
+
+And then she sprang forward; but Serge, thanks to his long legs,
+outstripped her and plucked the poppy, which he waved about
+victoriously. She stood there with lips compressed, saying nothing,
+but feeling a strong inclination to cry. Serge threw down the flower.
+Nothing else occurred to him. Then, to make his peace with her, he
+asked: 'Would you like me to carry you as I did the other day?'
+
+'No, no.'
+
+She pouted a little, but she had not gone another thirty steps, when she
+turned round smiling. A bramble had caught hold of her dress.
+
+'I thought it was you who were treading on my dress purposely. It won't
+let me go. Come and unfasten me.'
+
+When she was released, they walked on again, side by side, very quietly.
+Albine pretended that it was much more amusing to stroll along in this
+fashion, like steady grown-up folks. They had just reached the meadows.
+Far away, in front of them, stretched grassy expanses scarce broken here
+and there by the tender foliage of willows. The grass looked soft and
+downy, like velvet. It was a deep green, subsiding in the distance into
+lighter tints, and on the horizon assuming a bright yellow glow beneath
+the flaring sun. The clumps of willows right over yonder seemed like
+pure gold, bathed in the tremulous brilliance of the sunshine. Dancing
+dust tipped the blades of grass with quivering light, and as the gentle
+breezes swept over the free expanse, moire-like reflections appeared on
+the caressed and quivering herbage. In the nearer fields a multitude of
+little white daisies, now in swarms, now straggling, and now in groups,
+like holiday makers at some public rejoicing, brightly peopled the dark
+grass. Buttercups showed themselves, gay like little brass bells which
+the touch of a fly's wing would set tinkling. Here and there big lonely
+poppies raised fiery cups, and others, gathered together further away,
+spread out like vats purple with lees of wine. Big cornflowers balanced
+aloft their light blue caps which looked as if they would fly away
+at every breath of air. Then under foot there were patches of woolly
+feather-grass and fragrant meadow-sweet, sheets of fescue, dog's-tail,
+creeping-bent, and meadow grass. Sainfoin reared its long fine
+filaments; clover unfurled its clear green leaves, plantains brandished
+forests of spears, lucerne spread out in soft beds of green satin
+broidered with purple flowers. And all these were seen, to right, to
+left, in front, everywhere, rolling over the level soil, showing like
+the mossy surface of a stagnant sea, asleep beneath the sky which ever
+seemed to expand. Here and there, in the vast expanse, the vegetation
+was of a limpid blue, as though it reflected the colour of the heavens.
+
+Albine and Serge stepped along over the meadow-lands, with the grass
+reaching to their knees. It was like wading through a pool. Now and
+then, indeed, they found themselves caught by a current in which a
+stream of bending stalks seemed to flow away between their legs. Then
+there were placid-looking, slumbering lakes, basins of short grass,
+which scarcely reached their ankles. As they walked along together,
+their joy found expression not in wild gambols, as in the orchard a week
+before, but rather in loitering, with their feet caught among the supple
+arms of the herbage, tasting as it were the caresses of a pure stream
+which calmed the exuberance of their youth. Albine turned aside and
+slipped into a lofty patch of vegetation which reached to her chin. Only
+her head appeared. For a moment or two she stood there in silence. Then
+she called to Serge: 'Come here, it is just like a bath. It is as if one
+had green water all over one.'
+
+Then she gave a jump and scampered off without waiting for him, and
+they both walked along the margin of the first stream which barred their
+onward course. It was a shallow tranquil brook between banks of wild
+cress. It flowed on so placidly and gently that its surface reflected
+like a mirror the smallest reed that grew beside it. Albine and Serge
+followed this stream, whose onward motion was slower than their own, for
+a long time before they came across a tree that flung a long shadow
+upon the idle waters. As far as their eyes could reach they saw the bare
+brook stretch out and slumber in the sunlight like a blue serpent half
+uncoiled. At last they reached a clump of three willows. Two had their
+roots in the stream; the third was set a little backward. Their trunks,
+rotten and crumbling with age, were crowned with the bright foliage of
+youth. The shadow they cast was so slight as scarcely to be perceptible
+upon the sunlit bank. Yet here the water, which, both above and below,
+was so unruffled, showed a transient quiver, a rippling of its surface,
+as though it were surprised to find even this light veil cast over it.
+Between the three willows the meadow-land sloped down to the stream, and
+some crimson poppies had sprung up in the crevices of the decaying old
+trunks. The foliage of the willows looked like a tent of greenery fixed
+upon three stakes by the water's edge, beside a rolling prairie.
+
+'This is the place,' cried Albine, 'this is the place;' and she glided
+beneath the willows.
+
+Serge sat down by her side, his feet almost in the water. He glanced
+round him, and murmured: 'You know everything, you know all the best
+spots. One might almost think this was an island, ten feet square, right
+in the middle of the sea.'
+
+'Yes, indeed, we are quite at home,' she replied, as she gleefully
+drummed the grass with her fists. 'It is altogether our own, and we are
+going to do everything ourselves.' Then, as if struck by a brilliant
+idea, she sprang towards him, and, with her face close to his, asked him
+joyously: 'Will you be my husband? I will be your wife.'
+
+He was delighted at the notion, and replied that he would gladly be
+her husband, laughing even more loudly than she had done herself.
+Then Albine suddenly became grave, and assumed the anxious air of a
+housewife.
+
+'You know,' she said, 'that it is I who will have to give the orders. We
+will have breakfast as soon as you have laid the table.'
+
+She gave him her orders in an imperious fashion. He had to stow all the
+various articles which she extracted from her pockets into a hole in one
+of the willows, which bole she called the cupboard. The rags
+supplied the household linen, while the comb represented the toilette
+necessaries. The needles and string were to be used for mending the
+explorers' clothes. Provision for the inner man consisted of the little
+bottle of wine and a few crusts which she had saved from yesterday. She
+had, to be sure, some matches, by the aid of which she intended to cook
+the fish they were going to catch.
+
+When Serge had finished laying the table, the bottle of wine in the
+centre, and three crusts grouped round it, he hazarded the observation
+that the fare seemed to be scanty. But Albine shrugged her shoulders
+with feminine superiority. And wading into the water, she said in a
+severe tone, 'I will catch the fish; you can watch me.'
+
+For half an hour she strenuously exerted herself in trying to catch some
+of the little fishes with her hands. She had gathered up her petticoats
+and fastened them together with a piece of string. And she advanced
+quietly into the water, taking the greatest care not to disturb it. When
+she was quite close to some tiny fish, that lay lurking between a couple
+of pebbles, she thrust down her bare arm, made a wild grasp, and brought
+her hand up again with nothing in it but sand and gravel. Serge then
+broke out into noisy laughter which brought her back to the bank,
+indignant. She told him that he had no business to laugh at her.
+
+'But,' he ended by asking, 'how are we going to cook your fish when you
+have caught it? There is no wood about.'
+
+That put the finishing touch to her discouragement. However, the fish
+in that stream didn't seem to be good for much; so she came out of the
+water and ran through the long grass to get her feet dry.
+
+'See,' she suddenly exclaimed, 'here is some pimpernel. It is very nice.
+Now we shall have a feast.'
+
+Serge was ordered to gather a quantity of the pimpernel and place it on
+the table. They ate it with their crusts. Albine declared that it was
+much better than nuts. She assumed the position of mistress of the
+establishment, and cut Serge's bread for him, for she would not trust
+him with the knife. At last she made him store away in the 'cupboard'
+the few drops of wine that remained at the bottom of the bottle. He was
+also ordered to sweep the grass. Then Albine lay down at full length.
+
+'We are going to sleep now, you know. You must lie down by my side.'
+
+He did as he was ordered. They lay there stiffly staring into the air,
+and saying that they were asleep, and that it was very nice. After a
+while, however, they drew slightly away from one another, averting their
+heads as if they felt some discomfort. And at last breaking the silence
+which had fallen between them, Serge exclaimed: 'I love you very much.'
+
+It was love such as it is without any sensual feeling; that instinctive
+love which wakens in the bosom of a little man ten years old at the
+sight of some white-robed baby-girl. The meadow-lands, spreading around
+them all open and free, dissipated the slight fear each felt of the
+other. They knew that they lay there, seen of all the herbage, that the
+blue sky looked down upon them through the light foliage of the willows,
+and the thought was pleasant to them. The willow canopy over their heads
+was a mere open screen. The shade it cast was so imperceptible that
+it wafted to them none of the languor that some dim coppice might have
+done. From the far-off horizon came a healthy breeze fraught with all
+the freshness of the grassy sea, swelling here and there into waves
+of flowers; while, at their feet, the stream, childlike as they were,
+flowed idly along with a gentle babbling that sounded to them like the
+laughter of a companion. Ah! happy solitude, so tranquil and placid,
+immensity wherein the little patch of grass serving as their couch took
+the semblance of an infant's cradle.
+
+'There, that's enough; said Albine, getting up; 'we've rested long
+enough.'
+
+Serge seemed a little surprised at this speedy termination of their
+sleep. He stretched out his arm and caught hold of Albine, as though to
+draw her near him again; and when she, laughing, dropped upon her knees
+he grasped her elbows and gazed up at her. He knew not to what impulse
+he was yielding. But when she had freed herself, and again had risen to
+her feet, he buried his face amongst the grass where she had lain, and
+which still retained the warmth of her body.
+
+'Yes,' he said at last, 'it is time to get up,' and then he rose from
+the ground.
+
+They scoured the meadow-lands until evening began to fall. They went on
+and on, inspecting their garden. Albine walked in front, sniffing like
+a young dog, and saying nothing, but she was ever in search of the happy
+glade, although where they found themselves there were none of the big
+trees of which her thoughts were full. Serge meanwhile indulged in all
+kinds of clumsy gallantry. He rushed forward so hastily to thrust the
+tall herbage aside, that he nearly tripped her up; and he almost tore
+her arm from her body as he tried to assist her over the brooks. Their
+joy was great when they came to the three other streams. The first
+flowed over a bed of pebbles, between two rows of willows, so closely
+planted that they had to grope between the branches with the risk of
+falling into some deep part of the water. It only rose to Serge's knees,
+however, and having caught Albine in his arms he carried her to the
+opposite bank, to save her from a wetting. The next stream flowed black
+with shade beneath a lofty canopy of foliage, passing languidly onward
+with the gentle rustling and rippling of the satin train of some lady,
+dreamily sauntering through the woodland depths. It was a deep, cold,
+and rather dangerous-looking stream, but a fallen tree that stretched
+from bank to bank served them as a bridge. They crossed over, bestriding
+the tree with dangling feet, at first amusing themselves by stirring the
+water which looked like a mirror of burnished steel, but then suddenly
+hastening, frightened by the strange eyes which opened in the depths of
+the sleepy current at the slightest splash. But it was the last stream
+which delayed them the most. It was sportive like themselves, it flowed
+more slowly at certain bends, whence it started off again with merry
+ripples, past piles of big stones, into the shelter of some clump of
+trees, and grew calmer once more. It exhibited every humour as it sped
+along over soft sand or rocky boulders, over sparkling pebbles or greasy
+clay, where leaping frogs made yellow puddles. Albine and Serge dabbled
+about in delight, and even walked homewards through the stream in
+preference to remaining on the bank. At every little island that divided
+the current they landed. They conquered the savage spot or rested
+beneath the lofty canes and reeds, which seemed to grow there expressly
+as shelter for shipwrecked adventurers. Thus they made a delightful
+progress, amused by the changing scenery of the banks, enlivened by the
+merry humour of the living current.
+
+But when they were about to leave the river, Serge realised that Albine
+was still seeking something along the banks, on the island, even among
+the plants that slept on the surface of the water. He was obliged to
+go and pull her from the midst of a patch of water-lilies whose broad
+leaves set _collerettes_ around her limbs. He said nothing, but shook
+his finger at her. And at last they went home, walking along, arm in
+arm, like young people after a day's outing. They looked at each other,
+and thought one another handsomer and stronger than before, and of a
+certainty their laughter had a different ring from that with which it
+had sounded in the morning.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+'Are we never going out again?' asked Serge some days later.
+
+And when he saw Albine shrug her shoulders with a weary air, he added,
+in a teasing kind of way, 'You have got tired of looking for your tree,
+then?'
+
+They joked about the tree all day and made fun of it. It didn't exist.
+It was only a nursery-story. Yet they both spoke of it with a slight
+feeling of awe. And on the morrow they settled that they would go to
+the far end of the park and pay a visit to the great forest-trees which
+Serge had not yet seen. Albine refused to take anything along with them.
+They breakfasted before starting and did not set off till late. The heat
+of the sun, which was then great, brought them a feeling of languor,
+and they sauntered along gently, side by side, seeking every patch of
+sheltering shade. They lingered neither in the garden nor the orchard,
+through which they had to pass. When they gained the shady coolness
+beneath the big trees, they dropped into a still slower pace; and,
+without a word, but with a deep sigh, as though it were welcome relief
+to escape from the glare of day, they pushed on into the forest's
+depths. And when they had nothing but cool green leaves about them, when
+no glimpse of the sunlit expanse was afforded by any gap in the
+foliage, they looked at each other and smiled, with a feeling of vague
+uneasiness.
+
+'How nice it is here!' murmured Serge.
+
+Albine simply nodded her head. A choking sensation in her throat
+prevented her from speaking. Their arms were not passed as usual round
+each other's waist, but swung loosely by their sides. They walked along
+without touching each other, and with their heads inclined towards the
+ground.
+
+But Serge suddenly stopped short on seeing tears trickle down Albine's
+cheeks and mingle with the smile that played around her lips.
+
+'What is the matter with you?' he exclaimed; 'are you in pain? Have you
+hurt yourself?'
+
+'No, don't you see I'm smiling? I don't know how it is, but the scent of
+all these trees forces tears into my eyes.' She glanced at him, and then
+resumed: 'Why, you're crying too! You see you can't help it.'
+
+'Yes,' he murmured, 'all this deep shade affects one. It seems so
+peaceful, so mournful here that one feels a little sad. But you must
+tell me, you know, if anything makes you really unhappy. I have not done
+anything to annoy you, have I? you are not vexed with me?'
+
+She assured him that she was not. She was quite happy, she said.
+
+'Then why are you not enjoying yourself more? Shall we have a race?'
+
+'Oh! no, we can't race,' she said, disdainfully, with a pout. And
+when he went on to suggest other amusements, such as bird-nesting or
+gathering strawberries or violets, she replied a little impatiently: 'We
+are too big for that sort of thing. It is childish to be always playing.
+Doesn't it please you better to walk on quietly by my side?'
+
+She stepped along so prettily, that it was, indeed, a pleasure to hear
+the pit-pat of her little boots on the hard soil of the path. Never
+before had he paid attention to the rhythmic motion of her figure, the
+sweep of her skirts that followed her with serpentine motion. It was
+happiness never to be exhausted, to see her thus walking sedately by
+his side, for he was ever discovering some new charm in the lissom
+suppleness of her limbs.
+
+'You are right,' he said, 'this is really the best. I would walk by your
+side to the end of the world, if you wished it.'
+
+A little further on, however, he asked her if she were not tired, and
+hinted that he would not be sorry to have a rest himself.
+
+'We might sit down for a few minutes,' he suggested in a stammering
+voice.
+
+'No,' she replied, 'I don't want to.'
+
+'But we might lie down, you know, as we did in the meadows the other
+day. We should be quite comfortable.'
+
+'No, no; I don't want to.'
+
+And she suddenly sprang aside, as if scared by the masculine arms
+outstretched towards her. Serge called her a big stupid, and tried to
+catch her. But at the light touch of his fingers she cried out with such
+an expression of pain that he drew back, trembling.
+
+'I have hurt you?' he said.
+
+She did not reply for a moment, surprised, herself, at her cry of fear,
+and already smiling at her own alarm.
+
+'No; leave me, don't worry me;' and she added in a grave tone, though
+she tried to feign jocularity: 'you know that I have my tree to look
+for.'
+
+Then Serge began to laugh, and offered to help her in her search. He
+conducted himself very gently in order that he might not again alarm
+her, for he saw that she was even yet trembling, though she had resumed
+her slow walk beside him. What they were contemplating was forbidden,
+and could bring them no luck; and he, like her, felt a delightful
+awe, which thrilled him at each repeated sigh of the forest trees. The
+perfume of the foliage, the soft green light which filtered through
+the leaves, the soughing silence of the undergrowth, filled them with
+tremulous excitement, as though the next turn of the path might lead
+them to some perilous happiness.
+
+And for hours they walked on under the cool trees. They retained their
+reserved attitude towards each other, and scarcely exchanged a word,
+though they never left each other's side, but went together through the
+darkest greenery of the forest. At first their way lay through a jungle
+of saplings with trunks no thicker than a child's wrist. They had to
+push them aside, and open a path for themselves through the tender
+shoots which threw a wavy lacework of foliage before their eyes. The
+saplings closed up again behind them, leaving no trace of their passage,
+and they struggled on and on at random, ignorant of where they might be,
+and leaving nothing behind them to mark their progress, save a momentary
+waving of shaken boughs. Albine, weary of being unable to see more
+than three steps in front of her, was delighted when they at last
+found themselves free of this jungle, whose end they had long tried to
+discover. They had now reached a little clearing, whence several narrow
+paths, fringed with green hedges, struck out in various directions,
+twisting hither and thither, intersecting one another, bending and
+stretching in the most capricious fashion. Albine and Serge rose on
+tip-toes to peep over the hedges; but they were in no haste, and would
+willingly have stayed where they were, lost in the mazy windings,
+without ever getting anywhere, if they had not seen before them the
+proud lines of the lofty forest trees. They passed at last beneath their
+shade, solemnly and with a touch of sacred awe, as when one enters some
+vaulted cathedral. The straight lichen-stained trunks of the mighty
+trees, of a dingy grey, like discoloured stone, towered loftily, line
+by line, like a far-reaching infinity of columns. Naves opened far away,
+with lower, narrower aisles; naves strangely bold in their proportions,
+whose supporting pillars were very slender, richly caned, so finely
+chiselled that everywhere they allowed a glimpse of the blue heavens. A
+religious silence reigned beneath the giant arches, the ground below lay
+hard as stone in its austere nakedness; not a blade of green was there,
+nought but a ruddy dust of dead leaves. And Serge and Albine listened
+to their ringing footsteps as they went on, thrilled by the majestic
+solitude of this temple.
+
+Here, indeed, if anywhere, must be the much-sought tree, beneath whose
+shade perfect happiness had made its home. They felt that it was nigh,
+such was the delight which stole through them amidst the dimness of
+those mighty arches. The trees seemed to be creatures of kindliness,
+full of strength and silence and happy restfulness. They looked at
+them one by one, and they loved them all; and they awaited from their
+majestic tranquillity some revelation whereby they themselves might
+grow, expand into the bliss of strong and perfect life. The maples,
+the ashes, the hornbeams, the cornels, formed a nation of giants, a
+multitude full of proud gentleness, who lived in peace, knowing that the
+fall of any one of them would have sufficed to wreck a whole corner of
+the forest. The elms displayed colossal bodies and limbs full of sap,
+scarce veiled by light clusters of little leaves. The birches and the
+alders, delicate as sylphs, swayed their slim figures in the breeze to
+which they surrendered the foliage that streamed around them like the
+locks of goddesses already half metamorphosed into trees. The planes
+shot up regularly with glossy tattooed bark, whence scaly fragments
+fell. Down a gentle slope descended the larches, resembling a band of
+barbarians, draped in _sayons_ of woven greenery. But the oaks were
+the monarchs of all--the mighty oaks, whose sturdy trunks thrust out
+conquering arms that barred the sun's approach from all around them;
+Titan-like trees, oft lightning-struck, thrown back in postures like
+those of unconquered wrestlers, with scattered limbs that alone gave
+birth to a whole forest.
+
+Could the tree which Serge and Albine sought be one of those colossal
+oaks? or was it one of those lovely planes, or one of those pale,
+maidenly birches, or one of those creaking elms? Albine and Serge still
+plodded on, unable to tell, completely lost amongst the crowding trees.
+For a moment they thought they had found the object of their quest in
+the midst of a group of walnut trees from whose thick foliage fell
+so cold a shadow that they shivered beneath it. Further on they felt
+another thrill of emotion as they came upon a little wood of chestnut
+trees, green with moss and thrusting out big strange-shaped branches, on
+which one might have built an aerial village. But further still Albine
+caught sight of a clearing, whither they both ran hastily. Here, in the
+midst of a carpet of fine turf, a locust tree had set a very toppling of
+greenery, a foliaged Babel, whose ruins were covered with the strangest
+vegetation. Stones, sucked up from the ground by the mounting sap, still
+remained adhering to the trunk. High branches bent down to earth again,
+and, taking root, surrounded the parent tree with lofty arches, a nation
+of new trunks which ever increased and multiplied. Upon the bark, seared
+with bleeding wounds, were ripening fruit-pods; the mere effort of
+bearing fruit strained the old monster's skin until it split. The young
+folks walked slowly round it, passing under the arched branches which
+formed as it were the streets of a city, and stared at the gaping cracks
+of the naked roots. Then they went off, for they had not felt there the
+supernatural happiness they sought.
+
+'Where are we?' asked Serge.
+
+Albine did not know. She had never before come to this part of the park.
+They were now in a grove of cytisus and acacias, from whose clustering
+blossoms fell a soft, almost sugary perfume. 'We are quite lost,' she
+laughed. 'I don't know these trees at all.'
+
+'But the garden must come to an end somewhere,' said Serge. 'When we get
+to the end, you will know where you are, won't you?'
+
+'No,' she answered, waving her hands afar.
+
+They fell into silence; never yet had the vastness of the park filled
+them with such pleasure. They joyed at knowing that they were alone in
+so far-spreading a domain that even they themselves could not reach its
+limits.
+
+'Well, we are lost,' said Serge, gaily; then humbly drawing near her he
+inquired: 'You are not afraid, are you?'
+
+'Oh! no. There's no one except you and me in the garden. What could I
+be afraid of? The walls are very high. We can't see them, but they guard
+us, you know.'
+
+Serge was now quite close to her, and he murmured, 'But a little time
+ago you were afraid of me.'
+
+She looked him straight in the face, perfectly calm, without the least
+faltering in her glance. 'You hurt me,' she replied, 'but you are
+different now. Why should I be afraid of you?'
+
+'Then you will let me hold you like this. We will go back under the
+trees.'
+
+'Yes, you may put your arm around me, it makes me feel happy. And we'll
+walk slowly, eh? so that we may not find our way again too soon.'
+
+He had passed his arm round her waist, and it was thus that they
+sauntered back to the shade of the great forest trees, under whose
+arching vaults they slowly went, with love awakening within them.
+Albine said that she felt a little tired, and rested her head on Serge's
+shoulder. The fabulous tree was now forgotten. They only sought to draw
+their faces nearer together that they might smile in one another's eyes.
+And it was the trees, the maples, the elms, the oaks, with their soft
+green shade, that whisperingly suggested to them the first words of
+love.
+
+'I love you!' said Serge, while his breath stirred the golden hair that
+clustered round Albine's temples. He tried to think of other words, but
+he could only repeat, 'I love you! I love you!'
+
+Albine listened with a delightful smile upon her face. The music of her
+heart was in accord with his.
+
+'I love you! I love you!' she sighed, with all the sweetness of her soft
+young voice.
+
+Then, lifting up her blue eyes, in which the light of love was dawning,
+she asked, 'How do you love me?'
+
+Serge reflected for a moment. The forest was wrapped in solemn quietude,
+the lofty naves quivered only with the soft footsteps of the young pair.
+
+'I love you beyond everything,' he answered. 'You are more beautiful
+than all else that I see when I open my window in the morning. When I
+look at you, I want nothing more. If I could have you only, I should be
+perfectly happy.'
+
+She lowered her eyes, and swayed her head as if accompanying a strain of
+music. 'I love you,' he went on. 'I know nothing about you. I know
+not who you are, nor whence you came. You are neither my mother nor my
+sister; and yet I love you to a point that I have given you my whole
+heart and kept nought of it for others. Listen, I love those cheeks of
+yours, so soft and satiny; I love your mouth with its rose-sweet breath;
+I love your eyes, in which I see my own love reflected; I love even
+your eyelashes, even those little veins which blue the whiteness of your
+temples. Ah! yes, I love you, I love you, Albine.'
+
+'And I love you, too,' she answered. 'You are strong, and tall, and
+handsome. I love you, Serge.'
+
+For a moment or two they remained silent, enraptured. It seemed to them
+that soft, flute-like music went before them, that their own words came
+from some dulcet orchestra which they could not see. Shorter and shorter
+became their steps as they leaned one towards the other, ever threading
+their way amidst the mighty trees. Afar off through the long vista
+of the colonnades were glimpses of waning sunlight, showing like a
+procession of white-robed maidens entering church for a betrothal
+ceremony amid the low strains of an organ.
+
+'And why do you love me?' asked Albine again.
+
+He only smiled, and did not answer her immediately; then he said, 'I
+love you because you came to me. That expresses all.... Now we are
+together and we love one another. It seems to me that I could not go on
+living if I did not love you. You are the very breath of my life.'
+
+He bent his head, speaking almost as though he were in a dream.
+
+'One does not know all that at first. It grows up in one as one's heart
+grows. One has to grow, one has to get strong.... Do you remember how
+we loved one another though we didn't speak of it? One is childish and
+silly at first. Then, one fine day, it all becomes clear, and bursts
+out. You see, we have nothing to trouble about; we love one another
+because our love and our life are one.'
+
+Albine's head was cast back, her eyes were tightly closed, and she
+scarce drew her breath. Serge's caressing words enraptured her: 'Do you
+really, really love me?' she murmured, without opening her eyes.
+
+Serge remained silent, sorely troubled that he could find nothing
+further to say to prove to her the force of his love. His eyes wandered
+over her rosy face, which lay upon his shoulder with the restfulness of
+sleep. Her eyelids were soft as silk. Her moist lips were curved into a
+bewitching smile, her brow was pure white, with just a rim of gold below
+her hair. He would have liked to give his whole being with the word
+which seemed to be upon his tongue but which he could not utter. Again
+he bent over her, and seemed to consider on what sweet spot of that fair
+face he should whisper the supreme syllables. But he said nothing, he
+only breathed a little sigh. Then he kissed Albine's lips.
+
+'Albine, I love you!'
+
+'I love you, Serge!'
+
+Then they stopped short, thrilled, quivering with that first love kiss.
+She had opened her eyes quite widely. He was standing with his lips
+protruding slightly towards hers. They looked at each other without a
+blush. They felt they were under the influence of some sovereign power.
+It was like the realisation of a long dreamt-of meeting, in which they
+beheld themselves grown, made one for the other, for ever joined. For a
+moment they remained wondering, raising their eyes to the solemn vault
+of greenery above them, questioning the tranquil nation of trees as if
+seeking an echo of their kiss. But, beneath the serene complacence of
+the forest, they yielded to prolonged, ringing lovers' gaiety, full of
+all the tenderness now born.
+
+'Tell me how long you have loved me. Tell me everything. Did you love me
+that day when you lay sleeping upon my hand? Did you love me when I fell
+out of the cherry tree, and you stood beneath it, stretching out your
+arms to catch me, and looking so pale? Did you love me when you took
+hold of me round the waist in the meadows to help me over the streams?'
+
+'Hush, let me speak. I have always loved you. And you, did you love me;
+did you?'
+
+Until the evening closed round them they lived upon that one word
+'love,' in which they ever seemed to find some new sweetness. They
+brought it into every sentence, ejaculated it inconsequentially, merely
+for the pleasure they found in pronouncing it. Serge, however, did not
+think of pressing a second kiss to Albine's lips. The perfume of the
+first sufficed them in their purity. They had found their way again, or
+rather had stumbled upon it, for they had paid no attention to the paths
+they took. As they left the forest, twilight had fallen, and the moon
+was rising, round and yellow, between the black foliage. It was a
+delightful walk home through the park, with that discreet luminary
+peering at them through the gaps in the big trees. Albine said that
+the moon was surely following them. The night was balmy, warm too with
+stars. Far away a long murmur rose from the forest trees, and Serge
+listened, thinking: 'They are talking of us.'
+
+When they reached the parterre, they passed through an atmosphere of
+sweetest perfumes; the perfume of flowers at night, which is richer,
+more caressing than by day, and seems like the very breath of slumber.
+
+'Good night, Serge.'
+
+'Good night, Albine.'
+
+They clasped each other by the hand on the landing of the first floor,
+without entering the room where they usually wished each other good
+night. They did not kiss. But Serge, when he was alone, remained seated
+on the edge of his bed, listening to Albine's every movement in the room
+above. He was weary with happiness, a happiness that benumbed his limbs.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+For the next few days Albine and Serge experienced a feeling of
+embarrassment. They avoided all allusion to their walk beneath
+the trees. They had not again kissed each other, or repeated their
+confession of love. It was not any feeling of shame which had sealed
+their lips, but rather a fear of in any way spoiling their happiness.
+When they were apart, they lived upon the dear recollection of love's
+awakening, plunged into it, passed once more through the happy hours
+which they had spent, with their arms around each other's waist, and
+their faces close together. It all ended by throwing them both into a
+feverish state. They looked at each other with heavy eyes, and talked,
+in a melancholy mood, of things that did not interest them in the least.
+Then, after a long interval of silence, Serge would say to Albine in a
+tone full of anxiety: 'You are ill?'
+
+But she shook her head as she answered, 'No, no. It is you who are not
+well; your hands are burning.'
+
+The thought of the park filled them with vague uneasiness which they
+could not understand. They felt that danger lurked for them in some
+by-path, and would seize them and do them hurt. They never spoke about
+these disquieting thoughts, but certain timid glances revealed to them
+the mutual anguish which held them apart as though they were foes. One
+morning, however, Albine ventured, after much hesitation, to say to
+Serge: 'It is wrong of you to keep always indoors. You will fall ill
+again.'
+
+Serge laughed in rather an embarrassed way. 'Bah!' he muttered, 'we have
+been everywhere, we know all the garden by heart.'
+
+But Albine shook her head, and in a whisper replied, 'No, no, we don't
+know the rocks, we have never been to the springs. It was there that I
+warmed myself last winter. There are some nooks where the stones seem to
+be actually alive.'
+
+The next morning, without having said another word on the subject, they
+set out together. They climbed up to the left behind the grotto where
+the marble woman lay slumbering; and as they set foot on the lowest
+stones, Serge remarked: 'We must see everything. Perhaps we shall feel
+quieter afterwards.'
+
+The day was very hot, there was thunder in the air. They had not
+ventured to clasp each other's waist; but stepped along, one behind the
+other, glowing beneath the sunlight. Albine took advantage of a widening
+of the path to let Serge go on in front; for the warmth of his breath
+upon her neck troubled her. All around them the rocks arose in broad
+tiers, storeys of huge flags, bristling with coarse vegetation. They
+first came upon golden gorse, clumps of sage, thyme, lavender, and other
+balsamic plants, with sour-berried juniper trees and bitter rosemary,
+whose strong scent made them dizzy. Here and there the path was hemmed
+in by holly, that grew in quaint forms like cunningly wrought metal
+work, gratings of blackened bronze, wrought iron, and polished copper,
+elaborately ornamented, covered with prickly _rosaces_. And before
+reaching the springs, they had to pass through a pine-wood. Its shadow
+seemed to weigh upon their shoulders like lead. The dry needles crackled
+beneath their feet, throwing up a light resinous dust which burned their
+lips.
+
+'Your garden doesn't make itself very agreeable just here,' said Serge,
+turning towards Albine.
+
+They smiled at each other. They were now near the edge of the springs.
+The sight of the clear waters brought them relief. Yet these springs did
+not hide beneath a covering of verdure, like those that bubble up on the
+plains and set thick foliage growing around them that they may slumber
+idly in the shade. They shot up in the full light of day from a cavity
+in the rock, without a blade of grass near by to tinge the clear water
+with green. Steeped in the sunshine they looked silvery. In their depths
+the sun beat against the sand in a breathing living dust of light. And
+they darted out of their basin like arms of purest white, they rebounded
+like nude infants at play, and then suddenly leapt down in a waterfall
+whose curve suggested a woman's breast.
+
+'Dip your hands in,' cried Albine; 'the water is icy cold at the
+bottom.'
+
+They were indeed able to refresh their hot hands. They threw water over
+their faces too, and lingered there amidst the spray which rose up from
+the streaming springs.
+
+'Look,' cried Albine; 'look, there is the garden, and there are the
+meadows and the forest.'
+
+For a moment they looked at the Paradou spread out beneath their feet.
+
+'And you see,' she added, 'there isn't the least sign of any wall. The
+whole country belongs to us, right up to the sky.'
+
+By this time, almost unawares, they had slipped their arms round each
+other's waist. The coolness of the springs had soothed their feverish
+disquietude. But just as they were going away, Albine seemed to recall
+something and led Serge back again, saying:
+
+'Down there, below the rocks, a long time ago, I once saw the wall.'
+
+'But there is nothing to be seen,' replied Serge, turning a little pale.
+
+'Yes, yes; it must be behind that avenue of chestnut trees on the other
+side of those bushes.'
+
+Then, on feeling Serge's arm tremble, she added: 'But perhaps I am
+mistaken.... Yet I seem to remember that I suddenly came upon it as I
+left the avenue. It stopped my way, and was so high that I felt a little
+afraid. And a few steps farther on, I came upon another surprise. There
+was a huge hole in it, through which I could see the whole country
+outside.'
+
+Serge looked at her with entreaty in his eyes. She gave a little shrug
+of her shoulders to reassure him, and went on: 'But I stopped the hole
+up; I have told you that we are quite alone, and we are. I stopped it up
+at once. I had my knife with me, and I cut down some brambles and
+rolled up some big stones. I would defy even a sparrow to force its way
+through. If you like, we will go and look at it one of these days, and
+then you will be satisfied.'
+
+But he shook his head. Then they went away together, still holding each
+other by the waist; but they had grown anxious once more. Serge gazed
+down askance at Albine's face, and she felt perturbed beneath his
+glance. They would have liked to go down again at once, and thus escape
+the uneasiness of a longer walk. But, in spite of themselves, as though
+impelled by some stronger power, they skirted a rocky cliff and reached
+a table-land, where once more they found the intoxication of the full
+sunlight. They no longer inhaled the soft languid perfumes of aromatic
+plants, the musky scent of thyme, and the incense of lavender. Now they
+were treading a foul-smelling growth under foot; wormwood with bitter,
+penetrating smell; rue that reeked like putrid flesh; and hot valerian,
+clammy with aphrodisiacal exudations. Mandragoras, hemlocks, hellebores,
+dwales, poured forth their odours, and made their heads swim till they
+reeled and tottered one against the other.
+
+'Shall I hold you up?' Serge asked Albine, as he felt her leaning
+heavily upon him.
+
+He was already pressing her in his arms, but she struggled out of his
+grasp, and drew a long breath.
+
+'No; you stifle me,' she said. 'Leave me alone. I don't know what is the
+matter with me. The ground seems to give way under my feet. It is there
+I feel the pain.'
+
+She took hold of his hand and laid it upon her breast. Then Serge turned
+quite pale. He was even more overcome than she. And both had tears in
+their eyes as they saw each other thus ill and troubled, unable to think
+of a remedy for the evil which had fallen upon them. Were they going to
+die here of that mysterious, suffocating faintness?
+
+'Come and sit down in the shade,' said Serge. 'It is these plants which
+are poisoning us with their noxious odours.'
+
+He led her gently along by her finger-tips, for she shivered and
+trembled when he but touched her wrist. It was beneath a fine cedar,
+whose level roof-like branches spread nearly a dozen yards around, that
+she seated herself. Behind grew various quaint conifers; cypresses, with
+soft flat foliage that looked like heavy lace; spruce firs, erect and
+solemn, like ancient druidical pillars, still black with the blood of
+sacrificed victims; yews, whose dark robes were fringed with silver;
+evergreen trees of all kinds, with thick-set foliage, dark leathery
+verdure, splashed here and there with yellow and red. There was a
+weird-looking araucaria that stood out strangely with large regular
+arms resembling reptiles grafted one on the other, and bristling with
+imbricated leaves that suggested the scales of an excited serpent. In
+this heavy shade, the warm air lulled one to voluptuous drowsiness. The
+atmosphere slept, breathless; and a perfume of Eastern love, the perfume
+that came from the painted lips of the Shunamite, was exhaled by the
+odorous trees.
+
+'Are you not going to sit down?' said Albine.
+
+And she slipped a little aside to make room for him; but Serge stepped
+back and remained standing. Then, as she renewed her request, he dropped
+upon his knees, a little distance away, and said, softly: 'No, I am more
+feverish even than you are; I should make you hot. If I wasn't afraid of
+hurting you, I would take you in my arms, and clasp you so tightly that
+we should no longer feel any pain.'
+
+He dragged himself nearer to her on his knees.
+
+'Oh! to have you in my arms! In the night I awake from dreams in which
+I see you near me; but, alas! you are ever far away. There seems to be
+some wall built up between us which I can never beat down. And yet I am
+now quite strong again; I could catch you up in my arms and swing you
+over my shoulder, and carry you off as though you belonged to me.'
+
+He had let himself sink upon his elbows, in an attitude of deep
+adoration. And he breathed a kiss upon the hem of Albine's skirt. But at
+this the girl sprang up, as though it was she herself that had received
+the kiss. She hid her brow with her hands, perturbed, quivering, and
+stammering forth: 'Don't! don't! I beg of you. Let us go on.'
+
+She did not hurry away, but let Serge follow her as she walked slowly
+on, stumbling against the roots of the plants, and with her hands still
+clasped round her head, as though to check the excitement that thrilled
+her. When they came out of the little wood, they took a few steps over
+ledges of rocks, on which a whole nation of ardent fleshy plants was
+squatting. It was like a crawling, writhing assemblage of hideous
+nameless monsters such as people a nightmare; monsters akin to spiders,
+caterpillars, and wood-lice, grown to gigantic proportions, some with
+bare glaucous skins, others tufted with filthy matted hairs, whilst many
+had sickly limbs--dwarf legs, and shrivelled, palsied arms--sprawling
+around them. And some displayed horrid dropsical bellies; some had
+spines bossy with hideous humps, and others looked like dislocated
+skeletons. Mamillaria threw up living pustules, a crawling swarm of
+greenish tortoises, bristling hideously with long hairs that were
+stiffer than iron. The echinocacti, which showed more flesh, suggested
+nests of young writhing, knotted vipers. The echinopses were mere
+excrescent red-haired growths that made one think of huge insects rolled
+into balls. The prickly-pears spread out fleshy leaves spotted with
+ruddy spikes that resembled swarms of microscopic bees. The gasterias
+sprawled about like big shepherd-spiders turned over on their backs,
+with long-speckled and striated legs. The cacti of the cereus family
+showed a horrid vegetation, huge polyps, the diseases of an overheated
+soil, the maladies of poisoned sap. But the aloes, languidly unfolding
+their hearts, were particularly numerous and conspicuous. Among them
+one found every possible tint of green, pale green and vivid, yellowish
+green and greyish, browny green, dashed with a ruddy tone, and deep
+green, fringed with pale gold. And the shapes of their leaves were as
+varied as their tints. Some were broad and heart-shaped, others were
+long and narrow like sword-blades; some bristled with spikey thorns,
+while yet others looked as though they had been cunningly hemmed at the
+edges. There were giant ones, in lonely majesty, with flower stalks that
+towered up aloft like poles wreathed with rosy coral; and there were
+tiny ones clustering thickly together on one and the same stem, and
+throwing forth on all sides leaves that gleamed and quivered like
+adders' tongues.
+
+'Let us go back to the shade,' begged Serge. 'You can sit down there as
+you did just now, and I will lie at your feet and talk to you.'
+
+Where they stood the sun rays fell like torrential rain. It was as if
+the triumphant orb seized upon the shadowless ground, and strained it
+to his blazing breast. Albine grew faint, staggered, and turned to Serge
+for support.
+
+But the moment they felt each other's touch, they fell together without
+even a word. It was as though the very rock beneath them had opened, as
+though they were ever going down and down. Their hands sought each other
+caressingly, embracingly, but such keen anguish did they experience
+that they suddenly tore themselves apart, and fled, each in a different
+direction. Serge did not cease running till he had reached the pavilion,
+and had thrown himself upon his bed, his brain on fire, and despair in
+his heart. Albine did not return till nightfall, after hours of weeping
+in a corner of the garden. It was the first time that they had not
+returned home together, tired after their long wanderings. For three
+days they kept apart, feeling terribly unhappy.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+Yet now the park was entirely their own. They had taken sovereign
+possession of it. There was not a corner of it that was not theirs to
+use as they willed. For them alone the thickets of roses put forth their
+blossoms, and the parterre exhaled its soft perfume, which lulled them
+to sleep as they lay at night with their windows open. The orchard
+provided them with food, filling Albine's skirts with fruits, and
+spread over them the shade of its perfumed boughs, under which it was
+so pleasant to breakfast in the early morning. Away in the meadows the
+grass and the streams were all theirs; the grass, which extended their
+kingdom to such boundless distance, spreading an endless silky carpet
+before them; and the streams, which were the best of their joys,
+emblematic of their own purity and innocence, ever offering them
+coolness and freshness in which they delighted to bathe their youth. The
+forest, too, was entirely theirs, from the mighty oaks, which ten men
+could not have spanned, to the slim birches which a child might have
+snapped; the forest, with all its trees, all its shade, all its avenues
+and clearings, its cavities of greenery, of which the very birds
+themselves were ignorant; the forest which they used as they listed,
+as if it were a giant canopy, beneath which they might shelter from the
+noontide heat their new-born love. They reigned everywhere, even among
+the rocks and the springs, even over that gruesome stretch of ground
+that teemed with such hideous growth, and which had seemed to sink and
+give way beneath their feet, but which they loved yet even more than
+the soft grassy couches of the garden, for the strange thrill of passion
+they had felt there.
+
+Thus, now, in front of them, behind them, to the right of them and
+to the left, all was theirs. They had gained possession of the whole
+domain, and they walked through a friendly expanse which knew them, and
+smiled kindly greetings to them as they passed, devoting itself to their
+pleasure, like a faithful and submissive servitor. The sky, with its
+vast canopy of blue overhead, was also theirs to enjoy. The park walls
+could not enclose it, their eyes could ever revel in its beauty, and it
+entered into the joy of their life, at daytime with its triumphal sun,
+at night with its golden rain of stars. At every moment of the day it
+delighted them afresh, its expression ever varying. In the early morning
+it was pale as a maiden just risen from her slumber; at noon, it was
+flushed, radiant as with a longing for fruitfulness, and in the
+evening it became languid and breathless, as after keen enjoyment. Its
+countenance was constantly changing. Particularly in the evenings, at
+the hour of parting, did it delight them. The sun, hastening towards the
+horizon, ever found a fresh smile. Sometimes he disappeared in the
+midst of serene calmness, unflecked by a single cloud, sinking gradually
+beneath a golden sea. At other times he threw out crimson glories, tore
+his vaporous robe to shreds, and set amidst wavy flames that streaked
+the skies like the tails of gigantic comets, whose radiant heads lit up
+the crests of the forest trees. Then, again, extinguishing his rays
+one by one, he would softly sink to rest on shores of ruddy sand,
+far-reaching banks of blushing coral; and then, some other night, he
+would glide away demurely behind a heavy cloud that figured the grey
+hangings of some alcove, through which the eye could only detect a spark
+like that of a night-light. Or else he would rush to his couch in
+a tumult of passion, rolled round with white forms which gradually
+crimsoned beneath his fiery embraces, and finally disappeared with him
+below the horizon in a confused chaos of gleaming, struggling limbs.
+
+It was only the plants which had not made their submission. Albine and
+Serge passed like monarchs through the kingdom of animals, who rendered
+them humble and loyal obeisance. When they crossed the parterre, flights
+of butterflies arose to delight their eyes, to fan them with quivering
+wings, and to follow in their train like living sunbeams or flying
+blossoms. In the orchard, they were greeted by the birds that banqueted
+in the fruit-trees. The sparrows, the chaffinches, the golden orioles,
+the bullfinches, showed them the ripest fruit scarred by their hungry
+beaks; and while they sat astride the branches and breakfasted, birds
+twittered and sported round them like children at play, and even
+purloined the fruit beneath their very feet. Albine found even more
+amusement in the meadows, where she caught the little green frogs
+with eyes of gold, that lay squatting amongst the reeds, absorbed in
+contemplation; while Serge, with a piece of straw, poked the crickets
+out of their hiding-places, or tickled the grasshoppers to make them
+sing. He picked up insects of all colours, blue ones, red ones, yellow
+ones, and set them creeping upon his sleeve, where they gleamed and
+glittered like buttons of sapphire and ruby and topaz.
+
+Then there was all the mysterious life of the streams; the grey-backed
+fishes that threaded the dim waters, the eels whose presence was
+betrayed by a slight quivering of the water-plants, the young fry, which
+dispersed like blackish sand at the slightest sound, the long-legged
+flies and the water-beetles that ruffled into circling silvery ripples
+the stagnant surface of the pools; all that silent teeming life which
+drew them to the water and impelled them to dabble and stand in it, so
+that they might feel those millions of existences ever and ever gliding
+past their limbs. At other times, when the day was hot and languid, they
+would betake themselves beneath the voiceful shade of the forest and
+listen to the serenades of their musicians, the clear fluting of the
+nightingales, the silvery bugle-notes of the tomtits, and the far-off
+accompaniment of the cuckoos. They gazed with delight upon the swift
+flight of the pheasants, whose plumes gleamed like sudden sun rays
+amidst the branches, and with a smile they stayed their steps to let a
+troop of young roebucks bound past, or else a couple of grave stags that
+slackened their pace to look at them. Again, on other days they would
+climb up amongst the rocks, when the sun was blazing in the heavens,
+and find a pleasure in watching the swarms of grasshoppers which at the
+sound of their footsteps arose with a great crepitation of wings from
+the beds of thyme. The snakes that lay uncoiled beneath the parched
+bushes, or the lizards that sprawled over the red-hot stones, watched
+them with friendly eyes.
+
+Of all the life that thus teemed round them in the park, Albine and
+Serge had only become really conscious since the day when a kiss had
+awakened them to life themselves. Now it deafened them at times, and
+spoke to them in a language which they did not understand. It was that
+life--all the voices of the animal creation, all the perfumes and soft
+shadows of the flowers and trees--which perturbed them to such a point
+as to make them angry with one another. And yet throughout the whole
+park they found nothing but loving familiarity. Every plant and every
+creature was their friend. All the Paradou was one great caress.
+
+Before they had come thither, the sun had for a whole century reigned
+over it in lonely majesty. The garden, then, had known no other master;
+it had beheld him, every morning, scaling the boundary wall with his
+slanting rays, at noontide it had seen him pour his vertical heat upon
+the panting soil; and at evening it had seen him go off, on the other
+side, with a kiss of farewell upon its foliage. And so the garden had
+no shyness; it welcomed Albine and Serge, as it had so long welcomed
+the sun, as pleasant companions, with whom one puts on no ceremony.
+The animals, the trees, the streams, the rocks, all continued in an
+unrestrained state of nature, speaking aloud, living openly, without a
+secret, displaying the innocent shamelessness, the hearty tenderness of
+the world's first days. Serge and Albine, however, suffered from these
+voluptuous surroundings, and at times felt minded to curse the garden.
+On the afternoon when Albine had wept so bitterly after their saunter
+amongst the rocks, she had called out to the Paradou, whose intensity of
+life and passion filled her with distress:
+
+'If you really be our friend, why, why do you make us so wretched?'
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+The next morning Serge barricaded himself in his room. The perfume from
+the garden irritated him. He drew the calico curtains closely across the
+window to shut out the sight of the park. Perhaps he thought he might
+recover all his old serenity and calm if he shut himself off from that
+greenery, whose shade sent such passionate thrills quivering through
+him.
+
+During the long hours they spent together, Albine and he never now spoke
+of the rocks or the streams, the trees or the sky. The Paradou might no
+longer have been in existence. They strove to forget it. And yet they
+were all the time conscious of its presence on the other side of
+those slight curtains. Scented breezes forced their way in through the
+interstices of the window frame, the many voices of nature made
+the panes resound. All the life of the park laughed, chattered, and
+whispered in ambush beneath their window. As it reached them their
+cheeks would pale and they would raise their voices, seeking some
+occupation which might prevent them from hearing it.
+
+'Have you noticed,' said Serge one morning during these uneasy
+intervals, 'there is a painting of a woman over the door there? She is
+like you.'
+
+He laughed noisily as he finished speaking. They both turned to the
+paintings and dragged the table once more alongside the wall, with a
+nervous desire to occupy themselves.
+
+'Oh! no,' murmured Albine. 'She is much fatter than I am. But one can't
+see her very well; her position is so queer.'
+
+They relapsed into silence. From the decayed, faded painting a scene,
+which they had never before noticed, now showed forth. It was as if the
+picture had taken shape and substance again beneath the influence of
+the summer heat. You could sea a nymph with arms thrown back and pliant
+figure on a bed of flowers which had been strewn for her by young
+cupids, who, sickle in hand, ever added fresh blossoms to her rosy
+couch. And nearer, you could also see a cloven-hoofed faun who had
+surprised her thus. But Albine repeated, 'No, she is not like me, she is
+very plain.'
+
+Serge said nothing. He looked at the girl and then at Albine, as though
+he were comparing them one with the other. Albine pulled up one of her
+sleeves, as if to show that her arm was whiter than that of the pictured
+girl. Then they subsided into silence again, and gazed at the painting;
+and for a moment Albine's large blue eyes turned to Serge's grey ones,
+which were glowing.
+
+'You have got all the room painted again, then?' she cried, as she
+sprang from the table. 'These people look as though they were all coming
+to life again.'
+
+They began to laugh, but there was a nervous ring about their merriment
+as they glanced at the nude and frisking cupids which started to
+life again on all the panels. They no longer took those survivals of
+voluptuous eighteenth century art to represent mere children at play.
+They were disturbed by the sight of them, and as Albine felt Serge's hot
+breath on her neck she started and left his side to seat herself on the
+sofa. 'They frighten me,' she murmured. 'The men are like robbers,
+and the women, with their dying eyes, look like people who are being
+murdered.'
+
+Serge sat down in a chair, a little distance away, and began to talk of
+other matters. But they remained uneasy. They seemed to think that all
+those painted figures were gazing at them. It was as if the trooping
+cupids were springing out of the panelling, casting the flowers they
+held around them, and threatening to bind them together with the blue
+ribbons which already enchained two lovers in one corner of the ceiling.
+And the whole story of the nymph and her faun lover, from his first peep
+at her to his triumph among the flowers, seemed to burst into warm life.
+Were all those lovers, all those impudent shameless cupids about to step
+down from their panels and crowd around them? They already seemed to
+hear their panting sighs, and to feel their breath filling the spacious
+room with the perfume of voluptuousness.
+
+'It's quite suffocating, isn't it?' sighed Albine. 'In spite of every
+airing I have given it, the room has always seemed close to me!
+
+'The other night,' said Serge, 'I was awakened by such a penetrating
+perfume, that I called out to you, thinking you had come into the room.
+It was just like the soft warmth of your hair when you have decked it
+with heliotropes.... In the earlier times it seemed to be wafted to me
+from a distance, it was like the lingering memory of a perfume; but now
+I can't sleep for it, and it is so strong and penetrating that it quite
+stupefies me. The alcove grows so hot, too, at night that I shall be
+obliged to lie on the couch.'
+
+Albine laid her fingers on her lips, and whispered, 'It is the dead
+girl--she who once lived here.'
+
+They sniffed the odorous air with forced gaiety, but in reality feeling
+very troubled. Certainly never before had the room exhaled such a
+disquieting aroma. The very walls seemed to be still echoing the faint
+rustling of perfumed skirts; and the floor had retained the fragrance
+of satin slippers dropped by the bedside, and near the head of the bed
+itself Serge thought he could trace the imprint of a little hand, which
+had left behind it a clinging scent of violets. Over all the furniture
+the phantom presence of the dead girl still lingered fragrantly.
+
+'See, this is the armchair where she used to sit,' cried Albine; 'there
+is the scent of her shoulders at the back of it yet.'
+
+She sat down in it herself, and bade Serge drop upon his knees and kiss
+her hand.
+
+'You remember the day when I first let you in and said, "Good morrow,
+my dear lord!" But that wasn't all, was it? He kissed her hands when the
+door was closed. There they are, my hands. They are yours.'
+
+Then they tried to resume their old frolics in order that they might
+forget the Paradou, whose joyous murmur they heard ever rising outside,
+and that they might no longer think of the pictures nor yield to the
+languor-breathing influence of the room. Albine put on an affected
+manner, leant back in her chair, and finally laughed at the foolish
+figure which Serge made at her feet.
+
+'You stupid!' she said, 'take me round the waist, and say pretty things
+to me, since you are supposed to be in love with me. Don't you know how
+to make love then?'
+
+But as soon as she felt him clasp her with eager impetuosity, she began
+to struggle, and freed herself from his embrace.
+
+'No, no; leave me alone. I can't bear it. I feel as though I were
+choking in this room.'
+
+From that day forward they felt the same kind of fear for the room as
+they already felt for the garden. Their one remaining harbour of refuge
+was now a place to be shunned and dreaded, a spot where they could no
+longer find themselves together without watching each other furtively.
+Albine now scarcely ventured to enter it, but remained near the
+threshold, with the door wide open behind her so as to afford her an
+immediate retreat. Serge lived there in solitude, a prey to sickening
+restlessness, half-stifling, lying on the couch and vainly trying to
+close his ears to the sighs of the soughing park and his nostrils to
+the haunting fragrance of the old furniture. At night he dreamt wild
+passionate dreams, which left him in the morning nervous and disquieted.
+He believed that he was falling ill again, that he would never recover
+plenitude of health. For days and days he remained there in silence,
+with dark rings round his sleepy eyes, only starting into wakefulness
+when Albine came to visit him. They would remain face to face, gazing
+at one another sadly, and uttering but a few soft words, which seemed to
+choke them. Albine's eyes were even darker than Serge's, and were filled
+with an imploring gaze.
+
+Then, after a week had gone by, Albine's visit never lasted more than
+a few minutes. She seemed to shun him. When she came to the room, she
+appeared thoughtful, remained standing, and hurried off as soon as
+possible. When he questioned her about this change in her demeanour
+towards him, and reproached her for no longer being friendly, she turned
+her head away and avoided replying. He never could get her to tell him
+how she spent the mornings that she passed alone. She would only
+shake her head, and talk about being very idle. If he pressed her
+more closely, she bounded out of the room, just wishing him a hasty
+good-night as she disappeared through the doorway. He often noticed,
+however, that she had been crying. He observed, too, in her expression
+the phases of a hope that was never fulfilled, the perpetual struggling
+of a desire eager to be satisfied. Sometimes she seemed quite
+overwhelmed with melancholy, dragging herself about with an air of utter
+discouragement, like one who no longer had any pleasure in living. At
+other times she laughed lightly, her face shone with an expression of
+triumphant hope, of which, however, she would not yet speak, and her
+feet could not remain still, so eager was she to dart away to what
+seemed to her some last certainty. But on the following day, she would
+sink again into desperation, to soar afresh on the morrow on the pinions
+of renewed hope. One thing which she could not conceal from Serge was
+that she suffered from extreme lassitude. Even during the few moments
+they spent together she could not prevent her head from nodding, or keep
+herself from dozing off.
+
+Serge, recognising that she was unwilling to reply, had ceased to
+question her; and, when she now entered his room, he contented himself
+with casting an anxious glance at her, fearful lest some evening she
+should no longer have strength enough to come to him. Where could she
+thus reduce herself to such exhaustion? What perpetual struggle was it
+that brought about those alternations of joy and despair? One morning
+he started at the sound of a light footfall beneath his window. It
+could not be a roe venturing abroad in that manner. Moreover he could
+recognise that light footfall. Albine was wandering about the Paradou
+without him. It was from the Paradou that she returned to him with all
+those hopes and fears and inward wrestlings, all that lassitude which
+was killing her. And he could well guess what she was seeking out there,
+alone in the woody depths, with all the silent obstinacy of a woman who
+has vowed to effect her purpose. After that he used to listen for her
+steps. He dared not draw aside the curtain and watch her as she hurried
+along through the trees; but he experienced strange, almost painful
+emotion, in listening to ascertain what direction she took, whether she
+turned to right or to left, whether she went straight on through the
+flower-beds, and how far her ramble extended. Amidst all the noisy life
+of the Paradou, amidst the soughing chorus of the trees, the rustling of
+the streams, and the ceaseless songs of the birds, he could distinguish
+the gentle pit-pat of her shoes so plainly that he could have told
+whether she was stepping over the gravel near the rivers, the crumbling
+mould of the forest, or the bare ledges of the rocks. In time he even
+learned to tell, from the sound of her nervous footfall, whether she
+came back hopeful or depressed. As soon as he heard her step on the
+staircase, he hurried from the window, and he never let her know that
+he had thus followed her from afar in her wanderings. But she must have
+guessed it, for with a glance she always afterwards told him where she
+had been.
+
+'Stay indoors, and don't go out,' he begged her, with clasped hands,
+one morning when he saw her still unrecovered from the fatigue of the
+previous day. 'You drive me to despair.'
+
+But she hastened away in irritation. The garden, now that it rang with
+Albine's footfalls, seemed to have a more depressing influence than ever
+upon Serge. The pit-pat of her feet was yet another voice that called
+him; an imperious voice that echoed ever more and more loudly within
+him. He closed his ears and tried to shut out the sound, but the distant
+footsteps still echoed to him in the throbbings of his heart. And when
+she came back, in the evening, it was the whole park that came back with
+her, with the memories of their walks together, and of the slow dawn of
+their love, in the midst of conniving nature. She seemed to have grown
+taller and graver, mellowed, matured by her solitary rambles. There
+was nothing left in her of the frolicsome child, and his teeth would
+suddenly set at times when he looked at her and beheld her so desirable.
+
+One day, about noon, Serge heard Albine returning in hot haste. He had
+restrained himself from listening for her steps when she went away.
+Usually, she did not return till late, and he was amazed at her
+impetuosity as she sped along, forcing her way through the branches that
+barred her path. As she passed beneath his window, he heard her laugh;
+and as she mounted the stairway, she panted so heavily that he almost
+thought he could feel her hot breath streaming against his face. She
+threw the door wide open, and cried out: 'I have found it!'
+
+Then she sat down and repeated softly, breathlessly: 'I have found it! I
+have found it!'
+
+Serge, distracted, laid his fingers on her lips, and stammered: 'Don't
+tell me anything, I beg you. I want to know nothing of it. It will kill
+me, if you speak.'
+
+Then she sank into silence with gleaming eyes and lips tightly pressed
+lest the words she kept back should spring out in spite of her. And
+she stayed in the room till evening, trying to meet Serge's glance, and
+imparting to him, each time that their eyes met, something of that which
+she had discovered. Her whole face beamed with radiance, she exhaled a
+delicious odour, she was full of life; and Serge felt that she permeated
+him through all his senses. Despairingly did he struggle against this
+gradual invasion of his being.
+
+On the morrow she returned to his room as soon as she was up.
+
+'Aren't you going out?' he asked, conscious that he would be vanquished
+should she remain there.
+
+'No,' she said; she wasn't going out any more. As by degrees she
+recovered from her fatigue he felt her becoming stronger, more
+triumphant. She would soon be able to take him by the hand and drag him
+to that spot, whose charm her silence proclaimed so loudly. That day,
+however, she did not speak; she contented herself with keeping him
+seated on a cushion at her feet. It was not till the next morning
+that she ventured to say: 'Why do you shut yourself up here? It is so
+pleasant under the trees.'
+
+He rose from her feet, and stretched out his arms entreatingly. But she
+laughed at him.
+
+'Well, well, then, we won't go out, since you would rather not....
+But this room has such a strange scent, and we should be much more
+comfortable in the garden. It is very wrong of you to have taken such a
+dislike to it.'
+
+He had again settled himself at her feet in silence, his eyelids
+lowered, his features quivering with passionate emotion.
+
+'We won't go out,' she repeated, 'so don't worry. But do you really
+prefer these pictures to the grass and flowers in the park? Do you
+remember all we saw together? It is these paintings which make us feel
+so unhappy. They are a nuisance, always looking and watching us as they
+do.'
+
+As Serge gradually leant more closely against her, she passed her arm
+round his neck and laid his head upon her lap, while murmuring in yet a
+lower tone: 'There is a little corner there I know, where we might be
+so very happy. Nothing would trouble us there; the fresh air would cool
+your feverishness.'
+
+Then she stopped, as she felt him quivering. She was afraid lest she
+might again revive his old fears. But she gradually conquered him merely
+by the caressing gaze of her blue eyes. His eyelids were now raised, and
+he rested there quietly, wholly hers, his tremor past.
+
+'Ah! if you only knew!' she softly breathed; and seeing that he
+continued to smile, she went on boldly: 'It is all a lie; it is not
+forbidden. You are a man now and ought not to be afraid. If we went
+there, and any danger threatened me, you would protect me, you would
+defend me, would you not? You could carry me off on your back, couldn't
+you? I am never the least afraid when I have you with me. Look how
+strong your arms have grown. What is there for any one with such strong
+arms as yours to be afraid of?'
+
+She caressed him beguilingly as she spoke, stroking his hair and neck
+and shoulders with her hand.
+
+'No, it is not forbidden,' she resumed. 'That is only a story for
+stupids, and was invented, long ago, by some one who didn't want to be
+disturbed in the most charming spot in the whole garden. As soon as
+you sat down on that grassy carpet, you would be happy and well again.
+Listen, then, come with me.'
+
+He shook his head but without any sign of vexation, as though indeed he
+liked thus being teased. Then after a short silence, grieved to see her
+pouting, and longing for a renewal of her caresses, he opened his lips
+and asked: 'Where is it?'
+
+She did not answer him immediately. Her eyes seemed to be wandering far
+away: 'It is over yonder,' she murmured at last. 'I cannot explain to
+you clearly. One has to go down the long avenue, and then to turn to
+the left, and then again to the left. We must have passed it at least a
+score of times. You might look for it for ever without finding it, if
+I didn't go with you to show you. I could find my way to it quite
+straight, though I could never explain it to you.'
+
+'And who took you there?'
+
+'I don't know. That morning the trees and plants seemed to drive me
+there. The long branches pushed me on, the grass bent down before me
+invitingly, the paths seemed to open expressly for me to take them. And
+I believe the animals themselves helped to lead me there, for I saw a
+stag trotting on before me as though he wanted me to follow; while a
+company of bullfinches flitted on from tree to tree, and warned me with
+their cries whenever I was about to take a wrong direction.'
+
+'And is it very beautiful?'
+
+Again she did not reply. Deep ecstasy filled her eyes; at last, when she
+was able to speak again, she said: 'Ah! so beautiful, that I could
+never tell you of it. I was so charmed that I was conscious only of
+some supreme joy, which I could not name, falling from the leaves and
+slumbering amid the grass. And I ran back here to take you along with me
+that I might not be without you.'
+
+Then she clasped her arms round his neck again, and entreated him
+passionately, her lips almost pressed to his own.
+
+'Oh! you will come!' she stammered; 'you must come; you will make me so
+miserable if you don't. You can't want me to be miserable.... And even
+if you knew that you would die there, even if that shade should be fatal
+to both of us, would you hesitate or cast a regretful look behind? We
+should remain there, at the foot of the tree, and sleep on quietly for
+ever, in one anther's arms. Ah! would it not be bliss indeed?'
+
+'Yes, yes!' he stammered, transported by her passionate entreaties.
+
+'But we shall not die,' she continued, raising her voice, and laughing
+with the laugh which proclaims woman's victory; 'we shall live to love
+each other. It is a tree of life, a tree whose shadow will make us
+stronger, more perfect, more complete. You will see that all will now go
+happily. Some blessed joy will assuredly descend on us from heaven! Will
+you come?'
+
+His face paled, and his eyelids quivered, as though too powerful a light
+were suddenly beating against them.
+
+'Will you come? will you come?' she cried again, yet more passionately,
+and already half rising to her feet.
+
+He sprang up and followed her, at first with tottering steps and then
+with his arm thrown round her waist, as if he could endure no separation
+from her. He went where she went, carried along in the warm fragrance
+that streamed from her hair. And as he thus remained slightly in the
+rear, she turned upon him a face so radiant with love, such tempting
+lips and eyes, which so imperiously bade him follow, that he would have
+gone with her anywhere, trusting and unquestioning, like a dog.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+They went down and out into the garden without the smile fading from
+Serge's face. All that he saw of the greenery around him was such as was
+reflected in the clear depths of Albine's eyes. As they approached, the
+garden smiled and smiled again, a murmur of content sped from leaf to
+leaf and from bough to bough to the furthest depths of the avenues. For
+days and days the garden must have been hoping and expecting to see them
+thus, clinging to one another, making their peace again with the trees
+and searching for their lost love on the grassy banks. A solemn warning
+breath sighed through the branches; the afternoon sky was drowsy with
+heat; the plants raised their bowing heads to watch them pass.
+
+'Listen,' whispered Albine. 'They drop into silence as we come near
+them; but over yonder they are expecting us, they are telling each other
+the way they must lead us.... I told you we should have no trouble about
+the paths, the trees themselves will direct us with their spreading
+arms.'
+
+The whole park did, indeed, appear to be impelling them gently onward.
+In their rear it seemed as if a barrier of brush-wood had bristled up
+to prevent them from retracing their steps; while, in front of them, the
+grassy lawns spread out so invitingly, that they glided along the soft
+slopes, without thought of choosing their way.
+
+'And the birds are coming with us, too,' said Albine. 'It is the tomtits
+this time. Don't you see them? They are skimming over the hedges, and
+they stop at each turning to see that we don't lose our way.' Then she
+added: 'All the living things of the park are with us. Can't you hear
+them? There is a deep rustling close behind us. It is the birds in
+the trees, the insects in the grass, the roebucks and the stags in the
+coppices, and even the little fishes splashing the quiet water with
+their beating fins. Don't turn round, or you will frighten them. Ah! I
+am sure we have a rare train behind us.'
+
+They still walked on, unfatigued. Albine spoke only to charm Serge with
+the music of her voice, while Serge obeyed the slightest pressure of her
+hand. They knew not what they passed, but they were certain that they
+were going straight towards their goal. And as they went along, the
+garden became gradually graver, more discreet; the soughing of the
+branches died away, the streams hushed their plashing waters, the birds,
+the beasts, and the insects fell into silence. All around them reigned
+solemn stillness.
+
+Then Albine and Serge instinctively raised their heads. In front of them
+they beheld a colossal mass of foliage; and, as they hesitated for a
+moment, a roe, after gazing at them with its sweet soft eyes, bounded
+into the thickets.
+
+'It is there,' said Albine.
+
+She led the way, her face again turned towards Serge, whom she drew with
+her, and they disappeared amid the quivering leaves, and all grew quiet
+again. They were entering into delicious peace.
+
+In the centre there stood a tree covered with so dense a foliage that
+one could not recognise its species. It was of giant girth, with a trunk
+that seemed to breathe like a living breast, and far-reaching boughs
+that stretched like protecting arms around it. It towered up there
+beautiful, strong, virile, and fruitful. It was the king of the garden,
+the father of the forest, the pride of the plants, the beloved of the
+sun, whose earliest and latest beams smiled daily on its crest. From its
+green vault poured all the joys of creation: fragrance of flowers, music
+of birds, gleams of golden light, wakeful freshness of dawn, slumbrous
+warmth of evening twilight. So strong was the sap that it burst through
+the very bark, bathing the tree with the powers of fruitfulness, making
+it the symbol of earth's virility. Its presence sufficed to give the
+clearing an enchanting charm. The other trees built up around it an
+impenetrable wall, which isolated it as in a sanctuary of silence
+and twilight. There was but greenery there, not a scrap of sky, not a
+glimpse of horizon; nothing but a swelling rotunda, draped with green
+silkiness of leaves, adorned below with mossy velvet. And one entered,
+as into the liquid crystal of a source, a greenish limpidity, a sheet
+of silver reposing beneath reflected reeds. Colours, perfumes, sounds,
+quivers, all were vague, indeterminate, transparent, steeped in a
+felicity amidst which everything seemed to faint away. Languorous
+warmth, the glimmer of a summer's night, as it fades on the bare
+shoulder of some fair girl, a scarce perceptible murmur of love sinking
+into silence, lingered beneath the motionless branches, unstirred by the
+slightest zephyr. It was hymeneal solitude, a chamber where Nature lay
+hidden in the embraces of the sun.
+
+Albine and Serge stood there in an ecstasy of joy. As soon as the tree
+had received them beneath its shade, they felt eased of all the anxious
+disquiet which had so long distressed them. The fears which had made
+them avoid each other, the fierce wrestling of spirit which had torn
+and wounded them, without consciousness on their part of what they were
+really contending against, vanished, and left them in perfect peace.
+Absolute confidence, supreme serenity, now pervaded them, they yielded
+unhesitatingly to the joy of being together in that lonely nook,
+so completely hidden from the outside world. They had surrendered
+themselves to the garden, they awaited in all calmness the behests of
+that tree of life. It enveloped them in such ecstasy of love that the
+whole clearing seemed to disappear from before their eyes, and to leave
+them wrapped in an atmosphere of perfume.
+
+'The air is like ripe fruit,' murmured Albine.
+
+And Serge whispered in his turn: 'The grass seems so full of life and
+motion, that I could almost think I was treading on your dress.'
+
+It was a kind of religious feeling which made them lower their voices.
+No sentiment of curiosity impelled them to raise their heads and scan
+the tree. The consciousness of its majesty weighed heavily upon them.
+With a glance Albine asked whether she had overrated the enchantment of
+the greenery, and Serge answered her with two tears that trickled
+down his cheeks. The joy that filled them at being there could not be
+expressed in words.
+
+'Come,' she whispered in his ear, in a voice that was softer than a
+sigh.
+
+And she glided on in front of him, and seated herself at the very foot
+of the tree. Then, with a fond smile, she stretched out her hands to
+him; while he, standing before her, grasped them in his own with a
+responsive smile. Then she drew him slowly towards her and he sank down
+by her side.
+
+'Ah! do you remember,' he said, 'that wall which seemed to have grown up
+between us? Now there is nothing to keep us apart--you are not unhappy
+now?'
+
+'No, no,' she answered; 'very happy.'
+
+For a moment they relapsed into silence whilst soft emotion stole over
+them. Then Serge, caressing Albine, exclaimed: 'Your face is mine; your
+eyes, your mouth, your cheeks are mine. Your arms are mine, from your
+shoulders to the tips of your nails. You are wholly mine.' And as he
+spoke he kissed her lips, her eyes, her cheeks. He kissed her arms, with
+quick short kisses, from her fingers to her shoulders. He poured upon
+her a rain of kisses hot as a summer shower, deluging her cheeks, her
+forehead, her lips, and her neck.
+
+'But if you are mine, I am yours,' said he; 'yours for ever; for I now
+well know that you are my queen, my sovereign, whom I must worship
+on bended knee. I am here only to obey you, to lie at your feet, to
+anticipate your wishes, to shelter you with my arms, to drive away
+whatever might trouble your tranquillity. And you are my life's goal.
+Since I first awoke in this garden, you have ever been before me; I have
+grown up that I might be yours. Ever, as my end, my reward, have I
+gazed upon your grace. You passed in the sunshine with the sheen of
+your golden hair; you were a promise that I should some day know all the
+mysteries and necessities of creation, of this earth, of these trees,
+these waters, these skies, whose last secret is yet unrevealed. I belong
+to you; I am your slave; I will listen to you and obey you, with my lips
+upon your feet.'
+
+He said this, bowed to the ground, adoring Woman. And Albine, full of
+pride, allowed herself to be adored. She yielded her hands, her cheeks,
+her lips, to Serge's rapturous kisses. She felt herself indeed a queen
+as she saw him, who was so strong, bending so humbly before her. She had
+conquered him, and held him there at her mercy. With a single word
+she could dispose of him. And that which helped her to recognise
+her omnipotence was that she heard the whole garden rejoicing at her
+triumph, with gradually swelling paeans of approval.
+
+'Ah! if we could fly off together, if we could but die even, in one
+another's arms,' faltered Serge, scarce able to articulate. But Albine
+had strength enough to raise her finger as though to bid him listen.
+
+It was the garden that had planned and willed it all. For weeks and
+weeks it had been favouring and encouraging their passion, and at last,
+on that supreme day, it had lured them to that spot, and now it became
+the Tempter whose every voice spoke of love. From the flower-beds, amid
+the fragrance of the languid blossoms, was wafted a soft sighing, which
+told of the weddings of the roses, the love-joys of the violets; and
+never before had the heliotropes sent forth so voluptuous a perfume.
+Mingled with the soft air which arose from the orchard were all the
+exhalations of ripe fruit, the vanilla of apricots, the musk of oranges,
+all the luscious aroma of fruitfulness. From the meadows came fuller
+notes, the million sighs of the sun-kissed grass, the multitudinous
+love-plaints of legions of living things, here and there softened by
+the refreshing caresses of the rivulets, on whose banks the very willows
+palpitated with desire. And the forest proclaimed the mighty passion of
+the oaks. Through the high branches sounded solemn music, organ strains
+like the nuptial marches of the ashes and the birches, the hornbeams
+and the planes, while from the bushes and the young coppices arose noisy
+mirth like that of youthful lovers chasing one another over banks and
+into hollows amid much crackling and snapping of branches. From afar,
+too, the faint breeze wafted the sounds of the rocks splitting in their
+passion beneath the burning heat, while near them the spiky plants
+loved in a tragic fashion of their own, unrefreshed by the neighbouring
+springs, which themselves glowed with the love of the passionate sun.
+
+'What do they say?' asked Serge, half swooning, as Albine pressed him to
+her bosom. The voices of the Paradou were growing yet more distinct.
+The animals, in their turn, joined in the universal song of nature.
+The grasshoppers grew faint with the passion of their chants; the
+butterflies scattered kisses with their beating wings. The amorous
+sparrows flew to their mates; the rivers rippled over the loves of the
+fishes; whilst in the depths of the forest the nightingales sent forth
+pearly, voluptuous notes, and the stags bellowed their love aloud.
+Reptiles and insects, every species of invisible life, every atom of
+matter, the earth itself joined in the great chorus. It was the chorus
+of love and of nature--the chorus of the whole wide world; and in the
+very sky the clouds were radiant with rapture, as to those two children
+Love revealed the Eternity of Life.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+Albine and Serge smiled at one another.
+
+'I love you, Albine,' said Serge.
+
+'Serge, I love you,' Albine answered.
+
+And never before had those syllables 'I love you' had for them so
+supreme a meaning. They expressed everything. Joy pervaded those young
+lovers, who had attained to the fulness of life. They felt that they
+were now on a footing of equality with the forces of the world; and with
+their happiness mingled the placid conviction that they had obeyed the
+universal law. And Serge seemed to have awakened to life, lion-like,
+to rule the whole far expanse under the free heavens. His feet planted
+themselves more firmly on the ground, his chest expanded, there was
+pride and confidence in his gait and demeanour. He took Albine by the
+hands, she was trembling, and he was obliged to support her.
+
+'Don't be afraid,' he said; 'you are she whom I love.'
+
+It was Albine now who had become the submissive one. She drooped her
+head upon his shoulder, glancing up at him with anxious scrutiny. Would
+he never bear her spite for that hour of adoration in which he had
+called himself her slave? But he smiled, and stroked her hair, while
+she said to him: 'Let me stay like this, in your arms, for I cannot
+walk without you. I will make myself so small and light, that you will
+scarcely know I am there.' Then becoming very serious she added, 'You
+must always love me; and I will be very obedient and do whatever you
+wish. I will yield to you in all things if you but love me.'
+
+Serge felt more powerful and virile on seeing her so humble. 'Why are
+you trembling so?' he asked her; 'I can have no cause to reproach you.'
+
+But she did not answer him, she gazed almost sadly upon the tree and the
+foliage and the grass around them.
+
+'Foolish child!' he said, laughing; 'are you afraid that I shall be
+angry with you for your love? We have loved as we were meant to love.
+Let me kiss you.'
+
+But, dropping her eyelids so that she might not see the tree, she said,
+in a low whisper, 'Take me away!'
+
+Serge led her thence, pacing slowly and giving one last glance at the
+spot which love had hallowed. The shadows in the clearing were growing
+darker, and a gentle quiver coursed through the foliage. When they
+emerged from the wood and caught sight of the sun, still shining
+brightly in the horizon, they felt easier. Everything around Serge now
+seemed to bend down before him and pay homage to his love. The garden
+was now nothing but an appanage of Albine's beauty, and seemed to have
+grown larger and fairer amid the love-kisses of its rulers.
+
+But Albine's joy was still tinged with disquietude. She would suddenly
+pause amid her laughter and listen anxiously.
+
+'What is the matter?' asked Serge.
+
+'Nothing,' she replied, casting furtive glances behind her.
+
+They did not know in what out-of-the-way corner of the park they were.
+To lose themselves in their capricious wanderings only served to amuse
+them as a rule; but that day they experienced anxious embarrassment. By
+degrees they quickened their pace, plunging more and more deeply into a
+labyrinth of bushes.
+
+'Don't you hear?' asked Albine, nervously, as she suddenly stopped
+short, almost breathless.
+
+Serge listened, a prey, in his turn, to the anxiety which the girl could
+no longer conceal.
+
+'All the coppice seems full of voices,' she continued. 'It sounds as
+though there were people deriding us. Listen! Wasn't that a laugh
+that sounded from that tree? And over yonder did not the grass murmur
+something as my dress brushed against it?'
+
+'No, no,' he said, anxious to reassure her, 'the garden loves us; and,
+if it said anything, it would not be to vex or annoy us. Don't you
+remember all the sweet words which sounded through the leaves? You are
+nervous and fancy things.'
+
+But she shook her head and faltered: 'I know very well that the garden
+is our friend.... So it must be some one who has broken into it. I am
+certain I hear some one. I am trembling all over. Oh! take me away and
+hide me somewhere, I beseech you.'
+
+Then they went on again, scanning every tree and bush, and imagining
+that they could see faces peering at them from behind every trunk.
+Albine was certain, she said, that there were steps pursuing them in the
+distance. 'Let us hide ourselves,' she begged.
+
+She had turned quite scarlet. It was new-born modesty, a sense of
+shame which had laid hold of her like a fever, mantling over the snowy
+whiteness of her skin, which never previously had known that flush.
+Serge was alarmed at seeing her thus crimson, her face full of distress,
+her eyes brimming with tears. He tried to clasp her in his arms again
+and to soothe her with a caress; but she slipped away from him, and,
+with a despairing gesture, made sign that they were not alone. And her
+blushes grew deeper as her eyes fell upon her bare arms. She shuddered
+when her loose hanging hair stirred against her neck and shoulders.
+The slightest touch of a waving bough or a passing insect, the softest
+breath of air, now made her tremble as if some invisible hand were
+grasping at her.
+
+'Calm yourself,' begged Serge, 'there is no one. You are as crimson as
+though you had a fever. Let us rest here for a moment. Do; I beg you.'
+
+She had no fever at all, she said, but she wanted to get back as quickly
+as possible, so that no one might laugh at her. And, ever increasing her
+pace, she plucked handfuls of leaves and tendrils from the hedges, which
+she entwined about her. She fastened a branch of mulberry over her hair,
+twisted bindweed round her arms, and tied it to her wrists, and circled
+her neck with such long sprays of laurustinus, that her bosom was hidden
+as by a veil of leaves.
+
+And that shame of hers proved contagious. Serge, who first had jested,
+asking her if she were going to a ball, glanced at himself, and likewise
+felt alarmed and ashamed, to a point that he also wound foliage about
+his person.
+
+Meantime, they could discover no way out of the labyrinth of bushes, but
+all at once, at the end of the path, they found themselves face to face
+with an obstacle, a tall, grey, grave mass of stone. It was the wall of
+the Paradou.
+
+'Come away! come away!' cried Albine.
+
+And she sought to drag him thence; but they had not taken another twenty
+steps before they again came upon the wall. They then skirted it at a
+ran, panic-stricken. It stretched along, gloomy and stern, without
+a break in its surface. But suddenly, at a point where it fringed a
+meadow, it seemed to fall away. A great breach gaped in it, like a huge
+window of light opening on to the neighbouring valley. It must have been
+the very hole that Albine had one day spoken of, which she said she had
+blocked up with brambles and stones. But the brambles now lay scattered
+around like severed bits of rope, the stones had been thrown some
+distance away, and the breach itself seemed to have been enlarged by
+some furious hand.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+'Ah! I felt sure of it,' cried Albine, in accents of supreme despair.
+'I begged you to take me away--Serge, I beseech you, don't look through
+it.'
+
+But Serge, in spite of himself, stood rooted to the ground, on the
+threshold of the breach through which he gazed. Down below, in the
+depths of the valley, the setting sun cast a sheet of gold upon the
+village of Les Artaud, which showed vision-like amidst the twilight in
+which the neighbouring fields were already steeped. One could plainly
+distinguish the houses that straggled along the high road; the little
+yards with their dunghills, and the narrow gardens planted with
+vegetables. Higher up, the tall cypress in the graveyard reared its
+dusky silhouette, and the red tiles on the church glowed brazier-like,
+the dark bell looking down on them like a human face, while the old
+parsonage at the side threw its doors and windows open to the evening
+air.
+
+'For pity's sake,' sobbed Albine, 'don't look out, Serge. Remember that
+you promised you would always love me. Ah! will you ever love me enough,
+now? Stay, let me cover your eyes with my hands. You know it was my
+hands that cured you. You won't push me away.'
+
+But he put her from him gently. Then, while she fell down and clung to
+his legs, he passed his hands across his face, as though he were wiping
+from his brow and eyes some last lingering traces of sleep. It was
+yonder, then, that lay the unknown world, the strange land of which he
+had never dreamed without vague fear. Where had he seen that country?
+From what dream was he awakening, that he felt such keen anguish
+swelling up in his breast till it almost choked him? The village was
+breaking out into life at the close of the day's work. The men were
+coming home from the fields with weary gait, their jackets thrown over
+their shoulders; the women, standing by their doors, were beckoning to
+them to hasten on; while the children, in noisy bands, chased the
+fowls about and pelted them with stones. In the churchyard a couple of
+scapegraces, a lad and a girl, were creeping along under the shelter of
+the wall in order to escape notice. Swarms of sparrows were retiring
+to roost beneath the eaves of the church; and, on the steps of the
+parsonage, a blue calico skirt had just appeared, of such spreading
+dimensions as to quite block the doorway.
+
+'Oh! he is looking out! he is looking out!' sobbed Albine. 'Listen to
+me. It was only just now that you promised to obey me. I beg of you to
+turn round and to look upon the garden. Haven't you been very happy in
+the garden? It was the garden which gave me to you. Think of the happy
+days it has in store for us, what lasting bliss and enjoyment. Instead
+of which it will be death that will force its way through that hole,
+if you don't quickly flee and take me with you. See, all those people
+yonder will come and thrust themselves between us. We were so quite
+alone, so secluded, so well guarded by the trees! Oh! the garden is our
+love! Look on the garden, I beg it of you on my knees!'
+
+But Serge was quivering. He had began to recollect. The past was
+re-awakening. He could distinctly hear the stir of the village life.
+Those peasants, those women and children, he knew them. There was the
+mayor, Bambousse, returning from Les Olivettes, calculating how much
+the approaching vintage would yield him; there were the Brichets, the
+husband crawling along, and the wife moaning with misery. There was
+Rosalie flirting with big Fortune behind a wall. He recognised also the
+pair in the churchyard, that mischievous Vincent and that bold hussy
+Catherine, who were catching big grasshoppers amongst the tombstones.
+Yes, and they had Voriau, the black dog, with them, helping them and
+ferreting about in the dry grass, and sniffing at every crack in the old
+stones. Under the eaves of the church the sparrows were twittering
+and bickering before going to roost. The boldest of them flew down and
+entered the church through the broken windows, and, as Serge followed
+them with his eyes, he recollected all the noise they had formerly made
+below the pulpit and on the step by the altar rails, where crumbs were
+always put for them. And that was La Teuse yonder, on the parsonage
+doorstep, looking fatter than ever in her blue calico dress. She was
+turning her head to smile at Desiree, who was coming up from the yard,
+laughing noisily. Then they both vanished indoors, and Serge, distracted
+with all these revived memories, stretched out his arms.
+
+'It is all over now,' faltered Albine, as she sank down amongst the
+broken brambles. 'You will never love me enough again.'
+
+She wept, while Serge stood rooted by the breach, straining his ears
+to catch the slightest sound that might be wafted from the village,
+waiting, as it were, for some voice that might fully awaken him. The
+bell in the church-tower had begun to sway, and slowly through the quiet
+evening air the three chimes of the _Angelus_ floated up to the Paradou.
+It was a soft and silvery summons. The bell now seemed to be alive.
+
+'O God!' cried Serge, falling on his knees, quite overcome by the
+emotion which the soft notes of the bell had excited in him.
+
+He bent down towards the ground, and he felt the three peals of the
+_Angelus_ pass over his neck and echo through his heart. The voice of
+the bell seemed to grow louder. It was raised again sternly, pitilessly,
+for a few moments which seemed to him to be years. It summoned up
+before him all his old life, his pious childhood, his happy days at the
+seminary, and his first Masses in that burning valley of Les Artaud,
+where he had dreamt of a solitary, saintly life. He had always heard it
+speaking to him as it was doing now. He recognised every inflection of
+that sacred voice, which had so constantly fallen upon his ears, like
+the grave and gentle voice of a mother. Why had he so long ceased to
+hear it? In former times it had promised him the coming of Mary. Had
+Mary come then and taken him and carried him off into those happy green
+fastnesses, which the sound of the bell could not reach? He would never
+have lapsed into forgetfulness if the bell had not ceased to ring. And
+as he bent his head still lower towards the earth, the contact of his
+beard with his hands made him start. He could not recognise his own self
+with that long silky beard. He twisted it and fumbled about in his hair
+seeking for the bare circle of the tonsure, but a heavy growth of curls
+now covered his whole head from his brow to the nape of his neck.
+
+'Ah! you were right,' he said, casting a look of despair at Albine.
+'It was forbidden. We have sinned, and we have merited some terrible
+punishment.... But I, indeed, I tried to reassure you, I did not hear
+the threats which sounded in your ears through the branches.'
+
+Albine tried to clasp him in her arms again as she sobbed out, 'Get up,
+and let us escape together. Perhaps even yet there is time for us to
+love each other.'
+
+'No, no; I haven't the strength. I should stumble and fall over the
+smallest pebble in the path. Listen to me. I am afraid of myself. I know
+not what man dwells in me. I have murdered myself, and my hands are red
+with blood. If you took me away, you would never see aught in my eyes
+save tears.'
+
+She kissed his wet eyes, as she answered passionately, 'No matter! Do
+you love me?'
+
+He was too terrified to answer her. A heavy step set the pebbles rolling
+on the other side of the wall. A growl of anger seemed to draw nigh.
+Albine had not been mistaken. Some one was, indeed, there, disturbing
+the woodland quiet with jealous inquisition. Then both Albine and Serge,
+as if overwhelmed with shame, sought to bide themselves behind a bush.
+But Brother Archangias, standing in front of the breach, could already
+see them.
+
+The Brother remained for a moment silent, clenching his fists and
+looking at Albine clinging round Serge's neck, with the disgust of a man
+who has espied some filth by the roadside.
+
+'I suspected it,' he mumbled between his teeth. 'It was virtually
+certain that they had hidden him here.'
+
+Then he took a few steps, and cried out: 'I see you. It is an
+abomination. Are you a brute beast to go coursing through the woods with
+that female? She has led you far astray, has she not? She has besmeared
+you with filth, and now you are hairy like a goat.... Pluck a branch
+from the trees wherewith to smite her on the back.'
+
+Again Albine whispered in an ardent, prayerful voice: 'Do you love me?
+Do you love me?'
+
+But Serge, with bowed head, kept silence, though he did not yet drive
+her from him.
+
+'Fortunately, I have found you,' continued Brother Archangias. 'I
+discovered this hole.... You have disobeyed God, and have slain your own
+peace. Henceforward, for ever, temptation will gnaw you with its fiery
+tooth, and you will no longer have ignorance of evil to help you to
+fight it. It was that creature who tempted you to your fall, was it not?
+Do you not see the serpent's tail writhing amongst her hair? The mere
+sight of her shoulders is sufficient to make one vomit with disgust....
+Leave her. Touch her not, for she is the beginning of hell. In the name
+of God, come forth from that garden.'
+
+'Do you love me? Oh! do you love me?' reiterated Albine.
+
+But Serge hastily drew away from her as though her bare arms and
+shoulders really scorched him.
+
+'In the name of God! In the name of God!' cried the Brother, in a voice
+of thunder.
+
+Serge unresistingly stepped towards the breach. As soon as Brother
+Archangias, with rough violence, had dragged him out of the Paradou,
+Albine, who had fallen half fainting to the ground, with hands wildly
+stretched towards the love which was deserting her, rose up again,
+choking with sobs. And she fled, vanished into the midst of the trees,
+whose trunks she lashed with her streaming hair.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+When Abbe Mouret had said the _Pater_, he bowed to the altar, and went
+to the Epistle side. Then he came down, and made the sign of the cross
+over big Fortune and Rosalie, who were kneeling, side by side, before
+the altar-rails.
+
+'_Ego conjungo vos in matrimonium, in nomine Patris, et Filii, et
+Spiritus Sancti_.'
+
+'_Amen_,' responded Vincent, who was serving the mass, and glancing
+curiously at his big brother out of the corner of his eye.
+
+Fortune and Rosalie bent their heads, affected by some slight emotion,
+although they had nudged each other with their elbows when they knelt
+down, by way of making one another laugh. But Vincent went to get the
+basin and the sprinkler. Fortune placed the ring in the basin, a thick
+ring of solid silver. When the priest had blessed it, sprinkling it
+crosswise, he returned it to Fortune, who slipped it upon Rosalie's
+finger. Her hand was still discoloured with grass-stains, which soap had
+not been able to remove.
+
+'_In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti_,' Abbe Mouret murmured
+again, giving them a final benediction.
+
+'_Amen_,' responded Vincent.
+
+It was early morning. The sun was not yet shining through the big
+windows of the church. Outside one could hear the noisy twittering of
+the sparrows in the branches of the service tree, whose foliage shot
+through the broken panes. La Teuse, who had not previously had time to
+clean the church, was now dusting the altar, craning up on her sound leg
+to wipe the feet of the ochre and lake-bedaubed Christ, and arranging
+the chairs as quietly as possible; all the while bowing and crossing
+herself, and following the service, but not omitting a single sweep of
+her feather broom. Quite alone, at the foot of the pulpit, was mother
+Brichet, praying in a very demonstrative fashion. She kept on her knees,
+and repeated the prayers in so loud a whisper that it seemed as if a
+swarm of bluebottles had taken possession of the nave.
+
+At the other end of the church near the confessional, Catherine held
+an infant in swaddling clothes. As it began to cry, she turned her back
+upon the altar, and tossed it up, and amused it with the bell-rope,
+which dangled just over its nose.
+
+'_Dominus vobiscum_,' said the priest, turning round, and spreading out
+his hands.
+
+'_Et cum spiritu tuo_,' responded Vincent.
+
+At that moment three big girls came into the church. They were too shy
+to go far up, though they jostled one another to get a better view of
+what was going on. They were three friends of Rosalie, who had dropped
+in for a minute or two on their way to the fields, curious as they were
+to hear what his reverence would say to the bride and bridegroom. They
+had big scissors hanging at their waists. At last they hid themselves
+behind the font, where they pinched each other and twisted themselves
+about, while trying to choke their bursts of laughter with their
+clenched fists.
+
+'Well,' whispered La Rousse, a finely built girl, with copper-coloured
+skin and hair, 'there won't be any scrimmage to get out of church when
+it's all over.'
+
+'Oh! old Bambousse is quite right,' murmured Lisa, a short dark girl,
+with gleaming eyes; 'when one has vines, one looks after them. Since his
+reverence so particularly desired to marry Rosalie, he can very well do
+it all alone.'
+
+The other girl, Babet, who was humpbacked, tittered. 'There's mother
+Brichet,' she said; 'she is always here. She prays for the whole family.
+Listen, do you hear how she's buzzing? All that will mean something in
+her pocket. She knows very well what she is about, I can tell you.'
+
+'She is playing the organ for them,' retorted La Rousse.
+
+At this all three burst into a laugh. La Teuse, in the distance,
+threatened them with her broom. At the altar, Abbe Mouret was taking the
+sacrament. As he went from the Epistle side towards Vincent, so that the
+water of ablution might be poured upon his thumb and fore-finger, Lisa
+said more softly: 'It's nearly over. He will begin to talk to them
+directly.'
+
+'Yes,' said La Rousse, 'and so big Fortune will still be able to go to
+his work, and Rosalie won't lose her day's pay at the vintage. It is
+very convenient to be married so early in the morning. He looks very
+sheepish, that big Fortune.'
+
+'Of course,' murmured Babet. 'It tires him, keeping so long on his
+knees. You may be sure that he has never knelt so long since his first
+communion.'
+
+But the girls' attention was suddenly distracted by the baby which
+Catherine was dangling in her arms. It wanted to get hold of the
+bell-rope, and was quite blue with rage, frantically stretching out its
+little hands and almost choking itself with crying.
+
+'Ah! so the youngster is there,' said La Rousse.
+
+The baby now burst into still louder wailing, and struggled like a
+little Imp.
+
+'Turn it over on its stomach, and let it suck,' said Babet to Catherine.
+
+Catherine lifted up her head, and began to laugh, with the shamelessness
+of a little minx. 'It's not at all amusing,' she said, giving the baby a
+shake. 'Be quiet, will you, little pig! My sister plumped it down on my
+knees.'
+
+'Naturally,' said Babet, mischievously. 'You could scarcely have
+expected her to give the brat to Monsieur le Cure to nurse.'
+
+At this sally, La Rousse almost fell over in a fit of laughter. She
+leaned against the wall, holding her sides with her hands. Lisa threw
+herself against her, and attempted to soothe her by pinching her back
+and shoulders; while Babet laughed with a hunchback's laugh, which
+grated on the ear like the sound of a saw.
+
+'If it hadn't been for the little one,' she continued, 'Monsieur le Cure
+would have lost all use for his holy water. Old Bambousse had made up
+his mind to marry Rosalie to young Laurent, of Figuieres.'
+
+However, the girls' merriment and their chatter now came to an end, for
+they saw La Teuse limping furiously towards them. At this the three big
+hussies felt alarmed, stepped back, and subsided into sedateness.
+
+'You worthless things!' hissed La Teuse. 'You come to talk a lot of
+filth here, do you? Aren't you ashamed of yourself, La Rousse? You ought
+to be there, on your knees, before the altar, like Rosalie. I will throw
+you outside if you stir again. Do you hear?'
+
+La Rousse's copper cheeks were tinged with a rising blush, and Babet
+glanced at her and tittered.
+
+'And you,' continued La Teuse, turning towards Catherine, 'just you
+leave that baby alone. You are pinching it on purpose to make it scream.
+Don't tell me you are not. Give it to me.'
+
+She took the child, hushed it in her arms for a moment, and then laid
+it upon a chair, where it went to sleep, peacefully like a cherub.
+The church then subsided into solemn quietness, disturbed only by the
+chattering of the sparrows on the rowan tree outside. At the altar,
+Vincent had carried the missal to the right again, and Abbe Mouret had
+just folded the corporal and slipped it within the burse. He was now
+saying the concluding prayers with a solemn earnestness, which neither
+the screams of the baby nor the giggling of the three girls had been
+able to disturb. He seemed to hear nothing of them, but to be wholly
+absorbed in the prayers which he was offering up to Heaven for the
+happiness of the pair whose union he had just blessed. The sky that
+morning was grey with a hazy heat, which veiled the sun. Through the
+broken windows a russet vapour streamed into the church, betokening
+a stormy day. Along the walls the gaudily coloured pictures of the
+Stations of the Cross displayed their red, blue, and yellow patches;
+at the bottom of the nave the dry woodwork of the gallery creaked and
+strained; and under the doorway the tall grass by the steps thrust
+ripening straw, all alive with little brown grasshoppers. The clock,
+in its wooden case, made a whirring noise, as though it were some
+consumptive trying to clear his throat, and then huskily struck
+half-past six.
+
+'_Ite, missa est_,' said the priest, turning round to the congregation.
+
+'_Deo gratias_,' responded Vincent.
+
+Then, having kissed the altar, Abbe Mouret once more turned round,
+and murmured over the bent heads of the newly married pair the final
+benediction: '_Deus Abraham, Deus Isaac, et Deus Jacob vobiscum
+sit_'--his voice dying away into a gentle whisper.
+
+'Now, he's going to address them,' said Babet to her friends.
+
+'He is very pale,' observed Lisa. 'He isn't a bit like Monsieur Caffin,
+whose fat face always seemed to be on the laugh. My little sister Rose
+says that she daren't tell him anything when she goes to confess.'
+
+'All the same,' murmured La Rousse, 'he's not ugly. His illness has aged
+him a little, but it seems to suit him. He has bigger eyes, and lines at
+the corners of his mouth which make him look like a man. Before he had
+the fever, he was too much like a girl.'
+
+'I believe he's got some great trouble,' said Babet. 'He looks as though
+he were pining away. His face is deadly pale, but how his eyes glitter!
+When he drops his eyelids, it is just as though he were doing it to
+extinguish the fire in his eyes.'
+
+La Teuse again shook her broom at them. 'Hush!' she hissed out, so
+energetically that it seemed as if a blast of wind had burst into the
+church.
+
+Meantime Abbe Mouret had collected himself, and he began, in a rather
+low voice:
+
+'My dear brother, my dear sister, you are joined together in Jesus. The
+institution of marriage symbolises the sacred union between Jesus and
+His Church. It is a bond which nothing can break; which God wills shall
+be eternal, so that man may not sever those whom Heaven has joined. In
+making you flesh of each other's flesh, and bone of each other's bone,
+God teaches you that it is your duty to walk side by side through
+life, a faithful couple, along the paths which He, in His omnipotence,
+appoints for you. And you must love each other with God-like love. The
+slightest ill-feeling between you will be disobedience to the Creator,
+Who has joined you together as a single body. Remain, then, for ever
+united, after the likeness of the Church, which Jesus has espoused, in
+giving to us all His body and blood.'
+
+Big Fortune and Rosalie sat listening, with their noses peaked up
+inquisitively.
+
+'What does he say?' asked Lisa, who was a little deaf.
+
+'Oh! he says what they all say,' answered La Rousse. 'He has a glib
+tongue, like all the priests have.'
+
+Abbe Mouret went on with his address, his eyes wandering over the heads
+of the newly wedded couple towards a shadowy corner of the church. And
+by degrees his voice became more flexible, and he put emotion into the
+words he spoke, words which he had formerly learned by heart from a
+manual intended for the use of young priests. He had turned slightly
+towards Rosalie, and whenever his memory failed him, he added sentences
+of his own:
+
+'My dear sister, submit yourself to your husband, as the Church submits
+itself to Jesus. Remember that you must leave everything to follow him,
+like a faithful handmaiden. You must give up father and mother, you must
+cleave only to your husband, and you must obey him that you may obey God
+also. And your yoke will be a yoke of love and peace. Be his comfort,
+his happiness, the perfume of his days of strength, the support of his
+days of weakness. Let him find you, as a grace, ever by his side. Let
+him have but to reach out his hand to find yours grasping it. It is thus
+that you will step along together, never losing your way, and that you
+will meet with happiness in the carrying out of the divine laws. Oh! my
+dear sister, my dear daughter, your humility will hear sweet fruit; it
+will give birth to all the domestic virtues, to the joys of the hearth,
+and the prosperity that attends a God-fearing family. Have for your
+husband the love of Rachel, the wisdom of Rebecca, the constant fidelity
+of Sarah. Tell yourself that a pure life is the source of all happiness.
+Pray to God each morning that He may give you strength to live as a
+woman who respects her responsibilities and duties; for the punishment
+you would otherwise incur is terrible: you would lose your love. Oh! to
+live loveless, to tear flesh from flesh, to belong no more to the one
+who is half of your very self, to live on in pain and agony, bereft of
+the one you have loved! In vain would you stretch out your arms to him;
+he would turn away from you. You would yearn for happiness, but you
+would find in your heart nothing but shame and bitterness. Hear me, my
+daughter, it is in your own conduct, in your obedience, in your purity,
+in your love, that God has established the strength of your union.'
+
+As Abbe Mouret spoke these words, there was a burst of laughter at the
+other end of the church. The baby had just woke up on the chair where La
+Teuse had laid it. But it was no longer in a bad temper. Having kicked
+itself free of its swaddling clothes, it was laughing merrily, and
+shaking its rosy little feet in the air. It was the sight of these
+little feet that made it laugh.
+
+Rosalie, who was beginning to find the priest's address rather tedious,
+turned her head to smile at the child. But, when she saw it kicking
+about on the chair, she grew alarmed, and cast an angry look at
+Catherine.
+
+'Oh! you can look at me as much as you like,' said Catherine. 'I'm not
+going to take it any more. It would only begin to cry again.'
+
+And she turned aside to ferret in an ant-hole at a corner of one of the
+stone flags under the gallery.
+
+'Monsieur Caffin didn't talk so long,' now remarked La Rousse. 'When he
+married Miette, he just gave her two taps on the cheek and told her to
+be good.'
+
+My dear brother,' resumed Abbe Mouret, turning towards big Fortune, 'it
+is God who, to-day, gives you a companion, for He does not wish that man
+should live alone. But, if He ordains that she shall be your servant,
+He demands from you that you shall be to her a master full of gentleness
+and love. You will love her, because she is part of your own flesh, of
+your own blood, and your own bone. You will protect her, because God has
+given you strong arms only that you may stretch them over her head in
+the hour of danger. Remember that she is entrusted to you, and that
+you cannot abuse her submission and weakness without sin. Oh! my dear
+brother, what proud happiness should be yours! Henceforth, you will no
+longer live in the selfish egotism of solitude. At all hours you will
+have a lovable duty before you. There is nothing better than to love,
+unless it be to protect those whom we love. Your heart will expand;
+your manly strength will increase a hundredfold. Oh! to be a support and
+stay, to have a love given into your keeping, to see a being sink her
+existence in yours and say, "Take me and do with me what you will! I
+trust myself wholly to you!" And may you be accursed if you ever abandon
+her! It would be a cowardly desertion which God would assuredly punish.
+From the moment she gives herself to you, she becomes yours for ever.
+Carry her rather in your arms, and set her not upon the ground until it
+be certain that she will be there in safety. Give up everything, my dear
+brother--'
+
+But here the Abbe's voice faltered, and only an indistinct murmur came
+from his lips. He had quite closed his eyes, his face was deathly white,
+and his voice betokened such deep distress that big Fortune himself shed
+tears without knowing why.
+
+'He hasn't recovered yet,' said Lisa. 'It is wrong of him to fatigue
+himself. See, there's Fortune crying!'
+
+'Men are softer-hearted than women,' murmured Babet.
+
+'He spoke very well, all the same,' remarked La Rousse. 'Those priests
+think of a lot of things that wouldn't occur to anybody else.'
+
+'Hush!' cried La Teuse, who was already making ready to extinguish the
+candles.
+
+But Abbe Mouret still stammered on, trying to utter a few more
+sentences. 'It is for this reason, my dear brother, my dear sister, that
+you must live in the Catholic Faith, which alone can ensure the peace of
+your hearth. Your families have taught you to love God, to pray to Him
+every morning and evening, to look only for the gifts of His mercy--'
+
+He was unable to finish. He turned round, took the chalice off the
+altar, and retired, with bowed head, into the vestry, preceded by
+Vincent, who almost let the cruets and napkin fall, in trying to see
+what Catherine might be doing at the end of the church.
+
+'Oh! the heartless creature!' said Rosalie, who left her husband to go
+and take her baby in her arms. The child laughed. She kissed it, and
+rearranged its swaddling clothes, while threatening Catherine with her
+fist. 'If it had fallen,' she cried out, 'I would have boxed your ears
+for you, nicely.'
+
+Big Fortune now came slouching along. The three girls stepped towards
+him, with compressed lips.
+
+'See how proud he is,' murmured Babet to the others. 'He is sure of
+inheriting old Bambousse's money now. I used to see him creeping along
+every night under the little wall with Rosalie.'
+
+Then they giggled, and big Fortune, standing there in front of them,
+laughed even louder than they did. He pinched La Rousse, and let Lisa
+jeer at him. He was a sturdy young blood, and cared nothing for anybody.
+The priest's address had annoyed him.
+
+'Hallo! mother, come on!' he called in his loud voice. But mother
+Brichet was begging at the vestry door. She stood there, tearful and
+wizen, before La Teuse, who was slipping some eggs into the pocket of
+her apron. Fortune didn't seem to feel the least sense of shame. He just
+winked and remarked: 'She is a knowing old card, my mother is. But then
+the Cure likes to see people at mass.'
+
+Meanwhile, Rosalie had grown calm again. Before leaving the church, she
+asked Fortune if he had begged the priest to come and bless their
+room, according to the custom of the country. So Fortune ran off to the
+vestry, striding heavily through the church, as if it were a field. He
+soon reappeared, shouting that his reverence would come. La Teuse, who
+was scandalised at the noise made by all these people, who seemed to
+think themselves in a public street, gently clapped her hands, and
+pushed them towards the door.
+
+'It is all over,' said she; 'go away and get to your work.'
+
+She thought they had all gone, when her eye caught sight of Catherine,
+whom Vincent had joined. They were bending anxiously over the ants'
+nest. Catherine was poking a long straw into the hole so roughly, that
+a swarm of frightened ants had rushed out upon the floor. Vincent
+declared, however, that she must get her straw right to the bottom if
+she wished to find the queen.
+
+'Ah! you young imps!' cried La Teuse, 'what are you after there? Can't
+you leave the poor little things alone? That is Mademoiselle Desiree's
+ants' nest. She would be nicely pleased if she saw you!'
+
+At this the children promptly took to their heels.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Abbe Mouret, now wearing his cassock but still bareheaded, had come
+back to kneel at the foot of the altar. In the grey light that streamed
+through the window, his tonsure showed like a large livid spot amidst
+his hair; and a slight quiver, as if from cold, sped down his neck. With
+his hands tightly clasped he was praying earnestly, so absorbed in his
+devotions that he did not hear the heavy footsteps of La Teuse, who
+hovered around without daring to disturb him. She seemed to be grieved
+at seeing him bowed down there on his knees. For a moment, she thought
+that he was in tears, and thereupon she went behind the altar to watch
+him. Since his return, she had never liked to leave him in the church
+alone, for one evening she had found him lying in a dead faint upon the
+flagstones, with icy lips and clenched teeth, like a corpse.
+
+'Come in, mademoiselle!' she said to Desiree, who was peeping through
+the vestry-doorway. 'He is still here, and he will lay himself up. You
+know you are the only person that he will listen to.'
+
+'It is breakfast-time,' she replied softly, 'and I am very hungry.'
+
+Then she gently sidled up to the priest, passed an arm round his neck,
+and kissed him.
+
+'Good morning, brother,' she said. 'Do you want to make me die of hunger
+this morning?'
+
+The face he turned upon her was so intensely sad, that she kissed
+him again on both his cheeks. He was emerging from agony. Then, on
+recognising her, he tried to put her from him, but she kept hold of one
+of his hands and would not release it. She would scarcely allow him to
+cross himself, but insisted upon leading him away.
+
+'Come! Come! for I am very hungry. You must be hungry too.'
+
+La Teuse had laid out the breakfast beneath two big mulberry trees,
+whose spreading branches formed a sheltering roof at the bottom of the
+little garden. The sun, which had at last succeeded in dissipating
+the stormy-looking vapours of early morning, was warming the beds
+of vegetables, while the mulberry-trees cast a broad shadow over the
+rickety table, on which were laid two cups of milk and some thick slices
+of bread.
+
+'You see how nice it looks,' said Desiree, delighted at breakfasting in
+the fresh air.
+
+She was already cutting some of the bread into strips, which she ate
+with eager appetite. And as she saw La Teuse still standing in front of
+them, she said, 'Why don't you eat something?'
+
+'I shall, presently,' the old servant answered. 'My soup is warming.'
+
+Then, after a moment's silence, looking with admiration at the girl's
+big bites, she said to the priest: 'It is quite a pleasure to see her.
+Doesn't she make you feel hungry, Monsieur le Cure? You should force
+yourself.'
+
+Abbe Mouret smiled as he glanced at his sister. 'Yes, yes,' he murmured;
+'she gets on famously, she grows fatter every day.'
+
+'That's because I eat,' said Desiree. 'If you would eat you would get
+fat, too. Are you ill again? You look very melancholy. I don't want to
+have it all over again, you know. I was so very lonely when they took
+you away to cure you.'
+
+'She is right,' said La Teuse. 'You don't behave reasonably, Monsieur le
+Cure. You can't expect to be strong, living, as you do, on two or three
+crumbs a day, as though you were a bird. You don't make blood; and
+that's why you are so pale. Don't you feel ashamed of keeping as thin as
+a lath when we are so fat; we who are only women? People will begin to
+think that we gobble up everything and leave you nothing but the empty
+plates.'
+
+Then both La Teuse and Desiree, brimful of health and strength, scolded
+him affectionately. His eyes seemed very large and bright, but empty,
+expressionless. He was still gently smiling.
+
+'I am not ill,' he said; 'I have nearly finished my milk.' He had
+swallowed two mouthfuls of it, but had not touched the bread.
+
+'The animals, now,' said Desiree, thoughtfully, 'seem to get on much
+more comfortably than we do. The fowls never have headaches, have they?
+The rabbits grow as fat as ever one wants them to be. And you never saw
+my pig looking sad.'
+
+Then, turning towards her brother, she went on with an air of rapture:
+
+'I have named it Matthew, because it is so like that fat man who brings
+the letters. It is growing so big and strong. It is very unkind of you
+to refuse to come and look at it as you always do. You will come to see
+it some day, won't you?'
+
+While she was thus talking she had laid hold of her brother's share of
+bread, and was eating away at it. She had already finished one piece,
+and was beginning the second, when La Teuse became aware of what she was
+doing.
+
+'That doesn't belong to you, that bread! You are actually stealing his
+food from him now!'
+
+'Let her have it,' said Abbe Mouret, gently. 'I shouldn't have touched
+it myself. Eat it all, my dear, eat it all.'
+
+For a moment Desiree fell into confusion, with her eyes fixed upon the
+bread, whilst she struggled to check her rising tears. Then she began to
+laugh, and finished the slice.
+
+'My cow,' said she, continuing her remarks, 'is never as sad as you are.
+You were not here when uncle Pascal gave her to me, on the promise that
+I would be a good girl, or you would have seen how pleased she was when
+I kissed her for the first time.'
+
+She paused to listen. A cock crowed in the yard, and a great uproar
+followed, with flapping of wings and cackling, grunting, and hoarse
+cries as if the whole yard were in a state of commotion.
+
+'Ah! you know,' resumed Desiree, clapping her hands, 'she must be in
+calf now. I took her to the bull at Beage, three leagues from here.
+There are very few bulls hereabouts, you know.'
+
+La Teuse shrugged her shoulders, and glanced at the priest with an
+expression of annoyance.
+
+'It would be much better, mademoiselle,' said she, 'if you were to go
+and quiet your fowls. They all seem to be murdering one another.'
+
+Indeed, the uproar in the yard had now become so great that the girl was
+already hurrying off with a great rustling of her petticoats, when the
+priest called her back. 'The milk, my dear; you have not finished the
+milk.'
+
+He held out his cup to her, which he had scarcely touched. And she came
+back and drank the milk without the slightest scruple, in spite of La
+Teuse's angry look. Then she again set off for the poultry-yard, where
+they soon heard her reducing the fowls to peace and order. She had,
+perhaps, sat down in the midst of them, for she could be heard gently
+humming as though she were trying to lull them to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+'Now my soup is too hot!' grumbled La Teuse, as she returned from the
+kitchen with a basin, from which a wooden spoon was projecting.
+
+She placed herself just in front of Abbe Mouret, and began to eat very
+cautiously from the edge of the spoon. She wanted to enliven the Abbe
+and to draw him out of his melancholy moodiness. Ever since he had
+returned from the Paradou, he had declared himself well again, and
+had never complained. Often, indeed, he smiled in so soft and sweet a
+fashion, that his fever seemed to have increased his saintliness, at
+least so thought the villagers. But, at intervals, he had fits of gloomy
+silence, and appeared to be suffering torture which he strove to bear
+uncomplainingly. It was a mute agony which bore down upon him, and,
+for hours at a time, left him stupefied, a prey to a frightful inward
+struggle, the violence of which could only be guessed by the sweat of
+anguish that streamed down his face.
+
+At such times La Teuse refused to leave him, and overwhelmed him with
+a torrent of gossip, until he had gradually recovered tranquillity by
+crushing the rebellion of his blood. On that particular morning, the old
+servant foresaw a more grievous attack than usual, and poured forth an
+amazing flood of talk, while continuing her wary manoeuvres with the
+spoon, which threatened to burn her tongue.
+
+'Well, well,' said she, 'one has to live among a lot of wild beasts
+to see such goings-on. Would any one ever think in a decent village of
+being married by candlelight? It shows what a poor sort these Artauds
+are. When I was in Normandy, I used to see weddings that threw every one
+into commotion for a couple of leagues round. They would feast for three
+whole days. The priest would be there, and the mayor, too; and at the
+marriage of one of my cousins, all the firemen came as well. And didn't
+they have a fine time of it! But to make a priest get up before sunrise
+and marry people before even the chickens have left their roost, why,
+there's no sense in it! If I had been your reverence, I should have
+refused to do it. You haven't had your proper sleep, and you may have
+caught cold in the church. It is that which has upset you. Besides which
+it would be better to marry brute beasts than that Rosalie and her ugly
+lout. That brat of theirs dirtied one of the chairs.--But you ought to
+tell me when you feel poorly, and I could make you something warm.--Eh!
+Monsieur le Cure, speak to me!'
+
+He answered, in a feeble voice, that he was quite well, and only needed
+a little fresh air. He had just leant against one of the mulberry-trees,
+and was breathing rather quickly, as if faint.
+
+'Oh! all right,' went on La Teuse, 'do just as you like. Go on marrying
+people when you haven't the strength for it, and when you know very
+well that it's bound to upset you. I knew how it would be; I told you so
+yesterday. And if you took my advice, you wouldn't stay where you are.
+The smell of the yard is bad for you. It is frightful just now. I can't
+imagine what Mademoiselle Desiree can be stirring about there. She's
+singing away, and doesn't seem to mind it at all. Ah! that reminds me
+of something I want to tell you. You know that I did all I could to keep
+her from taking the cow to Beage; but she's like you, obstinate, and
+will go her own way. Fortunately, however, for her, she's none the worse
+for it. She delights to be amongst the animals and their young ones.
+But come now, your reverence, do be reasonable. Let me take you to your
+room. You must lie down and rest a little. What, you don't want to!
+Well, then, so much the worse for you, if you suffer! Besides, it's
+absurd to keep one's worries locked up in one's heart till they stifle
+one.'
+
+Then, in her indignation, she hastily swallowed a big spoonful of soup
+at the risk of burning her throat. She rattled the handle of the spoon
+against the bowl, muttering and grumbling to herself.
+
+'There never was such a man,' said she. 'He would die rather than say
+a word. But it's all very well for him to keep silent. I know quite
+enough, and it doesn't require much cleverness to guess the rest. Well!
+well! let him keep it to himself. I dare say it is better.'
+
+La Teuse was jealous. Dr. Pascal had had a tremendous fight with her
+in order to get her patient away at the time when he had come to the
+conclusion that the young priest's case would be quite hopeless if he
+should remain at the parsonage. He had then explained to her that the
+sound of the bell would aggravate and intensify Serge's fever, that the
+religious pictures and statuettes scattered about his room would fill
+his brain with hallucinations, and that entirely new surroundings
+were necessary if he was to be restored to health and strength and
+peacefulness of mind. She, however, had vigorously shaken her head, and
+declared that her 'dear child' would nowhere find a better nurse than
+herself. Still, she had ended by yielding. She had even resigned
+herself to seeing him go to the Paradou, though protesting against this
+selection of the doctor's, which astonished her. But she retained
+a strong feeling of hatred for the Paradou; and she was hurt by the
+silence which Abbe Mouret maintained as to the time he had spent there.
+She had frequently laid all sorts of unsuccessful traps to induce him
+to talk of it. That morning, exasperated by his ghastly pallor, and his
+obstinacy in suffering in silence, she ended by waving her spoon about
+and crying:
+
+'You should go back yonder again, Monsieur le Cure, if you were so happy
+there--I dare say there is some one there who would nurse you better
+than I do.'
+
+It was the first time she had ventured upon a direct allusion to her
+suspicions. The blow was so painful to the priest that he could not
+check a slight cry, as he raised his grief-racked countenance. At this
+La Teuse's kindly heart was filled with regret.
+
+'Ah!' she murmured, 'it is all the fault of your uncle Pascal. I told
+him what it would be. But those clever men cling so obstinately to their
+own ideas. Some of them would kill you, just for the sake of rummaging
+in your body afterwards--It made me so angry that I would never speak of
+it to any one. Yes, Monsieur le Cure, you have me to thank that nobody
+knew where you were; I was so angry about it. I thought it abominable!
+When Abbe Guyot, from Saint-Eutrope, who took your place during your
+absence, came to say mass here on Sundays, I told him all sorts of
+stories. I said you had gone to Switzerland. I don't even know where
+Switzerland is.--Well! well! I surely don't want to say anything to pain
+you, but it was certainly over yonder that you got your trouble. Very
+finely they've cured you indeed! It would have been very much better if
+they had left you with me. I shouldn't have thought of trying to turn
+your head.'
+
+Abbe Mouret, whose brow was again lowered, made no attempt to interrupt
+her. La Teuse had seated herself upon the ground a few yards away from
+him, in order if possible to catch his eye. And she went on again in her
+motherly way, delighted at his seeming complacency in listening to her.
+
+'You would never let me tell you about Abbe Caffin. As soon as I began
+to speak of him, you always made me stop. Well, well; Abbe Caffin had
+had his troubles in my part of the world, at Canteleu. And yet he was a
+very holy man, with an irreproachable character. But, you see, he was
+a man of very delicate taste, and liked soft pretty things. Well, there
+was a young party who was always prowling round him, the daughter of a
+miller, whom her parents had sent to a boarding-school. Well, to put it
+shortly, what was likely to happen did happen. When the story got about,
+all the neighbourhood was very indignant with the Abbe. But he managed
+to escape to Rouen, and poured out his grief to the Archbishop there.
+Then he was sent here. The poor man was punished quite enough by being
+made to live in this hole of a place. I heard of the girl afterwards.
+She had married a cattle-dealer, and was very happy.'
+
+La Teuse, delighted at having been allowed to tell her story,
+interpreted the priest's silence as an encouragement to continue her
+gossiping. So she drew a little nearer to him and said:
+
+'He was very friendly with me, was good Monsieur Caffin, and often spoke
+to me of his sin. It won't keep him out of heaven, I'm sure. He can rest
+quite peacefully out there under the turf, for he never harmed any one.
+For my part, I can't understand why people should get so angry with a
+priest when such a thing unhappily befalls him. Of course it's wrong,
+and likely to anger God; but then one can confess and repent, and get
+absolution. Isn't it so, your reverence, that when one truly repents,
+one is saved in spite of one's sins?'
+
+Abbe Mouret slowly raised his head. By a supreme effort he had overcome
+his agony, and though his face was still very pale, he exclaimed in a
+firm voice, 'One should never sin; never! never!'
+
+'Ah! sir,' cried the old servant, 'you are too proud and reserved. It is
+not a nice thing, that pride of yours.--If I were in your place, I would
+not harden myself like that. I would talk of what was troubling me, and
+not try to rend my heart in pieces. You should reconcile yourself to the
+separation gradually. The worry wears off little by little. But, instead
+of that, you won't even allow people's names to be uttered. You forbid
+them to be mentioned. It is as though they were dead. Since you came
+back, I have not dared to tell you the least bit of news. Well, well,
+I am going to speak now, and I shall tell you all I know; because I see
+quite well that it is all this silence that is preying upon your heart.'
+
+He looked at her sternly, and lifted his finger to silence her.
+
+'Yes, yes,' she went on, 'I get news from over yonder, very often
+indeed, and I am going to tell it to you. To begin with, there is some
+one there who is no happier than you are.'
+
+'Silence! Silence!' said Abbe Mouret, summoning all his strength to rise
+and move away.
+
+But La Teuse also rose and barred his way with her bulky figure. She was
+angry, and cried out:
+
+'There, you see, you want to be off already! But you are going to listen
+to me. You know quite well that I am not over fond of the people yonder,
+don't you? If I talk to you about them, it is for your own good. Some
+people say that I am jealous. Well, one day I mean to take you over
+there. You would be with me, and you wouldn't be afraid of any harm
+happening. Will you go?'
+
+He motioned her away from him with his hands, and his face was calm
+again as he said:
+
+'I desire nothing. I wish to know nothing. There is high mass to-morrow.
+You must see that the altar is made ready.'
+
+Then, as he walked away, he added, smiling:
+
+'Don't be uneasy, my good Teuse. I am stronger than you imagine. I shall
+be able to cure myself without any one's assistance.'
+
+With these words he went off, bearing himself sturdily, with his head
+erect, for he had vanquished his feelings. His cassock rustled very
+gently against the borders of thyme. La Teuse, who for a moment had
+remained rooted to the spot where she was standing, sulkily picked up
+her basin and wooden spoon. Then, shrugging her big shoulders again and
+again, she mumbled between her teeth:
+
+'That's all bravado of his. He imagines that he is differently made from
+other men, just because he is a priest. Well, as a matter of fact, he is
+very firm and determined. I have known some who wouldn't have had to be
+wheedled so long. And he is quite capable of crushing his heart, just
+as one might crush a flea. It must be the Almighty who gives him his
+strength.'
+
+As she returned to the kitchen she saw Abbe Mouret standing by the gate
+of the farmyard. Desiree had stopped him there to make him feel a capon
+which she had been fattening for some weeks past. He told her pleasantly
+that it was very heavy, and the big child chuckled with glee.
+
+'Ah! well,' said La Teuse in a fury, 'that bird has got to crush its
+heart too. But then it can't help itself.'
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+Abbe Mouret spent his days at the parsonage. He shunned the long walks
+which he had been wont to take before his illness. The scorched soil of
+Les Artaud, the ardent heat of that valley where the vines could never
+even grow straight, distressed him. On two occasions, in the morning, he
+had attempted to go out and read his breviary as he strolled along the
+road; but he had not gone beyond the village. He had returned home,
+overcome by the perfumes, the heat, the breadth of the landscape. It
+was only in the evening, in the cool twilight air, that he ventured to
+saunter a little in front of the church, on the terrace which led to
+the graveyard. In the afternoons, to fill up his time, and satisfy his
+craving for some kind of occupation, he had imposed upon himself the
+task of pasting paper over the broken panes of the church windows, This
+had kept him for a week mounted on a ladder, arranging his paper panes
+with great exactness, and laying on the paste with the most scrupulous
+care in order to avoid any mess.
+
+La Teuse stood at the foot of the ladder and watched him. And Desiree
+urged that he must not fill up all the windows, or else the sparrows
+would no longer be able to get through. To please her, the priest left
+a pane or two in each window unfilled. Then, having completed these
+repairs, he was seized with the ambition of decorating the church,
+without summoning to his aid either mason or carpenter or painter. He
+would do it all himself. This sort of handiwork would amuse him, he
+said, and help to bring back his strength. Uncle Pascal encouraged him
+every time he called at the parsonage, assuring him that such exercise
+and fatigue were better than all the drugs in the world. And so Abbe
+Mouret began to stop up the holes in the walls with plaster, to drive
+fresh nails into the disjoined altars, and to crush and mix paints,
+in order that he might put a new coating on the pulpit and
+confessional-box. It was quite an event in the district, and folks
+talked of it for a couple of leagues round. Peasants would come and
+stand gazing, with their hands behind their backs, at his reverence's
+work. The Abbe himself, with a blue apron tied round his waist, and his
+hands all soiled with his labour, became absorbed in it, and used it as
+an excuse for no longer going out. He spent his days in the midst of his
+repairs, and was more tranquil than he had been before; almost cheerful,
+indeed, as he forgot the outer world, the trees and the sunshine and the
+warm breezes, which had formerly disturbed him so much.
+
+'Monsieur le Cure is free to do as he pleases, since the parish hasn't
+got to find the money,' said old Bambousse, who came round every evening
+to see how the work was progressing.
+
+Abbe Mouret spent all his savings on it. Some of his decorations,
+indeed, were so awkward that they would have excited many people's
+smiles. The replastering of the stonework soon tired him: so he
+contented himself with patching up the church walls all round to a
+height of some six feet from the ground. La Teuse mixed the plaster.
+When she talked of repairing the parsonage as well, for she was
+continually fearing that it would topple down on their heads, he told
+her that he did not think he could manage it, that a regular workman
+would be necessary; a reply which led to a terrible quarrel between
+them. La Teuse said it was quite ridiculous to go on ornamenting the
+church, where nobody slept, while their bedrooms were in such a crazy
+condition, for she was quite sure they would all be found, one morning,
+crushed to death by the fallen ceilings.
+
+'I shall end by bringing my bed here, and placing it behind the altar,'
+she grumbled. 'I feel quite terrified sometimes at night.'
+
+However, when the plaster was all used up, she said no more about
+repairing the parsonage. The painting which the priest executed quite
+delighted her. It was the chief charm of the improvements. The Abbe,
+who had repaired the woodwork everywhere with bits of boards, took
+particular pleasure in spreading his big brush, dipped in bright yellow
+paint, over all this woodwork. The gentle, up-and-down motion of the
+brush lulled him, left him thoughtless for hours whilst he gazed on the
+oily streaks of paint. When everything was quite yellow, the pulpit,
+the confessional-box, the altar rails, even the clock-case itself, he
+ventured to try his hand at imitation marble work by way of touching up
+the high altar. Then, growing bolder, he painted it all over. Glistening
+with white and yellow and blue, it was pronounced superb. People who had
+not been to mass for fifty years streamed into the church to see it.
+
+And now the paint was dry. All that remained for Abbe Mouret to do was
+to edge the panels with brown beading. So, that afternoon, he set to
+work at it, wishing to get it done by evening; for on the following day,
+as he had reminded La Teuse, there would be high mass. She was there
+ready to arrange the altar. She had already placed on the credence
+the candlesticks and the silver cross, the porcelain vases filled with
+artificial roses, and the laced cloth which was only used on great
+festivals. The beading, however, proved so difficult of execution, that
+it was not completed till late in the evening. It was growing quite dark
+as the Abbe finished his last panel.
+
+'It will be really too beautiful,' said a rough voice from amidst the
+greyish gloom of twilight which was filling the church.
+
+La Teuse, who had knelt down to get a better view of the Abbe's brush as
+it glided along his rule, started with alarm.
+
+'Ah! it's Brother Archangias,' she said, turning round. 'You came in by
+the sacristy then? You gave me quite a turn. Your voice seemed to sound
+from under the floor.'
+
+Abbe Mouret had resumed his work, after greeting the Brother with a
+slight nod. The Brother remained standing there in silence, with his fat
+hands clasped in front of his cassock. Then, shrugging his shoulders,
+as he observed with what scrupulous care the priest sought to make his
+beading perfectly straight, he repeated:
+
+'It will be really too beautiful.'
+
+La Teuse, who knelt near by in ecstasy, started again.
+
+'Dear me!' she said, 'I had quite forgotten you were there. You really
+ought to cough before you speak. You have a voice that comes on one so
+suddenly that one might think it was a voice from the grave.'
+
+She rose up and drew back a little the better to admire the Abbe's work.
+
+'Why too beautiful?' she asked. 'Nothing can be too beautiful when it is
+done for the Almighty. If his reverence had only had some gold, he would
+have done it with gold, I'm sure.'
+
+When the priest had finished, she hastened to change the altar-cloth,
+taking the greatest care not to smudge the beading. Then she arranged
+the cross, the candlesticks, and the vases symmetrically. Abbe Mouret
+had gone to lean against the wooden screen which separated the choir
+from the nave, by the side of Brother Archangias. Not a word passed
+between them. Their eyes were fixed upon the silver crucifix, which, in
+the increasing gloom, still cast some glimmer of light on the feet and
+the left side and the right temple of the big Christ. When La Teuse had
+finished, she came down towards them, triumphantly.
+
+'Doesn't it look lovely?' she asked. 'Just you see what a crowd there
+will be at mass to-morrow! Those heathens will only come to God's house
+when they think He is well-to-do. Now, Monsieur le Cure, we must do as
+much for the Blessed Virgin's altar.'
+
+'Waste of money!' growled Brother Archangias.
+
+But La Teuse flew into a tantrum; and, as Abbe Mouret remained silent,
+she led them both before the altar of the Virgin, pushing them and
+dragging them by their cassocks.
+
+'Just look at it,' said she; 'it is too shabby for anything, now that
+the high altar is so smart. It looks as though it had never been painted
+at all. However much I may rub it of a morning, the dust sticks to it.
+It is quite black; it is filthy. Do you know what people will say about
+you, your reverence? They will say that you care nothing for the Blessed
+Virgin; that's what they'll say.'
+
+'Well, what of it?' queried Brother Archangias.
+
+La Teuse looked at him, half suffocated by indignation.
+
+'What of it? It would be sinful, of course,' she muttered. 'This altar
+is like a neglected tomb in a graveyard. If it were not for me, the
+spiders would spin their webs across it, and moss would soon grow over
+it. From time to time, when I can spare a bunch of flowers, I give it to
+the Virgin. All the flowers in our garden used to be for her once.'
+
+She had mounted the altar steps, and she took up two withered bunches of
+flowers, which had been left there, forgotten.
+
+'See! it is just as it is in the graveyards,' she said, throwing the
+flowers at Abbe Mouret's feet.
+
+He picked them up, without replying. It was quite dark now, and Brother
+Archangias stumbled about amongst the chairs and nearly fell. He growled
+and muttered some angry words, in which the names of Jesus and Mary
+recurred. When La Teuse, who had gone for a lamp, returned into the
+church, she asked the priest:
+
+'So I can put the brushes and pots away in the attic, then?'
+
+'Yes,' he answered. 'I have finished. We will see about the rest later
+on.'
+
+She walked away in front of them, carrying all the things with her, and
+keeping silence, lest she should say too much. And as Abbe Mouret had
+kept the withered bunches of flowers in his hand, Brother Archangias
+said to him, as they passed the farmyard: 'Throw those things away.'
+
+The Abbe took a few steps more, with downcast head; and then over the
+palings he flung the flowers upon a manure-heap.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+The Brother, who had already had his own meal, seated himself astride a
+chair, while the priest dined. Since Serge's return to Les Artaud, the
+Brother had thus spent most of his evenings at the parsonage; but never
+before had he imposed his presence upon the other in so rough a fashion.
+He stamped on the tiled floor with his heavy boots, his voice thundered
+and he smote the furniture, whilst he related how he had whipped some of
+his pupils that morning, or expounded his moral principles in terms
+as stern, as uncompromising as bludgeon-blows. Then feeling bored, he
+suggested that he and La Teuse should have a game at cards. They had
+endless bouts of 'Beggar-my-neighbour' together, that being the only
+game which La Teuse had ever been able to learn. Abbe Mouret would
+smilingly glance at the first few cards flung on the table and would
+then gradually sink into reverie, remaining for hours forgetful of his
+self-restraint, oblivious of his surroundings, beneath the suspicious
+glances of Brother Archangias.
+
+That evening La Teuse felt so cross that she had talked of going to bed
+as soon as the cloth was removed. The Brother, however, wanted his
+game of cards. So he caught hold of her shoulders and sat her down, so
+roughly that the chair creaked beneath her. And forthwith he began to
+shuffle the cards. Desiree, who hated him, had gone off carrying her
+dessert, which she generally took upstairs with her every evening to eat
+in bed.
+
+'I want the red cards,' said La Teuse.
+
+Then the struggle began. The old woman at first won some of the
+Brother's best cards. But before long two aces fell together on the
+table.
+
+'Here's a battle!' she cried, wild with excitement.
+
+She threw down a nine, which rather alarmed her, but as the Brother,
+in his turn, only put down a seven, she picked up the cards with a
+triumphant air. At the end of half an hour, however, she had only gained
+two aces, so that the chances remained fairly equal. And a quarter of
+an hour later she lost an ace. The knaves and kings and queens were
+perpetually coming and going as the battle furiously progressed.
+
+'It's a splendid game, eh?' said Brother Archangias, turning towards
+Abbe Mouret.
+
+But when he saw him sitting there, so absorbed in his reverie, with such
+a gentle smile playing unconsciously round his lips, he roughly raised
+his voice:
+
+'Why, Monsieur le Cure, you are not paying any attention to us! It isn't
+polite of you. We are only playing on your account. We were trying
+to amuse you. Come and watch the game. It would do you more good than
+dozing and dreaming away there. Where were you just now?'
+
+The priest started. He said nothing, but with quivering eyelids tried to
+force himself to look at the game. The play went on vigorously. La Teuse
+won her ace back, and then lost it again. On some evenings they would
+fight in this way over the aces for quite four hours, and often they
+would go off to bed, angry at having failed to bring the contest to a
+decisive issue.
+
+'But, dear me! I've only just remembered it!' suddenly cried La Teuse,
+who greatly feared that she was going to be beaten. 'His reverence has
+to go out to-night. He promised Fortune and Rosalie that he would go to
+bless their room, according to the custom. Make haste, Monsieur le Cure!
+The Brother will go with you.'
+
+Abbe Mouret had already risen from his chair, and was looking for
+his hat. But Brother Archangias, still holding his cards, flew into a
+tantrum: 'Oh! don't bother about it,' said he. 'What does it want to
+be blessed for that pigsty of theirs? It is a custom that you should do
+away with. I can't see any sense in it. Stay here and let us finish the
+game. That is much the best thing to do.'
+
+'No,' said the priest, 'I promised to go. Those good people might feel
+hurt if I didn't. You stay here and play your game out while you are
+waiting for me.'
+
+La Teuse glanced uneasily at Brother Archangias.
+
+'Well, yes, I will stay here,' cried the Brother. 'It is really too
+absurd.'
+
+But before Abbe Mouret could open the door, he flung his cards on the
+table and rose to follow him. Then half turning back he called to La
+Teuse:
+
+'I should have won. Leave the cards as they are, and we will play the
+game out to-morrow.'
+
+'Oh! they are all mixed now,' answered the old servant, who had lost no
+time in shuffling them together. 'Did you suppose that I was going to
+put your hand away under a glass case? And, besides, I might very well
+have won, for I still had an ace left.'
+
+A few strides brought Brother Archangias up with Abbe Mouret, who was
+walking down the narrow path that led to the village. The Brother had
+undertaken the task of keeping watch over the Abbe's movements. He
+incessantly played the spy upon him, accompanying him everywhere, or,
+if he could not go in person, sending some school urchin to follow
+him. With that terrible laugh of his, he was wont to remark that he was
+'God's gendarme.'
+
+And, in truth, the Abbe seemed like a culprit ever guarded by the black
+shadow of the Brother's cassock; a culprit to be treated distrustfully,
+since in his weakness he might well lapse into fresh crime were he left
+free from surveillance for a single moment. Thus he was watched and
+guarded with all the spiteful eagerness that some jealous old maid
+might have displayed, the overreaching zeal of a gaoler who might carry
+precautions so far as to exclude even such rays of light as might creep
+through the chinks of the prison-house. Brother Archangias was always on
+the watch to keep out the sunlight, to prevent even a whiff of air from
+entering, to shut up his prison so completely that nothing from outside
+could gain access to it. He noted the Abbe's slightest fits of weakness,
+and by his glance divined his tender thoughts, which with a word he
+pitilessly crushed, as though they were poisonous vermin. The priest's
+intervals of silence, his smiles, the paling of his brow, the faint
+quivering of his limbs, were all noted by the Brother. But he never
+spoke openly of the transgression. His presence alone was a sufficient
+reproach. The manner in which he uttered certain words imparted to them
+all the sting of a whip stroke. With a mere gesture he expressed his
+utter disgust for the priest's sin. Like one of those betrayed husbands
+who enjoy torturing their wives with cruel allusions, he contented
+himself with recalling the scene at the Paradou, in an indirect fashion,
+by some word or phrase which sufficed to annihilate the Abbe, whenever
+the latter's flesh rebelled.
+
+It was nearly ten o'clock and most of the villagers of Les Artaud had
+retired to rest. But from a brightly lighted house at the far end, near
+the mill, there still came sounds of merriment. While keeping the best
+rooms for his own use, old Bambousse had given a corner of his house to
+his daughter and son-in-law. They were all assembled there, drinking a
+last glass, while waiting for the priest.
+
+'They are drunk,' growled Brother Archangias. 'Don't you hear the row
+they are making?'
+
+Abbe Mouret made no reply. It was a lovely night and all looked bluish
+in the moonlight, which lent to the distant part of the valley the
+aspect of a sleeping lake. The priest slackened his pace that he might
+the more fully enjoy the charm of that soft radiance, and now and then
+he even stopped as he came upon some expanse of light, experiencing the
+delightful quiver which the proximity of fresh water brings one on a
+hot day. But the Brother continued striding along, grumbling and calling
+him.
+
+'Come along; come along! It isn't good to loiter out of doors at this
+time of night. You would be much better in bed.'
+
+All at once, however, just as they were entering the village, Archangias
+himself stopped short in the middle of the road. He was looking towards
+the heights, where the white lines of the roads vanished amidst black
+patches of pine-woods, and he growled to himself, like a dog that scents
+danger.
+
+'Who can be coming down so late?' he muttered.
+
+But the priest, who neither saw nor heard anything, was now, in his
+turn, anxious to press on.
+
+'Stay! stay! there he is,' eagerly added Brother Archangias. 'He has
+just turned the corner. See! he is in the moonlight now. One can see him
+plainly. It is a tall man, with a stick.'
+
+Then, after a moment's silence, he resumed, in a voice husky with fury:
+'It is he, that beggar! I felt sure it was!'
+
+Thereupon, the new-comer having now reached the bottom of the hill, Abbe
+Mouret saw that it was Jeanbernat. In spite of his eighty years, the old
+man set his feet down with such force, that his heavy, nailed boots
+sent sparks flying from the flints on the road. And he walked along as
+upright as an oak, without the aid of his stick, which he carried across
+his shoulder like a musket.
+
+'Ah! the villain!' stammered the Brother, still standing motionless.
+'May the fiend light all the blazes of hell under his feet!'
+
+The priest, who felt greatly disturbed, and despaired of inducing his
+companion to come on, turned round to continue his journey, hoping that,
+by a quick walk to the Bambousses' house, he might yet manage to avoid
+Jeanbernat. But he had not taken five strides before he heard the
+bantering voice of the old man close behind him.
+
+'Hie! Cure! wait for me. Are you afraid of me?'
+
+And as Abbe Mouret stopped, he came up and continued: 'Ah! those
+cassocks of yours are tiresome things, aren't they? They prevent your
+getting along too quickly. It's such a fine clear night, too, that one
+can recognise you by your gown a long way off. When I was right at the
+top of the hill, I said to myself, "Surely that is the little priest
+down yonder." Oh! yes, I still have very good eyes.... Well, so you
+never come to see us now?'
+
+'I have had so much to do,' murmured the priest, who had turned very
+pale.
+
+'Well, well, every one's free to please himself. If I've mentioned the
+matter, it's only because I want you to know that I don't bear you any
+grudge for being a priest. We wouldn't even talk about your religion,
+it's all one and the same to me. But the little one thinks that it's I
+who prevents your coming. I said to her, "The priest is an idiot," and
+I think so, indeed. Did I try to eat you during your illness? Why, I
+didn't even go upstairs to see you. Every one's free, you know.'
+
+He spoke on in the most unconcerned manner, pretending that he did not
+notice the presence of Brother Archangias; but as the latter suddenly
+broke into an angry grunt, he added, 'Why, Cure, so you bring your pig
+out with you?'
+
+'Take care, you bandit!' hissed the Brother, clenching his fists.
+
+Jeanbernat, whose stick was still raised, then pretended to recognise
+him.
+
+'Hands off!' he cried. 'Ah! it's you, you soul-saver! I ought to have
+known you by your smell. We have a little account to settle together,
+remember. I have sworn to cut off your ears in the middle of your
+school. It will amuse the children you are poisoning.'
+
+The Brother fell back before the raised staff, a flood of abuse rising
+to his lips; but he began to stammer and went on disjointedly:
+
+'I will set the gendarmes after you, scoundrel! You spat on the church;
+I saw you. You give the plague to the poor people who merely pass your
+door. At Saint-Eutrope you made a girl die by forcing her to chew a
+consecrated wafer which you had stolen. At Beage you went and dug up the
+bodies of little dead children and carried them away on your back. You
+are an old sorcerer! Everybody knows it, you scoundrel! You are the
+disgrace of the district. Whoever strangles you will gain heaven for the
+deed.'
+
+The old man listened with a sneer, twirling the while his staff between
+his fingers. And between the Brother's successive insults he ejaculated
+in an undertone:
+
+'Go on, go on; relieve yourself, you viper. I'll break your back for you
+by-and-by.'
+
+Abbe Mouret tried to interfere, but Brother Archangias pushed him away,
+exclaiming: 'You are led by him yourself! Didn't he make you trample
+upon the cross? Deny it, if you dare!' Then again, turning to
+Jeanbernat, he yelled: 'Ah! Satan, you must have chuckled and no mistake
+when you held a priest in your grasp! May Heaven curse those who abetted
+you in that sacrilege! What was it you did, at night, while he slept?
+You came and moistened his tonsure with your saliva, eh? so that his
+hair might grow more quickly. And then you breathed upon his chin and
+his cheeks that his beard might grow a hand's breadth in a single night.
+And you rubbed all your philters into his body, and breathed into his
+mouth the lasciviousness of a dog. You turned him into a brute-beast,
+Satan.'
+
+'He's idiotic,' said Jeanbernat, resting his stick on his shoulder. 'He
+quite bores me.'
+
+The Brother, however, growing bolder, thrust his fists under the old
+man's nose.
+
+'And that drab of yours!' he cried, 'you can't deny that you set her on
+to damn the priest.'
+
+Then he suddenly sprang backwards, with a shriek, for the old man,
+swinging his stick with all his strength, had just broken it over his
+back. Retreating yet a little further, Archangias picked from a heap of
+stones beside the road a piece of flint twice the size of a man's fist,
+and threw it at Jeanbernat. It would surely have split the other's
+forehead open if he had not bent down. He, however, now likewise crossed
+over to a heap of stones, sheltered himself behind it, and provided
+himself with missiles; and from one heap to the other a terrible combat
+began, with a perfect hail of flints. The moon now shone very brightly,
+and their dark shadows fell distinctly on the ground.
+
+'Yes, yes, you set that hussy on to ruin him!' repeated the Brother,
+wild with rage. 'Ah! you are astonished that I know all about it! You
+hope for some monstrous result from it all. Every morning you make the
+thirteen signs of hell over that minx of yours! You would like her to
+become the mother of Antichrist. You long for Antichrist, you villain!
+But may this stone blind you!'
+
+'And may this one bung your mouth up!' retorted Jeanbernat, who was
+now quite calm again. 'Is he cracked, the silly fellow, with all those
+stories of his?... Shall I have to break your head for you, before I can
+get on my way? Is it your catechism that has turned your brain?'
+
+'Catechism, indeed! Do you know what catechism is taught to accursed
+ones like you? Ah! I will show you how to make the sign of the
+cross.--This stone is for the Father, and this for the Son, and this
+for the Holy Ghost. Ah! you are still standing. Wait a bit, wait a
+bit. Amen!' Then he threw a handful of small pebbles like a volley of
+grape-shot. Jeanbernat, who was struck upon the shoulder, dropped the
+stones he was holding, and quietly stepped forwards, while Brother
+Archangias picked two fresh handfuls from the heap, blurting out:
+
+I am going to exterminate you. It is God who wills it. God is acting
+through my arm.'
+
+'Will you be quiet!' said the old man, grasping him by the nape of the
+neck.
+
+Then came a short struggle amidst the dust of the road, all bluish with
+moonlight. The Brother, finding himself the weaker of the two, tried
+to bite. But Jeanbernat's sinewy limbs were like coils of rope which
+pinioned him so tightly that he could almost feel them cutting into
+his flesh. He panted and ceased to struggle, meditating some act of
+treachery.
+
+The old man, having got the other under him, scoffingly exclaimed: 'I
+have a good mind to break one of your arms. You see that it isn't you
+who are the stronger, but that it is I who am exterminating you.... Now
+I'm going to cut your ears off. You have tried my endurance too far.'
+
+Jeanbernat calmly drew his knife from his pocket. But Abbe Mouret, who
+had several times attempted to part the combatants, now raised such
+strenuous opposition to the old man's design that he consented to defer
+the operation till another time.
+
+'You are acting foolishly, Cure,' said he. 'It would do this scoundrel
+good to be well bled; but, since it seems to displease you, I'll wait a
+little longer; I shall be meeting him again in some quiet corner.'
+
+And as the Brother broke out into a growl, Jeanbernat cried
+threateningly: 'If you don't keep still I will cut your ears off at
+once!'
+
+'But you are sitting on his chest,' said the priest, 'get up and let him
+breathe.'
+
+'No, no; he would begin his tomfoolery again. I will give him his
+liberty when I go away, but not before.... Well, I was telling you,
+Cure, when this good-for-nothing interrupted us, that you would be very
+welcome yonder. The little one is mistress, you know; I don't attempt
+to interfere with her any more than I do with my salad-plants. There are
+only fools like this croaker here who see any harm in it. Where did you
+see anything wrong, scoundrel? It was yourself who imagined it, villain
+that you are!'
+
+And thereupon he gave the Brother another shaking. 'Let him get up,'
+begged Abbe Mouret.
+
+'By-and-by. The little one has not been well for a long time. I did not
+notice anything myself, but she told me; and now I am on my way to tell
+your uncle Pascal, at Plassans. I like the night for walking; it is
+quiet, and, as a rule, one isn't delayed by meeting people.... Yes, yes,
+the little one is quite ailing.'
+
+The priest could not find a word to say. He staggered, and his head
+sank.
+
+'It made her so happy to look after you,' continued the old man. 'While
+I smoked my pipe I used to hear her laugh. That was quite sufficient for
+me. Girls are like the hawthorns; when they break out into blossom, they
+do all they can. Well, now, you will come, if your heart prompts you to
+it. I am sure it would please the little one. Good night, Cure.'
+
+He got up slowly, keeping a firm grasp of the Brother's wrists, to
+guard against any treacherous attack. Then he proceeded on his way, with
+swinging strides, without once turning his head. The Brother silently
+crept to the heap of stones, and waited till the old man was some
+distance off. Then, with both hands, and with mad violence, he again
+began flinging stones, but they fell harmlessly upon the dusty road.
+Jeanbernat did not condescend to notice them, but went his way, upright
+like a tree, through the clear night.
+
+'The accursed one!--Satan carries him on!' shrieked Brother Archangias,
+as he hurled his last stone. 'An old scoundrel, that the least touch
+ought to upset! But he is baked in hell's fire. I smelt his claws.'
+
+The Brother stamped with impotent rage on the scattered flints. Then he
+suddenly attacked Abbe Mouret. 'It was all your fault,' he cried; 'you
+ought to have helped me, and, between us, we could have strangled him.'
+
+Meantime, at the other end of the village, the uproar in the Bambousses'
+house had become greater than ever. The rhythmic tapping of glasses on
+a table could be distinctly heard. The priest resumed his walk without
+raising his head, making his way towards the flood of bright light that
+streamed out of the window like the flare of a fire of vine-cuttings.
+The Brother followed him gloomily; his cassock soiled with dust, and one
+of his cheeks bleeding from a stone-cut. And, after a short interval of
+silence, he asked, in his harsh voice: 'Shall you go?'
+
+Then as Abbe Mouret did not answer, he went on: 'Take care! You are
+lapsing into sin again. It was sufficient for that man to pass by to
+send a thrill through your whole body. I saw you by the light of the
+moon looking as pale as a girl. Take care! take care! Do you hear me?
+Another time God will not pardon you--you will sink into the lowest
+abyss! Ah! wretched piece of clay that you are, filth is mastering you!'
+
+Thereupon, the priest at last raised his head. Big tears were streaming
+from his eyes, and it was in gentle heartbroken accents that he spoke:
+'Why do you speak to me like that?--You are always with me, and you know
+my ceaseless struggles. Do not doubt me, leave me strength to master
+myself.'
+
+Those simple words, bathed with silent tears, fell on the night air
+with such an expression of superhuman suffering, that even Brother
+Archangias, in spite of all his harshness, felt touched. He made no
+reply, but shook his dusty cassock, and wiped his bleeding cheek. When
+they reached the Bambousses' house, he refused to go inside. He seated
+himself, a few yards away, on the body of an overturned cart, where he
+waited for the Abbe with dog-like patience.
+
+'Ah! here is Monsieur le Cure!' cried all the company of Bambousses and
+Brichets as Serge entered.
+
+They filled their glasses once more. Abbe Mouret was compelled to take
+one, too. There had been no regular wedding-feast; but, in the evening,
+after dinner, a ten-gallon 'Dame Jane' had been placed upon the table,
+and they were making it their business to empty it before going to bed.
+There were ten of them, and old Bambousse was already with one hand
+tilting over the jar whence only a thread of red liquor now flowed.
+Rosalie, in a very sportive frame of mind, was dipping her baby's chin
+into her glass, while big Fortune showed off his strength by lifting
+up the chairs with his teeth. All the company passed into the bedroom.
+Custom required that the priest should there drink the glass of wine
+which had been poured out for him. It brought good luck, and prevented
+quarrels in the household. In Monsieur Caffin's time, it had always
+been a very merry ceremony, for the old priest loved a joke. He had
+even gained a reputation for the skilful way in which he could drain his
+glass, without leaving a single drop at the bottom of it; and the Artaud
+women pretended that every drop undrunk meant a year's less love for the
+newly married pair. But with Abbe Mouret they dare not joke so freely.
+However, he drank his wine at one gulp, which seemed to greatly please
+old Bambousse. Mother Brichet looked at the bottom of the glass and
+saw but a drop or two of the liquid remaining there. Then, after a few
+jokes, they all returned to the living room, where Vincent and Catherine
+had remained by themselves. Vincent, standing upon a chair, was clasping
+the huge jar in his arms, and draining the last drops of wine into
+Catherine's open mouth.
+
+'We are much obliged to you, Monsieur le Cure,' said old Bambousse, as
+he escorted the priest to the door. 'Well, they're married now, so I
+suppose you are satisfied. And they are not likely to complain, I'm
+sure.... Good night, sleep well, your reverence.'
+
+Brother Archangias had slowly risen from his seat on the old cart.
+
+'May the devil pile hot coals over them, and roast them!' he murmured.
+
+Then without again opening his lips he accompanied Abbe Mouret to the
+parsonage. And he waited outside till the door was closed. Even then he
+did not go off without twice looking round to make sure that the
+Abbe was not coming out again. As for the priest, when he reached his
+bedroom, he threw himself in his clothes upon his bed, clasping his
+hands to his ears, and pressing his face to the pillow, in order that he
+might shut out all sound and sight. And thus stilling his senses he fell
+into death-like slumber.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+The next day was Sunday. As the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy
+Cross fell on a high mass day, Abbe Mouret desired to celebrate the
+festival with especial solemnity. He was now full of extraordinary
+devotion for the Cross, and had replaced the image of the Immaculate
+Conception in his bedroom by a large crucifix of black wood, before
+which he spent long hours in worship. To exalt the Cross, to plant it
+before him, above all else, in a halo of glory, as the one object of
+his life, gave him the strength he needed to suffer and to struggle. He
+sometimes dreamed of hanging there himself, in Jesus's place, his head
+crowned with thorns, nails driven through his hands and feet, and
+his side rent by spears. What a coward he must be to complain of an
+imaginary wound, when God bled there from His whole body, and yet
+preserved on His lips the blessed smile of the Redemption! And however
+unworthy it might be, he offered up his wound as a sacrifice, ended by
+falling into ecstasy, and believing that blood did really stream from
+his brow and side and limbs. Those were hours of relief, for he fancied
+that all the impurity within him flowed forth from his wounds. And he
+then usually drew himself up with the heroism of a martyr, and longed to
+be called upon to suffer the most frightful tortures, in order that he
+might bear them without a quiver of the flesh.
+
+At early dawn that day he knelt before the crucifix, and grace came upon
+him abundantly as dew. He made no effort, he simply fell upon his knees,
+to receive it in his heart, to be permeated with it to the marrow of his
+bones in sweetest and most refreshing fulness. On the previous day he
+had prayed for grace in agony, and it had not come. At times it long
+remained deaf to his entreaties, and then, when he simply clasped his
+hands, in quite childlike fashion, it flowed down to succour him.
+It came upon him that morning like a benediction, bringing perfect
+serenity, absolute trusting faith. He forgot his anguish of the previous
+days, and surrendered himself wholly to the triumphant joy of the Cross.
+He seemed to be cased in such impenetrable armour that the world's most
+deadly blows would glide off from it harmlessly. When he came down from
+his bedroom, he stepped along with an air of serenity and victory. La
+Teuse was astonished, and went to find Desiree, that he might kiss her;
+and both of them clapped their hands, and said that they had not seen
+him looking so well for the last six months.
+
+But it was in the church, at high mass, that the priest felt that he
+had really recovered divine grace. It was a long time since he had
+approached the altar with such loving emotion; and he had to make a
+great effort to restrain himself from weeping whilst he remained with
+his lips pressed to the altar-cloth. It was a solemn high mass. The
+local rural guard, an uncle of Rosalie, chanted in a deep bass voice
+which rumbled through the low nave like a hoarse organ. Vincent, robed
+in a surplice much too large for him, which had formerly belonged to
+Abbe Caffin, carried an old silver censer, and was vastly amused by the
+tinkling of its chains; he swung it to a great height, so as to produce
+copious clouds of smoke, and glanced behind him every now and then to
+see if he had succeeded in making any one cough. The church was almost
+full, for everybody wanted to see his reverence's painting. Peasant
+women laughed with pleasure because the place smelt so nice, while the
+men, standing under the gallery, jerked their heads approvingly at each
+deeper and deeper note that came from the rural guard. Filtering through
+the paper window panes the full morning sun lighted up the brightly
+painted walls, on which the women's caps cast shadows resembling huge
+butterflies. The artificial flowers, with which the altar was decorated,
+almost seemed to possess the moist freshness of natural ones newly
+gathered; and when the priest turned round to bless the congregation, he
+felt even stronger emotion than before, as he saw his church so clean,
+so full, and so steeped in music and incense and light.
+
+After the offertory, however, a buzzing murmur sped through the peasant
+women. Vincent inquisitively turned his head, and in doing so, almost
+let the charcoal in his censer fall upon the priest's chasuble. And,
+wishing to excuse himself, as he saw the Abbe looking at him with an
+expression of reproof, he murmured: 'It is your reverence's uncle, who
+has just come in.'
+
+At the end of the church, standing beside one of the slender wooden
+pillars that supported the gallery, Abbe Mouret then perceived Doctor
+Pascal. The doctor was not wearing his usual cheerful and slightly
+scoffing expression. Hat in hand, he stood there looking very grave, and
+followed the service with evident impatience. The sight of the priest
+at the altar, his solemn demeanour, his slow gestures, and the perfect
+serenity of his countenance, appeared to gradually increase his
+irritation. He could not stay there till the end of the mass, but left
+the church, and walked up and down beside his horse and gig, which he
+had secured to one of the parsonage shutters.
+
+'Will that nephew of mine never have finished censing himself?' he asked
+of La Teuse, who was just coming out of the vestry.
+
+'It is all over,' she replied. 'Won't you come into the drawing-room?
+His reverence is unrobing. He knows you are here.'
+
+'Well, unless he were blind, he couldn't very well help it,' growled the
+doctor, as he followed La Teuse into the cold-looking, stiffly furnished
+chamber, which she pompously called the drawing-room. Here for a few
+minutes he paced up and down. The gloomy coldness of his surroundings
+seemed to increase his irritation. As he strode about, flourishing
+a stick he carried, he kept on striking the well-worn chair-seats of
+horsehair which sounded hard and dead as stone. Then, tired of walking,
+he took his stand in front of the mantelpiece, in the centre of which a
+gaudily painted image of Saint Joseph occupied the place of a clock.
+
+'Ah! here he comes at last,' he said, as he heard the door opening.
+And stepping towards the Abbe he went on: 'Do you know that you made me
+listen to half a mass? It is a very long time since that happened to me.
+But I was bent on seeing you to-day. I have something to say to you.'
+
+Then he stopped, and looked at the priest with an expression of
+surprise. Silence fell. 'You at all events are quite well,' he resumed,
+in a different voice.
+
+'Yes, I am very much better than I was,' replied Abbe Mouret, with a
+smile. 'I did not expect you before Thursday. Sunday isn't your day for
+coming. Is there something you want to tell me?'
+
+Uncle Pascal did not give an immediate answer. He went on looking at the
+Abbe. The latter was still fresh from the influence of the church and
+the mass. His hair was fragrant with the perfume of the incense, and in
+his eyes shone all the joy of the Cross. His uncle jogged his head, as
+he noticed that expression of triumphant peace.
+
+'I have come from the Paradou,' he said, abruptly. 'Jeanbernat came to
+fetch me there. I have seen Albine, and she disquiets me. She needs much
+careful treatment.'
+
+He kept his eyes fixed upon the priest as he spoke, but he did not
+detect so much as a quiver of Serge's eyelids.
+
+'She took great care of you, you know,' he added, more roughly. 'Without
+her, my boy, you might now be in one of the cells at Les Tulettes, with
+a strait waistcoat on.... Well, I promised that you would go to see her.
+I will take you with me. It will be a farewell meeting. She is anxious
+to go away.'
+
+'I can do nothing more than pray for the person of whom you speak,' said
+Abbe Mouret, softly.
+
+And as the doctor, losing his temper, brought his stick down heavily
+upon the couch, he added calmly, but in a firm voice:
+
+'I am a priest, and can only help with prayers.'
+
+'Ah, well! Yes, you are right,' said Uncle Pascal, dropping down into
+an armchair, 'it is I who am an old fool. Yes, I wept like a child, as
+I came here alone in my gig. That is what comes of living amongst books.
+One learns a lot from them, but one makes a fool of oneself in the
+world. How could I guess that it would all turn out so badly?'
+
+He rose from his chair and began to walk about again, looking
+exceedingly troubled.
+
+'But yes, but yes, I ought to have guessed. It was all quite natural.
+Though with one in your position, it was bound to be abominable! You
+are not as other men. But listen to me, I assure you that otherwise you
+would never have recovered. It was she alone, with the atmosphere she
+set round you, who saved you from madness. There is no need for me to
+tell you what a state you were in. It is one of my most wonderful cures.
+But I can't take any pride, any pleasure in it, for now the poor girl is
+dying of it!'
+
+Abbe Mouret remained there erect, perfectly calm, his face reflecting
+all the quiet serenity of a martyr whom nothing that man might do could
+disturb.
+
+'God will take mercy upon her,' he said.
+
+'God! God!' muttered the doctor below his breath. 'Ah! He would do
+better not to interfere. We might manage matters if we were left
+to ourselves.' Then, raising his voice, he added: 'I thought I had
+considered everything carefully, that is the most wonderful part of it.
+Oh! what a fool I was! You would stay there, I thought, for a month to
+recover your strength. The shade of the trees, the cheerful chatter of
+the girl, all the youthfulness about you would quickly bring you round.
+And then you, on your side, it seemed to me, would do something to
+reclaim the poor child from her wild ways; you would civilise her, and,
+between us, we should turn her into a young lady, for whom we should,
+by-and-by, find a suitable husband. It seemed such a perfect scheme. And
+then how was I to guess that old philosophising Jeanbernat would never
+stir an inch from his lettuce-beds? Well! well! I myself never left
+my own laboratory. I had such pressing work there.... And it is all my
+fault! Ah! I am a stupid bungler!'
+
+He was choking, and wished to go off. And he began to look about him for
+his hat, though, all the while, he had it on his head.
+
+'Good-bye!' he stammered; 'I am going. So you won't come? Do, now--for
+my sake! You see how miserable, how upset I am. I swear to you that she
+shall go away immediately afterwards. That is all settled. My gig is
+here; you might be back in an hour. Come, do come, I beg you.'
+
+The priest made a sweeping gesture; such a gesture as the doctor had
+seen him make before the altar.
+
+'No,' he said, 'I cannot.'
+
+Then, as he accompanied his uncle out of the room, he added:
+
+'Tell her to fall on her knees and pray to God. God will hear her as He
+heard me, and He will comfort her as He has comforted me. There is no
+other means of salvation.'
+
+The doctor looked him full in the face, and shrugged his shoulders.
+
+'Good-bye, then,' he repeated. 'You are quite well now, and have no
+further need of me.'
+
+But, as he was unfastening his horse, Desiree, who had heard his voice,
+came running up. She was extremely attached to her uncle. When she had
+been younger he had been wont to listen to her childish prattle for
+hours without showing the least sign of weariness. And, even now, he
+did his best to spoil her, and manifested the greatest interest in her
+farmyard, often spending a whole afternoon with her amongst her fowls
+and ducks, and smiling at her with his bright eyes. He seemed to
+consider her superior to other girls. And so she now flung herself round
+his neck, in an impulse of affection, and cried:
+
+'Aren't you going to stay and have some lunch with us?'
+
+But having kissed her, he said he could not remain, and unfastened her
+arms from his neck with a somewhat pettish air. She laughed however, and
+again clasped her arms round him.
+
+'Oh! but you must,' she persisted. 'I have some eggs that have only just
+been laid. I have been looking in the nests, and there are fourteen eggs
+this morning. And, if you will stay, we can have a fowl, the white
+one, that is always quarrelling with the others. When you were here on
+Thursday, you know, it pecked the big spotted hen's eye out.'
+
+But her uncle persisted in his refusal. He was irritated to find that he
+could not unfasten the knot in which he had tied his reins. And then she
+began to skip round him, clapping her hands and repeating in a sing-song
+voice: 'Yes! yes! you'll stay, and we will eat it up, we'll eat it up!'
+
+Her uncle could no longer resist her blandishments; he raised his head
+and smiled at her. She seemed so full of life and health and sincerity;
+her gaiety was as frank and natural as the sheet of sunlight which was
+gilding her bare arms.
+
+'You big silly!' he said; and clasping her by the wrists as she
+continued skipping gleefully about him, he went on: 'No, dear; not
+to-day. I have to go to see a poor girl who is ill. But I will come some
+other morning. I promise you faithfully.'
+
+'When? when?' she persisted. 'On Thursday? The cow is in calf, you know,
+and she hasn't seemed at all well these last two days. You are a doctor,
+and you ought to be able to give her something to do her good.'
+
+Abbe Mouret, who had calmly remained there, could not restrain a slight
+laugh.
+
+The doctor gaily got into his gig and exclaimed: 'All right, my dear,
+I will attend to your cow. Come and let me kiss you. Ah! how nice
+and healthy you are! And you are worth more than all the others put
+together. Ah! if every one was like my big silly, this earth would be
+too beautiful!'
+
+He set his horse off with a cluck of his tongue, and continued talking
+to himself as the gig rattled down the hill.
+
+'Yes, yes! there should be nothing but animals. Ah! if they were mere
+animals, how happy and gay and strong they would all be! It has gone
+well with the girl, who is as happy as her cow; but it has gone badly
+with the lad, who is in torture beneath his cassock. A drop too much
+blood, a little too much nerve, and one's whole life is wrecked! ...
+They are true Rougons and true Macquarts those children there! The
+tail-end of the stock--its final degeneracy.'
+
+Then, urging on his horse, he drove at a trot up the hill that led to
+the Paradou.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Sunday was a busy day for Abbe Mouret. He had to think of vespers, which
+he generally said to empty seats, for even mother Brichet did not carry
+her piety so far as to go back to church in the afternoon. Then, at four
+o'clock, Brother Archangias brought the little rogues from his school
+to repeat their catechism to his reverence. This lesson sometimes lasted
+until late. When the children showed themselves quite intractable, La
+Teuse was summoned to frighten them with her broom.
+
+On that particular Sunday, about four o'clock, Desiree found herself
+quite alone in the parsonage. As she felt a little bored, she went to
+gather some food for her rabbits in the churchyard, where there were
+some magnificent poppies, of which rabbits are extremely fond. Dragging
+herself about on her knees between the grave-stones, she gathered
+apronfuls of juicy verdure on which her pets fell greedily.
+
+'Oh! what lovely plantains!' she muttered, stooping before Abbe Caffin's
+tombstone, and delighted with the discovery she had made.
+
+There were, indeed, some magnificent plantains spreading out their broad
+leaves beside the stone. Desiree had just finished filling her apron
+with them when she fancied she heard a strange noise behind her. A
+rustling of branches and a rolling of small pebbles came from the ravine
+which skirted one side of the graveyard, and at the bottom of which
+flowed the Mascle, a stream which descended from the high lands of
+the Paradou. But the ascent here was so rough, so impracticable, that
+Desiree imagined that the noise could only have been made by some lost
+dog or straying goat. She stepped quickly to the edge, and, as she
+looked over, she was amazed to see amidst the brambles a girl who was
+climbing up the rocks with extraordinary agility.
+
+'I will give you a hand,' she said. 'You might easily break your neck
+there.'
+
+The girl, directly she saw she was discovered, started back, as though
+she would rather go down again, but after a moment's hesitation she
+ventured to take the hand that was held out to her.
+
+'Oh! I know who you are,' said Desiree, with a beaming smile, and
+letting her apron fall that she might grasp the girl by the waist. 'You
+once gave me some blackbirds, but they all died, poor little dears. I
+was so sorry about it.--Wait a bit, I know your name, I have heard it
+before. La Teuse often mentions it when Serge isn't there; but she
+told me that I was not to repeat it. Wait a moment, I shall remember it
+directly!'
+
+She tried to recall the name, and grew quite grave in the attempt. Then,
+having succeeded in remembering it, she became gay again, and seemingly
+found great pleasure in dwelling upon its musical sound.
+
+'Albine! Albine!---- What a sweet name it is! At first I used to think
+you must be a tomtit, because I once had a tomtit with a name very like
+yours, though I don't remember exactly what it was.'
+
+Albine did not smile. Her face was very pale, and there was a feverish
+gleam in her eyes. A few drops of blood trickled from her hands. When
+she had recovered her breath, she hastily exclaimed:
+
+No! no! leave it alone. You will only stain your handkerchief. It is
+nothing but a scratch. I didn't want to come by the road, as I should
+have been seen--so I preferred coming along the bed of the torrent----
+Is Serge there?'
+
+Desiree did not feel at all shocked at hearing the girl pronounce
+her brother's name thus familiarly and with an expression of subdued
+passion. She simply replied that he was in the church hearing the
+children say their catechism.
+
+'You must not speak at all loudly,' she added, raising her finger to
+her lips. 'Serge forbade me to talk loudly when he is catechising the
+children, and we shall get into trouble if we don't keep quiet. Let us
+go into the stable--shall we? We can talk better there.'
+
+'I want to see Serge,' said Albine, simply.
+
+Desiree cast a hasty glance at the church, and then whispered, 'Yes,
+yes; Serge will be finely caught. Come with me. We will hide ourselves,
+and keep quite quiet. We shall have some fine fun!'
+
+She had picked up the herbage which had fallen from her apron, and
+quitting the graveyard she stole back to the parsonage, telling Albine
+to hide herself behind her and make herself as little as possible. As
+they stealthily glided through the farmyard, they caught sight of La
+Teuse, who was crossing over to the vestry, but she did not appear to
+notice them.
+
+'There! There!' said Desiree, quite delighted, as they stowed themselves
+away in the stable; 'keep quiet, and no one will know that we are here.
+There is some straw there for you to lie down upon.'
+
+Albine seated herself on a truss of straw.
+
+'And Serge?' she asked, persisting in her one fixed idea.
+
+'Listen! You can hear his voice. When he claps his hands, it will be all
+over, and the children will go away--Listen! he is telling them a tale.'
+
+They could indeed just hear Abbe Mouret's voice, which was wafted to
+them through the vestry doorway which La Teuse had doubtless left open.
+It came to them like a solemn murmur, in which they could distinguish
+the name of Jesus thrice repeated. Albine trembled. She sprang up as
+though to hasten to that beloved voice whose caressing accents she knew
+so well, but all sound of it suddenly died away, shut off by the
+closing of the door. Then she sat down again, to wait, her hands tightly
+clasped, and her clear eyes gleaming with the intensity of her thoughts.
+Desiree, who was lying at her feet, gazed up at her with innocent
+admiration.
+
+'How beautiful you are!' she whispered. 'You are like an image that
+Serge used to have in his bedroom. It was quite white like you are, with
+great curls floating about the neck; and the heart was quite bare and
+uncovered, just in the place where I can feel yours beating---- But
+you are not listening to me. You are looking quite sad. Let us play at
+something? Will you?'
+
+Then she stopped short, holding her breath and saying between her teeth:
+'Ah! the wretches! they will get us caught!' She still had her apron
+full of herbage with her, and her pets were taking it by assault. A
+troop of fowls had surrounded her, clucking and calling each other, and
+pecking at the hanging green stuff. The goat pushed its head slyly under
+her arm, and began to eat the longer leaves. Even the cow, which was
+tethered to the wall, strained at its cord and poked out its nose,
+kissing her with its warm breath.
+
+'Oh! you thieves!' cried Desiree. 'But this is for the rabbits, not for
+you! Leave me alone, won't you! You, there, will get your ears boxed, if
+you don't go away! And you too will have your tail pulled if I catch you
+at it again. The wretches! they will be eating my hands soon!'
+
+She drove the goat off, dispersed the fowls with her feet, and tapped
+the cow's nose with her fists. But the creatures just shook themselves,
+and then came back more greedily than ever, surrounding her, jumping
+on her, and tearing open her apron. At this she whispered to Albine, as
+though she were afraid the animals might hear her.
+
+'Aren't they amusing, the dears? Watch them eat.'
+
+Albine looked on with a grave expression.
+
+'Now, now, be good,' resumed Desiree; 'you shall all have some, but you
+must wait your turns. Now, big Lisa, you first. Eh! how fond you are of
+plantain, aren't you?'
+
+Big Lisa was the cow. She slowly munched a handful of the juicy leaves
+which had grown beside Abbe Caffin's tomb. A thread of saliva hung down
+from her mouth, and her great brown eyes shone with quiet enjoyment.
+
+'There! now it's your turn,' continued Desiree, turning towards the
+goat. 'You are fond of poppies, I know; and you like the flowers best,
+don't you? The buds that shine in your teeth like red-hot butterflies!
+See, here are some splendid ones; they came from the left-hand corner,
+where there was a burial last year.'
+
+As she spoke, she gave the goat a bunch of scarlet flowers, which the
+animal ate from her hand. When there was nothing left in her grasp
+but the stalks, she pushed these between its teeth. Behind her, in the
+meanwhile, the fowls were desperately pecking away at her petticoats.
+She threw them some wild chicory and dandelions which she had gathered
+amongst the old slabs that were ranged alongside the church walls.
+It was particularly over the dandelions that the fowls quarrelled, so
+voraciously indeed, with such scratchings and flapping of wings,
+that the other fowls in the yard heard them. And then came a general
+invasion. The big yellow cock, Alexander, was the first to appear;
+having seized a dandelion and torn it in halves, without attempting to
+eat it, he called to the hens who were still outside to come and peck.
+Then a white hen strutted in, then a black one, and then a whole crowd
+of hens, who hustled one another, and trod on one another's tails, and
+ended by forming a wild flood of feathers. Behind the fowls came the
+pigeons, and the ducks, and the geese, and, last of all, the turkeys.
+Desiree laughed at seeing herself thus surrounded by this noisy,
+squabbling mob.
+
+'This is what always happens,' said she, 'every time that I bring any
+green stuff from the graveyard. They nearly kill each other to get at
+it; they must find it very nice.'
+
+Then she made a fight to keep a few handfuls of the leaves from the
+greedy beaks which rose all round her, saying that something must really
+be saved for the rabbits. She would surely get angry with them if
+they went on like that, and give them nothing but dry bread in future.
+However, she was obliged to give way. The geese tugged at her apron
+so violently that she was almost pulled down upon her knees; the ducks
+gobbled away at her ankles; two of the pigeons flew upon her head, and
+some of the fowls fluttered about her shoulders. It was the ferocity of
+creatures who smell flesh: the fat plantains, the crimson poppies,
+the milky dandelions, in which remained some of the life of the dead.
+Desiree laughed loudly, and felt that she was on the point of slipping
+down, and letting go of her last two handfuls, when the fowls were
+panic-stricken by a terrible grunting.
+
+'Ah! it's you, my fatty,' she exclaimed, quite delighted; 'eat them up,
+and set me at liberty.'
+
+The pig waddled in; he was no longer the little pig of former days--pink
+as a newly painted toy, with a tiny little tail, like a bit of string;
+but a fat wobbling creature, fit to be killed, with a belly as round
+as a monk's, and a back all bristling with rough hairs, that reeked of
+fatness. His stomach had grown quite yellow from his habit of sleeping
+on the manure heap. Waddling along on his shaky feet, he charged with
+lowered snout at the scared fowls, and so left Desiree at liberty to
+escape, and take the rabbits the few scraps of green stuff which she had
+so strenuously defended. When she came back, all was peace again. The
+stupid, ecstatic-looking geese were lazily swaying their long necks
+about, the ducks and turkeys were waddling in ungainly fashion alongside
+the wall; the fowls were quietly clucking and peaking at invisible
+grains on the hard ground of the stable; while the pig, the goat, and
+the big cow, were drowsily blinking their eyes, as though they were
+falling asleep. Outside it had just begun to rain.
+
+'Ah! well, there's a shower coming on!' cried Desiree, throwing herself
+down on the straw. 'You had better stay where you are, my dears, if you
+don't want to get soaked.'
+
+Then she turned to Albine and added: 'How stupid they all look, don't
+they? They only wake up just to eat!'
+
+Albine still remained silent. The merry laughter of that buxom girl
+as she struggled amidst those greedy necks and gluttonous beaks, which
+tickled and kissed her, and seemed bent on devouring her very flesh, had
+rendered the unhappy daughter of the Paradou yet paler than she had been
+before. So much gaiety, so much vitality, so much boisterous health made
+her despair. She strained her feverish arms to her desolate bosom, which
+desertion had parched.
+
+'And Serge?' she asked again, in the same clear, stubborn voice.
+
+'Hush!' said Desiree. 'I heard him just now. He hasn't finished yet----
+We have been making a pretty disturbance; La Teuse must surely have
+grown deaf this afternoon---- Let us keep quiet now. I like to hear the
+rain fall.'
+
+The shower beat in at the open doorway, casting big drops upon the
+threshold. The restless fowls, after venturing out for a moment, had
+quickly retreated to the far end of the stable; where, indeed, with the
+exception of three ducks who remained quietly walking in the rain, all
+the pets had now taken refuge, clustering round the girl's skirts. It
+was growing very warm amongst the straw. Desiree pulled two big trusses
+together, made a bed of them, and lay down at full length. She felt
+extremely comfortable there.
+
+'It is so nice,' she murmured. 'Come and lie down like me. It is so
+springy and soft, all this straw; and it tickles one so funnily in the
+neck. Do you roll about in the straw at home? There is nothing I am
+fonder of---- Sometimes I tickle the soles of my feet with it. That is
+very funny, too----'
+
+But at that moment, the big yellow cock, who had been gravely stalking
+towards her, jumped upon her breast.
+
+'Get away with you, Alexander! get away!' she cried. 'What a tiresome
+creature he is! The idea of his perching himself on me---- You are too
+rough, sir, and you scratch me with your claws. Do you hear me? I don't
+want you to go away, but you must be good, and mustn't peck at my hair.'
+
+Then she troubled herself no further about him. The cock still
+maintained his position, every now and then glancing inquisitively at
+the girl's chin with his gleaming eye. The other birds all began to
+cluster round her. After rolling amongst the straw, she was now lying
+lazily on her back with her arms stretched out.
+
+'Ah! how pleasant it is,' she said; 'but then it makes me feel so
+sleepy. Straw always makes one drowsy, doesn't it? Serge doesn't like
+it. Perhaps you don't either. What do you like? Tell me, so that I may
+know.'
+
+She was gradually dozing off. For a moment she opened her eyes widely,
+as though she were looking for something, and then her eyelids fell with
+a tranquil smile of content. She seemed to be asleep, but after a few
+minutes she opened her eyes again, and said:
+
+'The cow is going to have a calf---- That will be so nice, and will
+please me more than anything.'
+
+Then she sank into deep slumber. The fowls had ended by perching on
+her body; she was buried beneath a wave of living plumage. Hens were
+brooding over her feet; geese stretched their soft downy necks over her
+legs. The pig lay against her left side, while on the right, the goat
+poked its bearded head under her arm. The pigeons were roosting and
+nestling all over her, on her hands, her waist, and her shoulders. And
+there she lay asleep, in all her rosy freshness, caressed by the cow's
+warm breath, while the big cock still squatted just below her bosom with
+gleaming comb and quivering wings.
+
+Outside, the rain was falling less heavily. A sunbeam, escaping from
+beneath a cloud, gilded the fine drops of water. Albine, who had
+remained perfectly still, watched the slumber of Desiree, that big,
+plump girl who found her great delight in rolling about in the straw.
+She wished that she, too, could slumber away so peacefully, and feel
+such pleasure, because a few straws had tickled her neck. And she felt
+jealous of those strong arms, that firm bosom, all that vitality, all
+that purely animal development which made the other like a tranquil
+easy-minded sister of the big red and white cow.
+
+However, the rain had now quite ceased. The three cats of the parsonage
+filed out into the yard one after the other, keeping close to the wall,
+and taking the greatest precautions to avoid wetting their paws. They
+peeped into the stable, and then stalked up to the sleeping girl, and
+lay down, purring, close by her. Moumou, the big black cat, curled
+itself up close to her cheek, and gently licked her chin.
+
+'And Serge?' murmured Albine, quite mechanically.
+
+What was it that kept them apart? Who was it that prevented them from
+being happy together? Why might she not love him, and why might she
+not be loved, freely and in the broad sunlight, as the trees lived and
+loved? She knew not, but she felt that she had been forsaken, and had
+received a mortal wound. Yet she was possessed by a stubborn, determined
+longing, a very necessity, indeed, of once more clasping her love in
+her arms, of concealing him somewhere, that he might be hers in all
+felicity. She rose to her feet. The vestry door had just been opened
+again. A clapping of hands sounded, followed by the uproar of a swarm
+of children clattering in wooden shoes over the stone flags. The
+catechising was over. Then Albine gently glided out of the stable, where
+she had been waiting for an hour amidst the reeking warmth that emanated
+from Desiree's pets.
+
+As she quietly slipped through the passage that led to the vestry,
+she caught sight of La Teuse, who was going to her kitchen, and who
+fortunately did not turn her head. Certain, now, of not being seen and
+stopped, Albine softly pushed the door which was before her, keeping
+hold of it in order that it might make no noise as it closed again.
+
+And she found herself in the church.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+At first she could see nobody. Outside, the rain had again begun to fall
+in fine close drops. The church looked very grey and gloomy. She passed
+behind the high altar, and walked on towards the pulpit. In the middle
+of the nave, there were only a number of empty benches, left there in
+disorder by the urchins of the catechism class. Amidst all this void
+came a low tic-tac from the swaying pendulum. She went down the church
+to knock at the confessional-box, which she saw standing at the other
+end. But, just as she passed the Chapel of the Dead, she caught sight
+of Abbe Mouret prostrated before the great bleeding Christ. He did not
+stir; he must have thought that it was only La Teuse putting the seats
+in order behind him.
+
+But Albine laid her hand upon his shoulder.
+
+'Serge,' she said, 'I have come for you.'
+
+The priest raised his head with a start. His face was very pale. He
+remained on his knees and crossed himself, while his lips still quivered
+with the words of his prayer.
+
+'I have been waiting for you,' she continued. 'Every morning and every
+evening I looked to see if you were not coming. I have counted the days
+till I could keep the reckoning no longer. Ah! for weeks and weeks----
+Then, when I grew sure that you were not coming, I set out myself, and
+came here. I said to myself: "I will fetch him away with me." Give me
+your hand and let us go.'
+
+She stretched out her hands, as though to help him to rise. But he only
+crossed himself, afresh. He still continued his prayers as he looked at
+her. He had succeeded in calming the first quiver of his flesh. From
+the Divine grace which had been streaming around him since the early
+morning, like a celestial bath, he derived a superhuman strength.
+
+'It is not right for you to be here,' he said, gravely. 'Go away. You
+are aggravating your sufferings.'
+
+'I suffer no longer,' she said, with a smile. 'I am well again; I am
+cured, now that I see you once more---- Listen! I made myself out
+worse than I really was, to induce them to go and fetch you. I am quite
+willing to confess it now. And that promise of going away, of leaving
+the neighbourhood, you didn't suppose I should have kept it, did you?
+No, indeed, unless I had carried you away with me on my shoulders. The
+others don't know it, but you must know that I cannot now live anywhere
+but at your side.'
+
+She grew quite cheerful again, and drew close to the priest with the
+caressing ways of a child of nature, never noticing his cold and rigid
+demeanour. And she became impatient, clapped her hands, and exclaimed:
+
+'Come, Serge; make up your mind and come. We are only losing time. There
+is no necessity to think so much about it. It is quite simple; I am
+going to take you with me. If you don't want any one to see you, we will
+go along by the Mascle. It is not very easy walking, but I managed it
+all by myself; and, when we are together, we can help each other. You
+know the way, don't you? We cross the churchyard, we descend to the
+torrent, and then we shall only have to follow its course right up to
+the garden. And one is quite at home down there. Nobody can see us,
+there is nothing but brambles and big round stones. The bed of the
+stream is nearly dry. As I came along, I thought: "By-and-by, when he is
+with me, we will walk along gently together and kiss one another." Come,
+Serge, be quick; I am waiting for you.'
+
+The priest no longer appeared to hear her. He had betaken himself to
+his prayers again, and was asking Heaven to grant him the courage of the
+saints. Before entering upon the supreme struggle, he was arming himself
+with the flaming sword of faith. For a moment he had feared he was
+wavering. He had required all a martyr's courage and endurance to remain
+firmly kneeling there on the flagstones, while Albine was calling
+him: his heart had leapt out towards her, all his blood had surged
+passionately through his veins, filling him with an intense yearning to
+clasp her in his arms and kiss her hair. Her mere breath had awakened
+all the memory of their love; the vast garden, their saunters beneath
+the trees, and all the joy of their companionship.
+
+But Divine grace was poured down upon him more abundantly, and the
+torturing strife, during which all his blood seemed to quit his veins,
+lasted but a moment. Nothing human then remained within him. He had
+become wholly God's.
+
+Albine, however, again touched him on the shoulder. She was growing
+uneasy and angry.
+
+'Why do you not speak to me?' she asked. 'You can't refuse; you will
+come with me? Remember that I shall die if you refuse. But no! you
+can't; it is impossible. We lived together once; it was vowed that we
+should never separate. Twenty times, at least, did you give yourself to
+me. You bade me take you wholly, your limbs, your breath, your very life
+itself. I did not dream it all. There is nothing of you that you have
+not given to me; not a hair in your head which is not mine. Your hands
+are mine. For days and days have I held them clasped in mine. Your face,
+your lips, your eyes, your brow, all, all are mine, and I have lavished
+my love upon them. Do you hear me, Serge?'
+
+She stood erect before him, full of proud assertion, with outstretched
+arms. And, in a louder voice, she repeated:
+
+'Do you hear me, Serge? You belong to me.'
+
+Then Abbe Mouret slowly rose to his feet. He leant against the altar,
+and replied:
+
+'No. You are mistaken. I belong to God.'
+
+He was full of serenity. His shorn face seemed like that of some stone
+saint, whom no impulse of the flesh can disturb. His cassock fell around
+him in straight folds like a black winding-sheet, concealing all the
+outlines of his body. Albine dropped back at the sight of that sombre
+phantom of her former love. She missed his freely flowing beard, his
+freely flowing curls. And in the midst of his shorn locks she saw the
+pallid circle of his tonsure, which disquieted her as if it had been
+some mysterious evil, some malignant sore which had grown there, and
+would eat away all memory of the happy days they had spent together. She
+could recognise neither his hands, once so warm with caresses, nor his
+lissom neck, once so sonorous with laughter; nor his agile feet, which
+had carried her into the recesses of the woodlands. Could this, indeed,
+be the strong youth with whom she had lived one whole season--the youth
+with soft down gleaming on his bare breast, with skin browned by the
+sun's rays, with every limb full of vibrating life? At this present
+hour he seemed fleshless; his hair had fallen away from him, and all his
+virility had withered within that womanish gown, which left him sexless.
+
+'Oh! you frighten me,' she murmured. 'Did you think then that I was
+dead, that you put on mourning? Take off that black thing; put on a
+blouse. You can tuck up the sleeves, and we will catch crayfishes again.
+Your arms used to be as white as mine.'
+
+She laid her hand on his cassock, as though to tear it off him; but he
+repulsed her with a gesture, without touching her. He looked at her now
+and strengthened himself against temptation by never allowing his eyes
+to leave her. She seemed to him to have grown taller. She was no longer
+the playful damsel adorned with bunches of wild-flowers, and casting to
+the winds gay, gipsy laughter, nor was she the amorosa in white skirts,
+gracefully bending her slender form as she sauntered lingeringly beside
+the hedges. Now, there was a velvety bloom upon her lips; her hips were
+gracefully rounded; her bosom was in full bloom. She had become a woman,
+with a long oval face that seemed expressive of fruitfulness. Life
+slumbered within her. And her cheeks glowed with luscious maturity.
+
+The priest, bathed in the voluptuous atmosphere that seemed to emanate
+from all that feminine ripeness, took a bitter pleasure in defying the
+caresses of her coral lips, the tempting smile of her eyes, the witching
+charm of her bosom, and all the intoxication which seemed to pour from
+her at every movement. He even carried his temerity so far as to search
+with his gaze for the spots that he had once so hotly kissed, the
+corners of her eyes and lips, her narrow temples, soft as satin, and the
+ambery nape of her neck, which was like velvet. And never, even in
+her embrace, had he tasted such felicity as he now felt in martyring
+himself, by boldly looking in the face the love that he refused. At
+last, fearing lest he might there yield to some new allurement of the
+flesh, he dropped his eyes, and said, very gently:
+
+'I cannot hear you here. Let us go out, if you, indeed, persist in
+adding to the pain of both of us. Our presence in this place is a
+scandal. We are in God's house.'
+
+'God!' cried Albine, excitedly, suddenly becoming a child of nature
+once more. 'God! Who is He? I know nothing of your God! I want to know
+nothing of Him if He has stolen you away from me, who have never harmed
+Him. My uncle Jeanbernat was right then when he said that your God was
+only an invention to frighten people, and make them weep! You are lying;
+you love me no longer, and that God of yours does not exist.'
+
+'You are in His house now,' said Abbe Mouret, sternly. 'You blaspheme.
+With a breath He might turn you into dust.'
+
+She laughed with proud disdain, and raised her hands as if to defy
+Heaven.
+
+'Ah! then,' said she, 'you prefer your God to me. You think He is
+stronger than I am, and you imagine that He will love you better than
+I did. Oh! but you are a child, a foolish child. Come, leave all this
+folly. We will return to the garden together, and love each other, and
+be happy and free. That, that is life!'
+
+This time she succeeded in throwing an arm round his waist, and she
+tried to drag him away. But he, quivering all over, freed himself from
+her embrace, and again took his stand against the altar.
+
+'Go away!' he faltered. 'If you still love me, go away.... O Lord,
+pardon her, and pardon me too, for thus defiling this Thy house. Should
+I go with her beyond the door, I might, perhaps, follow her. Here, in
+Thy presence, I am strong. Suffer that I may remain here, to protect
+Thee from insult.'
+
+Albine remained silent for a moment. Then, in a calm voice, she said:
+
+'Well, let us stay here, then. I wish to speak to you. You cannot,
+surely, be cruel. You will understand me. You will not let me go away
+alone. Oh! do not begin to excuse yourself. I will not lay my hands upon
+you again, since it distresses you. I am quite calm now as you can see.
+We will talk quietly, as we used to do in the old days when we lost our
+way, and did not hurry to find it again, that we might have the more
+time to talk together.'
+
+She smiled at that memory, and continued:
+
+'I don't know about these things myself. My uncle Jeanbernat used to
+forbid me to go to church. "Silly girl," he'd say to me, "why do you
+want to go to a stuffy building when you have got a garden to run about
+in?" I grew up quite happy and contented. I used to look in the birds'
+nests without even taking the eggs. I did not even pluck the flowers,
+for fear of hurting the plants; and you know that I could never torture
+an insect. Why, then, should God be angry with me?'
+
+'You should learn to know Him, pray to Him, and render Him the constant
+worship which is His due,' answered the priest.
+
+'Ah! it would please you if I did, would it not?' she said. 'You would
+forgive me, and love me again? Well, I will do all that you wish me.
+Tell me about God, and I will believe in Him, and worship Him. All that
+you tell me shall be a truth to which I will listen on my knees. Have I
+ever had a thought that was not your own? We will begin our long walks
+again; and you shall teach me, and make of me whatever you will. Say
+"yes," I beg of you.'
+
+Abbe Mouret pointed to his cassock.
+
+'I cannot,' he simply said. 'I am a priest.'
+
+'A priest!' she repeated after him, the smile dying out of her eyes. 'My
+uncle says that priests have neither wife, nor sister, nor mother. So
+that is true, then. But why did you ever come? It was you who took me
+for your sister, for your wife. Were you then lying?'
+
+The priest raised his pale face, moist with the sweat of agony. 'I have
+sinned,' he murmured.
+
+'When I saw you so free,' the girl went on, 'I thought that you were
+no longer a priest. I believed that all that was over, that you would
+always remain there with me, and for my sake.---- And now, what would
+you have me do, if you rob me of my whole life?'
+
+'What I do,' he answered; 'kneel down, suffer on your knees, and never
+rise until God pardons you.'
+
+'Are you a coward, then?' she exclaimed, her anger roused once more, her
+lips curving scornfully.
+
+He staggered, and kept silence. Agony held him by the throat; but he
+proved stronger than pain. He held his head erect, and a smile almost
+played about his trembling lips. Albine for a moment defied him with
+her fixed glance; then, carried away by a fresh burst of passion, she
+exclaimed:
+
+'Well, answer me. Accuse me! Say it was I who came to tempt you! That
+will be the climax! Speak, and say what you can for yourself. Strike me
+if you like. I should prefer your blows to that corpse-like stiffness
+you put on. Is there no blood left in your veins? Have you no spirit?
+Don't you hear me calling you a coward? Yes, indeed, you are a coward.
+You should never have loved me, since you may not be a man. Is it that
+black robe of yours which holds you back? Tear it off! When you are
+naked, perhaps you will remember yourself again.'
+
+The priest slowly repeated his former words:
+
+'I have sinned. I had no excuse for my sin. I do penitence for my sin
+without hope of pardon. If I tore off my cassock, I should tear away my
+very flesh, for I have given myself wholly to God, soul and body. I am a
+priest.'
+
+'And I! what is to become of me?' cried Albine.
+
+He looked unflinchingly at her.
+
+'May your sufferings be reckoned against me as so many crimes! May I be
+eternally punished for the desertion in which I am forced to leave you!
+That will be only just. All unworthy though I be, I pray for you each
+night.'
+
+She shrugged her shoulders with an air of great discouragement. Her
+anger was subsiding. She almost felt inclined to pity him.
+
+'You are mad,' she murmured. 'Keep your prayers. It is you yourself that
+I want. But you will never understand me. There were so many things
+I wanted to tell you! Yet you stand there and irritate me with your
+chatter of another world. Come, let us try to talk sensibly. Let us wait
+for a moment till we are calmer. You cannot dismiss me in this way,
+I cannot leave you here. It is because you are here that you are so
+corpse-like, so cold that I dare not touch you. We won't talk any more
+just now. We will wait a little.'
+
+She ceased speaking, and took a few steps, examining the little church.
+The rain was still gently pattering against the windows; and the cold
+damp light seemed to moisten the walls. Not a sound came from outside
+save the monotonous plashing of the rain. The sparrows were doubtless
+crouching for shelter under the tiles, and the rowan-tree's deserted
+branches showed but indistinctly in the veiling, drenching downpour.
+Five o'clock struck, grated out, stroke by stroke, from the wheezy chest
+of the old clock; and then the silence fell again, seeming to grow yet
+deeper, dimmer, and more despairing. The priest's painting work, as yet
+scarcely dry, gave to the high altar and the wainscoting an appearance
+of gloomy cleanliness, like that of some convent chapel where the sun
+never shines. Grievous anguish seemed to fill the nave, splashed with
+the blood that flowed from the limbs of the huge Christ; while, along
+the walls, the fourteen scenes of the Passion displayed their awful
+story in red and yellow daubs, reeking with horror. It was life that was
+suffering the last agonies there, amidst that deathlike quiver of the
+atmosphere, upon those altars which resembled tombs, in that bare vault
+which looked like a sepulchre. The surroundings all spoke of slaughter
+and gloom, terror and anguish and nothingness. A faint scent of incense
+still lingered there, like the last expiring breath of some dead girl,
+who had been hurriedly stifled beneath the flagstones.
+
+'Ah,' said Albine at last, 'how sweet it used to be in the sunshine!
+Don't you remember? One morning we walked past a hedge of tall rose
+bushes, to the left of the flower-garden. I recollect the very colour of
+the grass; it was almost blue, shot with green. When we reached the end
+of the hedge we turned and walked back again, so sweet was the perfume
+of the sunny air. And we did nothing else, that morning; we took just
+twenty paces forward and then twenty paces back. It was so sweet a spot
+you would not leave it. The bees buzzed all around; and there was a
+tomtit that never left us, but skipped along by our side from branch to
+branch. You whispered to me, "How delightful is life!" Ah! life! it was
+the green grass, the trees, the running waters, the sky, and the sun,
+amongst which we seemed all fair and golden.'
+
+She mused for another moment and then continued: 'Life 'twas the
+Paradou. How vast it used to seem to us! Never were we able to find the
+end of it. The sea of foliage rolled freely with rustling waves as far
+as the eye could reach. And all that glorious blue overhead! we were
+free to grow, and soar, and roam, like the clouds without meeting more
+obstacles than they. The very air was ours!'
+
+She stopped and pointed to the low walls of the church.
+
+'But, here, you are in a grave. You cannot stretch out your hand without
+hurting it against the stones. The roof hides the sky from you and blots
+out the sun. It is all so small and confined that your limbs grow stiff
+and cramped as though you were buried alive.'
+
+'No,' answered the priest. 'The church is wide as the world.'
+
+But she waved her hands towards the crosses, and the dying Christ, and
+the pictures of the Passion.
+
+'And you live in the very midst of death. The grass, the trees, the
+springs, the sun, the sky, all are in the death throes around you.'
+
+'No, no; all revives, all grows purified and reascends to the source of
+light.'
+
+He had now drawn himself quite erect, with flashing eyes. And feeling
+that he was now invincible, so permeated with faith as to disdain
+temptation, he quitted the altar, took Albine's hand, and led her, as
+though she had been his sister, to the ghastly pictures of the Stations
+of the Cross.
+
+'See,' he said, 'this is what God suffered! Jesus is cruelly scourged.
+Look! His shoulders are naked; His flesh is torn; His blood flows down
+His back.... And Jesus is crowned with thorns. Tears of blood trickle
+down His gashed brow. On His temple is a jagged wound.... Again Jesus is
+insulted by the soldiers. His murderers have scoffingly thrown a purple
+robe around His shoulders, and they spit upon His face and strike Him,
+and press the thorny crown deep into His flesh.'
+
+Albine turned away her head, that she might not see the crudely painted
+pictures, in which the ochreous flesh of Christ had been plentifully
+bedaubed with carmine wounds. The purple robe round His shoulders seemed
+like a shred of His skin torn away.
+
+'Why suffer? why die?' she said. 'O Serge, if you would only
+remember!... You told me, that morning, that you were tired. But I knew
+that you were only pretending, for the air was quite cool and we had
+only been walking for a quarter of an hour. But you wanted to sit down
+that you might hold me in your arms. Right down in the orchard, by
+the edge of a stream, there was a cherry tree--you remember it, don't
+you?--which you never could pass without wishing to kiss my hands. And
+your kisses ran all up my arms and shoulders to my lips. Cherry time was
+over, and so you devoured my lips.... It used to make us feel so sad to
+see the flowers fading, and one day, when you found a dead bird in the
+grass, you turned quite pale, and caught me to your breast, as if to
+forbid the earth to take me.'
+
+But the priest drew her towards the other Stations of the Cross.
+
+'Hush! hush!' he cried, 'look here, and here! Bow down in grief and
+pity---- Jesus falls beneath the weight of His cross. The ascent of
+Calvary is very tiring. He has dropped down on His knees. But He does
+not stay to wipe even the sweat from His brow, He rises up again and
+continues His journey.... And again Jesus falls beneath the weight of
+His cross. At each step He staggers. This time He has fallen on His
+side, so heavily that for a moment He lies there quite breathless. His
+lacerated hands have relaxed their hold upon the cross. His bruised and
+aching feet leave blood-stained prints behind them. Agonising weariness
+overwhelms Him, for He carries upon His shoulders the sins of the whole
+world.'
+
+Albine gazed at the pictured Jesus, lying in a blue shirt prostrate
+beneath the cross, the blackness of which bedimmed the gold of His
+aureole. Then, with her glance wandering far away, she said:
+
+'Oh! those meadow-paths! Have you no memory left, Serge? Have you
+forgotten those soft grassy walks through the meadows, amidst very seas
+of greenery? On the afternoon I am telling you of, we had only meant
+to stay out of doors an hour; but we went wandering on and were still
+wandering when the stars came out above us. Ah! how velvety it was, that
+endless carpet, soft as finest silk! It was just like a green sea whose
+gentle waters lapped us round. And well we knew whither those beguiling
+paths that led nowhere, were taking us! They were taking us to our love,
+to the joy of living together, to the certainty of happiness.'
+
+With his hands trembling with anguish, Abbe Mouret pointed to the
+remaining pictures.
+
+'Jesus,' he stammered, 'Jesus is nailed to the cross. The nails are
+hammered through His outspread hands. A single nail suffices for his
+feet, whose bones split asunder. He, Himself, while His flesh quivers
+with pain, fixes His eyes upon heaven and smiles.... Jesus is crucified
+between two thieves. The weight of His body terribly aggravates His
+wounds. From His brow, from His limbs, does a bloody sweat stream down.
+The two thieves insult Him, the passers-by mock at Him, the soldiers
+cast lots for His raiment. And the shadowy darkness grows deeper and the
+sun hides himself.... Jesus dies upon the cross. He utters a piercing
+cry and gives up the ghost. Oh! most terrible of deaths! The veil of the
+temple is rent in twain from top to bottom. The earth quakes, the stones
+are broken, and the very graves open.'
+
+The priest had fallen on his knees, his voice choked by sobs, his eyes
+fixed upon the three crosses of Calvary, where writhed the gaunt pallid
+bodies of the crucified. Albine placed herself in front of the paintings
+in order that he might no longer see them.
+
+'One evening,' she said, 'I lay through the long gloaming with my head
+upon your lap. It was in the forest, at the end of that great avenue of
+chestnut-trees, through which the setting sun shot a parting ray. Ah!
+what a caressing farewell He bade us! He lingered awhile by our feet
+with a kindly smile, as if saying "Till to-morrow." The sky slowly grew
+paler. I told you merrily that it was taking off its blue gown, and
+donning its gold-flowered robe of black to go out for the evening.
+And it was not night that fell, but a soft dimness, a veil of love and
+mystery, reminding us of those dusky paths, where the foliage arches
+overhead, one of those paths in which one hides for a moment with the
+certainty of finding the joyousness of daylight at the other end.
+
+'That evening the calm clearness of the twilight gave promise of a
+splendid morrow. When I saw that it did not grow dark as quickly as you
+wished, I pretended to fall asleep. I may confess it to you now, but
+I was not really sleeping while you kissed me on the eyes. I felt your
+kisses and tried to keep from laughing. And then, when the darkness
+really came, it was like one long caress. The trees slept no more than
+I did. At night, don't you remember, the flowers always breathed a
+stronger perfume.'
+
+Then, as he still remained on his knees, while tears streamed down his
+face, she caught him by the wrists, and pulled him to his feet, resuming
+passionately:
+
+'Oh! if you knew you would bid me carry you off; you would fasten your
+arms about my neck, lest I should go away without you.... Yesterday I
+had a longing to see the garden once more. It seems larger, deeper,
+more unfathomable than ever. I discovered there new scents, so sweetly
+aromatic that they brought tears into my eyes. In the avenues I found a
+rain of sunbeams that thrilled me with desire. The roses spoke to me
+of you. The bullfinches were amazed at seeing me alone. All the garden
+broke out into sighs. Oh! come! Never has the grass spread itself out
+more softly. I have marked with a flower the hidden nook whither I
+long to take you. It is a nest of greenery in the midst of a tangle of
+brushwood. And there one can hear all the teeming life of the garden, of
+the trees and the streams and the sky. The earth's very breathing
+will softly lull us to rest there. Oh! come! come! and let us love one
+another amidst that universal loving!'
+
+But he pushed her from him. He had returned to the Chapel of the
+Dead and stood in front of the painted papier-mache Christ, big as a
+ten-year-old boy, that writhed in such horridly realistic agony. There
+were real iron nails driven into the figure's limbs, and the wounds
+gaped in the torn and bleeding flesh.
+
+'O Jesus, Who hast died for us!' cried the priest, 'convince her of our
+nothingness! Tell her that we are but dust, rottenness, and damnation!
+Ah! suffer that I may hide my head in a hair-cloth and rest it against
+Thy feet and stay there, motionless, until I rot away in death. The
+earth will no longer exist for me. The sun will no longer shine. I
+shall see nothing more, feel nothing, hear nothing. Nought of all this
+wretched world will come to turn my soul from its adoration of Thee.'
+
+He was gradually becoming more and more excited, and he stepped towards
+Albine with upraised hands.
+
+'You said rightly. It is Death that is present here; Death that is
+before my eyes; Death that delivers and saves one from all rottenness.
+Hear me! I renounce, I deny life, I wholly refuse it, I spit upon it.
+Those flowers of yours stink; your sun dazzles and blinds; your
+grass makes lepers of those that lie upon it; your garden is but
+a charnel-place where all rots and putrefies. The earth reeks with
+abomination. You lie when you talk of love and light and gladsome life
+in the depths of your palace of greenery. There is nought but darkness
+there. Those trees of yours exhale a poison which transforms men into
+beasts; your thickets are charged with the venom of vipers; your streams
+carry pestilence in their blue waters. If I could snatch away from that
+world of nature, which you extol, its kirtle of sunshine and its girdle
+of greenery, you would see it hideous like a very fury, a skeleton,
+rotting away with disease and vice.
+
+'And even if you spoke the truth, even if your hands were really filled
+with pleasures, even if you should carry me to a couch of roses and
+offer me the dreams of Paradise, I would defend myself yet the more
+desperately from your embraces. There is war between us; war eternal and
+implacable. See! the church is very small; it is poverty-stricken; it is
+ugly; its confessional-box and pulpit are made of common deal, its font
+is merely of plaster, its altars are formed of four boards which I have
+painted myself. But what of that? It is yet vaster than your garden,
+greater than the valley, greater, even, than the whole earth. It is an
+impregnable fortress which nothing can ever break down. The winds, the
+sun, the forests, the ocean, all that is, may combine to assault it; yet
+it will stand erect and unshaken for ever!
+
+'Yes, let all the jungles tower aloft and assail the walls with their
+thorny arms, let all the legions of insects swarm out of their holes
+in the ground and gnaw at the walls; the church, ruinous though it may
+seem, will never fall before the invasion of life. It is Death, Death
+the inexpugnable!... And do you know what will one day happen? The
+tiny church will grow and spread to such a colossal size, and will cast
+around such a mighty shadow, that all that nature, you speak of, will
+give up the ghost. Ah! Death, the Death of everything, with the skies
+gaping to receive our souls, above the curse-stricken ruins of the
+world!'
+
+As he shouted those last words, he pushed Albine forcibly towards the
+door. She, extremely pale, retreated step by step. When he had finished
+in a gasping voice she very gravely answered:
+
+'It is all over, then? You drive me away? Yet, I am your wife. It is you
+who made me so. And God, since He permitted it, cannot punish us to such
+a point as this.'
+
+She was now on the threshold, and she added:
+
+'Listen! Every day, at sunset, I go to the end of the garden, to the
+spot where the wall has fallen in. I shall wait for you there.'
+
+And then she disappeared. The vestry door fell back with a sound like a
+deep sigh.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+The church was perfectly silent, except for the murmuring sound of the
+rain, which was falling heavily once more. In that sudden change to
+quietude the priest's anger subsided, and he even felt moved. It was
+with his face streaming with tears, his frame shaken by sobs, that he
+went back to throw himself on his knees before the great crucifix. A
+torrent of ardent thanksgiving burst from his lips.
+
+'Thanks be to Thee, O God, for the help which Thou hast graciously
+bestowed upon me. Without Thy grace I should have hearkened unto the
+promptings of my flesh, and should have miserably returned to my sin. It
+was Thy grace that girded my loins as with armour for battle; Thy grace
+was indeed my armour, my courage, the support of my soul, that kept me
+erect, beyond weakness. Oh! my God, Thou wert in me; it was Thy voice
+that spoke in me, for I no longer felt the cowardice of the flesh, I
+could have cut asunder my very heart-strings. And now, O God, I offer
+Thee my bleeding heart. It no longer belongs to any creature of this
+world; it is Thine alone. To give it to Thee I have wrenched it from all
+worldly affection. But think not, O God, that I take any pride to myself
+for this victory. I know that without Thee I am nothing; and I humbly
+cast myself at Thy feet.'
+
+He sank down upon the altar steps, unable to utter another word, while
+his breath panted incense-like from his parted lips. The divine grace
+bathed him in ineffable ecstasy. He sought Jesus in the recesses of his
+being, in that sanctuary of love which he was ever preparing for His
+worthy reception. And Jesus was now present there. The Abbe knew it by
+the sweet influences which permeated him. And thereupon he joined with
+Jesus in that spiritual converse which at times bore him away from earth
+to companionship with God. He sighed out the verse from the 'Song of
+Solomon,' 'My beloved is mine, and I am his; He feedeth his flock
+among the lilies, until the day be cool, and the shadows flee away.' He
+pondered over the words of the 'Imitation:' 'It is a great art to know
+how to talk with Jesus, and it requires much prudence to keep Him near
+one.' And then, with adorable condescension, Jesus came down to him,
+and spoke with him for hours of his needs, his happiness, and his hopes.
+Their confidences were not less affectionate and touching than those
+of two friends, who meet after long separation and quietly retire to
+converse on the bank of some lonely stream; for during those hours of
+divine condescension Jesus deigned to be his friend, his best, most
+faithful friend, one who never forsook him, and who in return for a
+little love gave him all the treasures of eternal life. That day the
+priest was eager to prolong the sweet converse, and indeed, when six
+o'clock sounded through the quiet church, he was still listening to the
+words which echoed through his soul.
+
+On his side there was unreserved confession, unimpeded by the restraints
+of language, natural effusion of the heart which spoke even more quickly
+than the mind. Abbe Mouret told everything to Jesus, as to a God who
+had come down in all the intimacy of the most loving tenderness, and who
+would listen to everything. He confessed that he still loved Albine; and
+he was surprised that he had been able to speak sternly to her and drive
+her away, without his whole being breaking out into revolt. He marvelled
+at it, and smiled as though it were some wonderful miracle performed by
+another. And Jesus told him that he must not be astonished, and that the
+greatest saints were often but unconscious instruments in the hands of
+God. Then the Abbe gave expression to a doubt. Had he not lost merit in
+seeking refuge in the Cross and even in the Passion of his Saviour? Had
+he not shown that he possessed as yet but little courage, since he had
+not dared to fight unaided? But Jesus evinced kindly tolerance, and
+answered that man's weakness was God's continual care, and that He
+especially loved those suffering souls, to whose assistance He went,
+like a friend to the bedside of a sick companion.
+
+But was it a sin to love Albine, a sin for which he, Serge, would
+be damned? No; if his love was clean of all fleshly taint, and added
+another hope to his desire for eternal life. But, then, how was he to
+love her? In silence; without speaking a word to her, without taking a
+step towards her; simply allowing his pure affection to breathe forth,
+like a sweet perfume, pleasing unto heaven. And Jesus smiled with
+increasing kindliness, drawing nearer as if to encourage confession, in
+such wise that the priest grew bolder and began to recapitulate Albine's
+charms. She had hair that was fair and golden as an angel's; she was
+very white, with big soft eyes, like those of the aureoled saints. Jesus
+seemed to listen to this in silence, though a smile still played upon
+His face. And the priest continued: She had grown much taller. She was
+now like a queen, with rounded form and splendid shoulders. Oh! to clasp
+her waist, were it only for a second, and to feel her shoulders drawn
+close by his embrace! But the smile on the divine countenance then
+paled and died away, as a star sinks and falls beneath the horizon.
+Abbe Mouret now spoke all alone. Ah! had he not shown himself too
+hard-hearted? Why had he driven her away without one single word of
+affection, since Heaven allowed him to love her?
+
+'I do love her! I do love her!' he cried aloud, in a distracted voice,
+that rang through the church.
+
+He thought he saw her still standing there. She was stretching out her
+arms to him; she was beautiful enough to make him break all his vows. He
+threw himself upon her bosom without thought of the reverence due to
+his surroundings, he clasped her and rained kisses upon her face. It was
+before her that he now knelt, imploring her mercy, and beseeching her to
+forgive him his unkindness. He told her that, at times a voice which was
+not his own spoke through his lips. Could he himself ever have treated
+her harshly? It was the strange voice that had repulsed her. It could
+not, surely, be he himself, for he would have been unable to touch a
+hair of her head without loving emotion. And yet he had driven her away.
+The church was really empty! Whither should he hasten to find her again,
+to bring her back, and wipe her tears away with kisses? The rain was
+streaming down more violently than ever. The roads must be rivers
+of mud. He pictured her to himself lashed by the downpour, tottering
+alongside the ditches, her clothes soaked and clinging to her skin. No!
+no! it could not have been himself; it was that other voice, the jealous
+voice that had so cruelly sought to slay his love.
+
+'O Jesus!' he cried in desperation, 'be merciful and give her back to
+me!'
+
+But his Lord was no longer there. Then Abbe Mouret, awaking with a
+start, turned horribly pale. He understood it all. He had not known
+how to keep Jesus with him. He had lost his friend, and had been left
+defenceless against the powers of evil. Instead of that inward light,
+which had shone so brightly within him as he received his God, he now
+found utter darkness, a foul vapour that irritated his senses. Jesus had
+withdrawn His grace on leaving him; and he, who since early morning
+had been so strong with heaven-sent help, now felt utterly miserable,
+forsaken, weak and helpless as an infant. How frightful was his fall!
+How galling its bitterness! To have straggled so heroically, to have
+remained unshaken, invincible, implacable, while the temptress actually
+stood before him, with all her warm life, her swelling bosom and
+superb shoulders, her perfume of love and passion; and then to fall
+so shamefully, to throb with desire, when she had disappeared, leaving
+behind her but the echo of her skirts, and the fragrance diffused from
+her white neck! Now, these mere recollections sufficed to make her all
+powerful, her influence permeated the church.
+
+'Jesus! Jesus!' cried the priest, once more, 'return, come back to me;
+speak to me once again!'
+
+But Jesus remained deaf to his cry. For a moment Abbe Mouret raised his
+arms to heaven in desperate entreaty. His shoulders cracked and strained
+beneath the wild violence of his supplications. But soon his hands fell
+down again in discouragement. Heaven preserved that hopeless silence
+which suppliants at times encounter. Then he once more sat down on the
+altar steps, heart-crushed and with ashen face, pressing his elbows to
+his sides, as though he were trying to reduce his flesh to the smallest
+proportions possible.
+
+'My God! Thou deserted me!' he murmured. 'Nevertheless, Thy will be
+done!'
+
+He spoke not another word, but sat there, panting breathlessly, like a
+hunted beast that cowers motionless in fear of the hounds. Ever since
+his sin, he had thus seemed to be the sport of the divine grace. It
+denied itself to his most ardent prayers; it poured down upon him,
+unexpectedly and refreshingly, when he had lost all hope of winning it
+for long years to come.
+
+At first he had been inclined to rebel against this dispensation of
+Heaven, complaining like a betrayed lover, and demanding the immediate
+return of that consoling grace, whose kiss made him so strong. But
+afterwards, after unavailing outbursts of anger, he had learned to
+understand that humility profited him most and could alone enable him to
+endure the withdrawal of the divine assistance. Then, for hours and for
+days, he would humble himself and wait for comfort which came not. In
+vain he cast himself unreservedly into the hands of God, annihilated
+himself before the Divinity, wearied himself with the incessant
+repetition of prayers. He could not perceive God's presence with him;
+and his flesh, breaking free from all restraint, rose up in rebellious
+desire. It was a slow agony of temptation, in which the weapons of faith
+fell, one by one, from his faltering hands, in which he lay inert in
+the clutch of passion, in which he beheld with horror his own ignominy,
+without having the courage to raise his little finger to free himself
+from the thraldom of sin.
+
+Such was now his life. He had felt sin's attacks in every form. Not
+a day passed that he was not tried. Sin assumed a thousand guises,
+assailed him through his eyes and ears, flew boldly at his throat,
+leaped treacherously upon his shoulders, or stole torturingly into
+his bones. His transgression was ever present, he almost always beheld
+Albine dazzling as the sunshine, lighting up the greenery of the
+Paradou. He only ceased to see her in those rare moments when the divine
+grace deigned to close his eyes with its cool caresses. And he strove to
+hide his sufferings as one hides those of some disgraceful disease. He
+wrapped himself in the endless silence, which no one knew how to make
+him break, filling the parsonage with his martyrdom and resignation, and
+exasperating La Teuse, who, at times, when his back was turned, would
+shake her fist at heaven.
+
+This time he was alone now, and need take no care to hide his torment.
+Sin had just struck him such an overwhelming blow, that he had not
+strength left to move from the altar steps, where he had fallen. He
+remained there, sighing, and groaning, parched with agony, incapable of
+a single tear. And he thought of the calm unruffled life that had once
+been his. Ah! the perfect peace, the full confidence of his first days
+at Les Artaud! The path of salvation had seemed so straight and easy
+then! He had smiled at the very mention of temptation. He had lived in
+the midst of wickedness, without knowledge of it, without fear of it,
+certain of being able to withstand it. He had been a model priest, so
+pure and chaste, so inexperienced and innocent in God's sight, that God
+had led him by the hand like a little child.
+
+But now, all that childlike innocence was dead, God visited him in the
+morning, and forthwith tried him. A state of temptation became his life
+on earth. Now that full manhood and sin had come upon him, he entered
+into the everlasting struggle. Could it be that God really loved him
+more now than before? The great saints have all left fragments of their
+torn flesh upon the thorns of the way of sorrow. He tried to gather some
+consolation from this circumstance. At each laceration of his flesh,
+each racking of his bones, he tried to assure himself of some exceeding
+great reward. And then, no infliction that Heaven might now cast upon
+him could be too heavy. He even looked back with scorn on his former
+serenity, his easy fervour, which had set him on his knees with mere
+girlish enthusiasm, and left him unconscious even of the bruising of the
+hard stones. He strove also to discover pleasure in pain, in plunging
+into it, annihilating himself in it. But, even while he poured out
+thanks to God, his teeth chattered with growing terror, and the voice of
+his rebellious blood cried out to him that this was all falsehood, and
+that the only happiness worth desiring was in Albine's arms, amongst the
+flowers of the Paradou.
+
+Yet he had put aside Mary for Jesus, sacrificing his heart that he might
+subdue his flesh, and hoping to implant some virility in his faith.
+Mary disquieted him too much, with her smoothly braided hair, her
+outstretched hands, and her womanly smile. He could never kneel before
+her without dropping his eyes, for fear of catching sight of the hem of
+her dress. Then, too, he accused her of having treated him too tenderly
+in former times. She had kept him sheltered so long within the folds of
+her robe, that he had let himself slip from her arms to those of a human
+creature without being conscious even of the change of his affection.
+He thought of all the roughness of Brother Archangias, of his refusal
+to worship Mary, of the distrustful glances with which he had seemed
+to watch her. He himself despaired of ever rising to such a height of
+roughness, and so he simply left her, hiding her images and deserting
+her altar. Yet she remained in his heart, like some love which, though
+unavowed, is ever present. Sin, with sacrilege whose very horror made
+him shudder, made use of her to tempt him.
+
+Whenever he still invoked her, as he did at times of irrepressible
+emotion, it was Albine who showed herself beneath the white veil, with
+the blue scarf knotted round her waist and the golden roses blooming on
+her bare feet. All the representations of the Virgin, the Virgin with
+the royal mantle of cloth-of-gold, the Virgin crowned with stars, the
+Virgin visited by the Angel of the Annunciation, the peaceful Virgin
+poised between a lily and a distaff, all brought him some memory of
+Albine, her smiling eyes or her delicately curved mouth or her softly
+rounded cheeks.
+
+Thereupon, by a supreme effort, he drove the female element from his
+worship, and sought refuge in Jesus, though even His gentle mildness
+sometimes proved a source of disquietude to him. What he needed was a
+jealous God, an implacable God, the Jehovah of the Old Testament, girded
+with thunder and manifesting Himself only to chastise the terrified
+world. He had done with the saints and the angels and the Divine Mother;
+he bowed down before God Himself alone, the omnipotent Master, who
+demanded from him his every breath. And he felt the hand of this God
+laid heavily upon him, holding him helpless at His mercy through space
+and time, like a guilty atom. Ah! to be nothing, to be damned, to dream
+of hell, to wrestle vainly against hideous temptations, all that was
+surely good.
+
+From Jesus he took but the cross. He was seized with that passion for
+the cross which has made so many lips press themselves again and again
+to the crucifix till they were worn away with kissing. He took up the
+cross and followed Jesus. He sought to make it heavier, the mightiest of
+burdens; it was great joy to him to fall beneath its weight, to drag it
+on his knees, his back half broken. In it he beheld the only source
+of strength for the soul, of joy for the mind, of the consummation of
+virtue and the perfection of holiness. In it lay all that was good; all
+ended in death upon it. To suffer and to die, those words ever sounded
+in his ears, as the end and goal of mortal wisdom. And, when he had
+fastened himself to the cross, he enjoyed the boundless consolation of
+God's love. It was no longer, now, upon Mary that he lavished filial
+tenderness or lover's passion. He loved for love's mere sake, with an
+absolute abstract love. He loved God with a love that lifted him out of
+himself, out of all else, and wrapped him round with a dazzling radiance
+of glory. He was like a torch that burns away with blazing light. And
+death seemed to him to be only a great impulse of love.
+
+But what had he omitted to do that he was thus so sorely tried? With
+his hand he wiped away the perspiration that streamed down his brow,
+and reflected that, that very morning, he had made his usual
+self-examination without finding any great guilt within him. Was he not
+leading a life of great austerity and mortification of the flesh? Did he
+not love God solely and blindly? Ah! how he would have blessed His Holy
+Name had He only restored him his peace, deeming him now sufficiently
+punished for his transgression! But, perhaps, that sin of his could
+never be expiated. And then, in spite of himself, his mind reverted to
+Albine and the Paradou, and all their memories.
+
+At first he tried to make excuses for himself. He had fallen, one
+evening, senseless upon the tiled floor of his bedroom, stricken with
+brain fever. For three weeks he had remained unconscious. His blood
+surged furiously through his veins and raged within him like a torrent
+that had burst its banks. His whole body, from the crown of his head to
+the soles of his feet, was so scoured and renewed and wrought afresh
+by the mighty labouring of his ailment, that in his delirium he had
+sometimes thought he could hear the very hammer blows of workmen that
+nailed his bones together again. Then, one morning, he had awakened,
+feeling like a new being. He was born a second time, freed of all that
+his five-and-twenty years of life had successively implanted in him. His
+childish piety, his education at the seminary, the faith of his early
+priesthood, had all vanished, had been carried off, and their place was
+bare and empty. In truth, it could be hell alone that had thus prepared
+him for the reception of evil, disarming him of all his former weapons,
+and reducing his body to languor and softness, through which sin might
+readily enter.
+
+He, perfectly unconscious of it all, unknowingly surrendered himself
+to the gradual approach of evil. When he had reopened his eyes in the
+Paradou, he had felt himself an infant once more, with no memory of the
+past, no knowledge of his priesthood. He experienced a gentle pleasure,
+a glad feeling of surprise at thus beginning life afresh, as though it
+were all new and strange to him and would be delightful to learn. Oh!
+the sweet apprenticeship, the charming observations, the delicious
+discoveries! That Paradou was a vast abode of felicity; and hell, in
+placing him there, had known full well that he would be defenceless.
+Never, in his first youth, had he known such enjoyment in growing. That
+first youth of his, when he now thought of it, seemed quite black and
+gloomy, graceless, wan and inactive, as if it had been spent far away
+from the sunlight.
+
+But at the Paradou, how joyfully had he hailed the sun! How admiringly
+had he gazed at the first tree, at the first flower, at the tiniest
+insect he had seen, at the most insignificant pebble he had picked up!
+The very stones charmed him. The horizon was a source of never-ending
+amazement. One clear morning, the memory of which still filled his eyes,
+bringing back a perfume of jasmine, a lark's clear song, he had been so
+affected by emotion that he felt all power desert his limbs. He had long
+found pleasure in learning the sensations of life. And, ah! the morning
+when Albine had been born beside him amidst the roses! As he thought of
+it, an ecstatic smile broke out upon his face. She rose up like a
+star that was necessary to the very sun's existence. She illumined
+everything, she made everything clear. She made his life complete.
+
+Then in fancy he once again walked with her through the Paradou. He
+remembered the little curls that waved behind her neck as she ran on
+before him. She exhaled delicious scent, and the touch of her warm
+swaying skirts seemed like a caress. And when she clasped him with her
+supple curving arms, he half expected to see her, so slight and slender
+she was, twine herself around him. It was she who went foremost. She led
+him through winding paths, where they loitered, that their walk might
+last the longer. It was she who instilled into him love for nature; and
+it was by watching the loves of the plants that he had learned to love
+her, with a love that was long, indeed, in bursting into life, but whose
+sweetness had been theirs at last. Beneath the shade of the giant tree
+they had reached their journey's goal. Oh! to clasp her once again--yet
+once again!
+
+A low groan suddenly came from the priest. He hastily sprang up and then
+flung himself down again. Temptation had just assailed him afresh. Into
+what paths were his recollections leading him? Did he not know, only
+too well, that Satan avails himself of every wile to insinuate
+his serpent-head into the soul, even when it is absorbed in
+self-examination? No! no! he had no excuse. His illness had in no wise
+authorised him to sin. He should have set strict guard upon himself,
+and have sought God anew upon recovering from his fever. And what a
+frightful proof he now had of his vileness: he was not even able to
+make calm confession of his sin. Would he never be able to silence his
+nature? He wildly thought of scooping his brains out of his skull that
+he might be able to think no more, and of opening his veins that his
+blood might no longer torment him. For a moment he buried his face
+within his hands, shuddering as though the beasts that he felt prowling
+around him might infect him with the hot breath of temptation.
+
+But his thoughts strayed on in spite of himself, and his blood throbbed
+wildly in his very heart. Though he held his clenched fists to his eyes,
+he still saw Albine, dazzling like a sun. Every effort that he made to
+press the vision from his sight only made her shine out before him with
+increased brilliancy. Was God, then, utterly forsaking him, that he
+could find no refuge from temptation? And, in spite of all his efforts
+to control his thoughts, he espied every tiny blade of grass that thrust
+itself up by Albine's skirts; he saw a little thistle-flower fastened in
+her hair, against which he remembered that he had pricked his lips.
+Even the perfumed atmosphere of the Paradou floated round him, and
+well-remembered sounds came back, the repeated call of a bird, then an
+interval of hushed silence, then a sigh floating through the trees.
+
+Why did not Heaven at once strike him dead with its lightning? That
+would have been less cruel. It was with a voluptuous pang, like the
+pangs which assail the damned, that he recalled his transgression. He
+shuddered when he again heard in his heart the abominable words that he
+had spoken at Albine's feet. Their echoes were now accusing him before
+the throne of God. He had acknowledged Woman as his sovereign. He had
+yielded to her as a slave, kissing her feet, longing to be the water she
+drank and the bread she ate. He began to understand now why he could
+no longer recover self-control. God had given him over to Woman. But he
+would chastise her, scourge her, break her very limbs to force her to
+let him go! It was she who was the slave; she, the creature of impurity,
+to whom the Church should have denied a soul. Then he braced himself,
+and shook his fists at the vision of Albine; but his fists opened and
+his hands glided along her shoulders in a loving caress, while his lips,
+just now breathing out anger and insult, pressed themselves to her hair,
+stammering forth words of adoration.
+
+Abbe Mouret opened his eyes again. The burning apparition of Albine
+vanished. It was sudden and unexpected solace. He was able to weep.
+Tears flowed slowly and refreshingly down his cheeks, and he drew a long
+breath, still fearing to move, lest the Evil One should again grip
+him by the neck, for he yet thought that he heard the snarl of a beast
+behind him. And then he found such pleasure in the cessation of his
+sufferings that his one thought was to prolong the enjoyment of it.
+
+Outside the rain had ceased falling. The sun was setting in a vast
+crimson glow, which spread across the windows like curtains of
+rose-coloured satin. The church was quite warm and bright in the parting
+breath of the sinking luminary. The priest thanked God for the respite
+He had been pleased to vouchsafe to him. A broad ray of light, like a
+beam of gold-dust, streamed through the nave and illumined the far end
+of the building, the clock, the pulpit, and the high altar. Perhaps the
+Divine grace was returning to him from heaven along that radiant path.
+He watched with interest the atoms that came and went with prodigious
+speed through the ray, like a swarm of busy messengers ever hastening
+with news from the sun to the earth. A thousand lighted candles
+would not have filled the church with such splendour. Curtains of
+cloth-of-gold seemed to hang behind the high altar; treasures of the
+goldsmith's art covered all the ledges; candle-holders arose in dazzling
+sheaves; censers glowed full of burning gems; sacred vases gleamed
+like fiery comets; and around all there seemed to be a rain of luminous
+flowers amidst waving lacework--beds, bouquets, and garlands of roses,
+from whose expanding petals dropped showers of stars.
+
+Never had Abbe Mouret desired such magnificence for his poor church. He
+smiled, and dreamt of how he might retain all that splendour there, and
+then arrange it most effectively. He would have preferred to see the
+curtains of cloth-of-gold hung rather higher; the vases, too, needed
+more careful arrangement; and he thought that the bouquets of flowers
+might be tied up more neatly, and the garlands be more regularly shaped.
+Yet how wondrously magnificent it all was! He was the pontiff of a
+church of gold. Bishops, princes, princesses, arrayed in royal mantles,
+multitudes of believers, bending to the ground, were coming to visit it,
+encamping in the valley, waiting for weeks at the door until they should
+be able to enter. They kissed his feet, for even his feet had turned
+to gold, and worked miracles. The bath of gold mounted to his knees.
+A golden heart was beating within his golden breast, with so clear a
+musical pulsation that the waiting crowds could hear it from outside.
+Then a feeling of overweening pride seized upon him. He was an idol.
+The golden beam mounted still higher, the high altar was all ablaze
+with glory, and the priest grew certain that the Divine grace must be
+returning to him, such was his inward satisfaction. The fierce snarl
+behind him had now grown gentle and coaxing, and he only felt on his
+shoulder a soft velvety pressure, as though some giant cat were lightly
+caressing him.
+
+He still pursued his reverie. Never before had he seen things under such
+a favourable light. Everything seemed quite easy to him now that he once
+more felt full of strength. Since Albine was waiting for him, he would
+go and join her. It was only natural. On the previous morning he had
+married Fortune and Rosalie. The Church did not forbid marriages. He saw
+that young couple again as they knelt before him, smiling and nudging
+each other while his hands were held over them in benediction. Then, in
+the evening, they had shown him their room. Each word that he had spoken
+to them echoed loudly in his ear. He had told Fortune that God had sent
+him a companion, because He did not wish man to live alone; and he had
+told Rosalie that she must cleave to her husband, never leaving him,
+but always acting as his obedient helpmate. But he had said these things
+also for Albine and himself. Was she not his companion, his obedient
+helpmate, whom God had sent to him that his manhood might not wither up
+in solitude? Besides, they had been joined the one to the other. He felt
+surprised that he had not understood and recognised it at once; that he
+had not gone away with her, as his duty plainly required that he should
+have done. But he had quite made up his mind now; he would certainly
+join her in the morning. He could be with her in half an hour. He would
+go through the village, and take the road up the hill; it was much the
+shortest way. He could do what he pleased; he was the master, and no one
+would presume to say anything to him. If any one looked at him, a wave
+of his hand would force them to bend their heads. He would live with
+Albine. He would call her his wife. They would be very happy together.
+
+The golden stream mounted still higher, and played amongst his fingers.
+Again did he seem to be immersed in a bath of gold. He would take
+the altar-vases away to ornament his house, he would keep up a fine
+establishment, he would pay his servants with fragments of chalices
+which he could easily break with his fingers. He would hang his
+bridal-bed with the cloth-of-gold that draped the altar; and he would
+give his wife for jewels the golden hearts and chaplets and crosses that
+hung from the necks of the Virgin and the saints. The church itself, if
+another storey were added to it, would supply them with a palace. God
+would have no objection to make since He had allowed them to love each
+other. And, besides, was it not he who was now God, with the people
+kissing his golden miracle-working feet?
+
+Abbe Mouret rose. He made that sweeping gesture of Jeanbernat's, that
+wide gesture of negation, that took in everything as far as the horizon.
+
+'There is nothing, nothing, nothing!' he said. 'God does not exist.'
+
+A mighty shudder seemed to sweep through the church. The terrified
+priest turned deadly pale and listened. Who had spoken? Who was it that
+had blasphemed? Suddenly the velvety caress, whose gentle pressure
+he had felt upon his shoulder, turned fierce and savage: sharp talons
+seemed to be rending his flesh, and once more he felt his blood
+streaming forth. Yet he remained on his feet, struggling against the
+sudden attack. He cursed and reviled the triumphant sin that sniggered
+and grinned round his temples, whilst all the hammers of the Evil One
+battered at them. Why had he not been on his guard against Satan's
+wiles? Did he not know full well that it was his habit to glide up
+softly with gentle paws that he might drive them like blades into the
+very vitals of his victim?
+
+His anger increased as he thought how he had been entrapped, like a mere
+child. Was he destined, then, to be ever hurled to the ground, with sin
+crouching victoriously on his breast? This time he had actually denied
+his God. It was all one fatal descent. His transgression had destroyed
+his faith, and then dogma had tottered. One single doubt of the
+flesh, pleading abomination, sufficed to sweep heaven away. The divine
+ordinances irritated one; the divine mysteries made one smile. Then came
+other temptations and allurements; gold, power, unrestrained liberty,
+an irresistible longing for enjoyment, culminating in luxuriousness,
+sprawling on a bed of wealth and pride. And then God was robbed. His
+vessels were broken to adorn woman's impurity. Ah! well, then, he was
+damned. Nothing could make any difference to him now. Sin might speak
+aloud. It was useless to struggle further. The monsters who had hovered
+about his neck were battening on his vitals now. He yielded to them with
+hideous satisfaction. He shook his fists at the church. No; he believed
+no longer in the divinity of Christ; he believed no longer in the Holy
+Trinity; he believed in naught but himself, and his muscles and the
+appetites of his body. He wanted to live. He felt the necessity of being
+a man. Oh! to speed along through the open air, to be lusty and strong,
+to owe obedience to no jealous master, to fell one's enemies with
+stones, to carry off the fair maidens that passed upon one's shoulders.
+He would break out from that living tomb where cruel hands had thrust
+him. He would awaken his manhood, which had only been slumbering. And
+might he die of shame if he should find that it were really dead! And
+might the Divinity be accursed if, by the touch of His finger, He had
+made him different from the rest of mankind.
+
+The priest stood erect, his mind all dazed and scared. He fancied that,
+at this fresh outburst of blasphemy, the church was falling down upon
+him. The sunlight, which had poured over the high altar, had gradually
+spread and mounted the walls like ruddy fire. Flames soared and licked
+the rafters, then died away in a sanguineous, ember-like glow. And all
+at once the church became quite black. It was as though the fires of the
+setting sun had burst the roof asunder, pierced the walls, thrown open
+wide breaches on every side to some exterior foe. The gloomy framework
+seemed to shake beneath some violent assault. Night was coming on
+quickly.
+
+Then, in the far distance, the priest heard a gentle murmur rising from
+the valley of Les Artaud. The time had been when he had not understood
+the impassioned language of those burning lands, where writhed but
+knotted vine-stocks, withered almond-trees, and decrepit olives
+sprawling with crippled limbs. Protected by his ignorance, he had passed
+undisturbed through all that world of passion. But, to-day, his ear
+detected the slightest sigh of the leaves that lay panting in the heat.
+Afar off, on the edge of the horizon, the hills, still hot with the
+sinking luminary's farewell, seemed to set themselves in motion with the
+tramp of an army on the march. Nearer at hand, the scattered rocks,
+the stones along the road, all the pebbles in the valley, throbbed and
+rolled as if possessed by a craving for motion. Then the tracts of ruddy
+soil, the few fields that had been reduced to cultivation, seemed to
+heave and growl like rivers that had burst their banks, bearing along in
+a blood-like flood the engenderings of seeds, the births of roots, the
+embraces of plants. Soon everything was in motion. The vine-branches
+appeared to crawl along like huge insects; the parched corn and the dry
+grass formed into dense, lance-waving battalions; the trees stretched
+out their boughs like wrestlers making ready for a contest; the fallen
+leaves skipped forward; the very dust on the road rolled on. It was a
+moving multitude reinforced by fresh recruits at every step; a legion,
+the sound of whose coming went on in front of it; an outburst of
+passionate life, sweeping everything along in a mighty whirlwind of
+fruitfulness. And all at once the assault began. From the limits of
+the horizon, the whole countryside, the hills and stones and fields and
+trees, rushed upon the church. At the first shock, the building quivered
+and cracked. The walls were pierced and the tiles on the roof were
+thrown down. But the great Christ, although shaken, did not fall.
+
+A short respite followed. Outside, the voices sounded more angrily, and
+the priest could now distinguish human ones amongst them. The Artauds,
+those bastards who sprang up out of the rocky soil with the persistence
+of brambles, were now in their turn blowing a blast that reeked of
+teeming life. They had planted everywhere forests of humanity that
+swallowed up all around them. They came up to the church, they shattered
+the door with a push, and threatened to block up the very nave with the
+invading scions of their race. Behind them came the beasts; the oxen
+that tried to batter down the walls with their horns, the flocks of
+asses, goats, and sheep, that dashed against the ruined church like
+living waves, while swarms of wood-lice and crickets attacked the
+foundations and reduced them to dust with their sawlike teeth. Yet
+again, on the other side, there was Desiree's poultry-yard, where the
+dunghill reeked with suffocating fumes. Here the big cock, Alexander,
+sounded the assault, and the hens loosened the stones with their beaks,
+and the rabbits burrowed under the very altars; whilst the pig, too
+fat to stir, grunted and waited till all the sacred ornaments should be
+reduced to warm ashes in which he might wallow at his ease.
+
+A great roar ascended, and a second assault was delivered. The
+villagers, the animals, all that overflowing sea of life assailed the
+church with such impetuosity that the rafters bent and curved. This
+time a part of the walls tottered and fell down, the ceiling shook,
+the woodwork of the windows was carried away, and the grey mist of the
+evening streamed in through the frightful gaping breaches. The great
+Christ now only clung to His cross by the nail that pierced His left
+hand.
+
+A mighty shout hailed the downfall of the block of wall. Yet the church
+still stood there firmly, in spite of the injuries it had received. It
+offered a stern, silent, unflinching resistance, clutching desperately
+to the tiniest stones of its foundations. It seemed as though, to keep
+itself from falling, it required only the support of its slenderest
+pillar, which, by some miracle of equilibration, held up the gaping
+roof. Then Abbe Mouret beheld the rude plants of the plateau, the
+dreadful-looking growths that had become hard as iron amidst the
+arid rocks, that were knotted like snakes and bossy with muscles, set
+themselves to work. The rust-hued lichens gnawed away at the rough
+plasterwork like fiery leprosy. Then the thyme-plants thrust their roots
+between the bricks like so many iron wedges. The lavenders insinuated
+hooked fingers into the loosened stonework, and by slow persistent
+efforts tore the blocks asunder. The junipers, the rosemaries, the
+prickly holly bushes, climbed higher and battered the walls with
+irresistible blows; and even the grass, the grass whose dry blades
+slipped beneath the great door, stiffened itself into steel-like spears
+and made its way down the nave, where it forced up the flagstones with
+powerful levers. It was a victorious revolt, it was revolutionary nature
+constructing barricades out of the overturned altars, and wrecking the
+church which had for centuries cast too deep a shadow over it. The
+other combatants had fallen back, and let the plants, the thyme and the
+lavender and the lichens, complete the overthrow of the building with
+their ceaseless little blows, their constant gnawing, which proved more
+destructive than the heavier onslaught of the stronger assailants.
+
+Then, suddenly, the end came. The rowan-tree, whose topmost branches had
+already forced their way through the broken windows under the vaulted
+roof, rushed in violently with its formidable stream of greenery. It
+planted itself in the centre of the nave and grew there monstrously.
+Its trunk expanded till its girth became so colossal that it seemed as
+though it would burst the church asunder like a girdle spanning it too
+closely. Its branches shot out in knotted arms, each one of which broke
+down a piece of the wall or thrust off a strip of the roof, and they
+went on multiplying without cessation, each branch ramifying, till a
+fresh tree sprang out of each single knot, with such impetuosity of
+growth that the ruins of the church, pierced through and through like a
+sieve, flew into fragments, scattering a fine dust to the four quarters
+of the heavens.
+
+Now the giant tree seemed to reach the stars; its forest of branches was
+a forest of legs, arms, and breasts full of sap; the long locks of women
+streamed down from it; men's heads burst out from the bark; and up aloft
+pairs of lovers, lying languid by the edges of their nests, filled the
+air with the music of their delights.
+
+A final blast of the storm which had broken over the church swept away
+the dust of its remains: the pulpit and the confessional-box, which
+had been ground into powder, the lacerated holy pictures, the shattered
+sacred vessels, all the litter at which the legion of sparrows that had
+once dwelt amongst the tiles was eagerly pecking. The great Christ,
+torn from the cross, hung for a moment from one of the streaming women's
+curls, and then was whirled away into the black darkness, in the depths
+of which it sank with a loud crash. The Tree of Life had pierced the
+heavens; it overtopped the stars.
+
+Abbe Mouret was filled with the mad joy of an accursed spirit at the
+sight before him. The church was vanquished; God no longer had a house.
+And thenceforward God could no longer trouble him. He was free to rejoin
+Albine, since it was she who triumphed. He laughed at himself for having
+declared, an hour previously, that the church would swallow up the
+whole earth with its shadow. The earth, indeed, had avenged itself
+by consuming the church. The mad laughter into which he broke had
+the effect of suddenly awakening him from his hallucination. He
+gazed stupidly round the nave, which the evening shadows were slowly
+darkening. Through the windows he could see patches of star-spangled
+sky; and he was about to stretch out his arms to feel the walls, when he
+heard Desiree calling to him from the vestry-passage:
+
+'Serge! Serge! Are you there? Why don't you answer? I have been looking
+for you for this last half-hour.'
+
+She came in; she was holding a lighted lamp; and the priest then saw
+that the church was still standing. He could no longer understand
+anything, but remained in a horrible state of doubt betwixt the
+unconquerable church, springing up again from its ashes, and Albine, the
+all-powerful, who could shake the very throne of God by a single breath.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+Desiree came up to him, full of merry chatter.
+
+'Are you there? Are you there?' she cried. 'Why are you playing at
+hide-and-seek? I called out to you at the top of my voice at least a
+dozen times. I thought you must have gone out.'
+
+She pried into all the gloomy corners with an inquisitive glance, and
+even stepped up to the confessional-box, as though she had expected
+to surprise some one hiding there. Then she came back to Serge,
+disappointed, and continued:
+
+'So you are quite alone? Have you been asleep? What amusement do you
+find in shutting yourself up all alone in the dark? Come along; it is
+time we went to dinner.'
+
+The Abbe drew his feverish hands across his brow to wipe away the traces
+of the thoughts which he feared were plain for all the world to read. He
+fumbled mechanically at the buttons of his cassock, which seemed to him
+all disarranged. Then he followed his sister with stern-set face and
+never a sign of emotion, stiffened by that priestly energy which throws
+the dignity of sacerdotalism like a veil over the agonies of the flesh.
+Desiree did not even suspect that there was anything the matter with
+him. She simply said as they entered the dining-room:
+
+'I have had such a good sleep; but you have been talking too much, and
+have made yourself quite pale.'
+
+In the evening, after dinner, Brother Archangias came in to have his
+game of cards with La Teuse. He was in a very merry mood that night;
+and, when the Brother was merry, it was his habit to prod La Teuse
+in the sides with his big fists, an attention which she returned by
+heartily boxing his ears. This skirmishing made them both laugh, with a
+laughter that shook the very ceiling. The Brother, too, when he was in
+these gay humours, would devise all kinds of pranks. He would try to
+smash plates with his nose, and would offer to wager that he could break
+through the dining-room door in battering-ram fashion. He would also
+empty the snuff out of his box into the old servant's coffee, or would
+thrust a handful of pebbles down her neck. The merest trifle would give
+rise to these noisy outbursts of gaiety in the very midst of his wonted
+surliness. Some little incident, at which nobody else laughed, often
+sufficed to throw him into a state of wild hilarity, make him stamp his
+feet, twirl himself round like a top, and hold in his splitting sides.
+
+'What is it that makes you so gay to-night?' La Teuse inquired.
+
+He made no reply, bestriding a chair and galloping round the table on
+it.
+
+'Well! well! go on making a baby of yourself!' said the old woman; 'and,
+my gracious, what a big baby you are! If the Lord is looking at you, He
+must be very well pleased with you!'
+
+The Brother had just slipped off the chair and was lying on the floor,
+with his legs in the air.
+
+'He does see me, and is pleased to see me as I am. It is His wish that I
+should be gay. When He wishes me to be merry for a time, He rings a bell
+in my body, and then I begin to roll about; and all Paradise smiles as
+it watches me.'
+
+He dragged himself on his back to the wall, and then, supporting himself
+on the nape of his neck, he hoisted up his body as high as he could and
+began drumming on the wall with his heels. His cassock slipped down and
+exposed to view his black breeches, which were patched at the knees with
+green cloth.
+
+'Look, Monsieur le Cure,' he said, 'you see how high I can reach with
+my heels. I dare bet that you couldn't do as much. Come! look amused and
+laugh a little. It is better to drag oneself along on one's back than to
+think about a hussy as you are always doing. You know what I mean. For
+my part, when I take to scratching myself I imagine myself to be God's
+dog, and that's what makes me say that all Paradise looks out of the
+windows to smile at me. You might just as well laugh too, Monsieur le
+Cure. It's all done for the saints and you. See! here's a turn-over for
+Saint Joseph; here's another for Saint Michael, and another for Saint
+John, and another for Saint Mark, and another for Saint Matthew----'
+
+So he went on, enumerating a whole string of saints, and turning
+somersaults all round the room.
+
+Abbe Mouret, who had been sitting in perfect silence, with his hands
+resting on the edge of the table, was at last constrained to smile. As
+a rule, the Brother's sportiveness only disquieted him. La Teuse, as
+Archangias rolled within her reach, kicked at him with her foot.
+
+'Come!' she said, 'are we to have our game to-night?'
+
+His only reply was a grunt. Then, upon all fours, he sprang towards La
+Teuse as if he meant to bite her. But in lieu thereof he spat upon her
+petticoats.
+
+'Let me alone! will you?' she cried. 'What are you up to now? I begin
+to think you have gone crazy. What it is that amuses you so much I can't
+conceive.'
+
+'What makes me gay is my own affair,' he replied, rising to his feet and
+shaking himself. 'It is not necessary to explain it to you, La Teuse.
+However, as you want a game of cards, let us have it.'
+
+Then the game began. It was a terrible struggle. The Brother hurled
+his cards upon the table. Whenever he cried out the windows shook
+sonorously. La Teuse at last seemed to be winning. She had secured three
+aces for some time already, and was casting longing eyes at the fourth.
+But Brother Archangias began to indulge in fresh outbursts of gaiety.
+He pushed up the table, at the risk of breaking the lamp. He cheated
+outrageously, and defended himself by means of the most abominable
+lies, 'Just for a joke,' said he. Then he suddenly began to sing the
+'Vespers,' beating time on the palm of his left hand with his cards.
+When his gaiety reached a climax, and he could find no adequate means
+of expressing it, he always took to chanting the 'Vespers,' which he
+repeated for hours at a time. La Teuse, who well knew his habits, cried
+out to him, amidst the bellowing with which he shook the room:
+
+'Make a little less noise, do! It is quite distracting. You are much too
+lively to-night.'
+
+But he set to work on the 'Complines.' Abbe Mouret had now seated
+himself by the window. He appeared to pay no attention to what went on
+around him, apparently neither hearing nor seeing anything of it. At
+dinner he had eaten with his ordinary appetite and had even managed to
+reply to Desiree's everlasting rattle of questions. But now he had given
+up the struggle, his strength at an end, racked, exhausted as he was
+by the internal tempest that still raged within him. He even lacked the
+courage to rise from his seat and go upstairs to his own room. Moreover,
+he was afraid that if he turned his face towards the lamplight, the
+tears, which he could no longer keep from his eyes, would be noticed. So
+he pressed his face close to the window and gazed out into the darkness,
+growing gradually more drowsy, sinking into a kind of nightmare stupor.
+
+Brother Archangias, still busy at his psalm-singing, winked and nodded
+in the direction of the dozing priest.
+
+'What's the matter?' asked La Teuse.
+
+The Brother replied by a yet more significant wink.
+
+'Well, what do you mean? Can't you speak? Ah! there's a king. That's
+capital!--so I take your queen.'
+
+The Brother laid down his cards, bent over the table, and whispered
+close to La Teuse's face: 'That hussy has been here.'
+
+'I know that well enough,' answered La Teuse. 'I saw her go with
+mademoiselle into the poultry-yard.'
+
+At this he gave her a terrible look, and shook his fist in her face.
+
+'You saw her, and you let her come in! You ought to have called me, and
+we would have hung her up by the feet to a nail in your kitchen.'
+
+But at this the old woman lost her temper, and, lowering her voice
+solely in order that she might not awaken Abbe Mouret, she replied:
+'Don't you go talking about hanging people up in my kitchen! I certainly
+saw her, and I even kept my back turned when she went to join his
+reverence in the church when the catechising was over. But all that
+was no business of mine. I had my cooking to attend to! As for the girl
+herself, I detest her. But if his reverence wishes to see her--why, she
+is welcome to come whenever she pleases. I'd let her in myself!'
+
+'If you were to do that, La Teuse,' retorted the Brother ragefully, 'I
+would strangle you, that I would.'
+
+But she laughed at him.
+
+'Don't talk any of your nonsense to me, my man! Don't you know that it
+is forbidden you to lay your hands upon a woman, just as it's forbidden
+for a donkey to have anything to do with the _Pater Noster_? Just you
+try to strangle me and you'll see what I'll do! But do be quiet now, and
+let us finish the game. See, here's another king.'
+
+But the Brother, holding up a card, went on growling:
+
+'She must have come by some road that the devil alone knows for me to
+have missed her to-day. Every afternoon I go and keep guard up yonder
+by the Paradou. If ever I find them together again, I will acquaint
+the hussy with a stout dogwood stick which I have cut expressly for her
+benefit. And I shall keep a watch in the church as well now.'
+
+He played his card, which La Teuse took with a knave. Then he threw
+himself back in his chair and again burst into one of his loud laughs.
+He did not seem to be able to work himself up into a genuine rage that
+evening.
+
+'Well, well,' he grumbled, 'never mind, even if she did see him, she had
+a smacking fall on her nose. I'll tell you all about it, La Teuse. It
+was raining, you know. I was standing by the school-door when I caught
+sight of her coming down from the church. She was walking along quite
+straight and upright, in her stuck-up fashion, in spite of the pouring
+rain. But when she got into the road, she tumbled down full length, no
+doubt because the ground was so slippery. Oh! how I did laugh! How I did
+laugh! I clapped my hands, too. When she picked herself up again, I saw
+she was bleeding at the wrist. I shall feel happy over it for a week.
+I cannot think of her lying there on the ground without feeling the
+greatest delight.'
+
+Then, turning his attention to the game, he puffed out his cheeks and
+began to chant the _De profundis_. When he had got to the end of it, he
+began it all over again. The game came to a conclusion in the midst of
+this dirge. It was he who was beaten, but his defeat did not seem to vex
+him in the least.
+
+When La Teuse had locked the door behind him, after first awakening Abbe
+Mouret, his voice could still be heard, as he went his way through
+the black night, singing the last verse of the psalm, _Et ipse redimet
+Israel ex omnibus iniquitatibus ejus_, with extraordinary jubilation.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+That night Abbe Mouret slept very heavily. When he opened his eyes in
+the morning, later than usual, his face and hands were wet with tears.
+He had been weeping all through the night while he slept. He did not say
+his mass that day. In spite of his long rest, he had not recovered from
+his excessive weariness of the previous evening, and he remained in
+his bedroom till noon, sitting in a chair at the foot of his bed. The
+condition of stupor into which he more and more deeply sank, took all
+sensation of suffering away from him. He was conscious only of a great
+void and blank as he sat there overpowered and benumbed. Even to
+read his breviary cost him a great effort. Its Latin seemed to him a
+barbarous language, which he would never again be able to pronounce.
+
+Having tossed the book upon his bed he gazed for hours through his open
+window at the surrounding country. In the far distance he saw the long
+wall of the Paradou, creeping like a thin white line amongst the gloomy
+patches of the pine plantations to the crest of the hills. On the left,
+hidden by one of those plantations, was the breach. He could not see it,
+but he knew it was there. He remembered every bit of bramble scattered
+among the stones. On the previous night he would not have thus dared to
+gaze upon that dreaded scene. But now with impunity he allowed himself
+to trace the whole line of the wall, as it emerged again and again
+from the clumps of verdure which here and there concealed it. His
+blood pulsed none the faster for this scrutiny. Temptation, as though
+disdaining his present weakness, left him free from attack. Forsaken by
+the Divine grace, he was incapable of entering upon any struggle, the
+thought of sin could no longer even impassion him; it was sheer stupor
+alone that now rendered him willing to accept that which he had the day
+before so strenuously refused.
+
+At one moment he caught himself talking aloud and saying that, since
+the breach in the wall was still open, he would go and join Albine at
+sunset. This decision brought him a slight feeling of worry, but he did
+not think that he could do otherwise. She was expecting him to go,
+and she was his wife. When he tried to picture her face, he could only
+imagine her as very pale and a long way off. Then he felt a little
+uneasy as to their future manner of life together. It would be difficult
+for them to remain in the neighbourhood; they would have to go away
+somewhere, without any one knowing anything about it. And then, when
+they had managed to conceal themselves, they would need a deal of money
+in order to live happily and comfortably. He tried a score of times to
+hit upon some scheme by which they could get away and live together like
+happy lovers, but he could devise nothing satisfactory. Now that he was
+no longer wild with passion, the practical side of the situation
+alarmed him. He found himself, in all his weakness, face to face with a
+complicated problem with which he was incompetent to grapple.
+
+Where could they get horses for their escape? And if they went away
+on foot, would they not be stopped and detained as vagabonds? Was he
+capable of securing any employment by which he could earn bread for his
+wife? He had never been taught any kind of trade. He was quite ignorant
+of actual life. He ransacked his memory, and he could remember nothing
+but strings of prayers, details of ceremonies, and pages of Bouvier's
+'Instruction Theologique,' which he had learned by heart at the
+seminary. He worried too over matters of no real concern. He asked
+himself whether he would dare to give his arm to his wife in the street.
+He certainly could not walk with a woman clinging to his arm. He would
+surely appear so strange and awkward that every one would turn round
+to stare at him. They would guess that he was a priest and would insult
+Albine. It would be vain for him to try to obliterate the traces of
+his priesthood. He would always wear that mournful pallor and carry the
+odour of incense about with him. And what if he should have children
+some day? As this thought suddenly occurred to him, he quite started. He
+felt a strange repugnance at the very idea. He felt sure that he should
+not care for any children that might be born to him. Suppose there were
+two of them, a little boy and a little girl. He could never let them get
+on his knees; it would distress him to feel their hands clutching at his
+clothes. The thought of the little girl troubled him the most; he
+could already see womanly tenderness shining in the depths of her big,
+childish eyes. No! no! he would have no children.
+
+Nevertheless he resolved that he would flee with Albine that evening.
+But when the evening came, he felt too weary. So he deferred his flight
+till the next morning. And the next morning he made a fresh pretext
+for delay. He could not leave his sister alone with La Teuse. He would
+prepare a letter, directing that she should be taken to her uncle
+Pascal's. For three days he was ever on the point of writing that
+letter, and the paper and pen and ink were lying ready on the table
+in his room. Then, on the third day, he went off, leaving the letter
+unwritten. He took up his hat quite suddenly and set off for the
+Paradou in a state of mingled stupor and resignation, as though he were
+unwillingly performing some compulsory task which he saw no means of
+avoiding. Albine's image was now effaced from his memory; he no longer
+beheld her, but he was driven on by old resolves whose lingering
+influence, though they themselves were dead, still worked upon him in
+his silence and loneliness.
+
+He took no pains to escape notice when he set foot out of doors. He
+stopped at the end of the village to talk for a moment to Rosalie. She
+told him that her baby was suffering from convulsions; but she laughed,
+as she spoke, with the laugh that was natural to her. Then he struck
+out through the rocks, and walked straight on towards the breach in the
+wall. By force of habit he had brought his breviary with him. Finding
+the way long, he opened the book and read the regulation prayers. When
+he put it back again under his arm, he had forgotten the Paradou. He
+went on walking steadily, thinking about a new chasuble that he wished
+to purchase to replace the old gold-broidered one, which was certainly
+falling into shreds. For some time past he had been saving up
+twenty-sous pieces, and he calculated that by the end of seven months
+he would have got the necessary amount of money together. He had reached
+the hills when the song of a peasant in the distance reminded him of
+a canticle which had been familiar to him at the seminary. He tried to
+recall the first lines of it, but his recollection failed him. It vexed
+him to find that his memory was so poor. And when, at last, he succeeded
+in remembering the words, he found a soothing pleasure in humming the
+verses, which came back to his mind one by one. It was a hymn of homage
+to Mary. He smiled as though some soft breath from the days of his
+childhood were playing upon his face. Ah! how happy he had then been!
+Why shouldn't he be as happy again? He had not grown any bigger, he
+wanted nothing more than the same old happiness, unruffled peace, a nook
+in the chapel, where his knees marked his place, a life of seclusion,
+enlivened by the delightful puerilities of childhood. Little by little
+he raised his voice, singing the canticle in flutelike tones, when he
+suddenly became aware of the breach immediately in front of him.
+
+For a moment he seemed surprised. Then, the smile dying from his face,
+he murmured quietly:
+
+'Albine must be expecting me. The sun is already setting.'
+
+But just as he was about to push some stones aside to make himself a
+passage, he was startled by a snore. He sprang down again: he had only
+just missed setting his foot upon the very face of Brother Archangias,
+who was lying on the ground there sleeping soundly. Slumber had
+overtaken him while he kept guard over the entrance to the Paradou. He
+barred the approach to it, lying at full length before its threshold,
+with arms and legs spread out. His right hand, thrown back behind his
+head, still clutched his dogwood staff, which he seemed to brandish like
+a fiery sword. And he snored loudly in the midst of the brambles, his
+face exposed to the sun, without a quiver on his tanned skin. A swarm of
+big flies was hovering over his open mouth.
+
+Abbe Mouret looked at him for a moment. He envied the slumber of that
+dust-wallowing saint. He wished to drive the flies away, but they
+persistently returned, and clung around the purple lips of the Brother,
+who was quite unconscious of their presence. Then the Abbe strode over
+his big body and entered the Paradou.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+Albine was seated on a patch of grass a few paces away from the wall.
+She sprang up as she caught sight of Serge.
+
+'Ah! you have come!' she cried, trembling from head to foot.
+
+'Yes,' he answered calmly, 'I have come.'
+
+She flung herself upon his neck, but she did not kiss him. To her bare
+arms the beads of his neckband seemed very cold. She scrutinised him,
+already feeling uneasy, and resuming:
+
+'What is the matter with you? Why don't you kiss my cheeks as you used
+to do? Oh! if you are ill, I will cure you once again. Now that you
+are here, all our old happiness will return. There will be no more
+wretchedness.... See! I am smiling. You must smile, too, Serge.'
+
+But his face remained grave.
+
+'I have been troubled, too,' she went on. 'I am still quite pale, am I
+not? For a whole week I have been living on that patch of grass, where
+you found me. I wanted one thing only, to see you coming back through
+the breach in the wall. At every sound I sprang up and rushed to meet
+you. But, alas! it was not you I heard. It was only the leaves rustling
+in the wind. But I was sure that you would come. I should have waited
+for you for years.'
+
+Then she asked him:
+
+'Do you still love me?'
+
+'Yes,' he answered, 'I love you still.'
+
+They stood looking at each other, feeling rather ill at ease. And deep
+silence fell between them. Serge, who evinced perfect calmness, did not
+attempt to break it. Albine twice opened her mouth to speak, but closed
+it immediately, surprised at the words that rose to her lips. She could
+summon up nothing but expressions tinged with bitterness. She felt tears
+welling into her eyes. What could be the matter with her that she did
+not feel happy now that her love had come back?
+
+'Listen to me,' she said at last. 'We must not stay here. It is that
+hole that freezes us! Let us go back to our old home. Give me your
+hand.'
+
+They plunged into the depths of the Paradou. Autumn was fast
+approaching, and the trees seemed anxious as they stood there with their
+yellowing crests from which the leaves were falling one by one. The
+paths were already littered with dead foliage soaked with moisture,
+which gave out a sound as of sighing beneath one's tread. And away
+beyond the lawns misty vapour ascended, throwing a mourning veil over
+the blue distance. And the whole garden was wrapped in silence, broken
+only by some sorrowful moans that sounded quiveringly.
+
+Serge began to shiver beneath the avenue of tall trees, along which they
+were walking.
+
+'How cold it is here!' said he in an undertone.
+
+'You are cold indeed,' murmured Albine, sadly. 'My hand is no longer
+able to warm you. Shall I wrap you round with part of my dress? Come,
+all our love will now be born afresh.'
+
+She led him to the parterre, the flower-garden. The great thicket-like
+rosary was still fragrant with perfume, but there was a tinge of
+bitterness in the scent of the surviving blossoms, and their foliage,
+which had expanded in wild profusion, lay strewn upon the ground. Serge
+displayed such unwillingness to enter the tangled jungle, that they
+lingered on its borders, trying to detect in the distance the paths
+along which they had passed in the spring-time. Albine recollected
+every little nook. She pointed to the grotto where the marble woman lay
+sleeping; to the hanging screens of honeysuckle and clematis; the fields
+of violets; the fountain that spurted out crimson carnations; the steps
+down which flowed golden gilliflowers; the ruined colonnade, in the
+midst of which the lilies were rearing a snowy pavilion. It was
+there that they had been born again beneath the sunlight. And she
+recapitulated every detail of that first day together, how they had
+walked, and how fragrant had been the air beneath the cool shade. Serge
+seemed to be listening, but he suddenly asked a question which showed
+that he had not understood her. The slight shiver which made his face
+turn pale never left him.
+
+Then she led him towards the orchard, but they could not reach it. The
+stream was too much swollen. Serge no longer thought of taking Albine
+upon his back and lightly bounding across with her to the other side.
+Yet there the apple-trees and the pear-trees were still laden with
+fruit, and the vines, now with scantier foliage, bent beneath the weight
+of their gleaming clusters, each grape freckled by the sun's caress.
+Ah! how they had gambolled beneath the appetising shade of those ancient
+trees! What merry children had they then been! Albine smiled as she
+thought of how she had clambered up into the cherry-tree that had broken
+down beneath her. He, Serge, must at least remember what a quantity of
+plums they had eaten. He only answered by a nod. He already seemed quite
+weary. The orchard, with its green depths and chaos of mossy trunks,
+disquieted him and suggested to his mind some dark, dank spot, teeming
+with snakes and nettles.
+
+Then she led him to the meadow-lands, where he had to take a few steps
+amongst the grass. It reached to his shoulders now, and seemed to him
+like a swarm of clinging arms that tried to bind his limbs and pull him
+down and drown him beneath an endless sea of greenery. He begged Albine
+to go no further. She was walking on in front, and at first she did not
+stop; but when she saw how distressed he appeared, she halted and
+came back and stood beside him. She also was growing gradually more
+low-spirited, and at last she shuddered like himself. Still she went on
+talking. With a sweeping gesture she pointed out to him the streams,
+the rows of willows, the grassy expanse stretching far away towards
+the horizon. All that had formerly been theirs. For whole days they had
+lived there. Over yonder, between those three willows by the water's
+edge, they had played at being lovers. And they would then have been
+delighted if the grass had been taller than themselves so that they
+might have lost themselves in its depths, and have been the more
+secluded, like larks nesting at the bottom of a field of corn. Why,
+then, did he tremble so to-day, when the tip of his foot just sank into
+the grass?
+
+Then she led him to the forest. But the huge trees seemed to inspire
+Serge with still greater dread. He did not know them again, so sternly
+solemn seemed their bare black trunks. Here, more than anywhere else,
+amidst those austere columns, through which the light now freely
+streamed, the past seemed quite dead. The first rains had washed the
+traces of their footsteps from the sandy paths, the winds had swept
+every other lingering memorial into the underbrush. But Albine, with
+grief at her throat, shot out a protesting glance. She could still
+plainly see their lightest footprints on the sandy gravel, and, as they
+passed each bush, the warmth with which they had once brushed against it
+surged to her cheeks. With eyes full of soft entreaty, she still strove
+to awaken Serge's memory. It was along that path that they had walked
+in silence, full of emotion, but as yet not daring to confess that they
+loved one another. It was in that clearing that they had lingered one
+evening till very late watching the stars, which had rained upon
+them like golden drops of warmth. Farther, beneath that oak they had
+exchanged their first kiss. Its fragrance still clung to the tree, and
+the very moss still remembered it. It was false to say that the forest
+had become voiceless and bare.
+
+Serge, however, turned away his head, that he might escape the gaze of
+Albine's eyes, which oppressed him.
+
+Then she led him to the great rocks. There, perhaps, he would no longer
+shudder with that appearance of debility which so distressed her. At
+that hour the rocks were still warm with the red glow of the setting
+sun. They still wore an aspect of tragic passion, with their hot ledges
+of stone whereon the fleshy plants writhed monstrously. Without speaking
+a word, without even turning her head, Albine led Serge up the rough
+ascent, wishing to take him ever higher and higher, far up beyond the
+springs, till they should emerge into the full light on the summit. They
+would there see the cedar, beneath whose shade they had first felt
+the thrill of desire, and there amidst the glowing stones they would
+assuredly find passion once more. But Serge soon began to stumble
+pitiably. He could walk no further. He fell a first time on his knees.
+Albine, by a mighty effort, raised him and for a moment carried him
+along, but afterwards he fell again, and remained, quite overcome, on
+the ground. In front of him, beneath him, spread the vast Paradou.
+
+'You have lied!' cried Albine. 'You love me no longer!'
+
+She burst into tears as she stood there by his side, feeling that she
+could not carry him any higher. There was no sign of anger in her
+now. She was simply weeping over their dying love. Serge lay dazed and
+stupefied.
+
+'The garden is all dead. I feel so very cold,' he murmured. But she took
+his head between her hands, and showed him the Paradou.
+
+'Look at it! Ah! it is your eyes that are dead; your ears and your limbs
+and your whole body. You have passed by all the scenes of our happiness
+without seeing them or hearing them or feeling their presence. You have
+done nothing but slip and stumble, and now you have fallen down here in
+sheer weariness and boredom.... You love me no more.'
+
+He protested, but in a gentle, quiet fashion. Then, for the first time,
+she spoke out passionately.
+
+'Be quiet! As if the garden could ever die! It will sleep for the
+winter, but it will wake up again in May, and will restore to us all
+the love we have entrusted to its keeping. Our kisses will blossom again
+amongst the flower-beds, and our vows will bud again with the trees and
+plants. If you could only see it and understand it, you would know that
+it throbs with even deeper passion, and loves even more absorbingly at
+this autumn-time, when it falls asleep in its fruitfulness.... But you
+love me no more, and so you can no longer understand.'
+
+He raised his eyes to her as if begging her not to be angry. His face
+was pinched and pale with an expression of childish fear. The sound of
+her voice made him tremble. He ended by persuading her to rest a little
+while by his side. They could talk quietly and discuss matters. Then,
+with the Paradou spreading out in front of them, they began to speak of
+their love, but without even touching one another's fingers.
+
+'I love you; indeed I love you,' said Serge, in his calm, quiet voice.
+'If I did not love you, I should not be here: I should not have come.
+I am very weary, it is true. I don't know why. I thought I should find
+that pleasant warmth again, of which the mere memory was so delightful.
+But I am cold, the garden seems quite black. I cannot see anything of
+what I left here. But it is not my fault. I am trying hard to be as you
+would wish me and to please you.'
+
+'You love me no longer!' Albine repeated once more.
+
+'Yes, I do love you. I suffered grievously the other day after I had
+driven you away.... Oh! I loved you with such passion that, had you come
+back and thrown yourself in my arms, I should almost have crushed you
+to death.... And for hours your image remained present before me. When
+I shut my eyes, you gleamed out with all the brightness of the sun and
+threw a flame around me.... Then I trampled down every obstacle, and
+came here.'
+
+He remained silent for a moment, as if in thought. Then he spoke again:
+
+'And now my arms feel as though they were broken. If I tried to clasp
+you, I could not hold you; I should let you fall.... Wait till this
+shudder has passed away. Give me your hands, and let me kiss them again.
+Be gentle and do not look at me with such angry eyes. Help me to find my
+heart again.'
+
+He spoke with such genuine sadness, such evident longing to begin
+the past anew, that Albine was touched. For a moment all her wonted
+gentleness returned to her, and she questioned him anxiously:
+
+'What is the matter with you? What makes you so ill?'
+
+'I do not know. It is as though all my blood had left my veins. Just
+now, as I was coming here, I felt as if some one had flung a robe of ice
+around my shoulders, which turned me into stone from head to foot.... I
+have felt it before, but where I don't remember.'
+
+She interrupted him with a kindly laugh.
+
+'You are a child. You have caught cold, that's all. At any rate, it is
+not I that you are afraid of, is it? We won't stop in the garden during
+the winter, like a couple of wild things. We will go wherever you like,
+to some big town. We can love each other there, amongst all the people,
+as quietly as amongst the trees. You will see that I can be something
+else than a wilding, for ever bird's-nesting and tramping about for
+hours. When I was a little girl, I used to wear embroidered skirts and
+fine stockings and laces and all kinds of finery. I dare say you never
+heard of that.'
+
+He was not listening to her. He suddenly gave vent to a little cry, and
+said: 'Ah! now I recollect!'
+
+She asked him what he meant, but he would not answer her. He had just
+remembered the feeling he had long ago experienced in the chapel of the
+seminary. That was the icy robe enwrapping his shoulders and turning him
+to stone. And then his life as a priest took complete possession of his
+thoughts. The vague recollections which had haunted him as he walked
+from Les Artaud to the Paradou became more and more distinct and assumed
+complete mastery over him. While Albine talked on of the happy life that
+they would lead together, he heard the tinkling of the sanctuary bell
+that signalled the elevation of the Host, and he saw the monstrance
+trace gleaming crosses over the heads of kneeling multitudes.
+
+'And for your sake,' Albine was saying, 'I will put on my broidered
+skirts again.... I want you to be bright and gay. We will try to find
+something to make you lively. Perhaps you will love me better when you
+see me looking beautiful and prettily dressed, like a fine lady. I will
+wear my comb properly and won't let my hair fall wildly about my neck
+any more. And I won't roll my sleeves up over my elbows; I will fasten
+my dress so as to hide my shoulders. I still know how to bow and how to
+walk along quite properly. Yes, I will make you a nice little wife, as I
+walk through the streets leaning on your arm.'
+
+'Did you ever go to church when you were a little girl?' he asked her in
+an undertone, as if, in spite of himself, he were continuing aloud the
+reverie which prevented him from hearing her. 'I could never pass a
+church without entering it. As soon as the door closed silently
+behind me, I felt as though I were in Paradise itself, with the angels
+whispering stories of love in my ears and the saints caressing me with
+their breath. Ah! I would have liked to live there for ever, in that
+absorbing beatitude.'
+
+She looked at him with steady eyes, a passing blaze kindling in her
+loving glance. Nevertheless, submissive still, she answered:
+
+'I will do as you may fancy. I learned music once. I was quite a clever
+young lady and was taught all the accomplishments. I will go back to
+school and start music again. If there is any tune you would like to
+hear me play, you will only have to tell me, and I will practise it for
+months and months, so as to play it to you some evening in our own home
+when we are by ourselves in some snug little room, with the curtains
+closely drawn. And you will pay me with just one kiss, won't you? A kiss
+right on the lips, which will awaken all your love again!'
+
+'Yes, yes,' he murmured, answering his own thoughts only; 'my great
+pleasure at first was to light the candles, prepare the cruets, and
+carry the missal. Then, afterwards, I was filled with bliss at the
+approach of God, and felt as though I could die of sheer love. Those are
+my only recollections. I know of nothing else. When I raise my hand, it
+is to give a benediction. When my lips protrude it is to kiss the altar.
+If I look for my heart, I can no longer find it. I have offered it to
+God, and He has taken it.'
+
+Albine grew very pale and her eyes gleamed like fire. In a quivering
+voice she resumed:
+
+'I should not like my little girl to leave me. You can send the boy to
+college, if you wish, but the little girl must always keep with me. I
+myself will teach her to read. Oh! I shall remember everything, and
+if indeed there be anything that I find I have forgotten, I will have
+masters to teach me.... Yes, we will keep our dear little ones always
+about our knees. You will be happy so, won't you? Speak to me; tell me
+that you will then feel warm again, and will smile, and feel no regrets
+for anything you have left behind.'
+
+But Serge continued:
+
+'I have often thought of the stone-saints that have been censed in their
+niches for centuries past. They must have become quite saturated with
+incense; and I am like one of them. I have the fragrance of incense
+in the inmost parts of my being. It is that embalmment that gives me
+serenity, deathlike tranquillity of body, and the peace which I enjoy in
+no longer living.... Ah! may nothing ever disturb my quiescence! May I
+ever remain cold and rigid, with a ceaseless smile on my granite lips,
+incapable of descending among men! That is my one, my only desire!'
+
+At this Albine sprang to her feet, exasperated, threatening. She shook
+Serge and cried:
+
+'What are you saying? What is it you are dreaming aloud? Am I not your
+wife? Haven't you come here to be my husband?'
+
+He recoiled, trembling yet more violently.
+
+'No! Leave me! I am afraid!' he faltered.
+
+'But our life together, our happiness, the children we shall have?'
+
+'No, no; I am afraid.' And he broke out into a supreme cry: 'I cannot! I
+cannot!'
+
+For a moment Albine remained silent, gazing at the unhappy man who lay
+shivering at her feet. Her face flared. She opened her arms as if to
+seize him and strain him to her breast with wild angry passion. But
+another idea came to her, and she merely took him by the hand and raised
+him to his feet.
+
+'Come!' said she.
+
+She led him away to that giant tree, to the very spot where their love
+had reigned supreme. There was the same bliss-inspiring shade, there was
+the same trunk as of yore, the same branches spreading far around, like
+sheltering and protecting arms. The tree still towered aloft, kindly,
+robust, powerful, and fertile. As on the day of their nuptials,
+languorous warmth, the glimmer of a summer's night fading on the bare
+shoulder of some fair girl, a sob of love dying away into passionate
+silence, lingered about the clearing as it lay there bathed in dim green
+light. And, in the distance, the Paradou, in spite of the first
+chills of autumn, sighed once more with passion, again becoming love's
+accomplice. From the parterre, from the orchard, from the meadow-lands,
+from the forest, from the great rocks, from the spreading heavens,
+came back a ripple of voluptuous joy. Never had the garden, even on the
+warmest evenings of spring-time, shown such deep tenderness as now, on
+this fair autumn evening, when the plants and trees seemed to be bidding
+one another goodnight ere they sank to sleep. And the scent of ripened
+germs wafted the intoxication of desire athwart the scanty leaves.
+
+'Do you hear? Do you hear?' faltered Albine in Serge's ear, when she had
+let him slip upon the grass at the foot of the tree.
+
+Serge was weeping.
+
+'You see that the Paradou is not dead,' she added. 'It is crying out
+to us to love each other. It still desires our union. Oh, do remember!
+Clasp me to your heart!'
+
+Serge still wept.
+
+Albine said nothing more. She flung her arms around him; she pressed her
+warm lips to his corpse-like face; but tears were still his only answer.
+
+Then, after a long silence, Albine spoke. She stood erect, full of
+contempt and determination.
+
+'Away with you! Go!' she said, in a low voice.
+
+Serge rose with difficulty. He picked up his breviary, which had fallen
+upon the grass. And he walked away.
+
+'Away with you! Go!' repeated Albine, in louder tones, as she followed
+and drove him before her.
+
+Thus she urged him on from bush to bush till she had driven him back
+to the breach in the wall, in the midst of the stern-looking trees.
+And there, as she saw Serge hesitate, with lowered head she cried out
+violently:
+
+'Away with you Go!'
+
+And slowly she herself went back into the Paradou, without even turning
+her head. Night was fast falling, and the garden was but a huge bier of
+shadows.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+Brother Archangias, aroused from his slumber, stood erect in the breach,
+striking the stones with his stick and swearing abominably.
+
+'May the devil break their legs for them! May he drag them to hell by
+their feet, with their noses trailing in their abomination!'
+
+But when he saw Albine driving away the priest, he stopped for a moment
+in surprise. Then he struck the stones yet more vigorously, and burst
+into a roar of laughter.
+
+'Good-bye, you hussy! A pleasant journey to you! Go back to your mates
+the wolves! A priest is no fit companion for such as you.'
+
+Then, looking at Abbe Mouret, he growled:
+
+'I knew you were in there. I saw that the stones had been disturbed....
+Listen to me, Monsieur le Cure. Your sin has made me your superior, and
+God tells you, through my mouth, that hell has no torments severe enough
+for a priest who lets himself succumb to the lusts of the flesh. If He
+were to pardon you now, He would be too indulgent, it would be contrary
+to His own justice.'
+
+They slowly walked down the hill towards Les Artaud. The priest had
+not opened his lips; but gradually he raised his head erect: he was no
+longer trembling. As in the distance he caught sight of the Solitaire
+looming blackly against the purplish sky, and the ruddy glow of the
+tiles on the church, a faint smile came to his lips, while to his calm
+eyes there rose an expression of perfect serenity.
+
+Meantime the Brother was every now and then giving a vicious kick at the
+stones that came in his way. Presently he turned to his companion:
+
+'Is it all over this time?' he asked. 'When I was your age I was
+possessed too. A demon was ever gnawing at me. But, after a time, he
+grew weary of it, and took himself off. Now that he has gone I live
+quietly enough.... Oh! I knew very well that you would go. For three
+weeks past I have been keeping watch upon you. I used to look into the
+garden through the breach in the wall. I should have liked to cut the
+trees down. I have often hurled stones at them; it was delightful to
+break the branches. Tell me, now, is it so very nice to be there?'
+
+He made Abbe Mouret stop in the middle of the road, and glared at him
+with a terrible expression of jealousy. The thought of the priest's
+life in the Paradou tortured him. But the Abbe kept perfect silence, so
+Archangias set off again, jeering as he went. Then, in a louder voice,
+he said:
+
+'You see, when a priest behaves as you have done, he scandalises every
+other priest. I myself felt sullied by your conduct. However, you
+are now behaving more sensibly. There is no need for you to make any
+confession. I know what has happened well enough. Heaven has broken your
+back for you, as it has done for so many others. So much the better! So
+much the better!'
+
+He clapped his hands triumphantly. But Abbe Mouret, immersed in deep
+reverie, with a smile spreading over his whole face, did not even hear
+him. When the Brother quitted him at the parsonage door, he went round
+and entered the church. It was grey and gloomy, as on that terrible
+rainy evening when temptation had racked him so violently. And it still
+remained poverty-stricken and meditative, bare of all that gleaming
+gold and sighing passion that had seemed to him to sweep in from the
+countryside. It preserved solemn silence. But a breath of mercy seemed
+to fill it.
+
+Kneeling before the great Christ and bursting into tears, which he let
+flow down his cheeks as though they were so many blessings, the priest
+murmured:
+
+'O God, it is not true that Thou art pitiless. I know it, I feel it:
+Thou hast already pardoned me. I feel it in the outpouring of Thy grace,
+which, for hours now, has been flowing through me in a sweet stream,
+bringing me back, slowly but surely, perfect peace and spiritual health.
+O God, it was at the very moment when I was about to forsake Thee that
+Thou didst protect me most effectually. Thou didst hide Thyself from me,
+the better to rescue me from evil. Thou didst allow my flesh to run its
+course, that I might be convinced of its nothingness. And now, O God,
+I see that Thou hast for ever marked me with Thy seal, that awful seal,
+pregnant with blessings, which sets a man apart from other men, and
+whose mark is so ineffaceable that, sooner or later, it makes itself
+manifest even upon those who sin. Thou hast broken me with sin and
+temptation. Thou hast ravaged me with Thy flames. Thou hast willed
+that there should be nought left of me save ruins wherein Thou mightest
+safely descend. I am an empty tabernacle wherein Thou may'st dwell.
+Blessed art Thou, O God!'
+
+He prostrated himself and continued stammering in the dust. The church
+triumphed. It remained firm and unshaken over the priest's head, with
+its altars and its confessional, its pulpit, its crosses, and its holy
+images. The world had ceased to exist. Temptation was extinguished like
+a fire that was henceforth unnecessary for the Abbe's purification. He
+was entering into supernatural peace. And he raised this supreme cry:
+
+'To the exclusion of life and its creatures and of everything that be in
+it, I belong to Thee, O God; to Thee, Thee alone, through all eternity!'
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+At that moment Albine was still wandering about the Paradou with all
+the mute agony of a wounded animal. She had ceased to weep. Her face was
+very white and a deep crease showed upon her brow. Why did she have to
+suffer that deathlike agony? Of what fault had she been guilty, that
+the garden no longer kept the promises it had held out to her since
+her childhood's days? She questioned herself as she walked along, never
+heeding the avenues through which the gloom was slowly stealing. She
+had always obeyed the voices of the trees. She could not remember having
+injured a single flower. She had ever been the beloved daughter of the
+greenery, hearkening to it submissively, yielding to it with full belief
+in the happiness which it promised to her. And when, on that supreme
+day, the Paradou had cried to her to cast herself beneath the
+giant-tree, she had done so in compliance with its voice. If she then
+had nothing to reproach herself with, it must be the garden which had
+betrayed her; the garden which was torturing her for the mere sake of
+seeing her suffer.
+
+She halted and looked around her. The great gloomy masses of foliage
+preserved deep silence. The paths were blocked with black walls of
+darkness. The distant lawns were lulling to sleep the breezes that
+kissed them. And she thrust out her hands with a gesture of hopelessness
+and raised a cry of protest. It could not all end thus. But her voice
+choked beneath the silent trees. Thrice did she implore the Paradou to
+answer her, but never an explanation fell from its lofty branches, not
+a leaf seemed to be moved with pity for her. Then she resumed her weary
+wandering, and felt that she was entering into the fatal sternness of
+winter. Now that she had ceased to rebelliously question the earth, she
+caught sound of a gentle murmur speeding along the ground. It was the
+farewell of the plants, wishing one another a happy death. To have drunk
+in the sunshine for a whole season, to have lived ever blossoming,
+to have breathed continual perfume, and then, at the first blast, to
+depart, with the hope of springing up again elsewhere, was not that
+sufficiently long and full a life which obstinate craving for further
+existence would mar? Ah! how sweet death must be; how sweet to have an
+endless night before one, wherein to dream of the short days of life and
+to recall eternally its fugitive joys!
+
+She stayed her steps once more; but she no longer protested as she stood
+there amidst the deep stillness of the Paradou. She now believed that
+she understood everything. The garden doubtless had death in store for
+her as a supreme culminating happiness. It was to death that it had all
+along been leading her in its tender fashion. After love, there could be
+nought but death. And never had the garden loved her so much as it did
+now; she had shown herself ungrateful in accusing it, for all the time
+she had remained its best beloved child. The motionless boughs, the
+paths blocked up with darkness, the lawns where the breezes fell asleep,
+had only become mute in order that they might lure her on to taste the
+joys of long silence. They wished her to be with them in their winter
+rest, they dreamt of carrying her off, swathed in their dry leaves with
+her eyes frozen like the waters of the springs, her limbs stiffened like
+the bare branches, and her blood sleeping the sleep of the sap. And,
+yes, she would live their life to the very end, and die their death.
+Perhaps they had already willed that she should spring up next summer as
+a rose in the flower-garden, or a pale willow in the meadow-lands, or a
+tender birch in the forest. Yes, it was the great law of life; she was
+about to die.
+
+Then, for the last time, she resumed her walk through the Paradou in
+quest of death. What fragrant plant might need her sweet-scented tresses
+to increase the perfume of its leaves? What flower might wish the gift
+of her satinlike skin, the snowy whiteness of her arms, the tender pink
+of her bosom? To what weakly tree should she offer her young blood? She
+would have liked to be of service to the weeds vegetating beside the
+paths, to slay herself there so that from her flesh some huge greenery
+might spring, lofty and sapful, laden with birds at May-time, and
+passionately caressed by the sun. But for a long while the Paradou still
+maintained silence as if it had not yet made up its mind to confide to
+her in what last kiss it would spirit away her life. She had to wander
+all over it again, seeking, pilgrim-like, for her favourite spots. Night
+was now more swiftly approaching, and it seemed to her as if she were
+being gradually sucked into the earth. She climbed to the great rocks
+and questioned them, asking whether it was upon their stony beds that
+she must breathe her last breath. She crossed the forest with lingering
+steps, hoping that some oak would topple down and bury her beneath the
+majesty of its fall. She skirted the streams that flowed through the
+meadows, bending down at almost every step she took so as to peep into
+the depths and see whether a couch had not been prepared for her amongst
+the water lilies. But nowhere did Death call her; nowhere did he offer
+her his cold hands. Yet, she was not mistaken. It was, indeed, the
+Paradou that was about to teach her to die, as, indeed, it had taught
+her to love. She again began to scour the bushes, more eagerly even than
+on those warm mornings of the past when she had gone searching for love.
+And, suddenly, just as she was reaching the parterre, she came upon
+death, amidst all the evening fragrance. She ran forward, breaking out
+into a rapturous laugh. She was to die amongst the flowers.
+
+First she hastened to the thicket-like rosary. There, in the last
+flickering of the gloaming, she searched the beds and gathered all the
+roses that hung languishing at the approach of winter. She plucked them
+from down below, quite heedless of their thorns; she plucked them in
+front of her, with both hands; she plucked them from above, rising upon
+tip-toes and pulling down the boughs. So eager was she, so desperate
+was her haste, that she even broke the branches, she, who had ever shown
+herself tender to the tiniest blades of grass. Soon her arms were full
+of roses, she tottered beneath her burden of flowers. And having quite
+stripped the rose trees, carrying away even the fallen petals, she
+turned her steps to the pavilion; and when she had let her load of
+blossoms slip upon the floor of the room with the blue ceiling, she
+again went down to the garden.
+
+This time she sought the violets. She made huge bunches of them,
+which she pressed one by one against her breast. Then she sought the
+carnations, plucking them all, even to the buds; massing them together
+in big sheaves of white blossoms that suggested bowls of milk, and big
+sheaves of the red ones, that seemed like bowls of blood. Then, too,
+she sought the stocks, the patches of mirabilis, the heliotropes and
+the lilies. She tore the last blossoming stocks off by the handful,
+pitilessly crumpling their satin ruches; she devastated the beds of
+mirabilis, whose flowers were scarcely opening to the evening air; she
+mowed down the field of heliotropes, piling her harvest of blooms into
+a heap; and she thrust bundles of lilies under her arms like handles
+of reeds. When she was again laden with as much as she could carry,
+she returned to the pavilion to cast the violets, the carnations, the
+lilies, the stocks, the heliotrope, and the mirabilis by the side of
+the roses. And then, without stopping to draw breath, she went down yet
+again.
+
+This time she repaired to that gloomy corner which seemed like the
+graveyard of the flower-garden. A warm autumn had there brought on a
+second crop of spring flowers. She raided the borders of tuberoses and
+hyacinths; going down upon her knees, and gathering her harvest with
+all a miser's care, lest she should miss a single blossom. The tuberoses
+seemed to her to be extremely precious flowers, which would distil drops
+of gold and wealth and wondrous sweetness. The hyacinths, beaded with
+pearly blooms, were like necklets, whose every pearl would pour forth
+joys unknown to man. And although she almost buried herself beneath the
+mass of tuberoses and hyacinths which she plucked, she next stripped a
+field of poppies, and even found means to crop an expanse of marigolds
+farther on. All these she heaped over the tuberoses and hyacinths, and
+then ran back to the room with the blue ceiling, taking the greatest
+care as she went that the breeze should not rob her of a single pistil.
+And once more did she come downstairs.
+
+But what was she to gather now? She had stripped the parterre bare. As
+she rose upon the tips of her shoes in the dim gloom, she could only see
+the garden lying there naked and dead, deprived of the tender eyes of
+its roses, the crimson smile of its carnations, and the perfumed locks
+of its heliotropes. Nevertheless, she could not return with empty arms.
+So she laid hands upon the herbs and leafy plants. She crawled over the
+ground, as though she would have carried off the very soil itself in
+a clutch of supreme passion. She filled her skirt with a harvest of
+aromatic plants, southernwood, mint, verbenas. She came across a border
+of balm, and left not a leaf of it unplucked. She even broke off two big
+fennels which she threw over her shoulders like a couple of trees. Had
+she been able, she would have carried all the greenery of the garden
+away with her between her teeth. When she reached the threshold of the
+pavilion, she turned round and gave a last look at the Paradou. It was
+quite dark now. The night had fully come and cast a black veil over
+everything. Then for the last time she went up the stairs, never more to
+step down them.
+
+The spacious room was quickly decked. She had placed a lighted lamp upon
+the table. She sorted out the flowers heaped upon the floor and arranged
+them in big bunches, which she distributed about the room. First she
+placed some lilies behind the lamp on the table, forming with them a
+lofty lacelike screen which softened the light with its snowy purity.
+Then she threw handfuls of carnations and stocks over the old sofa,
+which was already strewn with red bouquets that had faded a century
+ago, till all these were hidden, and the sofa looked like a huge bed of
+stocks bristling with carnations. Next she placed the four armchairs in
+front of the alcove. On the first one she piled marigolds, on the second
+poppies, on the third mirabilis, and on the fourth heliotrope. The
+chairs were completely buried in bloom, with nothing but the tips of
+their arms visible. At last she thought of the bed. She pushed a little
+table near the head of it, and reared thereon a huge pile of violets.
+Then she covered the whole bed with the hyacinths and tuberoses she
+had plucked. They were so abundant that they formed a thick couch
+overflowing all around, so that the bed now looked like one colossal
+bloom.
+
+The roses still remained. And these she scattered chancewise all over
+the room, without even looking to see where they fell. Some of them
+dropped upon the table, the sofa, and the chairs; and a corner of the
+bed was inundated with them. For some minutes there was a rain of roses,
+a real downpour of heavy blossoms, which settled in flowery pools in the
+hollows of the floor. But as the heap seemed scarcely diminished, she
+finished by weaving garlands of roses which she hung upon the walls.
+She twined wreaths around the necks and arms and waists of the plaster
+cupids that sported over the alcove. The blue ceiling, the oval panels,
+edged with flesh-coloured ribbon, the voluptuous paintings, preyed upon
+by time, were all hung with a mantle, a drapery of roses. The big room
+was fully decked at last. Now she could die there.
+
+For a moment she remained standing, glancing around her. She was looking
+to see if death was there. And she gathered up the aromatic greenery,
+the southernwood, the mint, the verbenas, the balm, and the fennel. She
+broke them and twisted them and made wedges of them with which to stop
+up every little chink and cranny about the windows and the door. Then
+she drew the white coarsely sewn calico curtains and, without even a
+sigh, laid herself upon the bed, on all the florescence of hyacinths and
+tuberoses.
+
+And then a final rapture was granted her. With her eyes wide open she
+smiled at the room. Ah! how she had loved there! And how happily she was
+there going to die! At that supreme moment the plaster cupids suggested
+nothing impure to her; the amorous paintings disturbed her no more. She
+was conscious of nothing beneath that blue ceiling save the intoxicating
+perfume of the flowers. And it seemed to her as if this perfume was none
+other than the old love-fragrance which had always warmed the room, now
+increased a hundredfold, till it had become so strong and penetrating
+that it would surely suffocate her. Perchance it was the breath of the
+lady who had died there a century ago. In perfect stillness, with her
+hands clasped over her heart, she continued smiling, while she listened
+to the whispers of the perfumes in her buzzing head. They were singing
+to her a soft strange melody of fragrance, which slowly and very gently
+lulled her to sleep.
+
+At first there was a prelude, bright and childlike; her hands, that had
+just now twisted and twined the aromatic greenery, exhaled the pungency
+of crushed herbage, and recalled her old girlish ramblings through the
+wildness of the Paradou. Then there came a flutelike song, a song of
+short musky notes, rising from the violets that lay upon the table near
+the head of the bed; and this flutelike strain, trilling melodiously to
+the soft accompaniment of the lilies on the other table, sang to her of
+the first joys of love, its first confession, and first kiss beneath the
+trees of the forest. But she began to stifle as passion drew nigh with
+the clove-like breath of the carnations, which burst upon her in brazen
+notes that seemed to drown all others. She thought that death was nigh
+when the poppies and the marigolds broke into a wailing strain, which
+recalled the torment of desire. But suddenly all grew quieter; she felt
+that she could breathe more freely; she glided into greater serenity,
+lulled by a descending scale that came from the throats of the stocks,
+and died away amidst a delightful hymn from the heliotropes, which, with
+their vanilla-like breath, proclaimed the approach of nuptial bliss.
+Here and there the mirabilis gently trilled. Then came a hush. And
+afterwards the roses languidly made their entry. Their voices streamed
+from the ceiling, like the strains of a distant choir. It was a chorus
+of great breadth, to which she at first listened with a slight quiver.
+Then the volume of the strain increased, and soon her whole frame
+vibrated with the mighty sounds that burst in waves around her. The
+nuptials were at hand, the trumpet blasts of the roses announced
+them. She pressed her hands more closely to her heart as she lay there
+panting, gasping, dying. When she opened her lips for the kiss which was
+to stifle her, the hyacinths and tuberoses shot out their perfume and
+enveloped her with so deep, so great a sigh that the chorus of the roses
+could be heard no more.
+
+And then, amidst the final gasp of the flowers, Albine died.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+About three o'clock the next afternoon, La Teuse and Brother Archangias,
+who were chatting on the parsonage-steps, saw Doctor Pascal's gig
+come at full gallop through the village. The whip was being vigorously
+brandished from beneath the lowered hood.
+
+'Where can he be off to at that rate?' murmured the old servant. 'He
+will break his neck.'
+
+The gig had just reached the rising ground on which the church was
+built. Suddenly, the horse reared and stopped, and the doctor's head,
+with its long white hair all dishevelled appeared from under the hood.
+
+'Is Serge there?' he cried, in a voice full of indignant excitement.
+
+La Teuse had stepped to the edge of the hill. 'Monsieur le Cure is in
+his room,' she said. 'He must be reading his breviary. Do you want to
+speak to him? Shall I call him?'
+
+Uncle Pascal, who seemed almost distracted, made an angry gesture with
+his whip hand. Bending still further forward, at the risk of falling
+out, he replied:
+
+'Ah! he's reading his breviary, is he? No! no! don't call him. I should
+strangle him, and that would do no good. I wanted to tell him that
+Albine was dead. Dead! do you hear me? Tell him, from me, that she is
+dead!'
+
+And he drove off, lashing his horse so fiercely that it almost bolted.
+But, twenty paces away, he pulled up again, and once more stretching out
+his head, cried loudly:
+
+'Tell him, too, from me, that she was _enceinte_! It will please him to
+know that.'
+
+Then the gig rolled on wildly again, jolting dangerously as it ascended
+the stony hill that led to the Paradou. La Teuse was quite dumbfounded.
+But Brother Archangias sniggered and looked at her with savage delight
+glittering in his eyes. She noticed this at last, and thrust him away
+from her, almost making him fall down the steps.
+
+'Be off with you!' she stammered, full of anger, seeking to relieve her
+feelings by abusing him. 'I shall grow to hate you. Is it possible to
+rejoice at any one's death? I wasn't fond of the girl, myself; but it is
+very sad to die at her age. Be off with you, and don't go on sniggering
+like that, or I will throw my scissors in your face!'
+
+It was only about one o'clock that a peasant, who had gone to Plassans
+to sell vegetables, had told Doctor Pascal of Albine's death, and had
+added that Jeanbernat wished to see him. The doctor now was feeling a
+little relieved by what he had just shouted as he passed the parsonage.
+He had gone out of his way expressly to give himself that satisfaction.
+He reproached himself for the death of the girl as for a crime in which
+he had participated. All along the road he had never ceased overwhelming
+himself with insults, and though he wiped the tears from his eyes that
+he might see where to guide his horse, he ever angrily drove his gig
+over heaps of stones, as if hoping that he would overturn himself and
+break one of his limbs. However, when he reached the long lane that
+skirted the endless wall of the park, a glimmer of hope broke upon him.
+Perhaps Albine was only in a dead faint. The peasant had told him that
+she had suffocated herself with flowers. Ah! if he could only get there
+in time, if he could only save her! And he lashed his horse ferociously
+as though he were lashing himself.
+
+It was a lovely day. The pavilion was all bathed in sunlight, just as
+it had been in the fair spring-time. But the leaves of the ivy which
+mounted to the roof were spotted and patched with rust, and bees
+no longer buzzed round the tall gilliflowers. Doctor Pascal hastily
+tethered his horse and pushed open the gate of the little garden. All
+around still prevailed that perfect silence amidst which Jeanbernat
+had been wont to smoke his pipe; but, to-day, the old man was no longer
+seated on his bench watching his lettuces.
+
+'Jeanbernat!' called the doctor.
+
+No one answered. Then, on entering the vestibule, he saw something that
+he had never seen before. At the end of the passage, below the dark
+staircase, was a door opening into the Paradou, and he could see the
+vast garden spreading there beneath the pale sunlight, with all its
+autumn melancholy, its sere and yellow foliage. The doctor hurried
+through the doorway and took a few steps over the damp grass.
+
+'Ah! it is you, doctor!' said Jeanbernat in a calm voice.
+
+The old man was digging a hole at the foot of a mulberry-tree. He had
+straightened his tall figure on hearing the approach of footsteps.
+But he promptly betook himself to his task again, throwing out at each
+effort a huge mass of rich soil.
+
+'What are you doing there?' asked Doctor Pascal.
+
+Jeanbernat straightened himself again and wiped the sweat off his
+face with the sleeve of his jacket. 'I am digging a hole,' he answered
+simply. 'She always loved the garden, and it will please her to sleep
+here.'
+
+The doctor nearly choked with emotion. For a moment he stood by the
+edge of the grave, incapable of speaking, but watching Jeanbernat as the
+other sturdily dug on.
+
+'Where is she?' he asked at last.
+
+'Up there, in her room. I left her on the bed. I should like you to
+go and listen to her heart before she is put away in here. I listened
+myself, but I couldn't hear anything at all.'
+
+The doctor went upstairs. The room had not been disturbed. Only a
+window had been opened. There the withered flowers, stifled by their own
+perfumes, exhaled but the faint odour of dead beauty. Within the alcove,
+however, there still hung an asphyxiating warmth, which seemed to
+trickle into the room and gradually disperse in tiny puffs. Albine,
+snowy-pale, with her hands upon her heart and a smile playing over her
+face, lay sleeping on her couch of hyacinths and tuberoses. And she
+was quite happy, since she was quite dead. Standing by the bedside,
+the doctor gazed at her for a long time, with a keen expression such as
+comes into the eyes of scientists who attempt to work resurrections. But
+he did not even disturb her clasped hands. He kissed her brow, on the
+spot where her latent maternity had already set a slight shadow. Below,
+in the garden, Jeanbernat was still driving his spade into the ground in
+heavy, regular fashion.
+
+A quarter of an hour later, however, the old man came upstairs. He had
+completed his work. He found the doctor seated by the bedside, buried
+in such a deep reverie that he did not seem conscious of the heavy tears
+that were trickling down his cheeks.
+
+The two men only glanced at each other. Then, after an interval of
+silence, Jeanbernat slowly said:
+
+'Well, was I not right? There is nothing, nothing, nothing. It is all
+mere nonsense.'
+
+He remained standing and began to pick up the roses that had fallen from
+the bed, throwing them, one by one, upon Albine's skirts.
+
+'The flowers,' he said, 'live only for a day, while the rough nettles,
+like me, wear out the very stones amidst which they spring.... Now it's
+all over; I can kick the bucket; I am nearly distracted. My last ray of
+sunlight has been snuffed out. It's all nonsense, as I said before.'
+
+He threw himself upon one of the chairs in his turn. He did not shed
+a tear; he bore himself with rigid despair, like some automaton whose
+mechanism is broken. Mechanically he reached out his hand and took a
+book that lay on the little table strewn with violets. It was one of the
+books stored away in the loft, an odd volume of Holbach,* which he had
+been reading since the morning, while watching by Albine's body. As the
+doctor still remained silent, buried in distressful thought, he began to
+turn its pages over. But a sadden idea occurred to him.
+
+  * Doubtless Holbach's now forgotten _Catechism of Nature_, into
+    which M. Zola himself may well have peeped whilst writing this
+    story.--ED.
+
+'If you will help me,' he said to the doctor, 'we will carry her
+downstairs, and bury her with all her flowers.'
+
+Uncle Pascal shuddered. Then he explained to the old man that it was not
+allowed for one to keep the dead in that fashion.
+
+'What! it isn't allowed!' cried Jeanbernat. 'Well, then, I will allow
+it myself! Doesn't she belong to me? Isn't she mine? Do you think I am
+going to let the priests walk off with her? Let them try, if they want
+to get a shot from my gun!'
+
+He sprang to his feet and waved his book about with a terrible gesture.
+But the doctor caught hold of his hands and clasped them within his own,
+beseeching him to be calm. And for a long time he talked to him, saying
+all that he had upon his mind. He blamed himself, made fragmentary
+confessions of his fault, and vaguely hinted at those who had killed
+Albine.
+
+'Listen,' he said in conclusion, 'she is yours no longer; you must give
+her up.'
+
+But Jeanbernat shook his head, and again waved his hand in token of
+refusal. However, his obstinate resolution was shaken; and at last he
+said:
+
+'Well, well, let them take her, and may she break their arms for them!
+I only wish that she could rise up out of the ground and kill them all
+with fright.... By the way. I have a little business to settle over
+there. I will go to-morrow.... Good-bye, then, doctor. The hole will do
+for me.'
+
+And, when the doctor had left, he again sat down by the dead girl's
+side, and gravely resumed the perusal of his book.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+That morning there was great commotion in the yard at the parsonage.
+The Artaud butcher had just slaughtered Matthew, the pig, in the shed.
+Desiree, quite enthusiastic about it all, had held Matthew's feet, while
+he was being bled, kissing him on the back that he might feel the pain
+of the knife less, and telling him that it was absolutely necessary that
+he should be killed, now that he had got so fat. No one could cut off a
+goose's neck with a single stroke of the hatchet more unconcernedly than
+she could, or gash open a fowl's throat with a pair of scissors. However
+much she loved her charges, she looked upon their slaughter with great
+equanimity. It was quite necessary, she would say. It made room for the
+young ones who were growing up. And that morning she was very gay.
+
+'Mademoiselle,' grumbled La Teuse every minute, 'you will end by making
+yourself ill. There is no sense in working yourself up into such a
+state, just because a pig has been slaughtered. You are as red as if you
+had been dancing a whole night.'
+
+But Desiree only clapped her hands and turned away and bustled about
+again. La Teuse, for her part, complained that her legs were sinking
+under her. Since six o'clock in the morning her big carcass had been
+perpetually rolling between the kitchen and the yard, for she had black
+puddings to make. It was she who had whisked the blood in two large
+earthenware pans, and she had thought that she would never get finished,
+since mademoiselle was for ever calling her away for mere nothings.
+
+It must be admitted that, at the very moment when the butcher was
+bleeding Matthew, Desiree had been thrilled with wild excitement, for
+Lisa, the cow, was about to calve. And the girl's delight at this had
+quite turned her head.
+
+'One goes and another comes!' she cried, skipping and twirling round.
+'Come here, La Teuse! come here!'
+
+It was eleven o'clock. Every now and then the sound of chanting was
+wafted from the church. A confused murmur of doleful voices, a muttering
+of prayers could be heard amidst scraps of Latin pronounced in louder
+and clearer tones.
+
+'Come! oh, do come!' repeated Desiree for the twentieth time.
+
+'I must go and toll the bell, now,' muttered the old servant. 'I shall
+never get finished really. What is it that you want now, mademoiselle?'
+
+But she did not wait for an answer. She threw herself upon a swarm of
+fowls, who were greedily drinking the blood from the pans. And having
+angrily kicked them away, and then covered up the pans, she called to
+Desiree:
+
+'It would be a great deal better if, instead of tormenting me, you only
+came to look after these wretched birds. If you let them do as they like
+there will be no black-pudding for you. Do you hear?'
+
+Desiree only laughed. What of it, if the fowls did drink a few drops of
+the blood? It would fatten them. Then she again tried to drag La Teuse
+off to the cow, but the old servant refused to go.
+
+'I must go and toll the bell. The procession will be coming out of
+church directly. You know that quite well.'
+
+At this moment the voices in the church rose yet more loudly, and a
+sound of steps could be distinctly heard.
+
+'No! no!' insisted Desiree, dragging La Teuse towards the stable. 'Just
+come and look at her, and tell me what ought to be done.'
+
+La Teuse shrugged her shoulders. All that the cow wanted was to be left
+alone and not bothered. Then she set off towards the vestry, but, as she
+passed the shed, she raised a fresh cry:
+
+'There! there!' she shrieked, shaking her fist. 'Ah! the little wretch!'
+
+Matthew was lying at full length on his back, with his feet in the air,
+under the shed, waiting to be singed.* The gash which the knife had made
+in his neck was still quite fresh, and was beaded with drops of blood.
+And a little white hen was very delicately picking off these drops of
+blood one by one.
+
+  * In some parts of France pigs, when killed, are singed, not scalded,
+    as is, I think, the usual practice in England.--ED.
+
+'Why, of course,' quietly remarked Desiree, 'she's regaling herself.'
+And the girl stooped and patted the pig's plump belly, saying: 'Eh! my
+fat fellow, you have stolen their food too often to grudge them a wee
+bit of your neck now!'
+
+La Teuse hastily doffed her apron and threw it round Matthew's neck.
+Then she hurried away and disappeared within the church. The great door
+had just creaked on its rusty hinges, and a burst of chanting rose in
+the open air amidst the quiet sunshine. Suddenly the bell began to toll
+with slow and regular strokes. Desiree, who had remained kneeling
+beside the pig patting his belly, raised her head to listen, while still
+continuing to smile. When she saw that she was alone, having glanced
+cautiously around, she glided away into the cow's stable and closed the
+door behind her.
+
+The little iron gate of the graveyard, which had been opened quite wide
+to let the body pass, hung against the wall, half torn from its hinges.
+The sunshine slept upon the herbage of the empty expanse, into which the
+funeral procession passed, chanting the last verse of the _Miserere_.
+Then silence fell.
+
+'_Requiem �ternam dona ei, Domine_,' resumed Abbe Mouret, in solemn
+tones.
+
+'_Et lux perpetua luceat ei_,' Brother Archangias bellowed.
+
+At the head walked Vincent, wearing a surplice and bearing the cross,
+a large copper cross, half the silver plating of which had come off. He
+lifted it aloft with both his hands. Then followed Abbe Mouret, looking
+very pale in his black chasuble, but with his head erect, and without
+a quiver on his lips as he chanted the office, gazing into the distance
+with fixed eyes. The flame of the lighted candle which he was carrying
+scarcely showed in the daylight. And behind him, almost touching him,
+came Albine's coffin, borne by four peasants on a sort of litter,
+painted black. The coffin was clumsily covered with too short a pall,
+and at the lower end of it the fresh deal of which it was made could be
+seen, with the heads of the nails sparkling with a steely glitter. Upon
+the pall lay flowers: handfuls of white roses, hyacinths, and tuberoses,
+taken from the dead girl's very bed.
+
+'Just be careful!' cried Brother Archangias to the peasants, as they
+slightly tilted the litter in order to get it through the gateway. 'You
+will be upsetting everything on to the ground!'
+
+He kept the coffin in its place with one of his fat hands. With the
+other--as there was no second clerk--he was carrying the holy-water
+vessel, and he likewise represented the choirman, the rural guard, who
+had been unable to come.
+
+'Come in, too, you others,' he exclaimed, turning round.
+
+There was a second funeral, that of Rosalie's baby, who had died the
+previous day from an attack of convulsions. The mother, the father, old
+mother Brichet, Catherine, and two big girls, La Rousse and Lisa, were
+there. The two last were carrying the baby's coffin, one supporting each
+end.
+
+Suddenly all voices were hushed again, and there came another interval
+whilst the bell continued tolling in slow and desolate accents. The
+funeral procession crossed the entire burial-ground, going towards
+the corner which was formed by the church and the wall of Desiree's
+poultry-yard. Swarms of grasshoppers leaped away at the approaching
+footsteps, and lizards hurried into their holes. A heavy warmth hung
+over this corner of the loamy cemetery. The crackling of the dry grass
+beneath the tramp of the mourners sounded like choking sobs.
+
+'There! stop where you are!' cried the Brother, barring the way before
+the two big girls who were carrying the baby's coffin. 'Wait for your
+turn. Don't be getting in our legs here.'
+
+The two girls laid the baby on the ground. Rosalie, Fortune, and old
+mother Brichet were lingering in the middle of the graveyard, while
+Catherine slyly followed Brother Archangias. Albine's grave was on
+the left hand of Abbe Caffin's tomb, whose white stone seemed in the
+sunshine to be flecked with silvery spangles. The deep cavity, freshly
+dug that morning, yawned amidst thick tufts of grass. Big weeds, almost
+uprooted, drooped over the edges, and a fallen flower lay at the bottom,
+staining the dark soil with its crimson petals. When Abbe Mouret came
+forward, the soft earth crumbled and gave way beneath his feet; he was
+obliged to step back to keep himself from slipping into the grave.
+
+'_Ego sum_--' he began in a full voice, which rose above the mournful
+tolling of the bell.
+
+During the anthem, those who were present instinctively cast furtive
+glances towards the bottom of the empty grave. Vincent, who had planted
+the cross at the foot of the cavity opposite the priest, pushed the
+loose earth with his foot, and amused himself by watching it fall. This
+drew a laugh from Catherine, who was leaning forward from behind him to
+get a better view. The peasants had set the litter on the grass and were
+stretching their arms, while Brother Archangias prepared the sprinkler.
+
+'Come here, Voriau!' called Fortune.
+
+The big black dog, who had gone to sniff at the coffin, came back
+sulkily.
+
+'Why has the dog been brought?' exclaimed Rosalie.
+
+'Oh! he followed us,' said Lisa, smiling quietly.
+
+They were all chatting together in subdued tones round the baby's
+coffin. The father and mother occasionally forgot all about it, but
+on catching sight of it again, lying between them at their feet, they
+relapsed into silence.
+
+'And so old Bambousse wouldn't come?' said La Rousse. Mother Brichet
+raised her eyes to heaven.
+
+'He threatened to break everything to pieces yesterday when the little
+one died,' said she. 'No, no, I must say that he is not a good man.
+Didn't he nearly strangle me, crying out that he had been robbed, and
+that he would have given one of his cornfields for the little one to
+have died three days before the wedding?'
+
+'One can never tell what will happen,' remarked Fortune with a knowing
+look.
+
+'What's the good of the old man putting himself out about it? We are
+married, all the same, now,' added Rosalie.
+
+Then they exchanged a smile across the little coffin while Lisa and
+La Rousse nudged each other with their elbows. But afterwards they all
+became very serious again. Fortune picked up a clod of earth to throw at
+Voriau, who was now prowling about amongst the old tombstones.
+
+'Ah! they've nearly finished over there, now!' La Rousse whispered very
+softly.
+
+Abbe Mouret was just concluding the _De profundis_ in front of Albine's
+grave. Then, with slow steps, he approached the coffin, drew himself up
+erect, and gazed at it for a moment without a quiver in his glance. He
+looked taller, his face shone with a serenity that seemed to transfigure
+him. He stooped and picked up a handful of earth, and scattered it over
+the coffin crosswise. Then, in a voice so steady and clear that not a
+syllable was lost, he said:
+
+'_Revertitur in terrain suam unde erat, et spiritus redit ad Deum qui
+dedit illum_.'
+
+A shudder ran through those who were present. Lisa seemed to reflect for
+a moment, and then remarked with an expression of worry: 'It is not very
+cheerful, eh, when one thinks that one's own turn will come some day or
+other.'
+
+But Brother Archangias had now handed the sprinkler to the priest, who
+took it and shook it several times over the corpse.
+
+'_Requiescat in pace_,' he murmured.
+
+'_Amen_,' responded Vincent and the Brother together, in tones so
+respectively shrill and deep that Catherine had to cram her fist into
+her mouth to keep from laughing.
+
+'No, indeed, it is certainly not cheerful,' continued Lisa. 'There
+really was nobody at all at that funeral. The graveyard would be quite
+empty without us.'
+
+'I've heard say that she killed herself,' said old mother Brichet.
+
+'Yes, I know,' interrupted La Rousse. 'The Brother didn't want to
+let her be buried amongst Christians, but Monsieur le Cure said
+that eternity was for everybody. I was there. But all the same the
+Philosopher might have come.'
+
+At that very moment Rosalie reduced them all to silence by murmuring:
+'See! there he is, the Philosopher.'
+
+Jeanbernat was, indeed, just entering the graveyard. He walked straight
+to the group that stood around Albine's grave; and he stepped along with
+so lithe, so springy a gait, that none of them heard him coming. When
+he was close to them, he remained for a moment behind Brother Archangias
+and seemed to fix his eyes, for an instant, on the nape of the Brother's
+neck. Then, just as the Abbe Mouret was finishing the office, he calmly
+drew a knife from his pocket, opened it, and with a single cut sliced
+off the Brother's right ear.
+
+There had been no time for any one to interfere. The Brother gave a
+terrible yell.
+
+'The left one will be for another occasion,' said Jeanbernat quietly, as
+he threw the ear upon the ground. Then he went off.
+
+So great and so general was the stupefaction that nobody followed him.
+Brother Archangias had dropped upon the heap of fresh soil which had
+been thrown out of the grave. He was staunching his bleeding wound with
+his handkerchief. One of the four peasants who had carried the coffin,
+wanted to lead him away, conduct him home; but he refused with a gesture
+and remained where he was, fierce and sullen, wishing to see Albine
+lowered into the pit.
+
+'There! it's our turn at last!' said Rosalie with a little sigh.
+
+But Abbe Mouret still lingered by the grave, watching the bearers who
+were slipping cords under Albine's coffin in order that they might let
+it down gently. The bell was still tolling; but La Teuse must have been
+getting tired, for it tolled irregularly, as though it were becoming a
+little irritated at the length of the ceremony.
+
+The sun was growing hotter and the Solitaire's shadow crept slowly over
+the grass and the grave mounds. When Abbe Mouret was obliged to step
+back in order to give the bearers room, his eyes lighted upon the marble
+tombstone of Abbe Caffin, that priest who also had loved, and who was
+now sleeping there so peacefully beneath the wild-flowers.
+
+Then, all at once, even as the coffin descended, supported by the cords,
+whose knots made it strain and creak, a tremendous uproar arose in the
+poultry-yard on the other side of the wall. The goat began to bleat. The
+ducks, the geese, and the turkeys raised their loudest calls and flapped
+their wings. The fowls all cackled at once. The yellow cock, Alexander,
+crowed forth his trumpet notes. The rabbits could even be heard leaping
+in their hutches and shaking their wooden floors. And, above all this
+lifeful uproar of the animal creation, a loud laugh rang out. There was
+a rustling of skirts. Desiree, with her hair streaming, her arms bare
+to the elbows, and her face crimson with triumph, burst into sight, her
+hands resting upon the coping of the wall. She had doubtless climbed
+upon the manure-heap.
+
+'Serge! Serge!' she cried.
+
+At that moment Albine's coffin had reached the bottom of the grave.
+The cords had just been withdrawn. One of the peasants was throwing the
+first shovelful of earth into the cavity.
+
+'Serge! Serge!' Desiree cried, still more loudly, clapping her hands,
+'the cow has got a calf!'
+
+
+
+                              THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Abbe Mouret's Transgression, by Emile Zola
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Abbe Mouret's Transgression, by Emile Zola
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+
+Title: Abbe Mouret's Transgression
+       La Faute De L'abbe Mouret
+
+Author: Emile Zola
+
+Release Date: November 28, 2004 [EBook #14200]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ABBE MOURET'S TRANSGRESSION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+                    ABBE MOURET'S TRANSGRESSION
+
+                                 BY
+
+                             EMILE ZOLA
+
+
+                   Edited with an Introduction by
+                      Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
+
+
+
+                            INTRODUCTION
+
+'LA FAUTE DE L'ABBE MOURET' was, with respect to the date of
+publication, the fourth volume of M. Zola's 'Rougon-Macquart' series;
+but in the amended and final scheme of that great literary undertaking,
+it occupies the ninth place. It proceeds from the sixth volume of the
+series, 'The Conquest of Plassans;' which is followed by the two works
+that deal with the career of Octave Mouret, Abbe Serge Mouret's elder
+brother. In 'The Conquest of Plassans,' Serge and his half-witted
+sister, Desiree, are seen in childhood at their home in Plassans, which
+is wrecked by the doings of a certain Abbe Faujas and his relatives.
+Serge Mouret grows up, is called by an instinctive vocation to the
+priesthood, and becomes parish priest of Les Artaud, a well-nigh pagan
+hamlet in one of those bare, burning stretches of country with which
+Provence abounds. And here it is that 'La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret' opens
+in the old ruinous church, perched upon a hillock in full view of the
+squalid village, the arid fields, and the great belts of rock which shut
+in the landscape all around.
+
+There are two elements in this remarkable story, which, from the
+standpoint of literary style, has never been excelled by anything that
+M. Zola has since written; and one may glance at it therefore from two
+points of view. Taking it under its sociological and religious aspect,
+it will be found to be an indirect indictment of the celibacy of the
+priesthood; that celibacy, contrary to Nature's fundamental law, which
+assuredly has largely influenced the destinies of the Roman Catholic
+Church. To that celibacy, and to all the evils that have sprang from it,
+may be ascribed much of the irreligion current in France to-day. The
+periodical reports on criminality issued by the French Ministers of
+Justice since the foundation of the Republic in 1871, supply materials
+for a most formidable indictment of that vow of perpetual chastity which
+Rome exacts from her clergy. Nowadays it is undoubtedly too late for
+Rome to go back upon that vow and thereby transform the whole of her
+sacerdotal organisation; but, perhaps, had she done so in past times,
+before the spirit of inquiry and free examination came into being, she
+might have assured herself many more centuries of supremacy than have
+fallen to her lot. But she has ever sought to dissociate the law of the
+Divinity from the law of Nature, as though indeed the latter were but
+the invention of the Fiend.
+
+Abbe Mouret, M. Zola's hero, finds himself placed between the law of the
+Divinity and the law of Nature: and the struggle waged within him by
+those two forces is a terrible one. That which training has implanted in
+his mind proves the stronger, and, so far as the canons of the Church
+can warrant it, he saves his soul. But the problem is not quite frankly
+put by M. Zola; for if Abbe Mouret transgresses he does so unwittingly,
+at a time when he is unconscious of his priesthood and has no memory of
+any vow. When the truth flashes upon him he is horrified with himself,
+and forthwith returns to the Church. A further struggle between the
+contending forces then certainly ensues, and ends in the final victory
+of the Church. But it must at least be said that in the lapses which
+occur in real life among the Roman priesthood, the circumstances are
+altogether different from those which M. Zola has selected for his
+story.
+
+The truth is that in 'La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret,' betwixt lifelike
+glimpses of French rural life, the author transports us to a realm of
+poesy and imagination. This is, indeed, so true that he has introduced
+into his work all the ideas on which he had based an early unfinished
+poem called 'Genesis.' He carries us to an enchanted garden, the
+Paradou--a name which one need hardly say is Provencal for Paradise*
+--and there Serge Mouret, on recovering from brain fever, becomes, as it
+were, a new Adam by the side of a new Eve, the fair and winsome Albine.
+All this part of the book, then, is poetry in prose. The author has
+remembered the ties which link Rousseau to the realistic school of
+fiction, and, as in the pages of Jean-Jacques, trees, springs,
+mountains, rocks, and flowers become animated beings and claim their
+place in the world's mechanism. One may indeed go back far beyond
+Rousseau, even to Lucretius himself; for more than once we are
+irresistibly reminded of Lucretian scenes, above which through M. Zola's
+pages there seems to hover the pronouncement of Sophocles:
+
+     No ordinance of man shall override
+     The settled laws of Nature and of God;
+     Not written these in pages of a book,
+     Nor were they framed to-day, nor yesterday;
+     We know not whence they are; but this we know,
+     That they from all eternity have been,
+     And shall to all eternity endure.
+
+
+  * There is a village called Paradou in Provence, between
+    Les Baux and Arles.
+
+And if we pass to the young pair whose duo of love is sung amidst the
+varied voices of creation, we are irresistibly reminded of the Paul and
+Virginia of St. Pierre, and the Daphnis and Chloe of Longus. Beside
+them, in their marvellous garden, lingers a memory too of Manon and Des
+Grieux, with a suggestion of Lauzun and a glimpse of the art of
+Fragonard. All combine, all contribute--from the great classics to the
+eighteenth century _petits maitres_--to build up a story of love's rise
+in the human breast in answer to Nature's promptings.
+
+M. Zola wrote 'La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret' one summer under the trees of
+his garden, mindful the while of gardens that he had known in childhood:
+the flowery expanse which had stretched before his grandmother's home at
+Pont-au-Beraud and the wild estate of Galice, between Roquefavour and
+Aix-en-Provence, through which he had roamed as a lad with friends then
+boys like himself: Professor Baille and Cezanne, the painter. And into
+his description of the wondrous Paradou he has put all his remembrance
+of the gardens and woods of Provence, where many a plant and flower
+thrive with a luxuriance unknown to England. True, in order to refresh
+his memory and avoid mistakes, he consulted various horticultural
+manuals whilst he was writing; of which circumstance captious critics
+have readily laid hold, to proclaim that the description of the Paradou
+is a mere florist's catalogue.
+
+But it is nothing of the kind. The florist who might dare to offer such
+a catalogue to the public would be speedily assailed by all the
+horticultural journalists of England and all the customers of villadom.
+For M. Zola avails himself of a poet's license to crowd marvel upon
+marvel, to exaggerate nature's forces, to transform the tiniest blooms
+into giant examples of efflorescence, and to mingle even the seasons one
+with the other. But all this was premeditated; there was a picture
+before his mind's eye, and that picture he sought to trace with his pen,
+regardless of all possible objections. It is the poet's privilege to do
+this and even to be admired for it. It would be easy for some leaned
+botanist, some expert zoologist, to demolish Milton from the standpoint
+of their respective sciences, but it would be absurd to do so. We ask of
+the poet the flowers of his imagination, and the further he carries us
+from the sordid realities, the limited possibilities of life, the more
+are we grateful to him.
+
+And M. Zola's Paradou is a flight of fancy, even as its mistress, the
+fair, loving, guileless Albine, whose smiles and whose tears alike go to
+our hearts, is the daughter of imagination. She is a flower--the very
+flower of life's youth--in the midst of all the blossoms of her garden.
+She unfolds to life and to love even as they unfold; she loves
+rapturously even as they do under the sun and the azure; and she dies
+with them when the sun's caress is gone and the chill of winter has
+fallen. At the thought of her, one instinctively remembers Malherbe's
+'Ode A Du Perrier:'
+
+     She to this earth belonged, where beauty fast
+          To direst fate is borne:
+     A rose, she lasted, as the roses last,
+          Only for one brief morn.
+
+
+French painters have made subjects of many episodes in M. Zola's works,
+but none has been more popular with them than Albine's pathetic,
+perfumed death amidst the flowers. I know several paintings of great
+merit which that touching incident has inspired.
+
+Albine, if more or less unreal, a phantasm, the spirit as it were of
+Nature incarnate in womanhood, is none the less the most delightful of
+M. Zola's heroines. She smiles at us like the vision of perfect beauty
+and perfect love which rises before us when our hearts are yet young and
+full of illusions. She is the ideal, the very quintessence of woman.
+
+In Serge Mouret, her lover, we find a man who, in more than one respect,
+recalls M. Zola's later hero, the Abbe Froment of 'Lourdes' and 'Rome.'
+He has the same loving, yearning nature; he is born--absolutely like
+Abbe Froment--of an unbelieving father and a mother of mystical mind.
+But unlike Froment he cannot shake off the shackles of his priesthood.
+Reborn to life after his dangerous illness, he relapses into the
+religion of death, the religion which regards life as impurity, which
+denies Nature's laws, and so often wrecks human existence, as if indeed
+that had been the Divine purpose in setting man upon earth. His
+struggles suggest various passages in 'Lourdes' and 'Rome.' In fact, in
+writing those works, M. Zola must have had his earlier creation in mind.
+There are passages in 'La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret' culled from the
+writings of the Spanish Jesuit Fathers and the 'Imitation' of Thomas a
+Kempis that recur almost word for word in the Trilogy of the Three
+Cities. Some might regard this as evidence of the limitation of M.
+Zola's powers, but I think differently. I consider that he has in both
+instances designedly taken the same type of priest in order to show how
+he may live under varied circumstances; for in the earlier instance he
+has led him to one goal, and in the later one to another. And the
+passages of prayer, entreaty, and spiritual conflict simply recur
+because they are germane, even necessary, to the subject in both cases.
+
+Of the minor characters that figure in 'La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret' the
+chief thing to be said is that they are lifelike. If Serge is almost
+wholly spiritual, if Albine is the daughter of poesy, they, the others,
+are of the earth earthy. As a result of their appearance on the scene,
+there are some powerful contrasting passages in the book. Archangias,
+the coarse and brutal Christian Brother who serves as a foil to Abbe
+Mouret; La Teuse, the priest's garrulous old housekeeper; Desiree, his
+'innocent' sister, a grown woman with the mind of a child and an almost
+crazy affection for every kind of bird and beast, are all admirably
+portrayed. Old Bambousse, though one sees but little of him, stands out
+as a genuine type of the hard-headed French peasant, who invariably
+places pecuniary considerations before all others. And Fortune and
+Rosalie, Vincent and Catherine, and their companions, are equally true
+to nature. It need hardly be said that there is many a village in France
+similar to Les Artaud. That hamlet's shameless, purely animal life has
+in no wise been over-pictured by M. Zola. Those who might doubt him need
+not go as far as Provence to find such communities. Many Norman hamlets
+are every whit as bad, and, in Normandy, conditions are aggravated by a
+marked predilection for the bottle, which, as French social-scientists
+have been pointing out for some years now, is fast hastening the
+degenerescence of the peasantry, both morally and physically.
+
+With reference to the English version of 'La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret'
+herewith presented, I may just say that I have subjected it to
+considerable revision and have retranslated all the more important
+passages myself.
+
+     MERTON, SURREY.                                    E. A. V.
+
+
+
+                    ABBE MOURET'S TRANSGRESSION
+
+
+
+                               BOOK I
+
+
+
+                                 I
+
+As La Teuse entered the church she rested her broom and feather-brush
+against the altar. She was late, as she had that day began her
+half-yearly wash. Limping more than ever in her haste and hustling the
+benches, she went down the church to ring the _Angelus_. The bare, worn
+bell-rope dangled from the ceiling near the confessional, and ended in a
+big knot greasy from handling. Again and again, with regular jumps, she
+hung herself upon it; and then let her whole bulky figure go with it,
+whirling in her petticoats, her cap awry, and her blood rushing to her
+broad face.
+
+Having set her cap straight with a little pat, she came back breathless
+to give a hasty sweep before the altar. Every day the dust persistently
+settled between the disjoined boards of the platform. Her broom rummaged
+among the corners with an angry rumble. Then she lifted the altar cover
+and was sorely vexed to find that the large upper cloth, already darned
+in a score of places, was again worn through in the very middle, so as
+to show the under cloth, which in its turn was so worn and so
+transparent that one could see the consecrated stone, embedded in the
+painted wood of the altar. La Teuse dusted the linen, yellow from long
+usage, and plied her feather-brush along the shelf against which she set
+the liturgical altar-cards. Then, climbing upon a chair, she removed the
+yellow cotton covers from the crucifix and two of the candlesticks. The
+brass of the latter was tarnished.
+
+'Dear me!' she muttered, 'they really want a clean! I must give them a
+polish up!'
+
+Then hopping on one leg, swaying and stumping heavily enough to drive in
+the flagstones, she hastened to the sacristy for the Missal, which she
+placed unopened on the lectern on the Epistle side, with its edges
+turned towards the middle of the altar. And afterwards she lighted the
+two candles. As she went off with her broom, she gave a glance round her
+to make sure that the abode of the Divinity had been put in proper
+order. All was still, save that the bell-rope near the confessional
+still swung between roof and floor with a sinuous sweep.
+
+Abbe Mouret had just come down to the sacristy, a small and chilly
+apartment, which a passage separated from his dining-room.
+
+'Good morning, Monsieur le Cure,' said La Teuse, laying her broom aside.
+'Oh! you have been lazy this morning! Do you know it's a quarter past
+six?' And without allowing the smiling young priest sufficient time to
+reply, she added 'I've a scolding to give you. There's another hole in
+the cloth again. There's no sense in it. We have only one other, and
+I've been ruining my eyes over it these three days in trying to mend it.
+You will leave our poor Lord quite bare, if you go on like this.'
+
+Abbe Mouret was still smiling. 'Jesus does not need so much linen, my
+good Teuse,' he cheerfully replied. 'He is always warm, always royally
+received by those who love Him well.'
+
+Then stepping towards a small tap, he asked: 'Is my sister up yet? I
+have not seen her.'
+
+'Oh, Mademoiselle Desiree has been down a long time,' answered the
+servant, who was kneeling before an old kitchen sideboard in which the
+sacred vestments were kept. 'She is already with her fowls and rabbits.
+She was expecting some chicks to be hatched yesterday, and it didn't
+come off. So you can guess her excitement.' Then the worthy woman broke
+off to inquire: 'The gold chasuble, eh?'
+
+The priest, who had washed his hands and stood reverently murmuring a
+prayer, nodded affirmatively. The parish possessed only three chasubles:
+a violet one, a black one, and one in cloth-of-gold. The last had to be
+used on the days when white, red, or green was prescribed by the ritual,
+and it was therefore an all important garment. La Teuse lifted it
+reverently from the shelf covered with blue paper, on which she laid it
+after each service; and having placed it on the sideboard, she
+cautiously removed the fine cloths which protected its embroidery. A
+golden lamb slumbered on a golden cross, surrounded by broad rays of
+gold. The gold tissue, frayed at the folds, broke out in little slender
+tufts; the embossed ornaments were getting tarnished and worn. There was
+perpetual anxiety, fluttering concern, at seeing it thus go off spangle
+by spangle. The priest had to wear it almost every day. And how on earth
+could it be replaced--how would they be able to buy the three chasubles
+whose place it took, when the last gold threads should be worn out?
+
+Upon the chasuble La Teuse next laid out the stole, the maniple, the
+girdle, alb and amice. But her tongue still wagged while she crossed the
+stole with the maniple, and wreathed the girdle so as to trace the
+venerated initial of Mary's holy name.
+
+'That girdle is not up to much now,' she muttered; 'you will have to
+make up your mind to get another, your reverence. It wouldn't be very
+hard; I could plait you one myself if I only had some hemp.'
+
+Abbe Mouret made no answer. He was dressing the chalice at a small
+table. A large old silver-gilt chalice it was with a bronze base, which
+he had just taken from the bottom of a deal cupboard, in which the
+sacred vessels and linen, the Holy Oils, the Missals, candlesticks, and
+crosses were kept. Across the cup he laid a clean purificator, and on
+this set the silver-gilt paten, with the host in it, which he covered
+with a small lawn pall. As he was hiding the chalice by gathering
+together the folds in the veil of cloth of gold matching the chasuble,
+La Teuse exclaimed:
+
+'Stop, there's no corporal in the burse. Last night I took all the dirty
+purificators, palls, and corporals to wash them--separately, of course
+--not with the house-wash. By-the-bye, your reverence, I didn't tell
+you: I have just started the house-wash. A fine fat one it will be!
+Better than the last.'
+
+Then while the priest slipped a corporal into the burse and laid the
+latter on the veil, she went on quickly:
+
+'By-the-bye, I forgot! that gadabout Vincent hasn't come. Do you wish me
+to serve your mass, your reverence?'
+
+The young priest eyed her sternly.
+
+'Well, it isn't a sin,' she continued, with her genial smile. 'I did
+serve a mass once, in Monsieur Caffin's time. I serve it better, too,
+than ragamuffins who laugh like heathens at seeing a fly buzzing about
+the church. True I may wear a cap, I may be sixty years old, and as
+round as a tub, but I have more respect for our Lord than those imps of
+boys whom I caught only the other day playing at leap-frog behind the
+altar.'
+
+The priest was still looking at her and shaking his head.
+
+'What a hole this village is!' she grumbled. 'Not a hundred and fifty
+people in it! There are days, like to-day, when you wouldn't find a
+living soul in Les Artaud. Even the babies in swaddling clothes are gone
+to the vineyards! And goodness knows what they do among such vines
+--vines that grow under the pebbles and look as dry as thistles! A
+perfect wilderness, three miles from any highway! Unless an angel comes
+down to serve your mass, your reverence, you've only got me to help you,
+on my honour! or one of Mademoiselle Desiree's rabbits, no offence to
+your reverence!'
+
+Just at that moment, however, Vincent, the Brichets' younger son, gently
+opened the door of the sacristy. His shock of red hair and his little,
+glistening, grey eyes exasperated La Teuse.
+
+'Oh! the wretch!' she cried. 'I'll bet he's just been up to some
+mischief! Come on, you scamp, since his reverence is afraid I might
+dirty our Lord!'
+
+On seeing the lad, Abbe Mouret had taken up the amice. He kissed the
+cross embroidered in the centre of it, and for a second laid the cloth
+upon his head; then lowering it over the collar-band of his cassock, he
+crossed it and fastened the tapes, the right one over the left. He next
+donned the alb, the symbol of purity, beginning with the right sleeve.
+Vincent stooped and turned around him, adjusting the alb, in order that
+it should fall evenly all round him to a couple of inches from the
+ground. Then he presented the girdle to the priest, who fastened it
+tightly round his loins, as a reminder of the bonds wherewith the
+Saviour was bound in His Passion.
+
+La Teuse remained standing there, feeling jealous and hurt and
+struggling to keep silence; but so great was the itching of her tongue,
+that she soon broke out once more: 'Brother Archangias has been here. He
+won't have a single child at school to-day. He went off again like a
+whirlwind to pull the brats' ears in the vineyards. You had better see
+him. I believe he has got something to say to you.'
+
+Abbe Mouret silenced her with a wave of the hand. Then he repeated the
+usual prayers while he took the maniple--which he kissed before slipping
+it over his left forearm, as a symbol of the practice of good works--and
+while crossing on his breast the stole, the symbol of his dignity and
+power. La Teuse had to help Vincent in the work of adjusting the
+chasuble, which she fastened together with slender tapes, so that it
+might not slip off behind.
+
+'Holy Virgin! I had forgotten the cruets!' she stammered, rushing to the
+cupboard. 'Come, look sharp, lad!'
+
+Thereupon Vincent filled the cruets, phials of coarse glass, while she
+hastened to take a clean finger-cloth from a drawer. Abbe Mouret,
+holding the chalice by its stem with his left hand, the fingers of his
+right resting meanwhile on the burse, then bowed profoundly, but without
+removing his biretta, to a black wooden crucifix, which hung over the
+side-board. The lad bowed too, and, bearing the cruets covered with the
+finger-cloth, led the way out of the sacristy, followed by the priest,
+who walked on with downcast eyes, absorbed in deep and prayerful
+meditation.
+
+
+
+                                 II
+
+The empty church was quite white that May morning. The bell-rope near
+the confessional hung motionless once more. The little bracket light,
+with its stained glass shade, burned like a crimson splotch against the
+wall on the right of the tabernacle. Vincent, having set the cruets on
+the credence, came back and knelt just below the altar step on the left,
+while the priest, after rendering homage to the Holy Sacrament by a
+genuflexion, went up to the altar and there spread out the corporal, on
+the centre of which he placed the chalice. Then, having opened the
+Missal, he came down again. Another bend of the knee followed, and,
+after crossing himself and uttering aloud the formula, 'In the name of
+the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,' he raised his joined hands to
+his breast, and entered on the great divine drama, with his countenance
+blanched by faith and love.
+
+'_Introibo ad altare Dei_.'
+
+'_Ad Deum qui loetificat juventutem meam_,' gabbled Vincent, who,
+squatting on his heels, mumbled the responses of the antiphon and the
+psalm, while watching La Teuse as she roved about the church.
+
+The old servant was gazing at one of the candles with a troubled look.
+Her anxiety seemed to increase while the priest, bowing down with hands
+joined again, recited the _Confiteor_. She stood still, in her turn
+struck her breast, her head bowed, but still keeping a watchful eye on
+the taper. For another minute the priest's grave voice and the server's
+stammers alternated:
+
+'_Dominus vobiscum_.'
+
+'_Et cum spiritu tuo_.'
+
+Then the priest, spreading out his hands and afterwards again joining
+them, said with devout compunction: '_Oremus_' (Let us pray).
+
+La Teuse could now stand it no longer, but stepped behind the altar,
+reached the guttering candle, and trimmed it with the points of her
+scissors. Two large blobs of wax had already been wasted. When she came
+back again putting the benches straight on her way, and making sure that
+there was holy-water in the fonts, the priest, whose hands were resting
+on the edge of the altar-cloth, was praying in subdued tones. And at
+last he kissed the altar.
+
+Behind him, the little church still looked wan in the pale light of
+early morn. The sun, as yet, was only level with the tiled roof. The
+_Kyrie Eleisons_ rang quiveringly through that sort of whitewashed
+stable with flat ceiling and bedaubed beams. On either side three lofty
+windows of plain glass, most of them cracked or smashed, let in a raw
+light of chalky crudeness.
+
+The free air poured in as it listed, emphasising the naked poverty of
+the God of that forlorn village. At the far end of the church, above the
+big door which was never opened and the threshold of which was green
+with weeds, a boarded gallery--reached by a common miller's ladder
+--stretched from wall to wall. Dire were its creakings on festival days
+beneath the weight of wooden shoes. Near the ladder stood the
+confessional, with warped panels, painted a lemon yellow. Facing it,
+beside the little door, stood the font--a former holy-water stoup
+resting on a stonework pedestal. To the right and to the left, halfway
+down the church, two narrow altars stood against the wall, surrounded by
+wooden balustrades. On the left-hand one, dedicated to the Blessed
+Virgin, was a large gilded plaster statue of the Mother of God, wearing
+a regal gold crown upon her chestnut hair; while on her left arm sat
+the Divine Child, nude and smiling, whose little hand raised the
+star-spangled orb of the universe. The Virgin's feet were poised on
+clouds, and beneath them peeped the heads of winged cherubs. Then the
+right-hand altar, used for the masses for the dead, was surmounted by a
+crucifix of painted papier-mache--a pendant, as it were, to the Virgin's
+effigy. The figure of Christ, as large as a child of ten years old,
+showed Him in all the horror of His death-throes, with head thrown back,
+ribs projecting, abdomen hollowed in, and limbs distorted and splashed
+with blood. There was a pulpit, too--a square box reached by a five-step
+block--near a clock with running weights, in a walnut case, whose thuds
+shook the whole church like the beatings of some huge heart concealed,
+it might be, under the stone flags. All along the nave the fourteen
+Stations of the Cross, fourteen coarsely coloured prints in narrow black
+frames, bespeckled the staring whiteness of the walls with the yellow,
+blue, and scarlet of scenes from the Passion.
+
+'_Deo Gratias_,' stuttered out Vincent at the end of the Epistle.
+
+The mystery of love, the immolation of the Holy Victim, was about to
+begin. The server took the Missal and bore it to the left, or
+Gospel-side, of the altar, taking care not to touch the pages of the
+book. Each time he passed before the tabernacle he made a genuflexion
+slantwise, which threw him all askew. Returning to the right-hand side
+once more, he stood upright with crossed arms during the reading of the
+Gospel. The priest, after making the sign of the cross upon the Missal,
+next crossed himself: first upon his forehead--to declare that he would
+never blush for the divine word; then on his mouth--to show his
+unchanging readiness to confess his faith; and finally on his heart--to
+mark that it belonged to God alone.
+
+'_Dominus vobiscum_,' said he, turning round and facing the cold white
+church.
+
+'_Et cum spirits tuo_,' answered Vincent, who once more was on his
+knees.
+
+The Offertory having been recited, the priest uncovered the chalice. For
+a moment he held before his breast the paten containing the host, which
+he offered up to God, for himself, for those present, and for all the
+faithful, living and dead. Then, slipping it on to the edge of the
+corporal without touching it with his fingers, he took up the chalice
+and carefully wiped it with the purificator. Vincent had in the
+meanwhile fetched the cruets from the credence table, and now presented
+them in turn, first the wine and then the water. The priest then offered
+up on behalf of the whole world the half-filled chalice, which he next
+replaced upon the corporal and covered with the pall. Then once again he
+prayed, and returned to the side of the altar where the server let a
+little water dribble over his thumbs and forefingers to purify him
+from the slightest sinful stain. When he had dried his hands on the
+finger-cloth, La Teuse--who stood there waiting--emptied the
+cruet-salver into a zinc pail at the corner of the altar.
+
+'_Orate, fratres_,' resumed the priest aloud as he faced the empty
+benches, extending and reclasping his hands in a gesture of appeal to
+all men of good-will. And turning again towards the altar, he continued
+his prayer in a lower tone, while Vincent began to mutter a long Latin
+sentence in which he eventually got lost. Now it was that the yellow
+sunbeams began to dart through the windows; called, as it were, by the
+priest, the sun itself had come to mass, throwing golden sheets of light
+upon the left-hand wall, the confessional, the Virgin's altar, and the
+big clock.
+
+A gentle creak came from the confessional; the Mother of God, in a halo,
+in the dazzlement of her golden crown and mantle smiled tenderly with
+tinted lips upon the infant Jesus; and the heated clock throbbed out the
+time with quickening strokes. It seemed as if the sun peopled the
+benches with the dusty motes that danced in his beams, as if the little
+church, that whitened stable, were filled with a glowing throng.
+Without, were heard the sounds that told of the happy waking of the
+countryside, the blades of grass sighed out content, the damp leaves
+dried themselves in the warmth, the birds pruned their feathers and took
+a first flit round. And indeed the countryside itself seemed to enter
+with the sun; for beside one of the windows a large rowan tree shot up,
+thrusting some of its branches through the shattered panes and
+stretching out leafy buds as if to take a peep within; while through the
+fissures of the great door the weeds on the threshold threatened to
+encroach upon the nave. Amid all this quickening life, the big Christ,
+still in shadow, alone displayed signs of death, the sufferings of
+ochre-daubed and lake-bespattered flesh. A sparrow raised himself up for
+a moment at the edge of a hole, took a glance, then flew away; but only
+to reappear almost immediately when with noiseless wing he dropped
+between the benches before the Virgin's altar. A second sparrow
+followed; and soon from all the boughs of the rowan tree came others
+that calmly hopped about the flags.
+
+'_Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth_,' said the priest in
+a low tone, whilst slightly stooping.
+
+Vincent rang the little bell thrice; and the sparrows, scared by the
+sudden tinkling, flew off with such a mighty buzz of wings that La
+Teuse, who had just gone back into the sacristy, came out again,
+grumbling; 'The little rascals! they will mess everything. I'll bet that
+Mademoiselle Desiree has been here again to scatter bread-crumbs for
+them.'
+
+The dread moment was at hand. The body and the blood of a God were about
+to descend upon the altar. The priest kissed the altar-cloth, clasped
+his hands, and multiplied signs of the cross over host and chalice. The
+prayers of the canon of the mass now fell from his lips in a very
+ecstasy of humility and gratitude. His attitude, his gestures, the
+inflections of his voice, all expressed his consciousness of his
+littleness, his emotion at being selected for so great a task. Vincent
+came and knelt beside him, lightly lifted the chasuble with his left
+hand, the bell ready in his right; and the priest, his elbows resting on
+the edge of the altar, holding the host with the thumbs and forefingers
+of both hands, pronounced over it the words of consecration: _Hoc est
+enim corpus meum_. Then having bowed the knee before it, he raised it
+slowly as high as his hands could reach, following it upwards with his
+eyes, while the kneeling server rang the bell thrice. Then he
+consecrated the wine--_Hic est enim calix_--leaning once more upon his
+elbows, bowing, raising the cup aloft, his right hand round the stem,
+his left holding its base, and his eyes following it aloft. Again the
+server rang the bell three times. The great mystery of the Redemption
+had once more been repeated, once more had the adorable Blood flowed
+forth.
+
+'Just you wait a bit,' growled La Teuse, as she tried to scare away the
+sparrows with outstretched fist.
+
+But the sparrows were now fearless. They had come back even while the
+bell was ringing, and, unabashed, were fluttering about the benches. The
+repeated tinklings even roused them into liveliness, and they answered
+back with little chirps which crossed amid the Latin words of prayer,
+like the rippling laughs of free urchins. The sun warmed their plumage,
+the sweet poverty of the church captivated them. They felt at home
+there, as in some barn whose shutters had been left open, and screeched,
+fought, and squabbled over the crumbs they found upon the floor. One
+flew to perch himself on the smiling Virgin's golden veil; another,
+whose daring put the old servant in a towering rage, made a hasty
+reconnaissance of La Teuse's skirts. And at the altar, the priest, with
+every faculty absorbed, his eyes fixed upon the sacred host, his thumbs
+and forefingers joined, did not even hear this invasion of the warm May
+morning, this rising flood of sunlight, greenery and birds, which
+overflowed even to the foot of the Calvary where doomed nature was
+wrestling in the death-throes.
+
+'_Per omnia soecula soeculorum_,' he said.
+
+'Amen,' answered Vincent.
+
+The _Pater_ ended, the priest, holding the host over the chalice, broke
+it in the centre. Detaching a particle from one of the halves, he
+dropped it into the precious blood, to symbolise the intimate union into
+which he was about to enter with God. He said the _Agnus Dei_ aloud,
+softly recited the three prescribed prayers, and made his act of
+unworthiness, and then with his elbows resting on the altar, and with
+the paten beneath his chin, he partook of both portions of the host at
+once. After a fervent meditation, with his hands clasped before his
+face, he took the paten and gathered from the corporal the sacred
+particles of the host that had fallen, and dropped them into the
+chalice. One particle which had adhered to his thumb he removed with his
+forefinger. And, crossing himself, chalice in hand, with the paten once
+again below his chin, he drank all the precious blood in three draughts,
+never taking his lips from the cup's rim, but imbibing the divine
+Sacrifice to the last drop.
+
+Vincent had risen to fetch the cruets from the credence table. But
+suddenly the door of the passage leading to the parsonage flew open and
+swung back against the wall, to admit a handsome child-like girl of
+twenty-two, who carried something hidden in her apron.
+
+'Thirteen of them,' she called out. 'All the eggs were good.' And she
+opened out her apron and revealed a brood of little shivering chicks,
+with sprouting down and beady black eyes. 'Do just look,' said she;
+'aren't they sweet little pets, the darlings! Oh, look at the little
+white one climbing on the others' backs! and the spotted one already
+flapping his tiny wings! The eggs were a splendid lot; not one of them
+unfertile.'
+
+La Teuse, who was helping to serve the mass in spite of all
+prohibitions, and was at that very moment handing the cruets to Vincent
+for the ablutions, thereupon turned round and loudly exclaimed: 'Do be
+quiet, Mademoiselle Desiree! Don't you see we haven't finished yet?'
+
+Through the open doorway now came the strong smell of a farmyard,
+blowing like some generative ferment into the church amidst the warm
+sunlight that was creeping over the altar. Desiree stood there for a
+moment delighted with the little ones she carried, watching Vincent
+pour, and her brother drink, the purifying wine, in order that nought of
+the sacred elements should be left within his mouth. And she stood there
+still when he came back to the side of the altar, holding the chalice in
+both hands, so that Vincent might pour over his forefingers and thumbs
+the wine and water of ablution, which he likewise drank. But when the
+mother hen ran up clucking with alarm to seek her little ones, and
+threatened to force her way into the church, Desiree went off, talking
+maternally to her chicks, while the priest, after pressing the
+purificator to his lips, wiped first the rim and next the interior of
+the chalice.
+
+Then came the end, the act of thanksgiving to God. For the last time the
+server removed the Missal, and brought it back to the right-hand side.
+The priest replaced the purificator, paten, and pall upon the chalice;
+once more pinched the two large folds of the veil together, and laid
+upon it the burse containing the corporal. His whole being was now one
+act of ardent thanksgiving. He besought from Heaven the forgiveness of
+his sins, the grace of a holy life, and the reward of everlasting
+life. He remained as if overwhelmed by this miracle of love, the
+ever-recurring immolation, which sustained him day by day with the blood
+and flesh of his Savior.
+
+Having read the final prayers, he turned and said: '_Ite, missa est_.'
+
+'_Deo gratias_,' answered Vincent.
+
+And having turned back to kiss the altar, the priest faced round anew,
+his left hand just below his breast, his right outstretched whilst
+blessing the church, which the gladsome sunbeams and noisy sparrows
+filled.
+
+'_Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus, Pater et Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus_.'
+
+'_Amen_,' said the server, as he crossed himself.
+
+The sun had risen higher, and the sparrows were growing bolder. While
+the priest read from the left-hand altar-card the passage of the Gospel
+of St. John, announcing the eternity of the Word, the sunrays set the
+altar ablaze, whitened the panels of imitation marble, and dimmed the
+flame of the two candles, whose short wicks were now merely two dull
+spots. The victorious orb enveloped with his glory the crucifix, the
+candlesticks, the chasuble, the veil of the chalice--all the gold work
+that paled beneath his beams. And when at last the priest, after taking
+the chalice in his hands and making a genuflexion, covered his head and
+turned from the altar to follow the server, laden with the cruets and
+finger-cloth, to the sacristy, the planet remained sole master of the
+church. Its rays in turn now rested on the altar-cloth, irradiating the
+tabernacle-door with splendour, and celebrating the fertile powers of
+May. Warmth rose from the stone flags. The daubed walls, the tall
+Virgin, the huge Christ, too, all seemed to quiver as with shooting sap,
+as if death had been conquered by the earth's eternal youth.
+
+
+
+                                III
+
+Le Teuse hastily put out the candles, but lingered to make one last
+attempt to drive away the sparrows, and so when she returned to the
+sacristy with the Missal she no longer found Abbe Mouret there. Having
+washed his hands and put away the sacred vessels and vestments, he was
+now standing in the dining room, breakfasting off a cup of milk.
+
+'You really ought to prevent your sister from scattering bread in the
+church,' said La Teuse on coming in. 'It was last winter she hit upon
+that pretty prank. She said the sparrows were cold, and that God might
+well give them some food. You see, she'll end by making us sleep with
+all her fowls and rabbits.'
+
+'We should be all the warmer,' pleasantly replied the young priest. 'You
+are always grumbling, La Teuse. Do let our poor Desiree pet her animals.
+She has no other pleasure, poor innocent!'
+
+The servant took her stand in the centre of the room.
+
+'I do believe you yourself wouldn't mind a bit if the magpies actually
+built their nests in the church. You never can see anything, everything
+seems just what it ought to be to you. Your sister is precious lucky in
+having had you to take charge of her when you left the seminary. No
+father, no mother. I should like to know who would let her mess about as
+she does in a farmyard.'
+
+Then softening, she added in a gentler tone: 'To be sure, it would be a
+pity to cross her. She hasn't a touch of malice in her. She's like a
+child of ten, although she's one of the finest grown girls in the
+neighbourhood. And I have to put her to bed, as you know, every night,
+and send her to sleep with stories, just like a little child.'
+
+Abbe Mouret had remained standing, finishing the cup of milk he held
+between his fingers, which were slightly reddened by the chill
+atmosphere of the dining-room--a large room with painted grey walls, a
+floor of square tiles, and having no furniture beyond a table and a few
+chairs. La Teuse picked up a napkin which she had laid at a corner of
+the table in readiness for breakfast.
+
+'It isn't much linen you dirty,' she muttered. 'One would think you
+could never sit down, that you are always just about to start off. Ah!
+if you had known Monsieur Caffin, the poor dead priest whose place you
+have taken! What a man he was for comfort! Why, he couldn't have
+digested his food, if he had eaten standing. A Norman he was, from
+Canteleu, like myself. I don't thank him, I tell you, for having brought
+me to such a wild-beast country as this. When first we came, O, Lord!
+how bored we were! But the poor priest had had some uncomfortable tales
+going about him at home. . . . Why, sir, didn't you sweeten your milk,
+then? Aren't those the two lumps of sugar?'
+
+The priest put down his cup.
+
+'Yes, I must have forgotten, I believe,' he said.
+
+La Teuse stared at him and shrugged her shoulders. She folded up inside
+the napkin a slice of stale home-made bread which had also been left
+untouched on the table. Then just as the priest was about to go out, she
+ran after him and knelt down at his feet, exclaiming: 'Stop, your
+shoe-laces are not even fastened. I cannot imagine how your feet can
+stand those peasant shoes, you're such a little, tender man and look as
+if you had been preciously spoilt! Ah, the bishop must have known a deal
+about you, to go and give you the poorest living in the department.'
+
+'But it was I who chose Les Artaud,' said the priest, breaking into
+another smile. 'You are very bad-tempered this morning, La Teuse. Are we
+not happy here? We have got all we want, and our life is as peaceful as
+if in paradise.'
+
+She then restrained herself and laughed in her turn, saying: 'You are a
+holy man, Monsieur le Cure. But come and see what a splendid wash I have
+got. That will be better than squabbling with one another.'
+
+The priest was obliged to follow, for she might prevent him going out
+at all if he did not compliment her on her washing. As he left the
+dining-room he stumbled over a heap of rubbish in the passage.
+
+'What is this?' he asked.
+
+Oh, nothing,' said La Teuse in her grimest tone. 'It's only the
+parsonage coming down. However, you are quite content, you've got all
+you want. Good heavens! there are holes and to spare. Just look at that
+ceiling, now. Isn't it cracked all over? If we don't get buried alive
+one of these days, we shall owe a precious big taper to our guardian
+angel. However, if it suits you--It's like the church. Those broken
+panes ought to have been replaced these two years. In winter our Lord
+gets frozen with the cold. Besides, it would keep out those rascally
+sparrows. I shall paste paper over the holes. You see if I don't.'
+
+'A capital idea,' murmured the priest, 'they might very well be pasted
+over. As to the walls, they are stouter than we think. In my room, the
+floor has only given way slightly in front of the window. The house will
+see us all buried.'
+
+On reaching the little open shed near the kitchen, in order to please La
+Teuse he went into ecstasies over the washing; he even had to dip his
+fingers into it and feel it. This so pleased the old woman that her
+attentions became quite motherly. She no longer scolded, but ran to
+fetch a clothes-brush, saying: 'You surely are not going out with
+yesterday's mud on your cassock! If you had left it out on the banister,
+it would be clean now--it's still a good one. But do lift it up well
+when you cross any field. The thistles tear everything.'
+
+While speaking she kept turning him round like a child, shaking him from
+head to foot with her energetic brushing.
+
+'There, there, that will do,' he said, escaping from her at last. 'Take
+care of Desiree, won't you? I will tell her I am going out.'
+
+But at this minute a fresh clear voice called to him: 'Serge! Serge!'
+
+Desiree came flying up, her cheeks ruddy with glee, her head bare, her
+black locks twisted tightly upon her neck, and her hands and arms
+smothered up to the elbows with manure. She had been cleaning out her
+poultry house. When she caught sight of her brother just about to go out
+with his breviary under his arm, she laughed aloud, and kissed him on
+his mouth, with her arms thrown back behind her to avoid soiling him.
+
+'No, no,' she hurriedly exclaimed, 'I should dirty you. Oh! I am having
+such fun! You must see the animals when you come back.'
+
+Thereupon she fled away again. Abbe Mouret then said that he would be
+back about eleven for luncheon, and as he started, La Teuse, who had
+followed him to the doorstep, shouted after him her last injunctions.
+
+'Don't forget to see Brother Archangias. And look in also at the
+Brichets'; the wife came again yesterday about that wedding. Just
+listen, Monsieur le Cure! I met their Rosalie. She'd ask nothing better
+than to marry big Fortune. Have a talk with old Bambousse; perhaps he
+will listen to you now. And don't come back at twelve o'clock, like the
+other day. Come, say you'll be back at eleven, won't you?'
+
+But the priest turned round no more. So she went in again, growling
+between her teeth:
+
+'When does he ever listen to me? Barely twenty-six years old and does
+just as he likes. To be sure, he's an old man of sixty for holiness; but
+then he has never known life; he knows nothing, it's no trouble to him
+to be as good as a cherub!'
+
+
+
+                                 IV
+
+When Abbe Mouret had got beyond all hearing of La Teuse he stopped,
+thankful to be alone at last. The church was built on a hillock, which
+sloped down gently to the village. With its large gaping windows and
+bright red tiles, it stretched out like a deserted sheep-cote. The
+priest turned round and glanced at the parsonage, a greyish building
+springing from the very side of the church; but as if fearful that he
+might again be overtaken by the interminable chatter that had been
+buzzing in his ears ever since morning, he turned up to the right again,
+and only felt safe when he at last stood before the great doorway, where
+he could not be seen from the parsonage. The front of the church, quite
+bare and worn by the sunshine and rain of years, was crowned by a narrow
+open stone belfry, in which a small bell showed its black silhouette,
+whilst its rope disappeared through the tiles. Six broken steps, on one
+side half buried in the earth, led up to the lofty arched door, now
+cracked, smothered with dust and rust and cobwebs, and so frailly hung
+upon its outwrenched hinges that it seemed as if the first slight puff
+would secure free entrance to the winds of heaven. Abbe Mouret, who had
+an affection for this dilapidated door, leaned against one of its leaves
+as he stood upon the steps. Thence he could survey the whole country
+round at a glance. And shading his eyes with his hands he scanned the
+horizon.
+
+In the month of May exuberant vegetation burst forth from that stony
+soil. Gigantic lavenders, juniper bushes, patches of rank herbage
+swarmed over the church threshold, and scattered clumps of dark greenery
+even to the very tiles. It seemed as if the first throb of shooting sap
+in the tough matted underwood might well topple the church over. At that
+early hour, amid all the travail of nature's growth, there was a hum of
+vivifying warmth, and the very rocks quivered as with a long and silent
+effort. But the Abbe failed to comprehend the ardour of nature's painful
+labour; he simply thought that the steps were tottering, and thereupon
+leant against the other side of the door.
+
+The countryside stretched away for a distance of six miles, bounded by a
+wall of tawny hills speckled with black pine-woods. It was a fearful
+landscape of arid wastes and rocky spurs rending the soil. The few
+patches of arable ground were like scattered pools of blood, red fields
+with rows of lean almond trees, grey-topped olive trees and long lines
+of vines, streaking the soil with their brown stems. It was as if some
+huge conflagration had swept by there, scattering the ashes of forests
+over the hill-tops, consuming all the grass of the meadow lands, and
+leaving its glare and furnace-like heat behind in the hollows. Only here
+and there was the softer note of a pale green patch of growing corn. The
+landscape generally was wild, lacking even a threadlet of water, dying
+of thirst, and flying away in clouds of dust at the least breath of
+wind. But at the farthest point where the crumbling hills on the horizon
+had left a breach one espied some distant fresh moist greenery, a
+stretch of the neighbouring valley fertilised by the Viorne, a river
+flowing down from the gorges of the Seille.
+
+The priest lowered his dazzled glance upon the village, whose few
+scattered houses straggled away below the church--wretched hovels they
+were of rubble and boards strewn along a narrow path without sign of
+streets. There were about thirty of them altogether, some squatting
+amidst muck-heaps, and black with woeful want; others roomier and more
+cheerful-looking with their roofs of pinkish tiles. Strips of garden,
+victoriously planted amidst stony soil, displayed plots of vegetables
+enclosed by quickset hedges. At this hour Les Artaud was empty, not a
+woman was at the windows, not a child was wallowing in the dust; parties
+of fowls alone went to and fro, ferreting among the straw, seeking food
+up to the very thresholds of the houses, whose open doors gaped in the
+sunlight. A big black dog seated on his haunches at the entrance to the
+village seemed to be mounting guard over it.
+
+Languor slowly stole over Abbe Mouret. The rising sun steeped him in
+such warmth that he leant back against the church door pervaded by a
+feeling of happy restfulness. His thoughts were dwelling on that hamlet
+of Les Artaud, which had sprung up there among the stones like one of
+the knotty growths of the valley. All its inhabitants were related, all
+bore the same name, so that from their very cradle they were
+distinguished among themselves by nicknames. An Artaud, their ancestor,
+had come hither and settled like a pariah in this waste. His family had
+grown with all the wild vitality of the herbage that sucked life from
+the rocky boulders. It had at last become a tribe, a rural community, in
+which cousin-ships were lost in the mists of centuries. They
+intermarried with shameless promiscuity. Not an instance could be cited
+of any Artaud taking himself a wife from any neighbouring village; only
+some of the girls occasionally went elsewhere. The others were born and
+died fixed to that spot, leisurely increasing and multiplying on their
+dunghills with the irreflectiveness of trees, and with no definite
+notion of the world that lay beyond the tawny rocks, in whose midst they
+vegetated. And yet there were already rich and poor among them; fowls
+having at times disappeared, the fowl-houses were now closed at night
+with stout padlocks; moreover one Artaud had killed another Artaud one
+evening behind the mill. These folk, begirt by that belt of desolate
+hills, were truly a people apart--a race sprung from the soil, a
+miniature replica of mankind, three hundred souls all told, beginning
+the centuries yet once again.
+
+Over the priest the sombre shadows of seminary life still hovered. For
+years he had never seen the sun. He perceived it not even now, his eyes
+closed and gazing inwards on his soul, and with no feeling for
+perishable nature, fated to damnation, save contempt. For a long time in
+his hours of devout thought he had dreamt of some hermit's desert, of
+some mountain hole, where no living thing--neither being, plant, nor
+water--should distract him from the contemplation of God. It was an
+impulse springing from the purest love, from a loathing of all physical
+sensation. There, dying to self, and with his back turned to the light
+of day, he would have waited till he should cease to be, till nothing
+should remain of him but the sovereign whiteness of the soul. To him
+heaven seemed all white, with a luminous whiteness as if lilies there
+snowed down upon one, as if every form of purity, innocence, and
+chastity there blazed. But his confessor reproved him whenever he
+related his longings for solitude, his cravings for an existence of
+Godlike purity; and recalled him to the struggles of the Church, the
+necessary duties of the priesthood. Later on, after his ordination, the
+young priest had come to Les Artaud at his own request, there hoping to
+realise his dream of human annihilation. In that desolate spot, on that
+barren soil, he might shut his ears to all worldly sounds, and live the
+dreamy life of a saint. For some months past, in truth, his existence
+had been wholly undisturbed, rarely had any thrill of the village-life
+disturbed him; and even the sun's heat scarcely brought him any glow of
+feeling as he walked the paths, his whole being wrapped in heaven,
+heedless of the unceasing travail of life amidst which he moved.
+
+The big black dog watching over Les Artaud had determined to come up to
+Abbe Mouret, and now sat upon its haunches at the priest's feet; but the
+unconscious man remained absorbed amidst the sweetness of the morning.
+On the previous evening he had begun the exercises of the Rosary, and to
+the intercession of the Virgin with her Divine Son he attributed the
+great joy which filled his soul. How despicable appeared all the good
+things of the earth! How thankfully he recognised his poverty! When he
+entered into holy orders, after losing on the same day both his father
+and his mother through a tragedy the fearful details of which were even
+now unknown to him,* he had relinquished all his share of their property
+to an elder brother. His only remaining link with the world was his
+sister; he had undertaken the care of her, stirred by a kind of
+religious affection for her feeble intelligence. The dear innocent was
+so childish, such a very little girl, that she recalled to him the poor
+in spirit to whom the Gospel promises the kingdom of heaven. Of late,
+however, she had somewhat disturbed him; she was growing too lusty, too
+full of health and life. But his discomfort was yet of the slightest.
+His days were spent in that inner life he had created for himself, for
+which he had relinquished all else. He closed the portals of his senses,
+and sought to free himself from all bodily needs, so that he might be
+but a soul enrapt in contemplation. To him nature offered only snares
+and abominations; he gloried in maltreating her, in despising her, in
+releasing himself from his human slime. And as the just man must be a
+fool according to the world, he considered himself an exile on this
+earth; his thoughts were solely fixed upon the favours of Heaven,
+incapable as he was of understanding how an eternity of bliss could be
+weighed against a few hours of perishable enjoyment. His reason duped
+him and his senses lied; and if he advanced in virtue it was
+particularly by humility and obedience. His wish was to be the last of
+all, one subject to all, in order that the divine dew might fall upon
+his heart as upon arid sand; he considered himself overwhelmed with
+reproach and with confusion, unworthy of ever being saved from sin. He
+no longer belonged to himself--blind, deaf, dead to the world as he was.
+He was God's thing. And from the depth of the abjectness to which he
+sought to plunge, Hosannahs suddenly bore him aloft, above the happy and
+the mighty into the splendour of never-ending bliss.
+
+  * This forms the subject of M. Zola's novel, _The Conquest of
+    Plassans_. ED.
+
+Thus, at Les Artaud, Abbe Mouret had once more experienced, each time he
+read the 'Imitation,' the raptures of the cloistered life which he had
+longed for at one time so ardently. As yet he had not had to fight any
+battle. From the moment that he knelt down, he became perfect,
+absolutely oblivious of the flesh, unresisting, undisturbed, as if
+overpowered by the Divine grace. Such ecstasy at God's approach is well
+known to some young priests: it is a blissful moment when all is hushed,
+and the only desire is but a boundless craving for purity. From no human
+creature had he sought his consolations. He who believes a certain thing
+to be all in all cannot be troubled: and he did believe that God was all
+in all, and that humility, obedience, and chastity were everything. He
+could remember having heard temptation spoken of as an abominable
+torture that tries the holiest. But he would only smile: God had never
+left him. He bore his faith about him thus like a breast-plate
+protecting him from the slightest breath of evil. He could recall how he
+had hidden himself and wept for very love; he knew not whom he loved,
+but he wept for love, for love of some one afar off. The recollection
+never failed to move him. Later on he had decided on becoming a priest
+in order to satisfy that craving for a superhuman affection which was
+his sole torment. He could not see where greater love could be. In that
+state of life he satisfied his being, his inherited predisposition, his
+youthful dreams, his first virile desires. If temptation must come, he
+awaited it with the calmness of the seminarist ignorant of the world. He
+felt that his manhood had been killed in him: it gladdened him to feel
+himself a creature set apart, unsexed, turned from the usual paths of
+life, and, as became a lamb of the Lord, marked with the tonsure.
+
+
+
+                                 V
+
+While the priest pondered the sun was heating the big church-door.
+Gilded flies buzzed round a large flower that was blooming between two
+of the church-door steps. Abbe Mouret, feeling slightly dazed, was at
+last about to move away, when the big black dog sprang, barking
+violently, towards the iron gate of the little graveyard on the left of
+the church. At the same time a harsh voice called out: 'Ah! you young
+rascal! So you stop away from school, and I find you in the graveyard!
+Oh, don't say no: I have been watching you this quarter of an hour.'
+
+As the priest stepped forward he saw Vincent, whom a Brother of the
+Christian Schools was clutching tightly by the ear. The lad was
+suspended, as it were, over a ravine skirting the graveyard, at the
+bottom of which flowed the Mascle, a mountain torrent whose crystal
+waters plunged into the Viorne, six miles away.
+
+'Brother Archangias!' softly called the priest, as if to appease the
+fearful man.
+
+The Brother, however, did not release the boy's ear.
+
+'Oh, it's you, Monsieur le Cure?' he growled. 'Just fancy, this rascal
+is always poking his nose into the graveyard. I don't know what he can
+be up to here. I ought to let go of him and let him smash his skull down
+there. It would be what he deserves.'
+
+The lad remained dumb, with his cunning eyes tight shut as he clung to
+the bushes.
+
+'Take care, Brother Archangias,' continued the priest, 'he might slip.'
+
+And he himself helped Vincent to scramble up again.
+
+'Come, my young friend, what were you doing there?' he asked. 'You must
+not go playing in graveyards.'
+
+The lad had opened his eyes, and crept away, fearfully, from the
+Brother, to place himself under the priest's protection.
+
+'I'll tell you,' he said in a low voice, as he raised his bushy head.
+'There is a tomtit's nest in the brambles there, under that rock. For
+over ten days I've been watching it, and now the little ones are
+hatched, so I came this morning after serving your mass.'
+
+'A tomtit's nest!' exclaimed Brother Archangias. 'Wait a bit! wait a
+bit!'
+
+Thereupon he stepped aside, picked a clod of earth off a grave and flung
+it into the brambles. But he missed the nest. Another clod, however,
+more skilfully thrown upset the frail cradle, and precipitated the
+fledglings into the torrent below.
+
+'Now, perhaps,' he continued, clapping his hands to shake off the earth
+that soiled them, 'you won't come roaming here any more, like a heathen;
+the dead will pull your feet at night if you go walking over them
+again.'
+
+Vincent, who had laughed at seeing the nest dive into the stream, looked
+round him and shrugged his shoulders like one of strong mind.
+
+'Oh, I'm not afraid,' he said. 'Dead folk don't stir.'
+
+The graveyard, in truth, was not a place to inspire fear. It was a
+barren piece of ground whose narrow paths were smothered by rank weeds.
+Here and there the soil was bossy with mounds. A single tombstone, that
+of Abbe Caffin, brand-new and upright, could be perceived in the centre
+of the ground. Save this, all around there were only broken fragments of
+crosses, withered tufts of box, and old slabs split and moss-eaten.
+There were not two burials a year. Death seemed to make no dwelling in
+that waste spot, whither La Teuse came every evening to fill her apron
+with grass for Desiree's rabbits. A gigantic cypress tree, standing near
+the gate, alone cast shadow upon the desert field. This cypress, a
+landmark visible for nine miles around, was known to the whole
+countryside as the Solitaire.
+
+'It's full of lizards,' added Vincent, looking at the cracks of the
+church-wall. 'One could have a fine lark--'
+
+But he sprang out with a bound on seeing the Brother lift his foot. The
+latter proceeded to call the priest's attention to the dilapidated state
+of the gate, which was not only eaten up with rust, but had one hinge
+off, and the lock broken.
+
+'It ought to be repaired,' said he.
+
+Abbe Mouret smiled, but made no reply. Addressing Vincent, who was
+romping with the dog: 'I say, my boy,' he asked, 'do you know where old
+Bambousse is at work this morning?'
+
+The lad glanced towards the horizon. 'He must be at his Olivettes field
+now,' he answered, pointing towards the left. 'But Voriau will show your
+reverence the way. He's sure to know where his master is.' And he
+clapped his hands and called: 'Hie! Voriau! hie!'
+
+The big black dog paused a moment, wagging his tail, and seeking to read
+the urchin's eyes. Then, barking joyfully, he set off down the slope to
+the village. Abbe Mouret and Brother Archangias followed him, chatting.
+A hundred yards further Vincent surreptitiously bolted, and again glided
+up towards the church, keeping a watchful eye upon them, and ready to
+dart behind a bush if they should look round. With adder-like
+suppleness, he once more glided into the graveyard, that paradise full
+of lizards, nests, and flowers.
+
+Meantime, while Voriau led the way before them along the dusty road,
+Brother Archangias was angrily saying to the priest: 'Let be! Monsieur
+le Cure, they're spawn of damnation, those toads are! They ought to have
+their backs broken, to make them pleasing to God. They grow up in
+irreligion, like their fathers. Fifteen years have I been here, and not
+one Christian have I been able to turn out. The minute they quit my
+hands, good-bye! They think of nothing but their land, their vines,
+their olive-trees. Not one ever sets foot in church. Brute beasts they
+are, struggling with their stony fields! Guide them with the stick,
+Monsieur le Cure, yes, the stick!'
+
+Then, after drawing breath, he added with a terrific wave of his hands:
+
+'Those Artauds, look you, are like the brambles over-running these
+rocks. One stem has been enough to poison the whole district. They cling
+on, they multiply, they live in spite of everything. Nothing short of
+fire from heaven, as at Gomorrha, will clear it all away.'
+
+'We should never despair of sinners,' said Abbe Mouret, all inward
+peacefulness, as he leisurely walked on.
+
+'But these are the devil's own,' broke in the Brother still more
+violently. 'I've been a peasant, too. Up to eighteen I dug the earth;
+and later on, when I was at the Training College, I had to sweep, pare
+vegetables, do all the heavy work. It's not their toilsome labour I find
+fault with. On the contrary, for God prefers the lowly. But the Artauds
+live like beasts! They are like their dogs, they never attend mass, and
+make a mock of the commandments of God and of the Church. They think of
+nothing but their plots of lands, so sweet they are on them!'
+
+Voriau, his tail wagging, kept stopping and moving on again as soon as
+he saw that they still followed him.
+
+'There certainly are some grievous things going on,' said Abbe Mouret.
+'My predecessor, Abbe Caffin--'
+
+'A poor specimen,' interrupted the Brother. 'He came here to us from
+Normandy owing to some disreputable affair. Once here, his sole thought
+was good living; he let everything go to rack and ruin.'
+
+'Oh, no, Abbe Caffin certainly did what he could; but I must own that
+his efforts were all but barren in results. My own are mostly
+fruitless.'
+
+Brother Archangias shrugged his shoulders. He walked on for a minute in
+silence, swaying his tall bony frame, which looked as if it had been
+roughly fashioned with a hatchet. The sun beat down upon his neck,
+shadowing his hard, sword-edged peasant's face.
+
+'Listen to me, Monsieur le Cure,' he said at last. 'I am too much
+beneath you to lecture you; but still, I am almost double your age, I
+know this part, and therefore I feel justified in telling you that you
+will gain nothing by gentleness. The catechism, understand, is enough.
+God has no mercy on the wicked. He burns them. Stick to that.'
+
+Then, as Abbe Mouret, whose head remained bowed, did not open his mouth,
+he went on: 'Religion is leaving the country districts because it is
+made over indulgent. It was respected when it spoke out like an
+unforgiving mistress. I really don't know what they can teach you now in
+the seminaries. The new priests weep like children with their
+parishioners. God no longer seems the same. I dare say, Monsieur le
+Cure, that you don't even know your catechism by heart now?'
+
+But the priest, wounded by the imperiousness with which the Brother so
+roughly sought to dominate him, looked up and dryly rejoined:
+
+'That will do, your zeal is very praiseworthy. But haven't you something
+to tell me? You came to the parsonage this morning, did you not?'
+
+Thereupon Brother Archangias plumply answered: 'I had to tell you just
+what I have told you. The Artauds live like pigs. Only yesterday I
+learned that Rosalie, old Bambousse's eldest daughter, is in the family
+way. It happens with all of them before they get married. And they
+simply laugh at reproaches, as you know.'
+
+'Yes,' murmured Abbe Mouret, 'it is a great scandal. I am just on my way
+to see old Bambousse to speak to him about it; it is desirable that they
+should be married as soon as possible. The child's father, it seems, is
+Fortune, the Brichets' eldest son. Unfortunately the Brichets are poor.'
+
+'That Rosalie, now,' continued the Brother, 'is just eighteen. Not four
+years since I still had her under me at school, and she was already a
+gadabout. I have now got her sister Catherine, a chit of eleven, who
+seems likely to become even worse than her elder. One comes across her
+in every corner with that little scamp, Vincent. It's no good, you may
+pull their ears till they bleed, the woman always crops up in them. They
+carry perdition about with them and are only fit to be thrown on a
+muck-heap. What a splendid riddance if all girls were strangled at their
+birth!'
+
+His loathing, his hatred of woman made him swear like a carter. Abbe
+Mouret, who had been listening to him with unmoved countenance, smiled
+at last at his rabid utterances. He called Voriau, who had strayed into
+a field close by.
+
+'There, look there!' cried Brother Archangias, pointing to a group
+of children playing at the bottom of a ravine, 'there are my young
+devils, who play the truant under pretence of going to help their
+parents among the vines! You may be certain that jade of a Catherine is
+among them. . . . There, didn't I tell you! Till to-night, Monsieur le
+Cure. Oh, just you wait, you rascals!'
+
+Off he went at a run, his dirty neckband flying over his shoulder, and
+his big greasy cassock tearing up the thistles. Abbe Mouret watched him
+swoop down into the midst of the children, who scattered like frightened
+sparrows. But he succeeded in seizing Catherine and one boy by the ears
+and led them back towards the village, clutching them tightly with his
+big hairy fingers, and overwhelming them with abuse.
+
+The priest walked on again. Brother Archangias sometimes aroused strange
+scruples in his mind. With his vulgarity and coarseness the Brother
+seemed to him the true man of God, free from earthly ties, submissive in
+all to Heaven's will, humble, blunt, ready to shower abuse upon sin. He,
+the priest, would then feel despair at his inability to rid himself more
+completely of his body; he regretted that he was not ugly, unclean,
+covered with vermin like some of the saints. Whenever the Brother had
+wounded him by some words of excessive coarseness, or by some over-hasty
+churlishness, he would blame himself for his refinement, his innate
+shrinking, as if these were really faults. Ought he not to be dead to
+all the weaknesses of this world? And this time also he smiled sadly as
+he thought how near he had been to losing his temper at the Brother's
+roughly put lesson. It was pride, it seemed to him, seeking to work his
+perdition by making him despise the lowly. However, in spite of himself,
+he felt relieved at being alone again, at being able to walk on gently,
+reading his breviary, free at last from the grating voice that had
+disturbed his dream of heavenly love.
+
+
+
+                                 VI
+
+The road wound on between fallen rocks, among which the peasants had
+succeeded here and there in reclaiming six or seven yards of chalky
+soil, planted with old olive trees. Under the priest's feet the dust in
+the deep ruts crackled lightly like snow. At times, as he felt a warmer
+puff upon his face, he would raise his eyes from his book, as if to seek
+whence came this soft caress; but his gaze was vacant, straying without
+perception over the glowing horizon, over the twisted outlines of that
+passion-breathing landscape as it stretched out in the sun before him,
+dry, barren, despairing of the fertilisation for which it longed. And he
+would lower his hat over his forehead to protect himself against the
+warm breeze and tranquilly resume his reading, his cassock raising
+behind him a cloudlet of dust which rolled along the surface of the
+road.
+
+'Good morning, Monsieur le Cure,' a passing peasant said to him.
+
+Sounds of digging alongside the cultivated strips of ground again
+roused him from his abstraction. He turned his head and perceived big
+knotty-limbed old men greeting him from among the vines. The Artauds
+were eagerly satisfying their passion for the soil, in the sun's full
+blaze. Sweating brows appeared from behind the bushes, heaving chests
+were slowly raised, the whole scene was one of ardent fructification,
+through which he moved with the calm step born of ignorance. No
+discomfort came to him from the great travail of love that permeated
+that splendid morning.
+
+'Steady! Voriau, you mustn't eat people!' some one gaily shouted in a
+powerful voice by way of silencing the dog's loud barks.
+
+Abbe Mouret looked up.
+
+'Oh! it's you. Fortune?' he said, approaching the edge of the field in
+which the young peasant was at work. 'I was just on my way to speak to
+you.'
+
+Fortune was of the same age as the priest: a bigly built, bold-looking
+young fellow, with skin already hardened. He was clearing a small plot
+of stony heath.
+
+'What about, Monsieur le Cure?' he asked.
+
+'About Rosalie and you,' replied the priest.
+
+Fortune began to laugh. Perhaps he thought it droll that a priest should
+interest himself in such a matter.
+
+'Well,' he muttered, 'I'm not to blame in it nor she either. So much the
+worse if old Bambousse refuses to let me have her. You saw yourself how
+his dog was trying to bite me just now; he sets him on me.'
+
+Then, as Abbe Mouret was about to continue, old Artaud, called Brichet,
+whom he had not previously perceived, emerged from the shadow of a bush
+behind which he and his wife were eating. He was a little man, withered
+by age, with a cringing face.
+
+'Your reverence must have been told a pack of lies,' he exclaimed. 'The
+youngster is quite ready to marry Rosalie. What's happened isn't
+anybody's fault. It has happened to others who got on all right just the
+same. The matter doesn't rest with us. You ought to speak to Bambousse.
+He's the one who looks down on us because he's got money.'
+
+'Yes, we are very poor,' whined his wife, a tall lachrymose woman, who
+also rose to her feet. 'We've only this scrap of ground where the very
+devil seems to have been hailing stones. Not a bite of bread from it,
+even. Without you, your reverence, life would be impossible.'
+
+Brichet's wife was the one solitary devotee of the village. Whenever she
+had been to communion, she would hang about the parsonage, well knowing
+that La Teuse always kept a couple of loaves for her from her last
+baking. At times she was even able to carry off a rabbit or a fowl given
+her by Desiree.
+
+'There's no end to the scandals,' continued the priest. 'The marriage
+must take place without delay.'
+
+'Oh! at once! as soon as the others are agreeable,' said the old woman,
+alarmed about her periodical presents. 'What do you say, Brichet? we are
+not such bad Christians as to go against his reverence?'
+
+Fortune sniggered.
+
+'Oh, I'm quite ready,' he said, 'and so is Rosalie. I saw her yesterday
+at the back of the mill. We haven't quarrelled. We stopped there to have
+a bit of a laugh.'
+
+But Abbe Mouret interrupted him: 'Very well, I am now going to speak to
+Bambousse. He is over there, at Les Olivettes, I believe.'
+
+The priest was going off when the mother asked him what had become of
+her younger son Vincent, who had left in the early morning to serve
+mass. There was a lad now who badly needed his reverence's admonitions.
+And she walked by the priest's side for another hundred yards, bemoaning
+her poverty, the failure of the potato crop, the frost which had nipped
+the olive trees, the hot weather which threatened to scorch up the
+scanty corn. Then, as she left him, she solemnly declared that her son
+Fortune always said his prayers, both morning and evening.
+
+Voriau now ran on in front, and suddenly, at a turn in the road, he
+bolted across the fields. The priest then struck into a small path
+leading up a low hill. He was now at Les Olivettes, the most fertile
+spot in the neighbourhood, where the mayor of the commune, Artaud,
+otherwise Bambousse, owned several fields of corn, olive plantations,
+and vines. The dog was now romping round the skirts of a tall brunette,
+who burst into a loud laugh as she caught sight of the priest.
+
+'Is your father here, Rosalie?' the latter asked.
+
+'Yes, just across there,' she said, pointing with her hand and still
+smiling.
+
+Leaving the part of the field she had been weeding, she walked on before
+him with the vigorous springiness of a hard-working woman, her head
+unshielded from the sun, her neck all sunburnt, her hair black and
+coarse like a horse's mane. Her green-stained hands exhaled the odour of
+the weeds she had been pulling up.
+
+'Father,' she called out, 'here's Monsieur le Cure asking for you.'
+
+And there she remained, bold, unblushing, with a sly smile still
+hovering over her features. Bambousse, a stout, sweating, round-faced
+man, left his work and gaily came towards the priest.
+
+'I'd take my oath you are going to speak to me about the repairs of the
+church,' he exclaimed, as he clapped his earthy hands. 'Well, then,
+Monsieur le Cure, I can only say no, it's impossible. The commune hasn't
+got the coin. If the Lord provides plaster and tiles, we'll provide the
+workmen.'
+
+At this jest of his the unbelieving peasant burst into a loud guffaw,
+slapped his thighs, coughed, and almost choked himself.
+
+'It was not for the church I came,' replied the Abbe Mouret. 'I wanted
+to speak to you about your daughter Rosalie.'
+
+'Rosalie? What has she done to you, then?' inquired Bambousse, his eyes
+blinking.
+
+The girl was boldly staring at the young priest, scrutinising his white
+hands and slender, feminine neck, as if trying to make him redden. He,
+however, bluntly and with unruffled countenance, as if speaking of
+something quite indifferent, continued:
+
+'You know what I mean, Bambousse. She must get married.'
+
+'Oh, that's it, is it?' muttered the old man, with a bantering look.
+'Many thanks for the message. The Brichets sent you, didn't they? Mother
+Brichet goes to mass, and so you give her a helping hand to marry her
+son--it's all very fine. But, I've got nothing to do with that. It
+doesn't suit me. That's all.'
+
+Thereupon the astonished priest represented to him that the scandal must
+be stopped, and that he ought to forgive Fortune, as the latter was
+willing to make reparation for his transgression, and that, lastly, his
+daughter's reputation demanded a speedy marriage.
+
+'Ta, ta, ta,' replied Bambousse, what a lot of words! I shall keep my
+daughter, please understand it. All that's got nothing to do with me.
+That Fortune is a beggarly pauper, without a brass farthing. What an
+easy job, if one could marry a girl like that! At that rate we should
+have all the young things marrying off morning and night. Thank Heaven!
+I'm not worried about Rosalie: everybody knows what has happened; but it
+makes no difference. She can marry any one she chooses in the
+neighbourhood.'
+
+'But the child?' interrupted the priest.
+
+'The child indeed! There'll be time enough to think of that when it's
+born.'
+
+Rosalie, perceiving the turn the priest's application was taking, now
+thought it proper to ram her fists into her eyes and whimper. And she
+even let herself fall upon the ground.
+
+'Shut up, will you, you hussy!' howled her father in a rage. And he
+proceeded to revile her in the coarsest terms, which made her laugh
+silently behind her clenched fists.
+
+'You won't shut up? won't you? Just wait a minute then, you jade!'
+continued old Bambousse. And thereupon he picked up a clod of earth and
+flung it at her. It burst upon her knot of hair, crumbling down her neck
+and smothering her in dust. Dizzy from the blow, she bounded to her feet
+and fled, sheltering her head between her hands. But Bambousse had time
+to fling two more clods at her, and if the first only grazed her left
+shoulder, the next caught her full on the base of the spine, with such
+force that she fell upon her knees.
+
+'Bambousse!' cried the priest, as he wrenched from the peasant's hand a
+number of stones which he had just picked up.
+
+'Let be, Monsieur le Cure,' said the other. 'It was only soft earth. I
+ought to have thrown these stones at her. It's easy to see that you
+don't know girls. Hard as nails, all of them. I might duck that one in
+the well, I might break all her bones with a cudgel, and she'd still be
+just the same. But I've got my eye on her, and if I catch her! . . . Ah!
+well, they are all like that.'
+
+He was already comforted. He took a good pull at a big flat bottle of
+wine, encased in wicker-work, which lay warming on the hot ground. And
+breaking once more into a laugh, he said: 'If I only had a glass,
+Monsieur le Cure, I would offer you some with pleasure.'
+
+'So then,' again asked the priest, 'this marriage?'
+
+'No, it can't be; I should get laughed at. Rosalie is a stout wench.
+She's worth a man to me. I shall have to hire a lad the day she goes
+off. . . . We can have another talk about it after the vintage. Besides,
+I don't want to be robbed. Give and take, say I. That's fair. What do
+you think?'
+
+Nevertheless for another long half-hour did the priest remain there
+preaching to Bambousse, speaking to him of God, and plying him with all
+the reasons suited to the circumstances. But the old man had resumed his
+work; he shrugged his shoulders, jested, and grew more and more
+obstinate. At last, he broke out: 'But if you asked me for a sack of
+corn, you would give me money, wouldn't you? So why do you want me to
+let my daughter go for nothing?'
+
+Much discomfited, Abbe Mouret left him. As he went down the path he saw
+Rosalie rolling about under an olive tree with Voriau, who was licking
+her face. With her arms whirling, she kept on repeating: 'You tickle me,
+you big stupid. Leave off!'
+
+When she perceived the priest, she made an attempt at a blush, settled
+her clothes, and once more raised her fists to her eyes. He, on his
+part, sought to console her by promising to attempt some fresh efforts
+with her father, adding that, in the meantime, she should do nothing to
+aggravate her sin. And then, as she impudently smiled at him, he
+pictured hell, where wicked women burn in torment. And afterwards he
+left her, his duty done, his soul once more full of the serenity which
+enabled him to pass undisturbed athwart the corruptions of the world.
+
+
+
+                                VII
+
+The morning was becoming terribly hot. In that huge rocky amphitheatre
+the sun kindled a furnace-like glare from the moment when the first fine
+weather began. By the planet's height in the sky Abbe Mouret now
+perceived that he had only just time to return home if he wished to get
+there by eleven o'clock and escape a scolding from La Teuse. Having
+finished reading his breviary and made his application to Bambousse, he
+swiftly retraced his steps, gazing as he went at his church, now a grey
+spot in the distance, and at the black rigid silhouette which the big
+cypress-tree, the Solitaire, set against the blue sky. Amidst the
+drowsiness fostered by the heat, he thought of how richly that evening
+he might decorate the Lady chapel for the devotions of the month of
+Mary. Before him the road offered a carpet of dust, soft to the tread
+and of dazzling whiteness.
+
+At the Croix-Verte, as the Abbe was about to cross the highway leading
+from Plassans to La Palud, a gig coming down the hill compelled him to
+step behind a heap of stones. Then, as he crossed the open space, a
+voice called to him: 'Hallo, Serge, my boy!'
+
+The gig had pulled up and from it a man leant over. The priest
+recognised him--he was an uncle of his, Doctor Pascal Rougon, or
+Monsieur Pascal, as the poor folk of Plassans, whom he attended for
+nothing, briefly styled him. Although barely over fifty, he was already
+snowy white, with a big beard and abundant hair, amidst which his
+handsome regular features took an expression of shrewdness and
+benevolence.*
+
+  * See M. Zola's novels, _Dr. Pascal_ and _The Fortune of the
+    Rougons_.--ED.
+
+'So you potter about in the dust at this hour of the day?' he said
+gaily, as he stooped to grasp the Abbe's hands. 'You're not afraid of
+sunstroke?'
+
+'No more than you are, uncle,' answered the priest, laughing.
+
+'Oh, I have the hood of my trap to shield me. Besides, sick folks won't
+wait. People die at all times, my boy.' And he went on to relate that he
+was now on his way to old Jeanbernat, the steward of the Paradou, who
+had had an apoplectic stroke the night before. A neighbour, a peasant on
+his way to Plassans market, had summoned him.
+
+'He must be dead by this time,' the doctor continued. 'However, we must
+make sure. . . . Those old demons are jolly tough, you know.'
+
+He was already raising his whip, when Abbe Mouret stopped him.
+
+'Stay! what o'clock do you make it, uncle?'
+
+'A quarter to eleven.'
+
+The Abbe hesitated; he already seemed to hear La Teuse's terrible voice
+bawling in his ears that his luncheon was getting cold. But he plucked
+up courage and added swiftly: 'I'll go with you, uncle. The unhappy man
+may wish to reconcile himself to God in his last hour.'
+
+Doctor Pascal could not restrain a laugh.
+
+'What, Jeanbernat!' he said; 'ah, well! if ever you convert him! Never
+mind, come all the same. The sight of you is enough to cure him.'
+
+The priest got in. The doctor, apparently regretting his jest, displayed
+an affectionate warmth of manner, whilst from time to time clucking his
+tongue by way of encouraging his horse. And out of the corner of his eye
+he inquisitively observed his nephew with the keenness of a scientist
+bent on taking notes. In short kindly sentences he inquired about his
+life, his habits, and the peaceful happiness he enjoyed at Les Artaud.
+And at each satisfactory reply he murmured, as if to himself in a tone
+of reassurance: 'Come, so much the better; that's just as it should be!'
+
+He displayed peculiar anxiety about the young priest's state of health.
+And Serge, greatly surprised, assured him that he was in splendid trim,
+and had neither fits of giddiness or of nausea, nor headaches
+whatsoever.
+
+'Capital, capital,' reiterated his uncle Pascal. 'In spring, you see,
+the blood is active. But you are sound enough. By-the-bye, I saw your
+brother Octave at Marseilles last month. He is off to Paris, where he
+will get a fine berth in a high-class business. The young beggar, a nice
+life he leads.'
+
+'What life?' innocently inquired the priest.
+
+To avoid replying the doctor chirruped to his horse, and then went on:
+'Briefly, everybody is well--your aunt Felicite, your uncle Rougon, and
+the others. Still, that does not hinder our needing your prayers. You
+are the saint of the family, my lad; I rely upon you to save the whole
+lot.'
+
+He laughed, but in such a friendly, good-humoured way that Serge himself
+began to indulge in jocularity.
+
+'You see,' continued Pascal, 'there are some among the lot whom it won't
+be easy to lead to Paradise. Some nice confessions you'd hear if all
+came in turn. For my part, I can do without their confessions; I watch
+them from a distance; I have got their records at home among my
+botanical specimens and medical notes. Some day I shall be able to draw
+up a wondrously interesting diagram. We shall see; we shall see!'
+
+He was forgetting himself, carried away by his enthusiasm for science. A
+glance at his nephew's cassock pulled him up short.
+
+'As for you, you're a parson,' he muttered; 'you did well; a parson's a
+very happy man. The calling absorbs you, eh? And so you've taken to the
+good path. Well! you would never have been satisfied otherwise. Your
+relatives, starting like you, have done a deal of evil, and still they
+are unsatisfied. It's all logically perfect, my lad. A priest completes
+the family. Besides, it was inevitable. Our blood was bound to run to
+that. So much the better for you; you have had the most luck.'
+Correcting himself, however, with a strange smile, he added: 'No, it's
+your sister Desiree who has had the best luck of all.'
+
+He whistled, whipped up his horse, and changed the conversation. The
+gig, after climbing a somewhat steep slope, was threading its way
+through desolate ravines; at last it reached a tableland, where the
+hollow road skirted an interminable and lofty wall. Les Artaud had
+disappeared; they found themselves in the heart of a desert.
+
+'We are getting near, are we not?' asked the priest.
+
+'This is the Paradou,' replied the doctor, pointing to the wall.
+'Haven't you been this way before, then? We are not three miles from Les
+Artaud. A splendid property it must have been, this Paradou. The park
+wall this side alone is quite a mile and a half long. But for over a
+hundred years it's all been running wild.'
+
+'There are some fine trees,' observed the Abbe, as he looked up in
+astonishment at the luxuriant mass of foliage which jutted over.
+
+'Yes, that part is very fertile. In fact, the park is a regular forest
+amidst the bare rocks which surround it. The Mascle, too, rises there; I
+have heard four or five springs mentioned, I fancy.'
+
+In short sentences, interspersed with irrelevant digressions, he then
+related the story of the Paradou, according to the current legend of the
+countryside. In the time of Louis XV., a great lord had erected a
+magnificent palace there, with vast gardens, fountains, trickling
+streams, and statues--a miniature Versailles hidden away among the
+stones, under the full blaze of the southern sun. But he had there spent
+but one season with a lady of bewitching beauty, who doubtless died
+there, as none had ever seen her leave. Next year the mansion was
+destroyed by fire, the park doors were nailed up, the very loopholes of
+the walls were filled with mould; and thus, since that remote time, not
+a glance had penetrated that vast enclosure which covered the whole of
+one of the plateaux of the Garrigue hills.
+
+'There can be no lack of nettles there,' laughingly said Abbe Mouret.
+'Don't you find that the whole wall reeks of damp, uncle?'
+
+A pause followed, and he asked:
+
+'And whom does the Paradou belong to now?'
+
+'Why, nobody knows,' the doctor answered. 'The owner did come here once,
+some twenty years ago. But he was so scared by the sight of this adders'
+nest that he has never turned up since. The real master is the
+caretaker, that old oddity, Jeanbernat, who has managed to find quarters
+in a lodge where the stones still hang together. There it is, see--that
+grey building yonder, with its windows all smothered in ivy.'
+
+The gig passed by a lordly iron gate, ruddy with rust, and lined inside
+with a layer of boards. The wide dry thoats were black with brambles. A
+hundred yards further on was the lodge inhabited by Jeanbernat. It stood
+within the park, which it overlooked. But the old keeper had apparently
+blocked up that side of his dwelling, and had cleared a little garden by
+the road. And there he lived, facing southwards, with his back turned
+upon the Paradou, as if unaware of the immensity of verdure that
+stretched away behind him.
+
+The young priest jumped down, looking inquisitively around him and
+questioning the doctor, who was hurriedly fastening the horse to a ring
+fixed in the wall.
+
+'And the old man lives all alone in this out-of-the-way hole?' he asked.
+
+'Yes, quite alone,' replied his uncle, adding, however, the next
+minute: 'Well, he has with him a niece whom he had to take in, a queer
+girl, a regular savage. But we must make haste. The whole place looks
+death-like.'
+
+
+
+                                VIII
+
+The house with its shutters closed seemed wrapped in slumber as it stood
+there in the midday sun, amidst the hum of the big flies that swarmed
+all up the ivy to the roof tiles. The sunlit ruin was steeped in happy
+quietude. When the doctor had opened the gate of the narrow garden,
+which was enclosed by a lofty quickset hedge, there, in the shadow cast
+by a wall, they found Jeanbernat, tall and erect, and calmly smoking his
+pipe, as in the deep silence he watched his vegetables grow.
+
+'What, are you up then, you humbug?' exclaimed the astonished doctor.
+
+'So you were coming to bury me, were you?' growled the old man harshly.
+'I don't want anybody. I bled myself.'
+
+He stopped short as he caught sight of the priest, and assumed so
+threatening an expression that the doctor hastened to intervene.
+
+'This is my nephew,' he said; 'the new Cure of Les Artaud--a good
+fellow, too. Devil take it, we haven't been bowling over the roads at
+this hour of the day to eat you, Jeanbernat.'
+
+The old man calmed down a little.
+
+'I don't want any shavelings here,' he grumbled. 'They're enough to make
+one croak. Mind, doctor, no priests, and no physics when I go off, or we
+shall quarrel. Let him come in, however, as he is your nephew.'
+
+Abbe Mouret, struck dumb with amazement, could not speak a word. He
+stood there in the middle of the path scanning that strange solitaire,
+with scorched, brick-tinted face, and limbs all withered and twisted
+like a bundle of ropes, who seemed to bear the burden of his eighty
+years with a scornful contempt for life. When the doctor attempted to
+feel his pulse, his ill-humour broke out afresh.
+
+'Do leave me in peace! I bled myself with my knife, I tell you. It's all
+over, now. Who was the fool of a peasant who disturbed you? The doctor
+here, and the priest as well, why not the mutes too! Well, it can't be
+helped, people will be fools. It won't prevent us from having a drink,
+eh?'
+
+He fetched a bottle and three glasses, and stood them on an old table
+which he brought out into the shade. Then, having filled the glasses to
+the brim, he insisted on clinking them. His anger had given place to
+jeering cheerfulness.
+
+'It won't poison you, Monsieur le Cure,' he said. 'A glass of good wine
+isn't a sin. Upon my word, however, this is the first time I ever
+clinked a glass with a cassock, but no offence to you. That poor Abbe
+Caffin, your predecessor, refused to argue with me. He was afraid.'
+
+Jeanbernat gave vent to a hearty laugh, and then went on: 'Just fancy,
+he had pledged himself that he would prove to me that God exists. So,
+whenever I met him, I defied him to do it; and he sloped off
+crestfallen, I can tell you.'
+
+'What, God does not exist!' cried Abbe Mouret, roused from his silence.
+
+'Oh! just as you please,' mockingly replied Jeanbernat. 'We'll begin
+together all over again, if it's any pleasure to you. But I warn you
+that I'm a tough hand at it. There are some thousands of books in one of
+the rooms upstairs, which were rescued from the fire at the Paradou: all
+the philosophers of the eighteenth century, a whole heap of old books on
+religion. I've learned some fine things from them. I've been reading
+them these twenty years. Marry! you'll find you've got some one who can
+talk, Monsieur le Cure.'
+
+He had risen, slowly waving his hand towards the surrounding horizon, to
+the earth and to the sky, and repeating solemnly: 'There's nothing,
+nothing, nothing. When the sun is snuffed out, all will be at an end.'
+
+Doctor Pascal nudged Abbe Mouret with his elbow. With blinking eyes he
+was curiously observing the old man and nodding approvingly in order to
+induce him to talk. 'So you are a materialist, Jeanbernat?' he said.
+
+'Oh, I am only a poor man,' replied the old fellow, relighting his pipe.
+'When Count de Corbiere, whose foster-brother I was, died from a fall
+from his horse, his children sent me here to look after this park of the
+Sleeping Beauty, in order to get rid of me. I was sixty years old then,
+and I thought I was about done. But death forgot me; and I had to make
+myself a burrow. If one lives all alone, look you, one gets to see
+things in rather a queer fashion. The trees are no longer trees, the
+earth puts on the ways of a living being, the stones seem to tell you
+tales. A parcel of rubbish, eh? But I know some secrets that would
+fairly stagger you. Besides, what do you think there is to do in this
+devilish desert? I read the old books; it was more amusing than
+shooting. The Count, who used to curse like a heathen, was always saying
+to me: "Jeanbernat, my boy, I fully expect to meet you again in the hot
+place, so that you will be able to serve me there as you have up here."'
+
+Once more he waved his hand to the horizon and added: 'You hear,
+nothing; there's nothing. It's all foolery.'
+
+Dr. Pascal began to laugh.
+
+'A pleasant piece of foolery, at any rate,' he said. 'Jeanbernat, you
+are a deceiver. I suspect you are in love, in spite of your affectation
+of being _blase_. You were speaking very tenderly of the trees and
+stones just now.'
+
+'Oh, no, I assure you,' murmured the old man, 'I have done with that. At
+one time, it's true, when I first knew you and used to go herborising
+with you, I was stupid enough to love all sorts of things I came across
+in that huge liar, the country. Fortunately, the old volumes have killed
+all that. I only wish my garden was smaller; I don't go out into the
+road twice a year. You see that bench? That's where I spend all my time,
+just watching my lettuces grow.'
+
+'And what about your rounds in the park?' broke in the doctor.
+
+'In the park!' repeated Jeanbernat, with a look of profound surprise.
+'Why, it's more than twelve years since I set foot in it! What do you
+suppose I could do inside that cemetery? It's too big. It's stupid, what
+with those endless trees and moss everywhere and broken statues, and
+holes in which one might break one's neck at every step. The last time I
+went in there, it was so dark under the trees, there was such a stink of
+wild flowers, and such queer breezes blew along the paths, that I felt
+almost afraid. So I have shut myself up to prevent the park coming in
+here. A patch of sunlight, three feet of lettuce before me, and a big
+hedge shutting out all the view, why, that's more than enough for
+happiness. Nothing, that's what I'd like, nothing at all, something so
+tiny that nothing from outside could come to disturb me. Seven feet of
+earth, if you like, just to be able to croak on my back.'
+
+He struck the table with his fist, and suddenly raised his voice to call
+out to Abbe Mouret: 'Come, just another glass, your reverence. The old
+gentleman isn't at the bottom of the bottle, you know.'
+
+The priest felt ill at ease. To lead back to God that singular old man,
+whose reason seemed to him to be strangely disordered, appeared a task
+beyond his powers. He now remembered certain bits of gossip he had heard
+from La Teuse about the Philosopher, as the peasants of Les Artaud
+dubbed Jeanbernat. Scraps of scandalous stories vaguely floated in his
+memory. He rose, making a sign to the doctor that he wished to leave
+this house, where he seemed to inhale an odour of damnation. But, in
+spite of his covert fears, a strange feeling of curiosity made him
+linger. He simply walked to the end of the garden, throwing a searching
+glance into the vestibule, as if to see beyond it, behind the walls. All
+he could perceive, however, through the gaping doorway, was the black
+staircase. So he came back again, and sought for some hole, some glimpse
+of that sea of foliage which he knew was near by the mighty murmur that
+broke upon the house, like the sound of waves.
+
+'And is the little one well?' asked the doctor, taking up his hat.
+
+'Pretty well,' answered Jeanbernat. 'She's never here. She often
+disappears all day long--still, she may be in the upstair rooms.'
+
+He raised his head and called: 'Albine! Albine!' Then with a
+shrug of his shoulders, he added: 'Yes, my word, she is a nice
+hussy. . . . Well, till next time, Monsieur le Cure. I'm always
+at your disposal.'
+
+Abbe Mouret, however, had no time to accept the Philosopher's challenge.
+A door suddenly opened at the end of the vestibule; a dazzling breach
+was made in the black darkness of the wall, and through the breach came
+a vision of a virgin forest, a great depth of woodland, beneath a flood
+of sunbeams. In that sudden blaze of light the priest distinctly
+perceived certain far-away things: a large yellow flower in the middle
+of a lawn, a sheet of water falling from a lofty rock, a colossal tree
+filled with a swarm of birds; and all this steeped, lost, blazing in
+such a tangle of greenery, such riotous luxuriance of vegetation, that
+the whole horizon seemed one great burst of shooting foliage. The door
+banged to, and everything vanished.
+
+'Ah! the jade!' cried Jeanbernat, 'she was in the Paradou again!'
+
+Albine was now laughing on the threshold of the vestibule. She wore an
+orange-coloured skirt, with a large red kerchief fastened round her
+waist, thus looking like some gipsy in holiday garb. And she went on
+laughing, her head thrown back, her bosom swelling with mirth, delighted
+with her flowers, wild flowers which she had plaited into her fair hair,
+fastened to her neck, her bodice, and her bare slender golden arms. She
+seemed like a huge nosegay, exhaling a powerful perfume.
+
+'Ay, you are a beauty!' growled the old man. 'You smell of weeds enough
+to poison one--would any one think she was sixteen, that doll?'
+
+Albine remained unabashed, however, and laughed still more heartily.
+Doctor Pascal, who was her great friend, let her kiss him.
+
+'So you are not frightened in the Paradou?' he asked.
+
+'Frightened? What of?' she said, her eyes wide open with astonishment.
+'The walls are too high, no one can get in. There's only myself. It is
+my garden, all my very own. A fine big one, too. I haven't found out
+where it ends yet.'
+
+'And the animals?' interrupted the doctor.
+
+'The animals? Oh! they don't hurt; they all know me well.'
+
+'But it is very dark under the trees?'
+
+'Course! there's shade: if there were none, the sun would burn my face
+up. It is very pleasant in the shade among the leaves.'
+
+She flitted about, filling the little garden with the rustling sweep of
+her skirts, and scattering round the pungent odour of wild flowers which
+clung to her. She had smiled at Abbe Mouret without trace of shyness,
+without heed of the astonished look with which he observed her. The
+priest had stepped aside. That fair-haired maid, with long oval face,
+glowing with life, seemed to him to be the weird mysterious offspring of
+the forest of which he had caught a glimpse in a sheet of sunlight.
+
+'I say, I have got some blackbird nestlings; would you like them?'
+Albine asked the doctor.
+
+'No, thanks,' he answered, laughing. 'You should give them to the Cure's
+sister; she is very fond of pets. Good day, Jeanbernat.'
+
+Albine, however, had fastened on the priest.
+
+'You are the vicar of Les Artaud, aren't you? You have a sister? I'll go
+and see her. Only you must not speak to me about God. My uncle will not
+have it.'
+
+'You bother us, be off,' exclaimed Jeanbernat, shrugging his shoulders.
+Then bounding away like a goat, dropping a shower of flowers behind her,
+she disappeared. The slam of a door was heard, and from behind the house
+came bursts of laughter, which died away in the distance like the
+scampering rush of some mad animal let loose among the grass.
+
+'You'll see, she will end by sleeping in the Paradou,' muttered the old
+man with indifference.
+
+And as he saw his visitors off, he added: 'If you should find me dead
+one of these fine days, doctor, just do me the favour of pitching me
+into the muck-pit there, behind my lettuces. Good evening, gentlemen.'
+
+He let the wooden gate which closed the hedge fall to again, and the
+house assumed once more its aspect of happy peacefulness in the noonday
+sunlight, amidst the buzzing of the big flies that swarmed all up the
+ivy even to the roof tiles.
+
+
+
+                                 IX
+
+The gig once more rolled along the road skirting the Paradou's
+interminable wall. Abbe Mouret, still silent, scanned with upturned eyes
+the huge boughs which stretched over that wall, like the arms of giants
+hidden there. All sorts of sounds came from the park: rustling of wings,
+quivering of leaves, furtive bounds at which branches snapped, mighty
+sighs that bowed the young shoots--a vast breath of life sweeping over
+the crests of a nation of trees. At times, as he heard a birdlike note
+that seemed like a human laugh, the priest turned his head, as if he
+felt uneasy.
+
+'A queer girl!' said his uncle as he eased the reins a little. 'She was
+nine years old when she took up her quarters with that old heathen. Some
+brother of his had ruined himself, though in what I can't remember. The
+little one was at school somewhere when her father killed himself. She
+was even quite a little lady, up to reading, embroidery, chattering, and
+strumming on the piano. And such a coquette too! I saw her arrive with
+open-worked stockings, embroidered skirts, frills, cuffs, a heap of
+finery. Ah, well! the finery didn't last long!'
+
+He laughed. A big stone nearly upset the gig.
+
+'It will be lucky if I don't leave a wheel in this cursed road!' he
+muttered. 'Hold on, my boy.'
+
+The wall still stretched beside them: the priest still listened.
+
+'As you may well imagine,' continued the doctor, 'the Paradou, what with
+its sun, its stones, and its thistles, would wreck a whole outfit every
+day. Three or four mouthfuls, that's all it made of all the little one's
+beautiful dresses. She used to come back naked. Now she dresses like a
+savage. To-day she was rather presentable; but sometimes she has
+scarcely anything on beyond her shoes and chemise. Did you hear her? The
+Paradou is hers. The very day after she came she took possession of it.
+She lives in it; jumps out of the window when Jeanbernat locks the door,
+bolts off in spite of all, goes nobody knows whither, buries herself in
+some invisible burrows known only to herself. She must have a fine time
+in that wilderness.'
+
+'Hark, uncle!' interrupted Abbe Mouret. 'Isn't that some animal running
+behind the wall?'
+
+Uncle Pascal listened.
+
+'No,' he said after a minute's silence, 'it is the rattle of the trap
+on the stones. No, the child doesn't play the piano now. I believe she
+has even forgotten how to read. Just picture to yourself a young lady
+gone back to a state of primevalness, turned out to play on a desert
+island. My word, if ever you get to know of a girl who needs proper
+bringing up, I advise you not to entrust her to Jeanbernat. He has a
+most primitive way of letting nature alone. When I ventured to speak to
+him about Albine he answered me that he must not prevent trees from
+growing as they pleased. He says he is for the normal development of
+temperaments. . . . All the same, they are very interesting, both of
+them. I never come this way without paying them a visit.'
+
+The gig was now emerging from the hollowed road. At this point the
+wall of the Paradou turned and wound along the crest of the hills as
+far as one could see. As Abbe Mouret turned to take a last look at that
+grey-hued barrier, whose impenetrable austerity had at last begun to
+annoy him, a rustling of shaken boughs was heard and a clump of young
+birch trees seemed to bow in greeting from above the wall.
+
+'I knew some animal was running behind,' said the priest.
+
+But, although nobody could be seen, though nothing was visible in the
+air above save the birches rocking more and more violently, they heard a
+clear, laughing voice call out: 'Good-bye, doctor! good-bye, Monsieur le
+Cure! I am kissing the tree, and the tree is sending you my kisses.'
+
+'Why! it is Albine,' exclaimed Doctor Pascal. 'She must have followed
+the trap at a run. Jumping over bushes is mere play to her, the little
+elf!'
+
+And he in his turn shouted out:
+
+'Good-bye, my pet! How tall you must be to bow like that.'
+
+The laughter grew louder, the birches bowed still lower, scattering
+their leaves around even on the hood of the gig.
+
+'I am as tall as the trees; all the leaves that fall are kisses,'
+replied the voice now mellowed by distance, so musical, so merged into
+the rippling whispers of the park, that the young priest was thrilled.
+
+The road grew better. On coming down the slope Les Artaud reappeared in
+the midst of the scorched plain. When the gig reached the turning to the
+village, Abbe Mouret would not let his uncle drive him back to the
+vicarage. He jumped down, saying:
+
+'No, thanks, I prefer to walk: it will do me good.'
+
+'Well, just as you like,' at last answered the doctor. And with a
+clasp of the hand, he added: 'Well, if you only had such parishioners
+as that old brute Jeanbernat, you wouldn't often be disturbed. However,
+you yourself wanted to come. And mind you keep well. At the slightest
+ache, night or day, send for me. You know I attend all the family
+gratis. . . . There, good-bye, my boy.'
+
+
+
+                                 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.'
+
+
+
+                                III
+
+And there, indeed, the sunlight was. When Albine had opened the
+shutters, behind the large curtains, the genial yellow glow once more
+warmed a patch of the white calico. But that which impelled Serge to sit
+up in bed was the sight of the shadowy bough, the branch that for him
+heralded the return of life. All the resuscitated earth, with its wealth
+of greenery, its waters, and its belts of hills, was in that greenish
+blur that quivered with the faintest breath of air. It no longer
+disturbed him; he greedily watched it rocking, and hungered for the
+fortified powers of the vivifying sap which to him it symbolised.
+Albine, happy once more, exclaimed, as she supported him in her arms:
+'Ah! my dear Serge, the winter is over. Now we are saved.'
+
+He lay down again, his eyes already brighter, and his voice clearer.
+'To-morrow I shall be very strong,' he said. 'You shall draw back the
+curtains. I want to see everything.'
+
+But on the morrow he was seized with childish fear. He would not hear of
+the windows being opened wide. 'By-and-by,' he muttered, 'later on.' He
+was fearful, he dreaded the first beam of light that would flash upon
+his eyes. Evening came on, and still he had been unable to make up his
+mind to look upon the sun. He remained thus all day long, his face
+turned towards the curtains, watching on their transparent tissue the
+pallor of morn, the glow of noon, the violet tint of twilight, all the
+hues, all the emotions of the sky. There were pictured even the
+quiverings of the warm air at the light stroke of a bird's wing, even
+the delight of earth's odours throbbing in a sunbeam. Behind that veil,
+behind that softened phantasm of the mighty life without, he could hear
+the rise of spring. He even felt stifled at times when in spite of the
+curtains' barrier the rush of the earth's new blood came upon him too
+strongly.
+
+The following morning he was still asleep when Albine, to hasten his
+recovery, cried out to him:
+
+'Serge! Serge! here's the sun!'
+
+She swiftly drew back the curtains and threw the windows wide open. He
+raised himself and knelt upon his bed, oppressed, swooning, his hands
+tightly pressed against his breast to keep his heart from breaking.
+Before him stretched the broad sky, all blue, a boundless blue; and in
+it he washed away his sufferings, surrendering himself to it, and
+drinking from it sweetness and purity and youth. The bough whose shadow
+he had noted jutted across the window and alone set against the azure
+sea its vigorous growth of green; but even this was too much for his
+sickly fastidiousness; it seemed to him that the very swallows flying
+past besmeared the purity of the azure. He was being born anew. He
+raised little involuntary cries, as he felt himself flooded with light,
+assailed by waves of warm air, while a whirling, whelming torrent of
+life flowed within him. As last with outstretched hands he sank back
+upon his pillow in a swoon of joy.
+
+What a happy, delicious day that was! The sun came in from the right,
+far away from the alcove. Throughout the morning Serge watched it
+creeping onward. He could see it coming towards him, yellow as gold,
+perching here and there on the old furniture, frolicking in corners, at
+times gliding along the ground like a strip of ribbon. It was a slow
+deliberate march, the approach of a fond mistress stretching her golden
+limbs, drawing nigh to the alcove with rhythmic motion, with voluptuous
+lingering, which roused intense desire. At length, towards two o'clock,
+the sheet of sunlight left the last armchair, climbed along the
+coverlet, and spread over the bed like loosened locks of hair. To its
+glowing fondling Serge surrendered his wasted hands: with his eyes
+half-closed, he could feel fiery kisses thrilling each of his fingers;
+he lay in a bath of light, in the embrace of a glowing orb. And when
+Albine leaned over smiling, 'Let me be,' he stammered, his eyes now
+shut; 'don't hold me so tightly. How do you manage to hold me like this
+in your arms?'
+
+But the sun crept down the bed again and slowly retreated to the left;
+and as Serge watched it bend once more and settle on chair after chair,
+he bitterly regretted that he had not kept it to his breast. Albine
+still sat upon the side of the bed, and the pair of them, an arm round
+each other's neck, watched the slow paling of the sky. At times a mighty
+thrill seemed to make it blanch. Serge's languid eyes now wandered over
+it more freely and detected in it exquisite tints of which he had never
+dreamed. It was not all blue, but rosy blue, lilac blue, tawny blue,
+living flesh, vast and spotless nudity heaving like a woman's bosom in
+the breeze. At every glance into space he found a fresh surprise
+--unknown nooks, coy smiles, bewitching rounded outlines, gauzy veils
+which were cast over the mighty, glorious forms of goddesses in the
+depths of peeping paradises. And with his limbs lightened by suffering
+he winged his way amid that shimmering silk, that stainless down of
+azure. The sun sank lower and lower, the blue melted into purest gold,
+the sky's living flesh gleamed fairer still, and then was slowly steeped
+in all the hues of gloom. Not a cloud--nought but gradual disappearance,
+a disrobing which left behind it but a gleam of modesty on the horizon.
+And at last the broad sky slumbered.
+
+'Oh, the dear baby!' exclaimed Albine, as she looked at Serge, who had
+fallen asleep upon her neck at the same time as the heavens.
+
+She laid him down in bed and shut the windows. Next morning, however,
+they were opened at break of day. Serge could no longer live without the
+sunlight. His strength was growing, he was becoming accustomed to the
+gusts of air which sent the alcove curtains flying. Even the azure, the
+everlasting azure, began to pall upon him. He grew weary of being white
+and swanlike, of ever swimming on heaven's limpid lake. He came to wish
+for a pack of black clouds, some crumbling of the skies, that would
+break upon the monotony of all that purity. And as his health returned,
+he hungered for keener sensations. He now spent hours in gazing at the
+verdant bough: he would have liked to see it grow, expand, and throw out
+its branches to his very bed. It no longer satisfied him, but only
+roused desires, speaking to him as it did of all the trees whose
+deep-sounding call he could hear although their crests were hidden from
+his sight. An endless whispering of leaves, a chattering as of running
+water, a fluttering as of wings, all blended in one mighty, long-drawn,
+quivering voice, resounded in his ears.
+
+'When you are able to get up,' said Albine, 'you shall sit at the
+window. You will see the lovely garden!'
+
+He closed his eyes and murmured gently:
+
+'Oh! I can see it, I hear it; I know where the trees are, where the
+water runs, where the violets grow.'
+
+And then he added: 'But I can't see it clearly, I see it without any
+light. I must be very strong before I shall be able to get as far as the
+window.'
+
+At times when Albine thought him asleep, she would vanish for hours. And
+on coming in again, she would find him burning with impatience, his eyes
+gleaming with curiosity.
+
+'Where have you been?' he would call to her, taking hold of her arms,
+and feeling her skirts, her bodice, and her cheeks. 'You smell of all
+sorts of nice things. Ah! you have been walking on the grass?'
+
+At this she would laugh and show him her shoes wet with dew.
+
+'You have been in the garden! you have been in the garden!' he then
+exclaimed delightedly. 'I knew it. When you came in you seemed like a
+large flower. You have brought the whole garden in your skirt.'
+
+He would keep her by him, inhaling her like a nosegay. Sometimes she
+came back with briars, leaves, or bits of wood entangled in her clothes.
+These he would remove and hide under his pillow like relics. One day she
+brought him a bunch of roses. At the sight of them he was so affected
+that he wept. He kissed them and went to sleep with them in his arms.
+But when they faded, he felt so keenly grieved that he forbade Albine to
+gather any more. He preferred her, said he, for she was as fresh and as
+balmy; and she never faded, her hands, her hair, her cheeks were always
+fragrant. At last he himself would send her into the garden, telling her
+not to come back before an hour.
+
+'In that way,' he said, 'I shall get sunlight, fresh air, and roses till
+to-morrow.'
+
+Often, when he saw her coming in out of breath, he would cross-examine
+her. Which path had she taken? Had she wandered among the trees, or had
+she gone round the meadow side? Had she seen any nests? Had she sat down
+behind a bush of sweetbriar, or under an oak, or in the shade of a clump
+of poplars? But when she answered him and tried to describe the garden
+to him, he would put his hand to her lips.
+
+'No, no,' he said gently. 'It is wrong of me. I don't want to know. I
+would rather see it myself.'
+
+Then he would relapse into his favourite dream of all the greenery which
+he could feel only a step away. For several days he lived on that dream
+alone. At first, he said, he had perceived the garden much more
+distinctly. As he gained strength, the surging blood that warmed his
+veins seemed to blur his dreamy imaginings. His uncertainties
+multiplied. He could no longer tell whether the trees were on the right,
+whether the water flowed at the bottom of the garden, or whether some
+great rocks were not piled below his windows. He talked softly of all
+this to himself. On the slightest indication he would rear wondrous
+plans, which the song of a bird, the creaking of a bough, the scent of a
+flower, would suddenly make him modify, impelling him to plant a thicket
+of lilac in one spot, and in another to place flower-beds where formerly
+there had been a lawn. Every hour he designed some new garden, much to
+the amusement of Albine, who, whenever she surprised him at it, would
+exclaim with a burst of laughter: 'That's not it, I assure you. You
+can't have any idea of it. It's more beautiful than all the beautiful
+things you ever saw. So don't go racking your head about it. The
+garden's mine, and I will give it to you. Be easy, it won't run away.'
+
+Serge, who had already been so afraid of the light, felt considerable
+trepidation when he found himself strong enough to go and rest his
+elbows on the window-sill. Every evening he once more repeated,
+'To-morrow,' and 'To-morrow.' He would turn away in his bed with a
+shudder when Albine came in, and would cry out that she smelt of
+hawthorn, that she had scratched her hands in burrowing a hole through a
+hedge to bring him all its odour. One morning, however, she suddenly
+took him up in her arms, and almost carrying him to the window, held him
+there and forced him to look out and see.
+
+'What a coward you are!' she exclaimed with her fine ringing laugh.
+
+And waving one hand all round the landscape, she repeated with an air of
+triumph, full of tender promise: 'The Paradou! The Paradou!'
+
+Serge looked out upon it, speechless.
+
+
+
+                                 IV
+
+A sea of verdure, in front, to right, to left, everywhere. A sea rolling
+its surging billows of leaves as far as the horizon, unhindered by
+house, or screen of wall, or dusty road. A desert, virgin, hallowed sea,
+displaying its wild sweetness in the innocence of solitude. The sun
+alone came thither, weltering in the meadows in a sheet of gold,
+threading the paths with the frolicsome scamper of its beams, letting
+its fine-spun, flaming locks droop through the trees, sipping from the
+springs with amber lips that thrilled the water. Beneath that flaming
+dust the vast garden ran riot like some delighted beast let loose at the
+world's very end, far from everything and free from everything. So
+prodigal was the luxuriance of foliage, so overflowing the tide of
+herbage, that from end to end it all seemed hidden, flooded, submerged.
+Nought could be seen but slopes of green, stems springing up like
+fountains, billowy masses, woodland curtains closely drawn, mantles of
+creepers trailing over the ground, and flights of giant boughs swooping
+down upon every side.
+
+Amidst that tremendous luxuriance of vegetation even lengthy scrutiny
+could barely make out the bygone plan of the Paradou. In the foreground,
+in a sort of immense amphitheatre, must have lain the flower garden,
+whose fountains were now sunken and dry, its stone balustrades
+shattered, its flight of steps all warped, and its statues overthrown,
+patches of their whiteness gleaming amidst the dusky stretches of turf.
+Farther back, behind the blue line of a sheet of water, stretched a maze
+of fruit-trees; farther still rose towering woodland, its dusky, violet
+depths streaked with bands of light. It was a forest which had regained
+virginity, an endless stretch of tree-tops rising one above the other,
+tinged with yellowish green and pale green and vivid green, according to
+the variety of the species.
+
+On the right, the forest scaled some hills, dotting them with little
+clumps of pine-trees, and dying away in straggling brushwood, while a
+huge barrier of barren rock, heaped together like the fallen wreckage of
+a mountain, shut out all view beyond. Flaming growths there cleaved the
+rugged soil, monstrous plants lay motionless in the heat, like drowsing
+reptiles; a silvery streak, a foamy splash that glistened in the
+distance like a cloud of pearls, revealed the presence of a waterfall,
+the source of those tranquil streams that lazily skirted the
+flower-garden. Lastly, on the left the river flowed through a vast
+stretch of meadowland, where it parted into four streamlets which winded
+fitfully beneath the rushes, between the willows, behind the taller
+trees. And far away into the distance grassy patches prolonged the
+lowland freshness, forming a landscape steeped in bluish haze, where a
+gleam of daylight slowly melted into the verdant blue of sunset. The
+Paradou--its flower-garden, forest, rocks, streams, and meadows--filled
+the whole breadth of sky.
+
+'The Paradou!' stammered Serge, stretching out his arms as if to clasp
+the entire garden to his breast.
+
+He tottered, and Albine had to seat him in an armchair. There he sat for
+two whole hours intently gazing, without opening his lips, his chin
+resting on his hands. At times his eyelids fluttered and a flush rose to
+his cheeks. Slowly he looked, profoundly amazed. It was all too vast,
+too complex, too overpowering.
+
+'I cannot see, I cannot understand,' he cried, stretching out his hands
+to Albine with a gesture of uttermost weariness.
+
+The girl came and leant over the back of his armchair. Taking his head
+between her hands, she compelled him to look again, and softly said:
+
+'It's all our own. Nobody will ever come in. When you are well again, we
+will go for walks there. We shall have room enough for walking all our
+lives. We'll go wherever you like. Where would you like to go?'
+
+He smiled.
+
+'Oh! not far,' he murmured. 'The first day only two steps or so beyond
+the door. I should surely fall---- See, I'll go over there, under that
+tree close to the window.'
+
+But she resumed: 'Would you like to go into the flower-garden, the
+parterre? You shall see the roses--they have over-run everything, even
+the old paths are all covered with them. Or would you like the orchard
+better? I can only crawl into it on my hands and knees, the boughs are
+so bowed down with fruit. But we'll go even farther if you feel strong
+enough. We'll go as far as the forest, right into the depths of shade,
+far, far away; so far that we'll sleep out there when night steals over
+us. Or else, some morning, we can climb up yonder to the summit of those
+rocks. You'll see the plants which make me quake; you'll see the
+springs, such a shower of water! What fun it will be to feel the spray
+all over our faces! . . . But if you prefer to walk along the hedges,
+beside a brook, we must go round by the meadows. It is so nice under the
+willows in the evening, at sunset. One can lie down on the grass and
+watch the little green frogs hopping about on the rushes.'
+
+'No, no,' said Serge, 'you weary me, I don't want to go so far. . . . I
+will only go a couple of steps, that will be more than enough.'
+
+'Even I,' she still continued, 'even I have not yet been able to go
+everywhere. There are many nooks I don't know. I have walked and walked
+in it for years, and still I feel sure there are unknown spots around,
+places where the shade must be cooler and the turf softer. Listen, I
+have always fancied there must be one especially in which I should like
+to live for ever. I know it's somewhere; I must have passed it by, or
+perhaps it's hidden so far away that I have never even got as far, with
+all my rambles. But we'll look for it together, Serge, won't we? and
+live there.'
+
+'No, no, be quiet,' stammered the young man. 'I don't understand what
+you are saying. You're killing me.'
+
+For a moment she let him sob in her arms. It troubled and grieved her
+that she could find no words to soothe him.
+
+'Isn't the Paradou as beautiful, then, as you fancied it?' she asked at
+last.
+
+He raised his face and answered:
+
+'I don't know. It was quite little, and now it is ever growing bigger
+and bigger---- Take me away, hide me.'
+
+She led him back to bed, soothing him like a child, lulling him with a
+fib.
+
+'There, there! it's not true, there is no garden. It was only a story
+that I told you. Go, sleep in peace.'
+
+
+
+                                 V
+
+Every day in this wise she made him sit at the window during the cool
+hours of morning. He would now attempt to take a few steps, leaning the
+while on the furniture. A rosy tint appeared upon his cheeks, and his
+hands began to lose their waxy transparency. But, while he thus regained
+health, his senses remained in a state of stupor which reduced him to
+the vegetative life of some poor creature born only the day before.
+Indeed, he was nothing but a plant; his sole perception was that of the
+air which floated round him. He lacked the blood necessary for the
+efforts of life, and remained, as it were, clinging to the soil,
+imbibing all the sap he could. It was like a slow hatching in the warm
+egg of springtide. Albine, remembering certain remarks of Doctor
+Pascal, felt terrified at seeing him remain in this state, 'innocent,'
+dull-witted like a little boy. She had heard it said that certain
+maladies left insanity behind them. And she spent hours in gazing at him
+and trying her utmost, as mothers do, to make him smile. But as yet he
+had not laughed. When she passed her hand across his eyes, he never saw,
+he never followed the shadow. Even when she spoke to him, he barely
+turned his head in the direction whence the sound came. She had but one
+consolation: he thrived splendidly, he was quite a handsome child.
+
+For another whole week she lavished the tenderest care on him. She
+patiently waited for him to grow. And as she marked various symptoms of
+awakening perception, her fears subsided and she began to think that
+time might make a man of him. When she touched him now he started
+slightly. Another time, one night, he broke into a feeble laugh. On the
+morrow, when she had seated him at the window, she went down into the
+garden, and ran about in it, calling to him the while. She vanished
+under the trees, flitted across the sunny patches, and came back
+breathless and clapping her hands. At first his wavering eyes failed to
+perceive her. But as she started off again, perpetually playing at
+hide-and-seek, reappearing behind every other bush, he was at last able
+to follow the white gleam of her skirt; and when she suddenly came
+forward and stood with upraised face below his window, he stretched out
+his arms and seemed anxious to go down to her. But she came upstairs
+again, and embraced him proudly: 'Ah! you saw me, you saw me!' she
+cried. 'You would like to come into the garden with me, would you
+not?---- If you only knew how wretched you have made me these last few
+days, with your stupid ways, never seeing me or hearing me!'
+
+He listened to her, but apparently with some slight sensation of pain
+that made him bend his neck in a shrinking way.
+
+'You are better now, however,' she went on. 'Well enough to come down
+whenever you like---- Why don't you say anything? Have you lost your
+tongue? Oh, what a baby! Why, I shall have to teach him how to talk!'
+
+And thereupon she really did amuse herself by telling him the names of
+the things he touched. He could only stammer, reiterating the syllables,
+and failing to utter a single word plainly. However, she began to walk
+him about the room, holding him up and leading him from the bed to the
+window--quite a long journey. Two or three times he almost fell on the
+way, at which she laughed. One day he fairly sat down on the floor, and
+she had all the trouble in the world to get him up on his feet again.
+Then she made him undertake the round of the room, letting him rest by
+the way on the sofa and the chairs--a tour round a little world which
+took up a good hour. At last he was able to venture on a few steps
+alone. She would stand before him with outstretched hands, and move
+backwards, calling him, so that he should cross the room in search of
+her supporting arms. If he sulked and refused to walk, she would take
+the comb from her hair and hold it out to him like a toy. Then he would
+come to her and sit still in a corner for hours, playing with her comb,
+and gently scratching his hands with its teeth.
+
+At last one morning she found him up. He had already succeeded in
+opening one of the shutters, and was attempting to walk about without
+leaning on the furniture.
+
+'Good gracious, we are active this morning!' she exclaimed gleefully.
+'Why, he will be jumping out of the window to-morrow if he has his own
+way---- So you are quite strong now, eh?'
+
+Serge's answer was a childish laugh. His limbs were regaining the
+strength of adolescence, but more perceptive sensations remained
+unroused. He spent whole afternoons in gazing out on the Paradou,
+pouting like a child that sees nought but whiteness and hears but the
+vibration of sounds. He still retained the ignorance of urchinhood--his
+sense of touch as yet so innocent that he failed to tell Albine's gown
+from the covers of the old armchairs. His eyes still stared wonderingly;
+his movements still displayed the wavering hesitation of limbs which
+scarce knew how to reach their goal; his state was one of incipient,
+purely instinctive existence into which entered no knowledge of
+surroundings. The man was not yet born within him.
+
+'That's right, you'll act the silly, will you?' muttered Albine. 'We'll
+see.'
+
+She took off her comb, and held it out to him.
+
+'Will you have my comb?' she said. 'Come and fetch it.'
+
+When she had got him out of the room, by retreating before him all the
+way, she put her arm round his waist and helped him down each stair,
+amusing him while she put her comb back, even tickling his neck with a
+lock of her hair, so that he remained unaware that he was going
+downstairs. But when he was in the hall, he became frightened at the
+darkness of the passage.
+
+'Just look!' she cried, throwing the door wide open.
+
+It was like a sudden dawn, a curtain of shadow snatched aside, revealing
+the joyousness of early day. The park spread out before them verdantly
+limpid, freshly cool and deep as a spring. Serge, entranced, lingered
+upon the threshold, with a hesitating desire to feel that luminous lake
+with his foot.
+
+'One would think you were afraid of wetting yourself,' said Albine.
+'Don't be frightened, the ground is safe enough.'
+
+He had ventured to take one step, and was astonished at encountering the
+soft resistance of the gravel. The first touch of the soil gave him a
+shock; life seemed to rebound within him and to set him for a moment
+erect, with expanding frame, while he drew long breaths.
+
+'Come now, be brave,' insisted Albine. 'You know you promised me to
+take five steps. We'll go as far as the mulberry tree there under the
+window---- There you can rest.'
+
+It took him a quarter of an hour to make those five steps. After each
+effort he stopped as if he had been obliged to tear up roots that held
+him to the ground.
+
+The girl, pushing him along, said with a laugh: 'You look just like a
+walking tree.'
+
+Having placed him with his back leaning against the mulberry tree, in
+the rain of sunlight falling from its boughs, she bounded off and left
+him, calling out to him that he must not stir. Serge, standing there
+with drooping hands, slowly turned his head towards the park.
+Terrestrial childhood met his gaze. The pale greenery was steeped in the
+very milk of youth, flooded with golden brightness. The trees were still
+in infancy, the flowers were as tender-fleshed as babes, the streams
+were blue with the artless blue of lovely infantile eyes. Beneath every
+leaf was some token of a delightful awakening.
+
+Serge had fixed his eyes upon a yellow breach which a wide path made in
+front of him amidst a dense mass of foliage. At the very end, eastward,
+some meadows, steeped in gold, looked like the luminous field upon which
+the sun would descend, and he waited for the morn to take that path and
+flow towards him. He could feel it coming in a warm breeze, so faint at
+first that it barely brushed across his skin, but rising little by
+little, and growing ever brisker till he was thrilled all over. He could
+also taste it coming with a more and more pronounced savour, bringing
+the healthful acridity of the open air, holding to his lips a feast of
+sugary aromatics, sour fruits, and milky shoots. Further, he could smell
+it coming with the perfumes which it culled upon its way--the scent of
+earth, the scent of the shady woods, the scent of the warm plants, the
+scent of living animals, a whole posy of scents, powerful enough to
+bring on dizziness. He could likewise hear it coming with the rapid
+flight of a bird skimming over the grass, waking the whole garden from
+silence, giving voice to all it touched, and filling his ears with the
+music of things and beings. Finally, he could see it coming from the end
+of the path, from the meadows steeped in gold--yes, he could see that
+rosy air, so bright that it lighted the way it took with a gleaming
+smile, no bigger in the distance than a spot of daylight, but in a few
+swift bounds transformed into the very splendour of the sun. And the
+morn flowed up and beat against the mulberry tree against which Serge
+was leaning. And he himself resuscitated amidst the childhood of the
+morn.
+
+'Serge! Serge!' cried Albine, lost to sight behind the high shrubs of
+the flower garden. 'Don't be afraid, I am here.'
+
+But Serge no longer felt frightened. He was being born anew in the
+sunshine, in that pure bath of light which streamed upon him. He was
+being born anew at five-and-twenty, his senses hurriedly unclosing,
+enraptured with the mighty sky, the joyful earth, the prodigy of
+loveliness spread out around him. This garden, which he knew not only
+the day before, now afforded him boundless delight. Everything filled
+him with ecstasy, even the blades of grass, the pebbles in the paths,
+the invisible puffs of air that flitted over his cheeks. His whole body
+entered into possession of this stretch of nature; he embraced it with
+his limbs, he drank it in with his lips, he inhaled it with his
+nostrils, he carried it in his ears and hid it in the depths of his
+eyes. It was his own. The roses of the flower garden, the lofty boughs
+of the forest, the resounding rocks of the waterfall, the meadows which
+the sun planted with blades of light, were his. Then he closed his eyes
+and slowly reopened them that he might enjoy the dazzle of a second
+wakening.
+
+'The birds have eaten all the strawberries,' said Albine disconsolately,
+as she ran up to him. 'See, I have only been able to find these two!'
+
+But she stopped short a few steps away, heart-struck and gazing at Serge
+with rapturous astonishment. 'How handsome you are!' she cried.
+
+She drew a little nearer; then stood there, absorbed in her
+contemplation, and murmuring: 'I had never, never seen you before.'
+
+He had certainly grown taller. Clothed in a loose garment, he stood
+erect, still somewhat slender, with finely moulded limbs, square chest,
+and rounded shoulders. His head, slightly thrown back, was poised upon a
+flexible and snowy neck, rimmed with brown behind. Health and strength
+and power were on his face. He did not smile, his expression was that of
+repose, with grave and tender mouth, firm cheeks, large nose, and grey,
+clear, commanding eyes. The long locks that thickly covered his head
+fell upon his shoulders in jetty curls; while a slender growth of hair,
+through which gleamed his white skin, curled upon his upper lip and
+chin.
+
+'Oh! how handsome, how handsome you are!' lingeringly repeated Albine,
+crouching at his feet and gazing up at him with loving eyes. 'But why
+are you sulking with me? Why don't you speak to me?'
+
+Still he stood there and made no answer. His eyes were far away; he
+never even saw that child at his feet. He spoke to himself in the
+sunlight, and said: 'How good the light is!'
+
+That utterance sounded like a vibration of the sunlight itself. It fell
+amid the silence in the faintest of whispers like a musical sigh, a
+quiver of warmth and of life. For several days Albine had never heard
+his voice, and now, like himself, it had altered. It seemed to her to
+course through the park more sweetly than the melody of birds, more
+imperiously than the wind that bends the boughs. It reigned, it ruled.
+The whole garden heard it, though it had been but a faint and passing
+breath, and the whole garden was thrilled with the joyousness it
+brought.
+
+'Speak to me,' implored Albine. 'You have never spoken to me like that.
+When you were upstairs in your room, when you were not dumb, you talked
+the silly prattle of a child. How is it I no longer know your voice?
+Just now I thought it had come down from the trees, that it reached me
+from every part of the garden, that it was one of those deep sighs that
+used to worry me at night before you came. Listen, everything is keeping
+silence to hear you speak again.'
+
+But still he failed to recognise her presence. Tenderer grew her tones.
+'No, don't speak if it tires you. Sit down beside me, and we will remain
+here on the grass till the sun wanes. And look, I have found two
+strawberries. Such trouble I had too! The birds eat up everything. One's
+for you, both if you like; or we can halve them, and taste each of them.
+You'll thank me, and then I shall hear you.'
+
+But he would not sit down, he refused the strawberries, which Albine
+pettishly threw away. She did not open her lips again. She would rather
+have seen him ill, as in those earlier days when she had given him her
+hand for a pillow, and had felt him coming back to life beneath the
+cooling breath she blew upon his face. She cursed the returning health
+which now made him stand in the light like a young unheeding god. Would
+he be ever thus then, with never a glance for her? Would he never be
+further healed, and at last see her and love her? And she dreamed of
+once again being his healer, of accomplishing by the sole power of her
+little hands the cure of the second childhood in which he remained. She
+could clearly see that there was no spark in the depths of his grey
+eyes, that his was but a pallid beauty like that of the statues which
+had fallen among the nettles of the flower-garden. She rose and clasped
+him, breathing on his neck to rouse him. But that morning Serge never
+even felt the breath that lifted his silky beard. The sun got low, it
+was time to go indoors. On reaching his room, Albine burst into tears.
+
+From that morning forward the invalid took a short walk in the garden
+every day. He went past the mulberry tree, as far as the edge of the
+terrace, where a wide flight of broken steps descended to the flowery
+parterre. He grew accustomed to the open air, each bath of sunlight
+brought him fresh vigour. A young chestnut tree, which had sprung from
+some fallen nut between two stones of the balustrade, burst the resin of
+its buds, and unfolded its leafy fans with far less vigour than he
+progressed. One day, indeed, he even attempted to descend the steps, but
+in this his strength failed him, and he sat down among the dane-wort
+which had grown up between the cracks in the stone flags. Below, to the
+left, he could see a small wood of roses. It was thither that he dreamt
+of going.
+
+'Wait a little longer,' said Albine. 'The scent of the roses is too
+strong for you yet. I have never been able to sit long under the
+rose-trees without feeling exhausted, light-headed, with a longing to
+cry. Don't be afraid, I will some day lead you to the rose-trees, and I
+shall surely weep among them, for you make me very sad.'
+
+
+
+                                 VI
+
+One morning she at last succeeded in helping him to the foot of the
+steps, trampling down the grass before him with her feet, and clearing a
+way for him through the briars, whose supple arms barred the last few
+yards. Then they slowly entered the wood of roses. It was indeed a very
+wood, with thickets of tall standard roses throwing out leafy clumps as
+big as trees, and enormous rose bushes impenetrable as copses of young
+oaks. Here, formerly, there had been a most marvellous collection of
+plants. But since the flower garden had been left in abandonment,
+everything had run wild, and a virgin forest had arisen, a forest of
+roses over-running the paths, crowded with wild offshoots, so mingled,
+so blended, that roses of every scent and hue seemed to blossom on the
+same stem. Creeping roses formed mossy carpets on the ground, while
+climbing roses clung to others like greedy ivy plants, and ascended in
+spindles of verdure, letting a shower of their loosened petals fall at
+the lightest breeze. Natural paths coursed through the wood--narrow
+footways, broad avenues, enchanting covered walks in which one strolled
+in the shade and scent. These led to glades and clearings, under bowers
+of small red roses, and between walls hung with tiny yellow ones. Some
+sunny nooks gleamed like green silken stuff embroidered with bright
+patterns; other shadier corners offered the seclusion of alcoves and an
+aroma of love, the balmy warmth, as it were, of a posy languishing on a
+woman's bosom. The rose bushes had whispering voices too. And the rose
+bushes were full of songbirds' nests.
+
+'We must take care not to lose ourselves,' said Albine, as she entered
+the wood. 'I did lose myself once, and the sun had set before I was able
+to free myself from the rose bushes which caught me by the skirt at
+every step.'
+
+They had barely walked a few minutes, however, before Serge, worn out
+with fatigue, wished to sit down. He stretched himself upon the ground,
+and fell into deep slumber. Albine sat musing by his side. They were on
+the edge of a glade, near a narrow path which stretched away through the
+wood, streaked with flashes of sunlight, and, through a small round blue
+gap at its far end, revealed the sky. Other little paths led from the
+clearing into leafy recesses. The glade was formed of tall rose bushes
+rising one above the other with such a wealth of branches, such a tangle
+of thorny shoots, that big patches of foliage were caught aloft, and
+hung there tent-like, stretching out from bush to bush. Through the tiny
+apertures in the patches of leaves, which were suggestive of fine lace,
+the light filtered like impalpable sunny dust. And from the vaulted roof
+hung stray branches, chandeliers, as it were, thick clusters suspended
+from green thread-like stems, armfuls of flowers that reached to the
+ground, athwart some rent in the leafy ceiling, which trailed around
+like a tattered curtain.
+
+Albine meanwhile was gazing at Serge asleep. She had never seen him so
+utterly prostrated in body as now, his hands lying open on the turf, his
+face deathly. So dead indeed he was to her that she thought she could
+kiss his face without his even feeling it. And sadly, absently, she
+busied her hands with shredding all the roses within her reach. Above
+her head drooped an enormous cluster which brushed against her hair, set
+roses on her twisted locks, her ears, her neck, and even threw a mantle
+of the fragrant flowers across her shoulders. Higher up, under her
+fingers, other roses rained down with large and tender petals
+exquisitely formed, which in hue suggested the faintly flushing purity
+of a maiden's bosom. Like a living snowfall these roses already hid her
+feet in the grass. And they climbed her knees, covered her skirt, and
+smothered her to her waist; while three stray petals, which had
+fluttered on to her bodice, just above her bosom, there looked like
+three glimpses of her bewitching skin.
+
+'Oh! the lazy fellow!' she murmured, feeling bored and picking up two
+handfuls of roses, which she flung in Serge's face to wake him.
+
+He did not stir, however, but still lay there with the roses on his eyes
+and mouth. This made Albine laugh. She stooped down, and with her whole
+heart kissed both his eyes and his mouth, blowing as she kissed to drive
+the rose petals away; but they remained upon his lips, and she broke
+into still louder laughter, intensely amused at this flowery caressing.
+
+Serge slowly raised himself. He gazed at her with amazement, as if
+startled at finding her there.
+
+'Who are you? where do you come from? what are you doing here beside
+me?' he asked her. And still she smiled, transported with delight at
+marking this awakening of his senses. Then he seemed to remember
+something, and continued with a gesture of happy confidence:
+
+'I know, you are my love, flesh of my flesh, you are waiting for me that
+we may be one for ever. I was dreaming of you. You were in my breast,
+and I gave you my blood, my muscles, my bones. I felt no pain. You took
+half my heart so tenderly that I experienced keen inward delight at thus
+dividing myself. I sought all that was best and most beautiful within me
+to give it to you. You might have carried off everything, and still I
+should have thanked you. And I woke when you went out of me. You left
+through my eyes and mouth; ay, I felt it. You were all warm, all
+fragrant, so sweet that it was the thrill from you that has made me
+awake.'
+
+Albine listened to his words with ecstasy. At last he saw her; at last
+his birth was accomplished, his cure begun. With outstretched hands she
+begged him to go on.
+
+'How have I managed to live without you?' he murmured. 'No, I did not
+live, I was like a slumbering animal. And now you are mine! and you are
+no one but myself! Listen, you must never leave me; for you are my very
+breath, and in leaving me you would rob me of my life. We will remain
+within ourselves. You will be mine even as I shall be yours. Should I
+ever forsake you, may I be accursed, may my body wither like a useless
+and noxious weed!'
+
+He caught hold of her hands, and exclaimed in a voice quivering with
+admiration: 'How beautiful you are!'
+
+In the falling dust of sunshine Albine's skin looked milky white, scarce
+gilded here and there by the sunny sheen. The shower of roses around and
+on her steeped her in pinkness.
+
+Her fair hair, loosely held together by her comb, decked her head as
+with a setting planet whose last bright sparks shone upon the nape of
+her neck. She wore a white gown; her arms, her throat, her stainless
+skin bloomed unabashed as a flower, musky with a goodly fragrance. Her
+figure was slender, not too tall, but supple as a snake's, with softly
+rounded, voluptuously expanding outlines, in which the freshness of
+childhood mingled with womanhood's nascent charms. Her oval face, with
+its narrow brow and rather full mouth, beamed with the tender living
+light of her blue eyes. And yet she was grave, too, her cheeks
+unruffled, her chin plump--as naturally lovely as are the trees.
+
+'And how I love you!' said Serge, drawing her to himself.
+
+They were wholly one another's now, clasped in each other's arms! They
+did not kiss, but held each other round the waist, cheek to cheek,
+united, dumb, delighted with their oneness. Around them bloomed the
+roses with a mad, amorous blossoming, full of crimson and rosy and white
+laughter. The living, opening flowers seemed to bare their very bosoms.
+Yellow roses were there showing the golden skin of barbarian maidens:
+straw-coloured roses, lemon-coloured roses, sun-coloured roses--every
+shade of the necks which are ambered by glowing skies. Then there was
+skin of softer hue: among the tea roses, bewitchingly moist and cool,
+one caught glimpses of modest, bashful charms, with skin as fine as silk
+tinged faintly with a blue network of veins. Farther on all the smiling
+life of the rose expanded: there was the blush white rose, barely tinged
+with a dash of carmine, snowy as the foot of a maid dabbling in a
+spring; there was the silvery pink, more subdued than even the glow with
+which a youthful arm irradiates a wide sleeve; there was the clear,
+fresh rose, in which blood seemed to gleam under satin as in the bare
+shoulders of a woman bathed in light; and there was the bright pink rose
+with its buds like the nipples of virgin bosoms, and its opening flowers
+that suggested parted lips, exhaling warm and perfumed breath. And the
+climbing roses, the tall cluster roses with their showers of white
+flowers, clothed all these others with the lacework of their bunches,
+the innocence of their flimsy muslin; while, here and there, roses dark
+as the lees of wine, sanguineous, almost black, showed amidst the bridal
+purity like passion's wounds. Verily, it was like a bridal--the bridal
+of the fragrant wood, the virginity of May led to the fertility of July
+and August; the first unknowing kiss culled like a nosegay on the
+wedding morn. Even in the grass, moss roses, clad in close-fitting
+garments of green wool, seemed to be awaiting the advent of love.
+Flowers rambled all along the sun-streaked path, faces peeped out
+everywhere to court the passing breezes. Bright were the smiles under
+the spreading tent of the glade. Not a flower that bloomed the same: the
+roses differed in the fashion of their wooing. Some, shy and blushing,
+would show but a glimpse of bud, while others, panting and wide open,
+seemed consumed with infatuation for their persons. There were pert, gay
+little things that filed off, cockade in cap; there were huge ones,
+bursting with sensuous charms, like portly, fattened-up sultanas; there
+were impudent hussies, too, in coquettish disarray, on whose petals the
+white traces of the powder-puff could be espied; there were virtuous
+maids who had donned low-necked garb like demure _bourgeoises_; and
+aristocratic ladies, graceful and original, who contrived attractive
+deshabilles. And the cup-like roses offered their perfume as in precious
+crystal; the drooping, urn-shaped roses let it drip drop by drop; the
+round, cabbage-like roses exhaled it with the even breath of slumbering
+flowers; while the budding roses tightly locked their petals and only
+sent forth as yet the faint sigh of maidenhood.
+
+'I love you, I love you,' softly repeated Serge.
+
+Albine, too, was a large rose, a pallid rose that had opened since the
+morning. Her feet were white, her arms were rosy pink, her neck was fair
+of skin, her throat bewitchingly veined, pale and exquisite. She was
+fragrant, she proffered lips which offered as in a coral cup a perfume
+that was yet faint and cool. Serge inhaled that perfume, and pressed her
+to his breast. Albine laughed.
+
+The ring of that laugh, which sounded like a bird's rhythmic notes,
+enraptured Serge.
+
+'What, that lovely song is yours?' he said. 'It is the sweetest I ever
+heard. You are indeed my joy.'
+
+Then she laughed yet more sonorously, pouring forth rippling scales of
+high-pitched, flute-like notes that melted into deeper ones. It was an
+endless laugh, a long-drawn cooing, then a burst of triumphant music
+celebrating the delight of awakening love. And everything--the roses,
+the fragrant wood, the whole of the Paradou--laughed in that laugh of
+woman just born to beauty and to love. Till now the vast garden had
+lacked one charm--a winning voice which should prove the living mirth of
+the trees, the streams, and the sunlight. Now the vast garden was
+endowed with that charm of laughter.
+
+'How old are you?' asked Albine, when her song had ended in a faint
+expiring note.
+
+'Nearly twenty-six,' Serge answered.
+
+She was amazed. What! he was twenty-six! He, too, was astonished at
+having made that answer so glibly, for it seemed to him that he had not
+yet lived a day--an hour.
+
+'And how old are you?' he asked in his turn.
+
+'Oh, I am sixteen.'
+
+Then she broke into laughter again, quivering from head to foot,
+repeating and singing her age. She laughed at her sixteen years with a
+fine-drawn laugh that flowed on with rhythmic trilling like a streamlet.
+Serge scanned her closely, amazed at the laughing life that transfigured
+her face. He scarcely knew her now with those dimples in her cheeks,
+those bow-shaped lips between which peeped the rosy moistness of her
+mouth, and those eyes blue like bits of sky kindling with the rising of
+the sun. As she threw back her head, she sent a glow of warmth through
+him.
+
+He put out his hand, and fumbled mechanically behind her neck.
+
+'What do you want?' she asked. And suddenly remembering, she exclaimed:
+'My comb! my comb! that's it.'
+
+She gave him her comb, and let fall her heavy tresses. A cloth of gold
+suddenly unrolled and clothed her to her hips. Some locks which flowed
+down upon her breast gave, as it were a finishing touch to her regal
+raiment. At the sight of that sudden blaze, Serge uttered an
+exclamation; he kissed each lock, and burned his lips amidst that
+sunset-like refulgence.
+
+But Albine now relieved herself of her long silence, and chatted and
+questioned unceasingly.
+
+'Oh, how wretched you made me! You no longer took any notice of me, and
+day after day I found myself useless and powerless, worried out of my
+wits like a good-for-nothing. . . . And yet the first few days I had
+done you good. You saw me and spoke to me. . . . Do you remember when
+you were lying down, and went to sleep on my shoulder, and murmured that
+I did you good?'
+
+'No!' said Serge, 'no, I don't remember it. I had never seen you before.
+I have only just seen you for the first time--lovely, radiant, never to
+be forgotten.'
+
+She clapped her hands impatiently, exclaiming: 'And my comb? You must
+remember how I used to give you my comb to keep you quiet when you were
+a little child? Why, you were looking for it just now.'
+
+'No, I don't remember. Your hair is like fine silk. I have never kissed
+your hair before.'
+
+At this, with some vexation, she recounted certain particulars of
+his convalescence in the room with the blue ceiling. But he only
+laughed at her, and at last closed her lips with his hand, saying with
+anxious weariness: 'No, be quiet, I don't know; I don't want to know any
+more. . . . I have only just woke up, and found you there, covered with
+roses. That is enough.'
+
+And he drew her once more towards him and held her there, dreaming
+aloud, and murmuring: 'Perhaps I have lived before. It must have been a
+long, long time ago. . . . I loved you in a painful dream. You had the
+same blue eyes, the same rather long face, the same youthful mien. But
+your hair was carefully hidden under a linen cloth, and I never dared to
+remove that cloth, because your locks seemed to me fearsome and would
+have made me die. But to-day your hair is the very sweetness of
+yourself. It preserves your scent, and when I kiss it, when I bury my
+face in it like this, I drink in your very life.'
+
+He kept on passing the long curls through his hands, and pressing them
+to his lips, as if to squeeze from them all Albine's blood. And after an
+interval of silence, he continued: 'It's strange, before one's birth,
+one dreams of being born. . . . I was buried somewhere. I was very cold.
+I could hear all the life of the world outside buzzing above me. But I
+shut my ears despairingly, for I was used to my gloomy den, and enjoyed
+some fearful delights in it, so that I never sought to free myself from
+all the earth weighing upon my chest. Where could I have been then? Who
+was it gave me light?'
+
+He struggled to remember, while Albine now waited in fear and trembling
+lest he should really do so. Smiling, she took a handful of her hair and
+wound it round the young man's neck, thus fastening him to herself. This
+playful act roused him from his musings.
+
+'You're right,' he said, 'I am yours, what does the rest matter? It was
+you, was it not, who drew me out of the earth? I must have been under
+this garden. What I heard were your steps rattling the little pebbles in
+the path. You were looking for me, you brought down upon my head the
+songs of the birds, the scent of the pinks, the warmth of the sun. I
+fancied that you would find me at last. I waited a long time for you.
+But I never expected that you would give yourself to me without your
+veil, with your hair undone--the terrible hair which has become so
+soft.'
+
+He sat her on his lap, placing his face beside hers.
+
+'Do not let us talk any more. We are alone for ever. We love each
+other.'
+
+And thus in all innocence they lingered in each other's arms; for a
+long, long time did they remain there forgetfully. The sun rose higher;
+and the dust of light fell hotter from the lofty boughs. The yellow and
+white and crimson roses were now only a ray of their delight, a sign of
+their smiles to one another. They had certainly caused buds to open
+around them. The roses crowned their heads and threw garlands about
+their waists. And the scent of the roses became so penetrating, so
+strong with amorous emotion, that it seemed to be the scent of their own
+breath.
+
+At last Serge put up Albine's hair. He raised it in handfuls with
+delightful awkwardness, and stuck her comb askew in the enormous knot
+that he had heaped upon her head. And as it happened she looked
+bewitching thus. Then, rising from the ground, he held out his hands to
+her, and supported her waist as she got up. They still smiled without
+speaking a word, and slowly they went down the path.
+
+
+
+                                VII
+
+Albine and Serge entered the flower garden. She was watching him with
+tender anxiety, fearing lest he should overtire himself; but he
+reassured her with a light laugh. He felt strong enough indeed to carry
+her whithersoever she listed. When he found himself once more in the
+full sunlight, he drew a sigh of content. At last he lived; he was no
+longer a plant subject to the terrible sufferings of winter. And how he
+was moved with loving gratitude! Had it been within his power, he would
+have spared Albine's tiny feet even the roughness of the paths; he
+dreamed of carrying her, clinging round his neck, like a child lulled to
+sleep by her mother. He already watched over her with a guardian's
+watchful care, thrusting aside the stones and brambles, jealous lest the
+breeze should waft a fleeting kiss upon those darling locks which were
+his alone. She on her side nestled against his shoulder and serenely
+yielded to his guidance.
+
+Thus Albine and Serge strolled on together in the sunlight for the first
+time. A balmy fragrance floated in their wake, the very path on which
+the sun had unrolled a golden carpet thrilled with delight under their
+feet. Between the tall flowering shrubs they passed like a vision of
+such wondrous charm that the distant paths seemed to entreat their
+presence and hail them with a murmur of admiration, even as crowds hail
+long-expected sovereigns. They formed one sole, supremely lovely being.
+Albine's snowy skin was but the whiteness of Serge's browner skin. And
+slowly they passed along clothed with sunlight--nay, they were
+themselves the sun--worshipped by the low bending flowers.
+
+A tide of emotion now stirred the Paradou to its depths. The old flower
+garden escorted them--that vast field bearing a century's untrammelled
+growth, that nook of Paradise sown by the breeze with the choicest
+flowers. The blissful peace of the Paradou, slumbering in the broad
+sunlight, prevented the degeneration of species. It could boast of a
+temperature ever equable, and a soil which every plant had long enriched
+to thrive therein in the silence of its vigour. Its vegetation was
+mighty, magnificent, luxuriantly untended, full of erratic growths
+decked with monstrous blossoming, unknown to the spade and watering-pot
+of gardeners. Nature left to herself, free to grow as she listed, in the
+depths of that solitude protected by natural shelters, threw restraint
+aside more heartily at each return of spring, indulged in mighty
+gambols, delighted in offering herself at all seasons strange nosegays
+not meant for any hand to pluck. A rabid fury seemed to impel her to
+overthrow whatever the effort of man had created; she rebelliously cast
+a straggling multitude of flowers over the paths, attacked the rockeries
+with an ever-rising tide of moss, and knotted round the necks of marble
+statues the flexible cords of creepers with which she threw them down;
+she shattered the stonework of the fountains, steps, and terraces with
+shrubs which burst through them; she slowly, creepingly, spread over the
+smallest cultivated plots, moulding them to her fancy, and planting on
+them, as ensign of rebellion, some wayside spore, some lowly weed which
+she transformed into a gigantic growth of verdure. In days gone by the
+parterre, tended by a master passionately fond of flowers, had displayed
+in its trim beds and borders a wondrous wealth of choice blossoms. And
+the same plants could still be found; but perpetuated, grown into such
+numberless families, and scampering in such mad fashion throughout the
+whole garden, that the place was now all helter-skelter riot to its very
+walls, a very den of debauchery, where intoxicated nature had hiccups of
+verbena and pinks.
+
+Though to outward seeming Albine had yielded her weaker self to the
+guidance of Serge, to whose shoulder she clung, it was she who really
+led him. She took him first to the grotto. Deep within a clump of
+poplars and willows gaped a cavern, formed by rugged bits of rocks which
+had fallen over a basin where tiny rills of water trickled between the
+stones. The grotto was completely lost to sight beneath the onslaught of
+vegetation. Below, row upon row of hollyhocks seemed to bar all entrance
+with a trellis-work of red, yellow, mauve, and white-hued flowers, whose
+stems were hidden among colossal bronze-green nettles, which calmly
+exuded blistering poison. Above them was a mighty swarm of creepers
+which leaped aloft in a few bounds; jasmines starred with balmy flowers;
+wistarias with delicate lacelike leaves; dense ivy, dentated and
+resembling varnished metal; lithe honeysuckle, laden with pale coral
+sprays; amorous clematideae, reaching out arms all tufted with white
+aigrettes. And among them twined yet slenderer plants, binding them more
+and more closely together, weaving them into a fragrant woof.
+Nasturtium, bare and green of skin, showed open mouths of ruddy gold;
+scarlet runners, tough as whipcord, kindled here and there a fire of
+gleaming sparks; convolvuli opened their heart-shaped leaves, and with
+thousands of little bells rang a silent peal of exquisite colours;
+sweetpeas, like swarms of settling butterflies, folded tawny or rosy
+wings, ready to be borne yet farther away by the first breeze. It was
+all a wealth of leafy locks, sprinkled with a shower of flowers,
+straying away in wild dishevelment, and suggesting the head of some
+giantess thrown back in a spasm of passion, with a streaming of
+magnificent hair, which spread into a pool of perfume.
+
+'I have never dared to venture into all that darkness,' Albine whispered
+to Serge.
+
+He urged her on, carried her over the nettles; and as a great boulder
+barred the way into the grotto, he held her up for a moment in his arms
+so that she might be able to peer through the opening that yawned at a
+few feet from the ground.
+
+'A marble woman,' she whispered, 'has fallen full length into the
+stream. The water has eaten her face away.'
+
+Then he, too, in his turn wanted to look, and pulled himself up. A cold
+breeze played upon his cheeks. In the pale light that glided through the
+hole, he saw the marble woman lying amidst the reeds and the duckweed.
+She was naked to the waist. She must have been drowning there for the
+last hundred years. Some grief had probably flung her into that spring
+where she was slowly committing suicide. The clear water which flowed
+over her had worn her face into a smooth expanse of marble, a mere white
+surface without a feature; but her breasts, raised out of the water by
+what appeared an effort of her neck, were still perfect and lifelike,
+throbbing even yet with the joys of some old delight.
+
+'She isn't dead yet,' said Serge, getting down again. 'One day we will
+come and get her out of there.'
+
+But Albine shuddered and led him away. They passed out again into the
+sunlight and the rank luxuriance of beds and borders. They wandered
+through a field of flowers capriciously, at random. Their feet trod a
+carpet of lovely dwarf plants, which had once neatly fringed the walks,
+and now spread about in wild profusion. In succession they passed
+ankle-deep through the spotted silk of soft rose catchflies, through the
+tufted satin of feathered pinks, and the blue velvet of forget-me-nots,
+studded with melancholy little eyes. Further on they forced their way
+through giant mignonette, which rose to their knees like a bath of
+perfume; then they turned through a patch of lilies of the valley in
+order that they might spare an expanse of violets, so delicate-looking
+that they feared to hurt them. But soon they found themselves surrounded
+on all sides by violets, and so with wary, gentle steps they passed over
+their fresh fragrance inhaling the very breath of springtide. Beyond the
+violets, a mass of lobelias spread out like green wool gemmed with pale
+mauve. The softly shaded stars of globularia, the blue cups of
+nemophila, the yellow crosses of saponaria, the white and purple ones of
+sweet rocket, wove patches of rich tapestry, stretching onward and
+onward, a fabric of royal luxury, so that the young couple might enjoy
+the delights of that first walk together without fatigue. But the
+violets ever reappeared; real seas of violets that rolled all round
+them, shedding the sweetest perfumes beneath their feet and wafting in
+their wake the breath of their leaf-hidden flowerets.
+
+Albine and Serge quite lost themselves. Thousands of loftier plants
+towered up in hedges around them, enclosing narrow paths which they
+found it delightful to thread. These paths twisted and turned, wandered
+maze-like through dense thickets. There were ageratums with sky-blue
+tufts of bloom; woodruffs with soft musky perfume; brazen-throated
+mimuluses, blotched with bright vermilion; lofty phloxes, crimson and
+violet, throwing up distaffs of flowers for the breezes to spin; red
+flax with sprays as fine as hair; chrysanthemums like full golden moons,
+casting short faint rays, white and violet and rose, around them. The
+young couple surmounted all the obstacles that lay in their path and
+continued their way betwixt the walls of verdure. To the right of them
+sprang up the slim fraxinella, the centranthus draped with snowy
+blossoms, and the greyish hounds-tongue, in each of whose tiny
+flowercups gleamed a dewdrop. To their left was a long row of columbines
+of every variety; white ones, pale rose ones, and some of deep violet
+hues, almost black, that seemed to be in mourning, the blossoms that
+drooped from their lofty, branching stems being plaited and goffered
+like crape. Then, as they advanced further on, the character of the
+hedges changed. Giant larkspurs thrust up their flower-rods, between the
+dentated foliage of which gaped the mouths of tawny snapdragons, while
+the schizanthus reared its scanty leaves and fluttering blooms, that
+looked like butterflies' wings of sulphur hue splashed with soft lake.
+The blue bells of campanulae swayed aloft, some of them even over the
+tall asphodels, whose golden stems served as their steeples. In one
+corner was a giant fennel that reminded one of a lace-dressed lady
+spreading out a sunshade of sea-green satin. Then the pair suddenly
+found their way blocked. It was impossible to advance any further; a
+mass of flowers, a huge sheaf of plants stopped all progress. Down
+below, a mass of brank-ursine formed as it were a pedestal, from the
+midst of which sprang scarlet geum, rhodanthe with stiff petals, and
+clarkia with great white carved crosses, that looked like the insignia
+of some barbarous order. Higher up still, bloomed the rosy viscaria, the
+yellow leptosiphon, the white colinsia, and the lagurus, whose dusty
+green bloom contrasted with the glowing colours around it. Towering over
+all these growths scarlet foxgloves and blue lupins, rising in slender
+columns, formed a sort of oriental rotunda gleaming vividly with crimson
+and azure; while at the very summit, like a surmounting dome of dusky
+copper, were the ruddy leaves of a colossal castor-bean.
+
+As Serge reached out his hands to try to force a passage, Albine stopped
+him and begged him not to injure the flowers. 'You will break the stems
+and crush the leaves,' she said. 'Ever since I have been here, I have
+always taken care to hurt none of them. Come, and I will show you the
+pansies.'
+
+She made him turn and led him from the narrow paths to the centre of the
+parterre, where, once upon a time, great basins had been hollowed out.
+But these had now fallen into ruin, and were nothing but gigantic
+_jardinieres_, fringed with stained and cracked marble. In one of the
+largest of them, the wind had sown a wonderful basketful of pansies. The
+velvety blooms seemed almost like living faces, with bands of violet
+hair, yellow eyes, paler tinted mouths, and chins of a delicate flesh
+colour.
+
+When I was younger they used to make me quite afraid,' murmured Albine.
+'Look at them. Wouldn't you think that they were thousands of little
+faces looking up at you from the ground? And they turn, too, all in the
+same direction. They might be a lot of buried dolls thrusting their
+heads out of the ground.'
+
+She led him still further on. They went the round of all the other
+basins. In the next one a number of amaranthuses had sprung up, raising
+monstrous crests which Albine had always shrunk from touching, such was
+their resemblance to big bleeding caterpillars. Balsams of all colours,
+now straw-coloured, now the hue of peach-blossom, now blush-white, now
+grey like flax, filled another basin where their seed pods split with
+little snaps. Then in the midst of a ruined fountain, there flourished a
+colony of splendid carnations. White ones hung over the moss-covered
+rims, and flaked ones thrust a bright medley of blossom between the
+chinks of the marble; while from the mouth of the lion, whence formerly
+the water-jets had spurted, a huge crimson clove now shot out so
+vigorously that the decrepit beast seemed to be spouting blood. Near by,
+the principal piece of ornamental water, a lake, on whose surface swans
+had glided, had now become a thicket of lilacs, beneath whose shade
+stocks and verbenas and day-lilies screened their delicate tints, and
+dozed away, all redolent of perfume.
+
+'But we haven't seen half the flowers yet,' said Albine, proudly. 'Over
+yonder there are such huge ones that I can quite bury myself amongst
+them like a partridge in a corn-field.'
+
+They went thither. They tripped down some broad steps, from whose fallen
+urns still flickered the violet fires of the iris. All down the steps
+streamed gilliflowers, like liquid gold. The sides were flanked with
+thistles, that shot up like candelabra, of green bronze, twisted and
+curved into the semblance of birds' heads, with all the fantastic
+elegance of Chinese incense-burners. Between the broken balustrades
+drooped tresses of stonecrop, light greenish locks, spotted as with
+mouldiness. Then at the foot of the steps another parterre spread out,
+dotted over with box-trees that were vigorous as oaks; box-trees which
+had once been carefully pruned and clipped into balls and pyramids and
+octagonal columns, but which were now revelling in unrestrained freedom
+of untidiness, breaking out into ragged masses of greenery, through
+which blue patches of sky were visible.
+
+And Albine led Serge straight on to a spot that seemed to be the
+graveyard of the flower-garden. There the scabious mourned, and
+processions of poppies stretched out in line, with deathly odour,
+unfolding heavy blooms of feverish brilliance. Sad anemones clustered in
+weary throngs, pallid as if infected by some epidemic. Thick-set daturas
+spread out purplish horns, from which insects, weary of life, sucked
+fatal poison. Marigolds buried with choking foliage their writhing
+starry flowers, that already reeked of putrefaction. And there were
+other melancholy flowers also: fleshy ranunculi with rusty tints,
+hyacinths and tuberoses that exhaled asphyxia and died from their own
+perfume. But the cinerarias were most conspicuous, crowding thickly in
+half-mourning robes of violet and white. In the middle of this gloomy
+spot a mutilated marble Cupid still remained standing, smiling beneath
+the lichens which overspread his youthful nakedness, while the arm with
+which he had once held his bow lay low amongst the nettles.
+
+Then Albine and Serge passed on through a rank growth of peonies,
+reaching to their waists. The white flowers fell to pieces as they
+passed, with a rain of snowy petals which was as refreshing to their
+hands as the heavy drops of a thunder shower. And the red ones grinned
+with apoplectical faces which perturbed them. Next they passed through a
+field of fuchsias, forming dense, vigorous shrubs that delighted them
+with their countless bells. Then they went on through fields of purple
+veronicas and others of geraniums, blazing with all the fiery tints of a
+brasier, which the wind seemed to be ever fanning into fresh heat. And
+they forced their way through a jungle of gladioli, tall as reeds, which
+threw up spikes of flowers that gleamed in the full daylight with all
+the brilliance of burning torches. They lost themselves too in a forest
+of sunflowers, with stalks as thick as Albine's wrist, a forest darkened
+by rough leaves large enough to form an infant's bed, and peopled with
+giant starry faces that shone like so many suns. And thence they passed
+into another forest, a forest of rhododendrons so teeming with blossom
+that the branches and leaves were completely hidden, and nothing but
+huge nosegays, masses of soft calyces, could be seen as far as the eye
+could reach.
+
+'Come along; we have not got to the end yet,' cried Albine. 'Let us push
+on.'
+
+But Serge stopped. They were now in the midst of an old ruined
+colonnade. Some of the columns offered inviting seats as they lay
+prostrate amongst primroses and periwinkles. Further away, among the
+columns that still remained upright, other flowers were growing in
+profusion. There were expanses of tulips showing brilliant streaks like
+painted china; expanses of calceolarias dotted with crimson and gold;
+expanses of zinnias like great daisies; expanses of petunias with petals
+like soft cambric through which rosy flesh tints gleamed; and other
+fields, with flowers they could not recognise spreading in carpets
+beneath the sun, in a motley brilliance that was softened by the green
+of their leaves.
+
+'We shall never be able to see it all,' said Serge, smiling and waving
+his hand. 'It would be very nice to sit down here, amongst all this
+perfume.'
+
+Near them there was a large patch of heliotropes, whose vanilla-like
+breath permeated the air with velvety softness. They sat down upon one
+of the fallen columns, in the midst of a cluster of magnificent lilies
+which had shot up there. They had been walking for more than an hour.
+They had wandered on through the flowers from the roses to the lilies.
+These offered them a calm, quiet haven after their lovers' ramble amid
+the perfumed solicitations of luscious honeysuckle, musky violets,
+verbenas that breathed out the warm scent of kisses, and tuberoses that
+panted with voluptuous passion. The lilies, with their tall slim stems,
+shot up round them like a white pavilion and sheltered them with snowy
+cups, gleaming only with the gold of their slender pistils. And there
+they rested, like betrothed children in a tower of purity; an
+impregnable ivory tower, where all their love was yet perfect innocence.
+
+Albine and Serge lingered amongst the lilies till evening. They felt so
+happy there, and seemed to break out into a new life. Serge felt the
+last trace of fever leave his hands, while Albine grew quite white, with
+a milky whiteness untinted by any rosy hue. They were unconscious that
+their arms and necks and shoulders were bare, and their straying
+unconfined hair in nowise troubled them. They laughed merrily one at the
+other, with frank open laughter. The expression of their eyes retained
+the limpid calmness of clear spring water. When they quitted the lilies,
+their feelings were but those of children ten years old; it seemed to
+them that they had just met each other in that garden so that they might
+be friends for ever and amuse themselves with perpetual play. And as
+they returned through the parterre, the very flowers bore themselves
+discreetly, as though they were glad to see their childishness, and
+would do nothing that might corrupt them. The forests of peonies, the
+masses of carnations, the carpets of forget-me-nots, the curtains of
+clematis now steeped in the atmosphere of evening, slumbering in
+childlike purity akin to their own, no longer spread suggestions of
+voluptuousness around them. The pansies looked up at them with their
+little candid faces, like playfellows; and the languid mignonette, as
+Albine's white skirt brushed by it, seemed full of compassion, and held
+its breath lest it should fan their love prematurely into life.
+
+
+
+                                VIII
+
+At dawn the next day it was Serge who called Albine. She slept in a room
+on the upper floor. He looked up at her window and saw her throw open
+the shutters just as she had sprung out of bed. They laughed merrily as
+their eyes met.
+
+'You must not go out to-day,' said Albine, when she came down. 'We must
+stay indoors and rest. To-morrow I will take you a long, long way off,
+to a spot where we can have a very jolly time.'
+
+'But sha'n't we grow tired of stopping here?' muttered Serge.
+
+'Oh, dear no! I will tell you stories.'
+
+They passed a delightful day. The windows were thrown wide open, and all
+the beauty of the Paradou came in and rejoiced with them in the room.
+Serge now really took possession of that delightful room, where he
+imagined he had been born. He insisted upon seeing everything, and upon
+having everything explained to him. The plaster Cupids who sported round
+the alcove amused him so much that he mounted upon a chair to tie
+Albine's sash round the neck of the smallest of them, a little bit of a
+man who was turning somersaults with his head downward. Albine clapped
+her hands, and said that he looked like a cockchafer fastened by a
+string. Then, as though seized by an access of pity, she said, 'No, no,
+unfasten him. It prevents him from flying.'
+
+But it was the Cupids painted over the doors that more particularly
+attracted Serge's attention. He fidgeted at not being able to make out
+what they were playing at, for the paintings had grown very dim. Helped
+by Albine, he dragged a table to the wall, and when they both had
+climbed upon it, Albine began to explain things to him.
+
+'Look, now, those are throwing flowers. Under the flowers you can only
+see some bare legs. It seems to me that when first I came here I could
+make out a lady reposing there. But she has been gone for a long time
+now.'
+
+They examined all the panels in turn; but they had faded to such a
+degree that little more could be distinguished than the knees and elbows
+of infants. The details which had doubtless delighted the eyes of those
+whose old-time passion seemed to linger round the alcove, had so
+completely disappeared under the influence of the fresh air, that the
+room, like the park, seemed restored to pristine virginity beneath the
+serene glory of the sun.
+
+'Oh! they are only some little boys playing,' said Serge, as he
+descended from the table. 'Do you know how to play at "hot cockles"?'
+
+There was no game that Albine did not know how to play at. But, for 'hot
+cockles,' at least three players are necessary, and that made them
+laugh. Serge protested, however, that they got on too well together ever
+to desire a third there, and they vowed that they would always remain by
+themselves.
+
+'We are quite alone here; one cannot hear a sound,' said the young man,
+lolling on the couch. 'And all the furniture has such a pleasant
+old-time smell. The place is as snug as a nest. We ought to be very
+happy in this room.'
+
+The girl shook her head gravely.
+
+'If I had been at all timid,' she murmured, 'I should have been very
+much frightened at first. . . . That is one of the stories I want to
+tell you. The people in the neighbourhood told it to me. Perhaps it
+isn't true, but it will amuse us, at any rate.'
+
+Then she came and sat down by Serge's side.
+
+'It is years and years since it all happened. The Paradou belonged to a
+rich lord, who came and shut himself up in it with a very beautiful
+lady. The gates of the mansion were kept so tightly closed, and the
+garden walls were built so very high, that no one ever caught sight even
+of the lady's skirts.'
+
+'Ah! I know,' Serge interrupted; 'the lady was never seen again.'
+
+Then, as Albine looked at him in surprise, somewhat annoyed to find that
+he knew her story already, he added in a low voice, apparently a little
+astonished himself: 'You told me the story before, you know.'
+
+She declared that she had never done so; but all at once she seemed to
+change her mind, and allowed herself to be convinced. However, that did
+not prevent her from finishing her tale in these words: 'When the lord
+went away his hair was quite white. He had all the gates barricaded up,
+so that no one might get inside and disturb the lady. It was in this
+room that she died.'
+
+'In this room!' cried Serge. 'You never told me that! Are you quite sure
+that it was really in this room she died?'
+
+Albine seemed put out. She repeated to him what every one in the
+neighbourhood knew. The lord had built the pavilion for the reception of
+this unknown lady, who looked like a princess. The servants employed at
+the mansion afterwards declared that he spent all his days and nights
+there. Often, too, they saw him in one of the walks, guiding the tiny
+feet of the mysterious lady towards the densest coppices. But for all
+the world they would never have ventured to spy upon the pair, who
+sometimes scoured the park for weeks together.
+
+'And it was here she died?' repeated Serge, who felt touched with
+sorrow. 'And you have taken her room; you use her furniture, and you
+sleep in her bed.'
+
+Albine smiled.
+
+'Ah! well, you know, I am not timid. Besides, it is so long since it all
+happened. You said what a delightful room it was.'
+
+Then they both dropped into silence, and glanced, for a moment, towards
+the alcove, the lofty ceiling, and the corners, steeped in grey gloom.
+The faded furniture seemed to speak of long past love. A gentle sigh, as
+of resignation, passed through the room.
+
+'No, indeed,' murmured Serge, 'one could not feel afraid here. It is too
+peaceful.'
+
+But Albine came closer to him and said: 'There is something else that
+only a few people know, and that is that the lord and the lady
+discovered in the garden a certain spot where perfect happiness was to
+be found, and where they afterwards spent all their time. I have been
+told that by a very good authority. It is a cool, shady spot, hidden
+away in the midst of an impenetrable jungle, and it is so marvellously
+beautiful that anyone who reaches it forgets all else in the world. The
+poor lady must have been buried there.'
+
+'Is it anywhere about the parterre?' asked Serge curiously.
+
+'Ah! I cannot tell, I cannot tell,' said the young girl with an
+expression of discouragement. 'I know nothing about it. I have searched
+everywhere, but I have never been able to find the least sign of that
+lovely clearing. It is not amongst the roses, nor the lilies, nor the
+violets.'
+
+'Perhaps it is hidden somewhere away amongst those mournful-looking
+flowers, where you showed me the figure of a boy standing with his arm
+broken off.'
+
+'No, no, indeed.'
+
+'Perhaps, then, it is in that grotto, near that clear stream, where the
+great marble woman, without a face, is lying.'
+
+'No, no.'
+
+Albine seemed to reflect for a moment. Then, as though speaking to
+herself, she went on: 'As soon as ever I came here, I began to hunt for
+it. I spent whole days in the Paradou, and ferreted about in all the
+out-of-the-way green corners, to have the pleasure of sitting for an
+hour in that happy spot. What mornings have I not wasted in groping
+under the brambles and peeping into the most distant nooks of the park!
+Oh! I should have known it at once, that enchanting retreat, with the
+mighty tree that must shelter it with a canopy of foliage, with its
+carpet of soft silky turf, and its walls of tangled greenery, which the
+very birds themselves cannot penetrate.
+
+She raised her voice, and threw one of her arms round Serge's neck, as
+she continued: 'Tell me, now; shall we search for it together? We shall
+surely find it. You, who are strong, will push aside the heavy branches,
+while I crawl underneath and search the brakes. When I grow weary, you
+can carry me; you can help me to cross the streams; and if we happen to
+lose ourselves, you can climb the trees and try to discover our way
+again. Ah! and how delightful it will be for us to sit, side by side,
+beneath the green canopy in the centre of the clearing! I have been told
+that in one minute one may there live the whole of life. Tell me, my
+dear Serge, shall we set off to-morrow and scour the park, from bush to
+bush, until we have found what we want?'
+
+Serge shrugged his shoulders, and smiled. 'What would be the use?' he
+said. 'Is it not pleasant in the parterre? Don't you think we ought to
+remain among the flowers, instead of seeking a greater happiness that
+lies so far away?'
+
+'It is there that the dead lady lies buried,' murmured Albine, falling
+back into her reverie. 'It was the joy of being there that killed her.
+The tree casts a shade, whose charm is deathly. . . . I would willingly
+die so. We would clasp one another there, and we would die, and none
+would ever find us again.'
+
+'Don't talk like that,' interrupted Serge. 'You make me feel so unhappy.
+I would rather that we should live in the bright sunlight, far away from
+that fatal shade. Your words distress me, as though they urged us to
+some irreparable misfortune. It must be forbidden to sit beneath a tree
+whose shade can thus affect one.'
+
+'Yes,' Albine gravely declared, 'it is forbidden. All the folks of the
+countryside have told me that it is forbidden.'
+
+Then silence fell. Serge rose from the couch where he had been lolling,
+and laughed, and pretended that he did not care about stories. The sun
+was setting, however, before Albine would consent to go into the garden
+for even a few minutes. She led Serge to the left, along the enclosing
+wall, to a spot strewn with fragments of stone, and woodwork, and
+ironwork, bristling too with briars and brambles. It was the site of the
+old mansion, still black with traces of the fire which had destroyed the
+building. Underneath the briars lay rotting timbers and fire-split
+masonry. The spot was like a little ravined, hillocky wilderness of
+sterile rocks, draped with rude vegetation, clinging creepers that
+twined and twisted through every crevice like green serpents. The young
+folks amused themselves by wandering across this chaos, groping about in
+the holes, turning over the debris, trying to reconstruct something of
+the past out of the ruins before them. They did not confess their
+curiosity as they chased one another through the midst of fallen
+floorings and overturned partitions; but they were indeed, all the time,
+secretly pondering over the legend of those ruins, and of that lady,
+lovelier than day, whose silken skirt had rustled down those steps,
+where now lizards alone were idly crawling.
+
+Serge ended by climbing the highest of the ruinous masses; and, looking
+round at the park which unfolded its vast expanse of greenery, he sought
+the grey form of the pavilion through the trees. Albine was standing
+silent by his side, serious once more.
+
+'The pavilion is yonder, to the right,' she said at last, without
+waiting for Serge to ask her. 'It is the only one of the buildings
+that is left. You can see it quite plainly at the end of that grove of
+lime-trees.'
+
+They fell into silence again; and then Albine, as though pursuing aloud
+the reflections which were passing through their minds, exclaimed: 'When
+he went to see her, he must have gone down yonder path, then past those
+big chestnut trees, and then under the limes. It wouldn't take him a
+quarter of an hour.'
+
+Serge made no reply. But as they went home, they took the path which
+Albine had pointed out, past the chestnuts and under the limes. It was a
+path that love had consecrated. And as they walked over the grass, they
+seemed to be seeking footmarks, or a fallen knot of ribbon, or a whiff
+of ancient perfume--something that would clearly satisfy them that they
+were really travelling along the path that led to the joy of union.
+
+'Wait out here,' said Albine, when they once more stood before the
+pavilion; 'don't come up for three minutes.'
+
+Then she ran off merrily, and shut herself up in the room with the blue
+ceiling. And when she had let Serge knock at the door twice, she softly
+set it ajar, and received him with an old-fashioned courtesy.
+
+'Good morrow, my dear lord,' she said as she embraced him.
+
+This amused them extremely. They played at being lovers with childish
+glee. In stammering accents they would have revived the passion which
+had once throbbed and died there. But it was like a first effort at
+learning a lesson. They knew not how to kiss each other's lips, but
+sought each other's cheeks, and ended by dancing around each other, with
+shrieks of laughter, from ignorance of any other way of showing the
+pleasure they experienced from their mutual love.
+
+
+
+                                 IX
+
+The next morning Albine was anxious to start at sunrise upon the grand
+expedition which she had planned the night before. She tapped her feet
+gleefully on the ground, and declared that they would not come back
+before nightfall.
+
+'Where are you going to take me?' asked Serge.
+
+'You will see, you will see.'
+
+But he caught her by the hands and looked her very earnestly in the
+face. 'You must not be foolish, you know. I won't have you hunting for
+that glade of yours, or for the tree, or for the grassy couch where one
+droops and dies. You know that it is forbidden.'
+
+She blushed slightly, protesting that she had no such idea in her head.
+Then she added: 'But if we should come across them, just by chance, you
+know, and without really seeking them, you wouldn't mind sitting down,
+would you? Else you must love me very little.'
+
+They set off, going straight through the parterre without stopping to
+watch the awakening of the flowers which were all dripping after their
+dewy bath. The morning had a rosy hue, the smile of a beautiful child,
+just opening its eyes on its snowy pillow.
+
+'Where are you taking me?' repeated Serge.
+
+But Albine only laughed and would not answer. Then, on reaching the
+stream which ran through the garden at the end of the flower-beds, she
+halted in great distress. The water was swollen with the late rains.
+
+'We shall never be able to get across,' she murmured. 'I can generally
+manage it by taking off my shoes and stockings, but, to-day, the water
+would reach to our waists.'
+
+They walked for a moment or two along the bank to find some fordable
+point; but the girl said it was hopeless; she knew the stream quite
+well. Once there had been a bridge across, but it had fallen in, and had
+strewn the river bed with great blocks of stone, between which the water
+rushed along in foaming eddies.
+
+'Get on to my back, then,' said Serge.
+
+'No, no; I'd rather not. If you were to slip, we should both of us get a
+famous wetting. You don't know how treacherous those stones are.'
+
+'Get on to my back,' repeated Serge.
+
+She was tempted to do so. She stepped back for a spring, and then jumped
+up, like a boy; but she felt that Serge was tottering; and crying out
+that she was not safely seated, she got down again. However, after two
+more attempts, she managed to settle herself securely on Serge's back.
+
+'When you are quite ready,' said the young man, laughing, 'we will
+start. Now, hold on tightly. We are off.'
+
+And, with three light strides, he crossed the stream, scarcely wetting
+even his toes. Midway, however, Albine thought that he was slipping. She
+broke out into a little scream, and hugged him tightly round his neck.
+But he sprang forward, and carried her at a gallop over the fine sand on
+the other side.
+
+'Gee up!' she cried, quite calm again, and delighted with this novel
+game.
+
+He ran along with her for some distance, she clucking her tongue, and
+guiding him to right or left by some locks of his hair.
+
+'Here--here we are,' she said at last, tapping him gently on the cheeks.
+
+Then she jumped to the ground; while he, hot and perspiring, leaned
+against a tree to draw breath. Albine thereupon began to scold him, and
+threatened that she would not nurse him if he made himself ill again.
+
+'Stuff!' he cried, 'it's done me good. When I have grown quite strong
+again, I will carry you about all day. But where are you taking me?'
+
+'Here,' she said, as she seated herself beneath a huge pear-tree.
+
+They were in the old orchard of the park. A hawthorn hedge, a real wall
+of greenery with here and there a gap, separated it from everything
+else. There was quite a forest of fruit trees, which no pruning knife
+had touched for a century past. Some of the trees had been strangely
+warped and twisted by the storms which had raged over them; while
+others, bossed all over with huge knots and full of deep holes, seemed
+only to hold on to the soil with their bark. The high branches, bent
+each year by weight of fruit, stretched out like big rackets; and each
+tree helped to keep its fellows erect. The trunks were like twisted
+pillars supporting a roof of greenery; and sometimes narrow cloisters,
+sometimes light halls were formed, while now and again the verdure swept
+almost to the ground and left scarcely room to pass. Round each colossus
+a crowd of wild and self-sown saplings had grown up, thicket-like with
+the entanglement of their young shoots. In the greenish light which
+filtered like tinted water through the foliage, in the deep silence of
+the mossy soil, one only heard the dull thud of the fruit as it was
+culled by the wind.
+
+And there were patriarchal apricot trees that bore their great age quite
+bravely. Though decayed on one side, where they showed a perfect
+scaffolding of dead wood, they were so youthful, so full of life, that,
+on the other, young shoots were ever bursting through their rough bark.
+There were cherry trees, that formed complete towns with houses of
+several stories, that threw out staircases and floors of branches, big
+enough for half a score of families. Then there were the apple trees,
+with their limbs twisted like old cripples, with bark gnarled and
+knotted, and all stained with lichen-growth. There were also smooth pear
+trees, that shot up mast-like with long slender spars. And there were
+rosy-blossomed peach-trees that won a place amid this teeming growth as
+pretty maids do amidst a human crowd by dint of bright smiles and gentle
+persistence. Some had been formerly trained as espaliers, but they had
+broken down the low walls which had once supported them, and now spread
+abroad in wild confusion, freed from the trammels of trellis work,
+broken fragments of which still adhered to some of their branches. They
+grew just as they listed, and resembled well-bred trees, once neat and
+prim, which, having gone astray, now flaunted but vestiges of whilom
+respectability. And from tree to tree, and from bough to bough, vine
+branches hung in confusion. They rose like wild laughter, twined for an
+instant round some lofty knot, then started off again with yet more
+sonorous mirth, splotching all the foliage with the merry ebriety of
+their tendrils. Their pale sun-gilt green set a glow of bacchanalianism
+about the weather-worn heads of the old orchard giants.
+
+Then towards the left were trees less thickly planted. Thin-foliaged
+almonds allowed the sun's rays to pass and ripen the pumpkins, which
+looked like moons that had fallen to the earth. Near the edge of a
+stream which flowed through the orchard there also grew various kinds of
+melons, some rough with knotty warts, some smooth and shining, as oval
+as the eggs of ostriches. At every step, too, progress was barred by
+currant bushes, showing limpid bunches of fruit, rubies in one and all
+of which there sparkled liquid sunlight. And hedges of raspberry canes
+shot up like wild brambles, while the ground was but a carpet of
+strawberry plants, teeming with ripe berries which exhaled a slight
+odour of vanilla.
+
+But the enchanted corner of the orchard was still further to the left,
+near a tier of rocks which there began to soar upwards. There you found
+yourself in a veritable land of fire, in a natural hot-house, on which
+the sun fell freely. At first, you had to make your way through huge,
+ungainly fig trees, which stretched out grey branches like arms weary of
+lying still, and whose villose leather-like foliage was so dense that in
+order to pass one constantly had to snap off twigs that had sprouted
+from the old wood. Next you passed on through groves of strawberry trees
+with verdure like that of giant box-plants, and with scarlet berries
+which suggested maize plants decked out with crimson ribbon. Then there
+came a jungle of nettle-trees, medlars and jujube trees, which
+pomegranates skirted with never-fading verdure. The fruit of the latter,
+big as a child's fist, was scarcely set as yet; and the purple blossoms,
+fluttering at the ends of the branches, looked like the palpitating
+wings of the humming birds, which do not even bend the shoots on which
+they perch. Lastly, there was a forest of orange and lemon trees growing
+vigorously in the open air. Their straight trunks stood like rows of
+brown columns, while their shiny leaves showed brightly against the blue
+of the sky, and cast upon the ground a network of light and shadow,
+figuring the palms of some Indian fabric. Here there was shade beside
+which that of the European orchard seemed colourless, insipid; the warm
+joy of sunlight, softened into flying gold-dust; the glad certainty of
+evergreen foliage; the penetrating perfume of blossom, and the more
+subdued fragrance of fruit; all helping to fill the body with the soft
+languor of tropical lands.
+
+'And now let us breakfast,' cried Albine, clapping her hands. 'It must
+be at least nine o'clock, and I am very hungry.'
+
+She had risen from the ground. Serge confessed that he, too, would find
+some food acceptable.
+
+'You goose!' she said, 'you didn't understand, then, that I brought you
+here to breakfast. We sha'n't die of hunger here. We can help ourselves
+to all there is.'
+
+They went along under the trees, pushing aside the branches and making
+their way to the thickest of the fruit. Albine, who went first, turned,
+and in her flute-like voice asked her companion: 'What do you like best?
+Pears, apricots, cherries, or currants? I warn you that the pears are
+still green; but they are very nice all the same.'
+
+Serge decided upon having cherries, and Albine agreed it would be as
+well to start with them; but when she saw him foolishly beginning to
+scramble up the first cherry tree he found, she made him go on for
+another ten minutes through a frightful entanglement of branches. The
+cherries on this tree, she said, were small and good for nothing; those
+on that were sour; those on another would not be ripe for at least a
+week. She knew all the trees.
+
+'Stop, climb this one,' she said at last, as she stopped at the foot of
+a tree, so heavily laden with fruit that clusters of it hung down to the
+ground, like strings of coral beads.
+
+Serge settled himself comfortably between two branches and began his
+breakfast. He no longer paid attention to Albine. He imagined she was in
+another tree, a few yards away, when, happening to cast his eyes towards
+the ground, he saw her calmly lying on her back beneath him. She had
+thrown herself there, and, without troubling herself to use her hands,
+was plucking with her teeth the cherries which dangled over her mouth.
+
+When she saw she was discovered, she broke out into a peal of laughter,
+and twisted about on the grass like a fish taken from the water. And
+finally, crawling along on her elbows, she gradually made the circuit of
+the tree, snapping up the plumpest cherries as she went along.
+
+'They tickle me so,' she cried. 'See, there's a beauty just fallen on my
+neck. They are so deliciously fresh and juicy. They get into my ears, my
+eyes, my nose, everywhere. They are much sweeter down here than up
+there.'
+
+'Ah!' said Serge, laughing, 'you say that because you daren't climb up.'
+
+She remained for a moment silent with indignation. 'Daren't!--I!--' she
+stammered.
+
+Then, having gathered up her skirts, she tightly grasped the tree and
+pulled herself up the trunk with a single effort of her strong wrists.
+And afterwards she stepped lightly along the branches, scarcely using
+her hands to steady herself. She had all the agile nimbleness of a
+squirrel, and made her way onward, maintaining her equilibrium only by
+the swaying poise of her body. When she was quite aloft at the end of a
+frail branch, which shook dangerously beneath her weight, she cried;
+'Now you see whether I daren't climb.'
+
+'Come down at once,' implored Serge, full of alarm for her. 'I beg of
+you to come down. You will be injuring yourself.'
+
+But she, enjoying her triumph, began to mount still higher. She crawled
+along to the extreme end of a branch, grasping its leaves in her hands
+to maintain her hold.
+
+'The branch will break!' cried Serge, thoroughly frightened.
+
+'Let it break,' she answered, with a laugh; 'it will save me the trouble
+of getting down.'
+
+And the branch did break, but only slowly, with such deliberation that,
+as it gradually settled towards the ground, it let Albine slip down in
+very gentle fashion. She did not appear in the least degree frightened;
+but gave herself a shake, and said: 'That was really nice. It was quite
+like being in a carriage.'
+
+Serge had jumped down from the tree to catch her in his arms. As he
+stood there, quite pale from fright, she laughed at him. 'One tumbles
+down from trees every day,' she exclaimed, 'but there is never any harm
+done. Look more cheerful, you great stupid! Stay, just wet your finger
+and rub it upon my neck. I have scratched it.'
+
+Serge wetted his finger and touched her neck with it.
+
+'There, I am all right again now,' she cried, as she bounded off. 'Let
+us play at hide and seek, shall we?'
+
+She was the first to hide. She disappeared, and presently from the
+depths of the greenery, which she alone knew, and where Serge could not
+possibly find her, she called, 'Cuckoo, cuckoo.' But this game of hide
+and seek did not put a stop to the onslaught upon the fruit trees.
+Breakfasting went on in all the nooks and corners where the two big
+children sought each other. Albine, while gliding beneath the branches,
+would stretch out her hand to pluck a green pear or fill her skirt with
+apricots. Then in some of her lurking-places she would come upon such
+rich discoveries as would make her careless of the game, content to sit
+upon the ground and remain eating. Once, however, she lost sound of
+Serge's movements. So, in her turn, she set about seeking him; and she
+was surprised, almost vexed, when she discovered him under a plum-tree,
+of whose existence she herself had been ignorant, and whose ripe fruit
+had a delicious musky perfume. She soundly rated him. Did he want to eat
+everything himself, that he hadn't called to her to come? He pretended
+to know nothing about the trees, but he evidently had a very keen scent
+to be able to find all the good things. She was especially indignant
+with the poor tree itself--a stupid tree which no one had known of, and
+which must have sprung up in the night on purpose to put people out. As
+she stood there pouting, refusing to pluck a single plum, it occurred to
+Serge to shake the tree violently. And then a shower, a regular hail, of
+plums came down. Albine, standing in the midst of the downfall, received
+plums on her arms, plums on her neck, plums on the very tip of her nose.
+At this she could no longer restrain her laughter; she stood in the
+midst of the deluge, crying 'More! more!' amused as she was by the round
+bullet-like fruit which fell around her as she squatted there, with
+hands and mouth open, and eyes closed.
+
+It was a morning of childish play, of wild gambols in the Paradou.
+Albine and Serge spent hours, scampering up and down, shouting and
+sporting with each other, their thoughts still all innocence. And in
+what a delicious spot they found themselves! Depths of greenery, with
+undiscoverable hiding-places; paths, along whose windings it was never
+possible to be serious, such greedy laughter fell from the very hedges.
+In this happy orchard, there was such a playful straggling of bushes,
+such fresh and appetising shade, such a wealth of old trees laden like
+kindly grandfathers with sweet dainties. Even in the depths of the
+recesses green with moss, beneath the broken trunks which compelled them
+to creep the one behind the other, in the narrow leafy alleys, the young
+folks never succumbed to the perilous reveries of silence. No trouble
+touched them in that happy wood.
+
+And when they had grown weary of the apricot-trees and the plum-trees
+and the cherry-trees, they ran beneath the slender almond-trees; eating
+green almonds, scarcely yet as big as peas, hunting for strawberries in
+the grassy carpet, and regretting that the melons were not already ripe.
+Albine finished by running as fast as she could go, pursued by Serge,
+who was unable to overtake her. She rushed amongst the fig-trees,
+leaping over their heavy branches, and pulling off the leaves to throw
+them behind her in her companion's face. In a few strides she had
+cleared the clumps of arbutus, whose red berries she tasted on her way;
+and it was in the jungle of nettle-trees, medlars, and jujube-trees that
+Serge lost her. At first he thought she was hiding behind a pomegranate;
+but found that he had mistaken two clustering blossoms for the rosy
+roundness of her wrists. Then he scoured the plantation of orange-trees,
+rejoicing in their beauty and perfume, and thinking that he must have
+reached the abode of the fairies of the sun. In the midst of them he
+caught sight of Albine, who, not believing him so near her, was peering
+inquisitively into the green depths.
+
+'What are you looking for?' he cried. 'You know very well that is
+forbidden.'
+
+She sprang up hastily, and slightly blushed for the first time that day.
+Then sitting down by the side of Serge, she told him of the fine times
+there would be when the oranges should be ripe. The wood would then be
+all golden, all bright with those round stars, dotting with yellow
+sparks the arching green.
+
+When at last they really set off homeward she halted at every
+wild-growing fruit tree, and filled her pockets with sour pears and
+bitter plums, saying that they world be good to eat on their way. They
+would prove a hundred times more enjoyable than anything they had tasted
+before. Serge was obliged to swallow some of them, in spite of the
+grimaces he made at each bite. And eventually they found themselves
+indoors again, tired out but feeling very happy.
+
+
+
+                                 X
+
+A week later there was another expedition to the park. They had planned
+to extend their rambles beyond the orchard, striking out to the left
+through the meadows watered by the four streams. They would travel
+several miles over the thick grass, and they might live on fish, if they
+happened to lose themselves.
+
+'I will take my knife,' said Albine, holding up a broad-bladed peasant's
+knife.
+
+She crammed all kinds of things into her pockets, string, bread,
+matches, a small bottle of wine, some rags, a comb, and some needles.
+Serge took a rug, but by the time they had passed the lime-trees and
+reached the ruins of the chateau, he found it such an encumbrance that
+he hid it beneath a piece of fallen wall.
+
+The sun was hotter than before, Albine had delayed their departure by
+her extensive preparations. Thus in the heat of the morning they stepped
+along side by side, almost quietly. They actually managed to take twenty
+paces at a time without pushing one another or laughing. They began to
+talk.
+
+'I never can wake up,' began Albine. 'I slept so soundly last night. Did
+you?'
+
+'Yes, indeed, very soundly,' replied Serge.
+
+'What does it mean when you dream of a bird that talks to you?' the girl
+resumed.
+
+'I don't know. What did your bird say to you?'
+
+'Oh, I have forgotten. But it said all kinds of things, and many of them
+sounded very comical. Stop, look at that big poppy over there. You
+sha'n't get it, you sha'n't get it!'
+
+And then she sprang forward; but Serge, thanks to his long legs,
+outstripped her and plucked the poppy, which he waved about
+victoriously. She stood there with lips compressed, saying nothing, but
+feeling a strong inclination to cry. Serge threw down the flower.
+Nothing else occurred to him. Then, to make his peace with her, he
+asked: 'Would you like me to carry you as I did the other day?'
+
+'No, no.'
+
+She pouted a little, but she had not gone another thirty steps, when she
+turned round smiling. A bramble had caught hold of her dress.
+
+'I thought it was you who were treading on my dress purposely. It won't
+let me go. Come and unfasten me.'
+
+When she was released, they walked on again, side by side, very quietly.
+Albine pretended that it was much more amusing to stroll along in this
+fashion, like steady grown-up folks. They had just reached the meadows.
+Far away, in front of them, stretched grassy expanses scarce broken here
+and there by the tender foliage of willows. The grass looked soft and
+downy, like velvet. It was a deep green, subsiding in the distance into
+lighter tints, and on the horizon assuming a bright yellow glow beneath
+the flaring sun. The clumps of willows right over yonder seemed like
+pure gold, bathed in the tremulous brilliance of the sunshine. Dancing
+dust tipped the blades of grass with quivering light, and as the gentle
+breezes swept over the free expanse, moire-like reflections appeared on
+the caressed and quivering herbage. In the nearer fields a multitude of
+little white daisies, now in swarms, now straggling, and now in groups,
+like holiday makers at some public rejoicing, brightly peopled the dark
+grass. Buttercups showed themselves, gay like little brass bells which
+the touch of a fly's wing would set tinkling. Here and there big lonely
+poppies raised fiery cups, and others, gathered together further away,
+spread out like vats purple with lees of wine. Big cornflowers balanced
+aloft their light blue caps which looked as if they would fly away at
+every breath of air. Then under foot there were patches of woolly
+feather-grass and fragrant meadow-sweet, sheets of fescue, dog's-tail,
+creeping-bent, and meadow grass. Sainfoin reared its long fine
+filaments; clover unfurled its clear green leaves, plantains brandished
+forests of spears, lucerne spread out in soft beds of green satin
+broidered with purple flowers. And all these were seen, to right, to
+left, in front, everywhere, rolling over the level soil, showing like
+the mossy surface of a stagnant sea, asleep beneath the sky which ever
+seemed to expand. Here and there, in the vast expanse, the vegetation
+was of a limpid blue, as though it reflected the colour of the heavens.
+
+Albine and Serge stepped along over the meadow-lands, with the grass
+reaching to their knees. It was like wading through a pool. Now and
+then, indeed, they found themselves caught by a current in which a
+stream of bending stalks seemed to flow away between their legs. Then
+there were placid-looking, slumbering lakes, basins of short grass,
+which scarcely reached their ankles. As they walked along together,
+their joy found expression not in wild gambols, as in the orchard a week
+before, but rather in loitering, with their feet caught among the supple
+arms of the herbage, tasting as it were the caresses of a pure stream
+which calmed the exuberance of their youth. Albine turned aside and
+slipped into a lofty patch of vegetation which reached to her chin. Only
+her head appeared. For a moment or two she stood there in silence. Then
+she called to Serge: 'Come here, it is just like a bath. It is as if one
+had green water all over one.'
+
+Then she gave a jump and scampered off without waiting for him, and they
+both walked along the margin of the first stream which barred their
+onward course. It was a shallow tranquil brook between banks of wild
+cress. It flowed on so placidly and gently that its surface reflected
+like a mirror the smallest reed that grew beside it. Albine and Serge
+followed this stream, whose onward motion was slower than their own, for
+a long time before they came across a tree that flung a long shadow upon
+the idle waters. As far as their eyes could reach they saw the bare
+brook stretch out and slumber in the sunlight like a blue serpent half
+uncoiled. At last they reached a clump of three willows. Two had their
+roots in the stream; the third was set a little backward. Their trunks,
+rotten and crumbling with age, were crowned with the bright foliage of
+youth. The shadow they cast was so slight as scarcely to be perceptible
+upon the sunlit bank. Yet here the water, which, both above and below,
+was so unruffled, showed a transient quiver, a rippling of its surface,
+as though it were surprised to find even this light veil cast over it.
+Between the three willows the meadow-land sloped down to the stream, and
+some crimson poppies had sprung up in the crevices of the decaying old
+trunks. The foliage of the willows looked like a tent of greenery fixed
+upon three stakes by the water's edge, beside a rolling prairie.
+
+'This is the place,' cried Albine, 'this is the place;' and she glided
+beneath the willows.
+
+Serge sat down by her side, his feet almost in the water. He glanced
+round him, and murmured: 'You know everything, you know all the best
+spots. One might almost think this was an island, ten feet square, right
+in the middle of the sea.'
+
+'Yes, indeed, we are quite at home,' she replied, as she gleefully
+drummed the grass with her fists. 'It is altogether our own, and we are
+going to do everything ourselves.' Then, as if struck by a brilliant
+idea, she sprang towards him, and, with her face close to his, asked him
+joyously: 'Will you be my husband? I will be your wife.'
+
+He was delighted at the notion, and replied that he would gladly be her
+husband, laughing even more loudly than she had done herself. Then
+Albine suddenly became grave, and assumed the anxious air of a
+housewife.
+
+'You know,' she said, 'that it is I who will have to give the orders. We
+will have breakfast as soon as you have laid the table.'
+
+She gave him her orders in an imperious fashion. He had to stow all the
+various articles which she extracted from her pockets into a hole in one
+of the willows, which bole she called the cupboard. The rags supplied
+the household linen, while the comb represented the toilette
+necessaries. The needles and string were to be used for mending the
+explorers' clothes. Provision for the inner man consisted of the little
+bottle of wine and a few crusts which she had saved from yesterday. She
+had, to be sure, some matches, by the aid of which she intended to cook
+the fish they were going to catch.
+
+When Serge had finished laying the table, the bottle of wine in the
+centre, and three crusts grouped round it, he hazarded the observation
+that the fare seemed to be scanty. But Albine shrugged her shoulders
+with feminine superiority. And wading into the water, she said in a
+severe tone, 'I will catch the fish; you can watch me.'
+
+For half an hour she strenuously exerted herself in trying to catch some
+of the little fishes with her hands. She had gathered up her petticoats
+and fastened them together with a piece of string. And she advanced
+quietly into the water, taking the greatest care not to disturb it. When
+she was quite close to some tiny fish, that lay lurking between a couple
+of pebbles, she thrust down her bare arm, made a wild grasp, and brought
+her hand up again with nothing in it but sand and gravel. Serge then
+broke out into noisy laughter which brought her back to the bank,
+indignant. She told him that he had no business to laugh at her.
+
+'But,' he ended by asking, 'how are we going to cook your fish when you
+have caught it? There is no wood about.'
+
+That put the finishing touch to her discouragement. However, the fish in
+that stream didn't seem to be good for much; so she came out of the
+water and ran through the long grass to get her feet dry.
+
+'See,' she suddenly exclaimed, 'here is some pimpernel. It is very nice.
+Now we shall have a feast.'
+
+Serge was ordered to gather a quantity of the pimpernel and place it on
+the table. They ate it with their crusts. Albine declared that it was
+much better than nuts. She assumed the position of mistress of the
+establishment, and cut Serge's bread for him, for she would not trust
+him with the knife. At last she made him store away in the 'cupboard'
+the few drops of wine that remained at the bottom of the bottle. He was
+also ordered to sweep the grass. Then Albine lay down at full length.
+
+'We are going to sleep now, you know. You must lie down by my side.'
+
+He did as he was ordered. They lay there stiffly staring into the air,
+and saying that they were asleep, and that it was very nice. After a
+while, however, they drew slightly away from one another, averting their
+heads as if they felt some discomfort. And at last breaking the silence
+which had fallen between them, Serge exclaimed: 'I love you very much.'
+
+It was love such as it is without any sensual feeling; that instinctive
+love which wakens in the bosom of a little man ten years old at the
+sight of some white-robed baby-girl. The meadow-lands, spreading around
+them all open and free, dissipated the slight fear each felt of the
+other. They knew that they lay there, seen of all the herbage, that the
+blue sky looked down upon them through the light foliage of the willows,
+and the thought was pleasant to them. The willow canopy over their heads
+was a mere open screen. The shade it cast was so imperceptible that it
+wafted to them none of the languor that some dim coppice might have
+done. From the far-off horizon came a healthy breeze fraught with all
+the freshness of the grassy sea, swelling here and there into waves of
+flowers; while, at their feet, the stream, childlike as they were,
+flowed idly along with a gentle babbling that sounded to them like the
+laughter of a companion. Ah! happy solitude, so tranquil and placid,
+immensity wherein the little patch of grass serving as their couch took
+the semblance of an infant's cradle.
+
+'There, that's enough; said Albine, getting up; 'we've rested long
+enough.'
+
+Serge seemed a little surprised at this speedy termination of their
+sleep. He stretched out his arm and caught hold of Albine, as though to
+draw her near him again; and when she, laughing, dropped upon her knees
+he grasped her elbows and gazed up at her. He knew not to what impulse
+he was yielding. But when she had freed herself, and again had risen to
+her feet, he buried his face amongst the grass where she had lain, and
+which still retained the warmth of her body.
+
+'Yes,' he said at last, 'it is time to get up,' and then he rose from
+the ground.
+
+They scoured the meadow-lands until evening began to fall. They went on
+and on, inspecting their garden. Albine walked in front, sniffing like a
+young dog, and saying nothing, but she was ever in search of the happy
+glade, although where they found themselves there were none of the big
+trees of which her thoughts were full. Serge meanwhile indulged in all
+kinds of clumsy gallantry. He rushed forward so hastily to thrust the
+tall herbage aside, that he nearly tripped her up; and he almost tore
+her arm from her body as he tried to assist her over the brooks. Their
+joy was great when they came to the three other streams. The first
+flowed over a bed of pebbles, between two rows of willows, so closely
+planted that they had to grope between the branches with the risk of
+falling into some deep part of the water. It only rose to Serge's knees,
+however, and having caught Albine in his arms he carried her to the
+opposite bank, to save her from a wetting. The next stream flowed black
+with shade beneath a lofty canopy of foliage, passing languidly onward
+with the gentle rustling and rippling of the satin train of some lady,
+dreamily sauntering through the woodland depths. It was a deep, cold,
+and rather dangerous-looking stream, but a fallen tree that stretched
+from bank to bank served them as a bridge. They crossed over, bestriding
+the tree with dangling feet, at first amusing themselves by stirring the
+water which looked like a mirror of burnished steel, but then suddenly
+hastening, frightened by the strange eyes which opened in the depths of
+the sleepy current at the slightest splash. But it was the last stream
+which delayed them the most. It was sportive like themselves, it flowed
+more slowly at certain bends, whence it started off again with merry
+ripples, past piles of big stones, into the shelter of some clump of
+trees, and grew calmer once more. It exhibited every humour as it sped
+along over soft sand or rocky boulders, over sparkling pebbles or greasy
+clay, where leaping frogs made yellow puddles. Albine and Serge dabbled
+about in delight, and even walked homewards through the stream in
+preference to remaining on the bank. At every little island that divided
+the current they landed. They conquered the savage spot or rested
+beneath the lofty canes and reeds, which seemed to grow there expressly
+as shelter for shipwrecked adventurers. Thus they made a delightful
+progress, amused by the changing scenery of the banks, enlivened by the
+merry humour of the living current.
+
+But when they were about to leave the river, Serge realised that Albine
+was still seeking something along the banks, on the island, even among
+the plants that slept on the surface of the water. He was obliged to go
+and pull her from the midst of a patch of water-lilies whose broad
+leaves set _collerettes_ around her limbs. He said nothing, but shook
+his finger at her. And at last they went home, walking along, arm in
+arm, like young people after a day's outing. They looked at each other,
+and thought one another handsomer and stronger than before, and of a
+certainty their laughter had a different ring from that with which it
+had sounded in the morning.
+
+
+
+                                 XI
+
+'Are we never going out again?' asked Serge some days later.
+
+And when he saw Albine shrug her shoulders with a weary air, he added,
+in a teasing kind of way, 'You have got tired of looking for your tree,
+then?'
+
+They joked about the tree all day and made fun of it. It didn't exist.
+It was only a nursery-story. Yet they both spoke of it with a slight
+feeling of awe. And on the morrow they settled that they would go to the
+far end of the park and pay a visit to the great forest-trees which
+Serge had not yet seen. Albine refused to take anything along with them.
+They breakfasted before starting and did not set off till late. The heat
+of the sun, which was then great, brought them a feeling of languor, and
+they sauntered along gently, side by side, seeking every patch of
+sheltering shade. They lingered neither in the garden nor the orchard,
+through which they had to pass. When they gained the shady coolness
+beneath the big trees, they dropped into a still slower pace; and,
+without a word, but with a deep sigh, as though it were welcome relief
+to escape from the glare of day, they pushed on into the forest's
+depths. And when they had nothing but cool green leaves about them, when
+no glimpse of the sunlit expanse was afforded by any gap in the foliage,
+they looked at each other and smiled, with a feeling of vague
+uneasiness.
+
+'How nice it is here!' murmured Serge.
+
+Albine simply nodded her head. A choking sensation in her throat
+prevented her from speaking. Their arms were not passed as usual round
+each other's waist, but swung loosely by their sides. They walked along
+without touching each other, and with their heads inclined towards the
+ground.
+
+But Serge suddenly stopped short on seeing tears trickle down Albine's
+cheeks and mingle with the smile that played around her lips.
+
+'What is the matter with you?' he exclaimed; 'are you in pain? Have you
+hurt yourself?'
+
+'No, don't you see I'm smiling? I don't know how it is, but the scent of
+all these trees forces tears into my eyes.' She glanced at him, and then
+resumed: 'Why, you're crying too! You see you can't help it.'
+
+'Yes,' he murmured, 'all this deep shade affects one. It seems so
+peaceful, so mournful here that one feels a little sad. But you must
+tell me, you know, if anything makes you really unhappy. I have not done
+anything to annoy you, have I? you are not vexed with me?'
+
+She assured him that she was not. She was quite happy, she said.
+
+'Then why are you not enjoying yourself more? Shall we have a race?'
+
+'Oh! no, we can't race,' she said, disdainfully, with a pout. And when
+he went on to suggest other amusements, such as bird-nesting or
+gathering strawberries or violets, she replied a little impatiently: 'We
+are too big for that sort of thing. It is childish to be always playing.
+Doesn't it please you better to walk on quietly by my side?'
+
+She stepped along so prettily, that it was, indeed, a pleasure to hear
+the pit-pat of her little boots on the hard soil of the path. Never
+before had he paid attention to the rhythmic motion of her figure, the
+sweep of her skirts that followed her with serpentine motion. It was
+happiness never to be exhausted, to see her thus walking sedately by his
+side, for he was ever discovering some new charm in the lissom
+suppleness of her limbs.
+
+'You are right,' he said, 'this is really the best. I would walk by your
+side to the end of the world, if you wished it.'
+
+A little further on, however, he asked her if she were not tired, and
+hinted that he would not be sorry to have a rest himself.
+
+'We might sit down for a few minutes,' he suggested in a stammering
+voice.
+
+'No,' she replied, 'I don't want to.'
+
+'But we might lie down, you know, as we did in the meadows the other
+day. We should be quite comfortable.'
+
+'No, no; I don't want to.'
+
+And she suddenly sprang aside, as if scared by the masculine arms
+outstretched towards her. Serge called her a big stupid, and tried to
+catch her. But at the light touch of his fingers she cried out with such
+an expression of pain that he drew back, trembling.
+
+'I have hurt you?' he said.
+
+She did not reply for a moment, surprised, herself, at her cry of fear,
+and already smiling at her own alarm.
+
+'No; leave me, don't worry me;' and she added in a grave tone, though
+she tried to feign jocularity: 'you know that I have my tree to look
+for.'
+
+Then Serge began to laugh, and offered to help her in her search. He
+conducted himself very gently in order that he might not again alarm
+her, for he saw that she was even yet trembling, though she had resumed
+her slow walk beside him. What they were contemplating was forbidden,
+and could bring them no luck; and he, like her, felt a delightful awe,
+which thrilled him at each repeated sigh of the forest trees. The
+perfume of the foliage, the soft green light which filtered through the
+leaves, the soughing silence of the undergrowth, filled them with
+tremulous excitement, as though the next turn of the path might lead
+them to some perilous happiness.
+
+And for hours they walked on under the cool trees. They retained their
+reserved attitude towards each other, and scarcely exchanged a word,
+though they never left each other's side, but went together through the
+darkest greenery of the forest. At first their way lay through a jungle
+of saplings with trunks no thicker than a child's wrist. They had to
+push them aside, and open a path for themselves through the tender
+shoots which threw a wavy lacework of foliage before their eyes. The
+saplings closed up again behind them, leaving no trace of their passage,
+and they struggled on and on at random, ignorant of where they might be,
+and leaving nothing behind them to mark their progress, save a momentary
+waving of shaken boughs. Albine, weary of being unable to see more than
+three steps in front of her, was delighted when they at last found
+themselves free of this jungle, whose end they had long tried to
+discover. They had now reached a little clearing, whence several narrow
+paths, fringed with green hedges, struck out in various directions,
+twisting hither and thither, intersecting one another, bending and
+stretching in the most capricious fashion. Albine and Serge rose on
+tip-toes to peep over the hedges; but they were in no haste, and would
+willingly have stayed where they were, lost in the mazy windings,
+without ever getting anywhere, if they had not seen before them the
+proud lines of the lofty forest trees. They passed at last beneath their
+shade, solemnly and with a touch of sacred awe, as when one enters some
+vaulted cathedral. The straight lichen-stained trunks of the mighty
+trees, of a dingy grey, like discoloured stone, towered loftily, line by
+line, like a far-reaching infinity of columns. Naves opened far away,
+with lower, narrower aisles; naves strangely bold in their proportions,
+whose supporting pillars were very slender, richly caned, so finely
+chiselled that everywhere they allowed a glimpse of the blue heavens. A
+religious silence reigned beneath the giant arches, the ground below lay
+hard as stone in its austere nakedness; not a blade of green was there,
+nought but a ruddy dust of dead leaves. And Serge and Albine listened to
+their ringing footsteps as they went on, thrilled by the majestic
+solitude of this temple.
+
+Here, indeed, if anywhere, must be the much-sought tree, beneath whose
+shade perfect happiness had made its home. They felt that it was nigh,
+such was the delight which stole through them amidst the dimness of
+those mighty arches. The trees seemed to be creatures of kindliness,
+full of strength and silence and happy restfulness. They looked at them
+one by one, and they loved them all; and they awaited from their
+majestic tranquillity some revelation whereby they themselves might
+grow, expand into the bliss of strong and perfect life. The maples, the
+ashes, the hornbeams, the cornels, formed a nation of giants, a
+multitude full of proud gentleness, who lived in peace, knowing that the
+fall of any one of them would have sufficed to wreck a whole corner of
+the forest. The elms displayed colossal bodies and limbs full of sap,
+scarce veiled by light clusters of little leaves. The birches and the
+alders, delicate as sylphs, swayed their slim figures in the breeze to
+which they surrendered the foliage that streamed around them like the
+locks of goddesses already half metamorphosed into trees. The planes
+shot up regularly with glossy tattooed bark, whence scaly fragments
+fell. Down a gentle slope descended the larches, resembling a band of
+barbarians, draped in _sayons_ of woven greenery. But the oaks were the
+monarchs of all--the mighty oaks, whose sturdy trunks thrust out
+conquering arms that barred the sun's approach from all around them;
+Titan-like trees, oft lightning-struck, thrown back in postures like
+those of unconquered wrestlers, with scattered limbs that alone gave
+birth to a whole forest.
+
+Could the tree which Serge and Albine sought be one of those colossal
+oaks? or was it one of those lovely planes, or one of those pale,
+maidenly birches, or one of those creaking elms? Albine and Serge still
+plodded on, unable to tell, completely lost amongst the crowding trees.
+For a moment they thought they had found the object of their quest in
+the midst of a group of walnut trees from whose thick foliage fell so
+cold a shadow that they shivered beneath it. Further on they felt
+another thrill of emotion as they came upon a little wood of chestnut
+trees, green with moss and thrusting out big strange-shaped branches, on
+which one might have built an aerial village. But further still Albine
+caught sight of a clearing, whither they both ran hastily. Here, in the
+midst of a carpet of fine turf, a locust tree had set a very toppling of
+greenery, a foliaged Babel, whose ruins were covered with the strangest
+vegetation. Stones, sucked up from the ground by the mounting sap, still
+remained adhering to the trunk. High branches bent down to earth again,
+and, taking root, surrounded the parent tree with lofty arches, a nation
+of new trunks which ever increased and multiplied. Upon the bark, seared
+with bleeding wounds, were ripening fruit-pods; the mere effort of
+bearing fruit strained the old monster's skin until it split. The young
+folks walked slowly round it, passing under the arched branches which
+formed as it were the streets of a city, and stared at the gaping cracks
+of the naked roots. Then they went off, for they had not felt there the
+supernatural happiness they sought.
+
+'Where are we?' asked Serge.
+
+Albine did not know. She had never before come to this part of the park.
+They were now in a grove of cytisus and acacias, from whose clustering
+blossoms fell a soft, almost sugary perfume. 'We are quite lost,' she
+laughed. 'I don't know these trees at all.'
+
+'But the garden must come to an end somewhere,' said Serge. 'When we get
+to the end, you will know where you are, won't you?'
+
+'No,' she answered, waving her hands afar.
+
+They fell into silence; never yet had the vastness of the park filled
+them with such pleasure. They joyed at knowing that they were alone in
+so far-spreading a domain that even they themselves could not reach its
+limits.
+
+'Well, we are lost,' said Serge, gaily; then humbly drawing near her he
+inquired: 'You are not afraid, are you?'
+
+'Oh! no. There's no one except you and me in the garden. What could I be
+afraid of? The walls are very high. We can't see them, but they guard
+us, you know.'
+
+Serge was now quite close to her, and he murmured, 'But a little time
+ago you were afraid of me.'
+
+She looked him straight in the face, perfectly calm, without the least
+faltering in her glance. 'You hurt me,' she replied, 'but you are
+different now. Why should I be afraid of you?'
+
+'Then you will let me hold you like this. We will go back under the
+trees.'
+
+'Yes, you may put your arm around me, it makes me feel happy. And we'll
+walk slowly, eh? so that we may not find our way again too soon.'
+
+He had passed his arm round her waist, and it was thus that they
+sauntered back to the shade of the great forest trees, under whose
+arching vaults they slowly went, with love awakening within them. Albine
+said that she felt a little tired, and rested her head on Serge's
+shoulder. The fabulous tree was now forgotten. They only sought to draw
+their faces nearer together that they might smile in one another's eyes.
+And it was the trees, the maples, the elms, the oaks, with their soft
+green shade, that whisperingly suggested to them the first words of
+love.
+
+'I love you!' said Serge, while his breath stirred the golden hair that
+clustered round Albine's temples. He tried to think of other words, but
+he could only repeat, 'I love you! I love you!'
+
+Albine listened with a delightful smile upon her face. The music of her
+heart was in accord with his.
+
+'I love you! I love you!' she sighed, with all the sweetness of her soft
+young voice.
+
+Then, lifting up her blue eyes, in which the light of love was dawning,
+she asked, 'How do you love me?'
+
+Serge reflected for a moment. The forest was wrapped in solemn quietude,
+the lofty naves quivered only with the soft footsteps of the young pair.
+
+'I love you beyond everything,' he answered. 'You are more beautiful
+than all else that I see when I open my window in the morning. When I
+look at you, I want nothing more. If I could have you only, I should be
+perfectly happy.'
+
+She lowered her eyes, and swayed her head as if accompanying a strain of
+music. 'I love you,' he went on. 'I know nothing about you. I know not
+who you are, nor whence you came. You are neither my mother nor my
+sister; and yet I love you to a point that I have given you my whole
+heart and kept nought of it for others. Listen, I love those cheeks of
+yours, so soft and satiny; I love your mouth with its rose-sweet breath;
+I love your eyes, in which I see my own love reflected; I love even your
+eyelashes, even those little veins which blue the whiteness of your
+temples. Ah! yes, I love you, I love you, Albine.'
+
+'And I love you, too,' she answered. 'You are strong, and tall, and
+handsome. I love you, Serge.'
+
+For a moment or two they remained silent, enraptured. It seemed to them
+that soft, flute-like music went before them, that their own words came
+from some dulcet orchestra which they could not see. Shorter and shorter
+became their steps as they leaned one towards the other, ever threading
+their way amidst the mighty trees. Afar off through the long vista of
+the colonnades were glimpses of waning sunlight, showing like a
+procession of white-robed maidens entering church for a betrothal
+ceremony amid the low strains of an organ.
+
+'And why do you love me?' asked Albine again.
+
+He only smiled, and did not answer her immediately; then he said, 'I
+love you because you came to me. That expresses all. . . . Now we are
+together and we love one another. It seems to me that I could not go on
+living if I did not love you. You are the very breath of my life.'
+
+He bent his head, speaking almost as though he were in a dream.
+
+'One does not know all that at first. It grows up in one as one's heart
+grows. One has to grow, one has to get strong. . . . Do you remember how
+we loved one another though we didn't speak of it? One is childish and
+silly at first. Then, one fine day, it all becomes clear, and bursts
+out. You see, we have nothing to trouble about; we love one another
+because our love and our life are one.'
+
+Albine's head was cast back, her eyes were tightly closed, and she
+scarce drew her breath. Serge's caressing words enraptured her: 'Do you
+really, really love me?' she murmured, without opening her eyes.
+
+Serge remained silent, sorely troubled that he could find nothing
+further to say to prove to her the force of his love. His eyes wandered
+over her rosy face, which lay upon his shoulder with the restfulness of
+sleep. Her eyelids were soft as silk. Her moist lips were curved into a
+bewitching smile, her brow was pure white, with just a rim of gold below
+her hair. He would have liked to give his whole being with the word
+which seemed to be upon his tongue but which he could not utter. Again
+he bent over her, and seemed to consider on what sweet spot of that fair
+face he should whisper the supreme syllables. But he said nothing, he
+only breathed a little sigh. Then he kissed Albine's lips.
+
+'Albine, I love you!'
+
+'I love you, Serge!'
+
+Then they stopped short, thrilled, quivering with that first love kiss.
+She had opened her eyes quite widely. He was standing with his lips
+protruding slightly towards hers. They looked at each other without a
+blush. They felt they were under the influence of some sovereign power.
+It was like the realisation of a long dreamt-of meeting, in which they
+beheld themselves grown, made one for the other, for ever joined. For a
+moment they remained wondering, raising their eyes to the solemn vault
+of greenery above them, questioning the tranquil nation of trees as if
+seeking an echo of their kiss. But, beneath the serene complacence of
+the forest, they yielded to prolonged, ringing lovers' gaiety, full of
+all the tenderness now born.
+
+'Tell me how long you have loved me. Tell me everything. Did you love me
+that day when you lay sleeping upon my hand? Did you love me when I fell
+out of the cherry tree, and you stood beneath it, stretching out your
+arms to catch me, and looking so pale? Did you love me when you took
+hold of me round the waist in the meadows to help me over the streams?'
+
+'Hush, let me speak. I have always loved you. And you, did you love me;
+did you?'
+
+Until the evening closed round them they lived upon that one word
+'love,' in which they ever seemed to find some new sweetness. They
+brought it into every sentence, ejaculated it inconsequentially, merely
+for the pleasure they found in pronouncing it. Serge, however, did not
+think of pressing a second kiss to Albine's lips. The perfume of the
+first sufficed them in their purity. They had found their way again, or
+rather had stumbled upon it, for they had paid no attention to the paths
+they took. As they left the forest, twilight had fallen, and the moon
+was rising, round and yellow, between the black foliage. It was a
+delightful walk home through the park, with that discreet luminary
+peering at them through the gaps in the big trees. Albine said that the
+moon was surely following them. The night was balmy, warm too with
+stars. Far away a long murmur rose from the forest trees, and Serge
+listened, thinking: 'They are talking of us.'
+
+When they reached the parterre, they passed through an atmosphere of
+sweetest perfumes; the perfume of flowers at night, which is richer,
+more caressing than by day, and seems like the very breath of slumber.
+
+'Good night, Serge.'
+
+'Good night, Albine.'
+
+They clasped each other by the hand on the landing of the first floor,
+without entering the room where they usually wished each other good
+night. They did not kiss. But Serge, when he was alone, remained seated
+on the edge of his bed, listening to Albine's every movement in the room
+above. He was weary with happiness, a happiness that benumbed his limbs.
+
+
+
+                                XII
+
+For the next few days Albine and Serge experienced a feeling of
+embarrassment. They avoided all allusion to their walk beneath the
+trees. They had not again kissed each other, or repeated their
+confession of love. It was not any feeling of shame which had sealed
+their lips, but rather a fear of in any way spoiling their happiness.
+When they were apart, they lived upon the dear recollection of love's
+awakening, plunged into it, passed once more through the happy hours
+which they had spent, with their arms around each other's waist, and
+their faces close together. It all ended by throwing them both into a
+feverish state. They looked at each other with heavy eyes, and talked,
+in a melancholy mood, of things that did not interest them in the least.
+Then, after a long interval of silence, Serge would say to Albine in a
+tone full of anxiety: 'You are ill?'
+
+But she shook her head as she answered, 'No, no. It is you who are not
+well; your hands are burning.'
+
+The thought of the park filled them with vague uneasiness which they
+could not understand. They felt that danger lurked for them in some
+by-path, and would seize them and do them hurt. They never spoke about
+these disquieting thoughts, but certain timid glances revealed to them
+the mutual anguish which held them apart as though they were foes. One
+morning, however, Albine ventured, after much hesitation, to say to
+Serge: 'It is wrong of you to keep always indoors. You will fall ill
+again.'
+
+Serge laughed in rather an embarrassed way. 'Bah!' he muttered, 'we have
+been everywhere, we know all the garden by heart.'
+
+But Albine shook her head, and in a whisper replied, 'No, no, we don't
+know the rocks, we have never been to the springs. It was there that I
+warmed myself last winter. There are some nooks where the stones seem to
+be actually alive.'
+
+The next morning, without having said another word on the subject, they
+set out together. They climbed up to the left behind the grotto where
+the marble woman lay slumbering; and as they set foot on the lowest
+stones, Serge remarked: 'We must see everything. Perhaps we shall feel
+quieter afterwards.'
+
+The day was very hot, there was thunder in the air. They had not
+ventured to clasp each other's waist; but stepped along, one behind the
+other, glowing beneath the sunlight. Albine took advantage of a widening
+of the path to let Serge go on in front; for the warmth of his breath
+upon her neck troubled her. All around them the rocks arose in broad
+tiers, storeys of huge flags, bristling with coarse vegetation. They
+first came upon golden gorse, clumps of sage, thyme, lavender, and other
+balsamic plants, with sour-berried juniper trees and bitter rosemary,
+whose strong scent made them dizzy. Here and there the path was hemmed
+in by holly, that grew in quaint forms like cunningly wrought metal
+work, gratings of blackened bronze, wrought iron, and polished copper,
+elaborately ornamented, covered with prickly _rosaces_. And before
+reaching the springs, they had to pass through a pine-wood. Its shadow
+seemed to weigh upon their shoulders like lead. The dry needles crackled
+beneath their feet, throwing up a light resinous dust which burned their
+lips.
+
+'Your garden doesn't make itself very agreeable just here,' said Serge,
+turning towards Albine.
+
+They smiled at each other. They were now near the edge of the springs.
+The sight of the clear waters brought them relief. Yet these springs did
+not hide beneath a covering of verdure, like those that bubble up on the
+plains and set thick foliage growing around them that they may slumber
+idly in the shade. They shot up in the full light of day from a cavity
+in the rock, without a blade of grass near by to tinge the clear water
+with green. Steeped in the sunshine they looked silvery. In their depths
+the sun beat against the sand in a breathing living dust of light. And
+they darted out of their basin like arms of purest white, they rebounded
+like nude infants at play, and then suddenly leapt down in a waterfall
+whose curve suggested a woman's breast.
+
+'Dip your hands in,' cried Albine; 'the water is icy cold at the
+bottom.'
+
+They were indeed able to refresh their hot hands. They threw water over
+their faces too, and lingered there amidst the spray which rose up from
+the streaming springs.
+
+'Look,' cried Albine; 'look, there is the garden, and there are the
+meadows and the forest.'
+
+For a moment they looked at the Paradou spread out beneath their feet.
+
+'And you see,' she added, 'there isn't the least sign of any wall. The
+whole country belongs to us, right up to the sky.'
+
+By this time, almost unawares, they had slipped their arms round each
+other's waist. The coolness of the springs had soothed their feverish
+disquietude. But just as they were going away, Albine seemed to recall
+something and led Serge back again, saying:
+
+'Down there, below the rocks, a long time ago, I once saw the wall.'
+
+'But there is nothing to be seen,' replied Serge, turning a little pale.
+
+'Yes, yes; it must be behind that avenue of chestnut trees on the other
+side of those bushes.'
+
+Then, on feeling Serge's arm tremble, she added: 'But perhaps I am
+mistaken. . . . Yet I seem to remember that I suddenly came upon it as I
+left the avenue. It stopped my way, and was so high that I felt a little
+afraid. And a few steps farther on, I came upon another surprise. There
+was a huge hole in it, through which I could see the whole country
+outside.'
+
+Serge looked at her with entreaty in his eyes. She gave a little shrug
+of her shoulders to reassure him, and went on: 'But I stopped the hole
+up; I have told you that we are quite alone, and we are. I stopped it up
+at once. I had my knife with me, and I cut down some brambles and rolled
+up some big stones. I would defy even a sparrow to force its way
+through. If you like, we will go and look at it one of these days, and
+then you will be satisfied.'
+
+But he shook his head. Then they went away together, still holding each
+other by the waist; but they had grown anxious once more. Serge gazed
+down askance at Albine's face, and she felt perturbed beneath his
+glance. They would have liked to go down again at once, and thus escape
+the uneasiness of a longer walk. But, in spite of themselves, as though
+impelled by some stronger power, they skirted a rocky cliff and reached
+a table-land, where once more they found the intoxication of the full
+sunlight. They no longer inhaled the soft languid perfumes of aromatic
+plants, the musky scent of thyme, and the incense of lavender. Now they
+were treading a foul-smelling growth under foot; wormwood with bitter,
+penetrating smell; rue that reeked like putrid flesh; and hot valerian,
+clammy with aphrodisiacal exudations. Mandragoras, hemlocks, hellebores,
+dwales, poured forth their odours, and made their heads swim till they
+reeled and tottered one against the other.
+
+'Shall I hold you up?' Serge asked Albine, as he felt her leaning
+heavily upon him.
+
+He was already pressing her in his arms, but she struggled out of his
+grasp, and drew a long breath.
+
+'No; you stifle me,' she said. 'Leave me alone. I don't know what is the
+matter with me. The ground seems to give way under my feet. It is there
+I feel the pain.'
+
+She took hold of his hand and laid it upon her breast. Then Serge turned
+quite pale. He was even more overcome than she. And both had tears in
+their eyes as they saw each other thus ill and troubled, unable to think
+of a remedy for the evil which had fallen upon them. Were they going to
+die here of that mysterious, suffocating faintness?
+
+'Come and sit down in the shade,' said Serge. 'It is these plants which
+are poisoning us with their noxious odours.'
+
+He led her gently along by her finger-tips, for she shivered and
+trembled when he but touched her wrist. It was beneath a fine cedar,
+whose level roof-like branches spread nearly a dozen yards around, that
+she seated herself. Behind grew various quaint conifers; cypresses, with
+soft flat foliage that looked like heavy lace; spruce firs, erect and
+solemn, like ancient druidical pillars, still black with the blood of
+sacrificed victims; yews, whose dark robes were fringed with silver;
+evergreen trees of all kinds, with thick-set foliage, dark leathery
+verdure, splashed here and there with yellow and red. There was a
+weird-looking araucaria that stood out strangely with large regular arms
+resembling reptiles grafted one on the other, and bristling with
+imbricated leaves that suggested the scales of an excited serpent. In
+this heavy shade, the warm air lulled one to voluptuous drowsiness. The
+atmosphere slept, breathless; and a perfume of Eastern love, the perfume
+that came from the painted lips of the Shunamite, was exhaled by the
+odorous trees.
+
+'Are you not going to sit down?' said Albine.
+
+And she slipped a little aside to make room for him; but Serge stepped
+back and remained standing. Then, as she renewed her request, he dropped
+upon his knees, a little distance away, and said, softly: 'No, I am more
+feverish even than you are; I should make you hot. If I wasn't afraid of
+hurting you, I would take you in my arms, and clasp you so tightly that
+we should no longer feel any pain.'
+
+He dragged himself nearer to her on his knees.
+
+'Oh! to have you in my arms! In the night I awake from dreams in which I
+see you near me; but, alas! you are ever far away. There seems to be
+some wall built up between us which I can never beat down. And yet I am
+now quite strong again; I could catch you up in my arms and swing you
+over my shoulder, and carry you off as though you belonged to me.'
+
+He had let himself sink upon his elbows, in an attitude of deep
+adoration. And he breathed a kiss upon the hem of Albine's skirt. But at
+this the girl sprang up, as though it was she herself that had received
+the kiss. She hid her brow with her hands, perturbed, quivering, and
+stammering forth: 'Don't! don't! I beg of you. Let us go on.'
+
+She did not hurry away, but let Serge follow her as she walked slowly
+on, stumbling against the roots of the plants, and with her hands still
+clasped round her head, as though to check the excitement that thrilled
+her. When they came out of the little wood, they took a few steps over
+ledges of rocks, on which a whole nation of ardent fleshy plants was
+squatting. It was like a crawling, writhing assemblage of hideous
+nameless monsters such as people a nightmare; monsters akin to spiders,
+caterpillars, and wood-lice, grown to gigantic proportions, some with
+bare glaucous skins, others tufted with filthy matted hairs, whilst many
+had sickly limbs--dwarf legs, and shrivelled, palsied arms--sprawling
+around them. And some displayed horrid dropsical bellies; some had
+spines bossy with hideous humps, and others looked like dislocated
+skeletons. Mamillaria threw up living pustules, a crawling swarm of
+greenish tortoises, bristling hideously with long hairs that were
+stiffer than iron. The echinocacti, which showed more flesh, suggested
+nests of young writhing, knotted vipers. The echinopses were mere
+excrescent red-haired growths that made one think of huge insects rolled
+into balls. The prickly-pears spread out fleshy leaves spotted with
+ruddy spikes that resembled swarms of microscopic bees. The gasterias
+sprawled about like big shepherd-spiders turned over on their backs,
+with long-speckled and striated legs. The cacti of the cereus family
+showed a horrid vegetation, huge polyps, the diseases of an overheated
+soil, the maladies of poisoned sap. But the aloes, languidly unfolding
+their hearts, were particularly numerous and conspicuous. Among them one
+found every possible tint of green, pale green and vivid, yellowish
+green and greyish, browny green, dashed with a ruddy tone, and deep
+green, fringed with pale gold. And the shapes of their leaves were as
+varied as their tints. Some were broad and heart-shaped, others were
+long and narrow like sword-blades; some bristled with spikey thorns,
+while yet others looked as though they had been cunningly hemmed at the
+edges. There were giant ones, in lonely majesty, with flower stalks that
+towered up aloft like poles wreathed with rosy coral; and there were
+tiny ones clustering thickly together on one and the same stem, and
+throwing forth on all sides leaves that gleamed and quivered like
+adders' tongues.
+
+'Let us go back to the shade,' begged Serge. 'You can sit down there as
+you did just now, and I will lie at your feet and talk to you.'
+
+Where they stood the sun rays fell like torrential rain. It was as if
+the triumphant orb seized upon the shadowless ground, and strained it to
+his blazing breast. Albine grew faint, staggered, and turned to Serge
+for support.
+
+But the moment they felt each other's touch, they fell together without
+even a word. It was as though the very rock beneath them had opened, as
+though they were ever going down and down. Their hands sought each other
+caressingly, embracingly, but such keen anguish did they experience that
+they suddenly tore themselves apart, and fled, each in a different
+direction. Serge did not cease running till he had reached the pavilion,
+and had thrown himself upon his bed, his brain on fire, and despair in
+his heart. Albine did not return till nightfall, after hours of weeping
+in a corner of the garden. It was the first time that they had not
+returned home together, tired after their long wanderings. For three
+days they kept apart, feeling terribly unhappy.
+
+
+
+                                XIII
+
+Yet now the park was entirely their own. They had taken sovereign
+possession of it. There was not a corner of it that was not theirs to
+use as they willed. For them alone the thickets of roses put forth their
+blossoms, and the parterre exhaled its soft perfume, which lulled them
+to sleep as they lay at night with their windows open. The orchard
+provided them with food, filling Albine's skirts with fruits, and spread
+over them the shade of its perfumed boughs, under which it was so
+pleasant to breakfast in the early morning. Away in the meadows the
+grass and the streams were all theirs; the grass, which extended their
+kingdom to such boundless distance, spreading an endless silky carpet
+before them; and the streams, which were the best of their joys,
+emblematic of their own purity and innocence, ever offering them
+coolness and freshness in which they delighted to bathe their youth. The
+forest, too, was entirely theirs, from the mighty oaks, which ten men
+could not have spanned, to the slim birches which a child might have
+snapped; the forest, with all its trees, all its shade, all its avenues
+and clearings, its cavities of greenery, of which the very birds
+themselves were ignorant; the forest which they used as they listed, as
+if it were a giant canopy, beneath which they might shelter from the
+noontide heat their new-born love. They reigned everywhere, even among
+the rocks and the springs, even over that gruesome stretch of ground
+that teemed with such hideous growth, and which had seemed to sink and
+give way beneath their feet, but which they loved yet even more than the
+soft grassy couches of the garden, for the strange thrill of passion
+they had felt there.
+
+Thus, now, in front of them, behind them, to the right of them and to
+the left, all was theirs. They had gained possession of the whole
+domain, and they walked through a friendly expanse which knew them, and
+smiled kindly greetings to them as they passed, devoting itself to their
+pleasure, like a faithful and submissive servitor. The sky, with its
+vast canopy of blue overhead, was also theirs to enjoy. The park walls
+could not enclose it, their eyes could ever revel in its beauty, and it
+entered into the joy of their life, at daytime with its triumphal sun,
+at night with its golden rain of stars. At every moment of the day it
+delighted them afresh, its expression ever varying. In the early morning
+it was pale as a maiden just risen from her slumber; at noon, it was
+flushed, radiant as with a longing for fruitfulness, and in the evening
+it became languid and breathless, as after keen enjoyment. Its
+countenance was constantly changing. Particularly in the evenings, at
+the hour of parting, did it delight them. The sun, hastening towards the
+horizon, ever found a fresh smile. Sometimes he disappeared in the midst
+of serene calmness, unflecked by a single cloud, sinking gradually
+beneath a golden sea. At other times he threw out crimson glories, tore
+his vaporous robe to shreds, and set amidst wavy flames that streaked
+the skies like the tails of gigantic comets, whose radiant heads lit up
+the crests of the forest trees. Then, again, extinguishing his rays one
+by one, he would softly sink to rest on shores of ruddy sand,
+far-reaching banks of blushing coral; and then, some other night, he
+would glide away demurely behind a heavy cloud that figured the grey
+hangings of some alcove, through which the eye could only detect a spark
+like that of a night-light. Or else he would rush to his couch in a
+tumult of passion, rolled round with white forms which gradually
+crimsoned beneath his fiery embraces, and finally disappeared with him
+below the horizon in a confused chaos of gleaming, struggling limbs.
+
+It was only the plants which had not made their submission. Albine and
+Serge passed like monarchs through the kingdom of animals, who rendered
+them humble and loyal obeisance. When they crossed the parterre, flights
+of butterflies arose to delight their eyes, to fan them with quivering
+wings, and to follow in their train like living sunbeams or flying
+blossoms. In the orchard, they were greeted by the birds that banqueted
+in the fruit-trees. The sparrows, the chaffinches, the golden orioles,
+the bullfinches, showed them the ripest fruit scarred by their hungry
+beaks; and while they sat astride the branches and breakfasted, birds
+twittered and sported round them like children at play, and even
+purloined the fruit beneath their very feet. Albine found even more
+amusement in the meadows, where she caught the little green frogs with
+eyes of gold, that lay squatting amongst the reeds, absorbed in
+contemplation; while Serge, with a piece of straw, poked the crickets
+out of their hiding-places, or tickled the grasshoppers to make them
+sing. He picked up insects of all colours, blue ones, red ones, yellow
+ones, and set them creeping upon his sleeve, where they gleamed and
+glittered like buttons of sapphire and ruby and topaz.
+
+Then there was all the mysterious life of the streams; the grey-backed
+fishes that threaded the dim waters, the eels whose presence was
+betrayed by a slight quivering of the water-plants, the young fry, which
+dispersed like blackish sand at the slightest sound, the long-legged
+flies and the water-beetles that ruffled into circling silvery ripples
+the stagnant surface of the pools; all that silent teeming life which
+drew them to the water and impelled them to dabble and stand in it, so
+that they might feel those millions of existences ever and ever gliding
+past their limbs. At other times, when the day was hot and languid, they
+would betake themselves beneath the voiceful shade of the forest and
+listen to the serenades of their musicians, the clear fluting of the
+nightingales, the silvery bugle-notes of the tomtits, and the far-off
+accompaniment of the cuckoos. They gazed with delight upon the swift
+flight of the pheasants, whose plumes gleamed like sudden sun rays
+amidst the branches, and with a smile they stayed their steps to let a
+troop of young roebucks bound past, or else a couple of grave stags that
+slackened their pace to look at them. Again, on other days they would
+climb up amongst the rocks, when the sun was blazing in the heavens, and
+find a pleasure in watching the swarms of grasshoppers which at the
+sound of their footsteps arose with a great crepitation of wings from
+the beds of thyme. The snakes that lay uncoiled beneath the parched
+bushes, or the lizards that sprawled over the red-hot stones, watched
+them with friendly eyes.
+
+Of all the life that thus teemed round them in the park, Albine and
+Serge had only become really conscious since the day when a kiss had
+awakened them to life themselves. Now it deafened them at times, and
+spoke to them in a language which they did not understand. It was that
+life--all the voices of the animal creation, all the perfumes and soft
+shadows of the flowers and trees--which perturbed them to such a point
+as to make them angry with one another. And yet throughout the whole
+park they found nothing but loving familiarity. Every plant and every
+creature was their friend. All the Paradou was one great caress.
+
+Before they had come thither, the sun had for a whole century reigned
+over it in lonely majesty. The garden, then, had known no other master;
+it had beheld him, every morning, scaling the boundary wall with his
+slanting rays, at noontide it had seen him pour his vertical heat upon
+the panting soil; and at evening it had seen him go off, on the other
+side, with a kiss of farewell upon its foliage. And so the garden had no
+shyness; it welcomed Albine and Serge, as it had so long welcomed the
+sun, as pleasant companions, with whom one puts on no ceremony. The
+animals, the trees, the streams, the rocks, all continued in an
+unrestrained state of nature, speaking aloud, living openly, without a
+secret, displaying the innocent shamelessness, the hearty tenderness of
+the world's first days. Serge and Albine, however, suffered from these
+voluptuous surroundings, and at times felt minded to curse the garden.
+On the afternoon when Albine had wept so bitterly after their saunter
+amongst the rocks, she had called out to the Paradou, whose intensity of
+life and passion filled her with distress:
+
+'If you really be our friend, why, why do you make us so wretched?'
+
+
+
+                                XIV
+
+The next morning Serge barricaded himself in his room. The perfume from
+the garden irritated him. He drew the calico curtains closely across the
+window to shut out the sight of the park. Perhaps he thought he might
+recover all his old serenity and calm if he shut himself off from that
+greenery, whose shade sent such passionate thrills quivering through
+him.
+
+During the long hours they spent together, Albine and he never now spoke
+of the rocks or the streams, the trees or the sky. The Paradou might no
+longer have been in existence. They strove to forget it. And yet they
+were all the time conscious of its presence on the other side of those
+slight curtains. Scented breezes forced their way in through the
+interstices of the window frame, the many voices of nature made the
+panes resound. All the life of the park laughed, chattered, and
+whispered in ambush beneath their window. As it reached them their
+cheeks would pale and they would raise their voices, seeking some
+occupation which might prevent them from hearing it.
+
+'Have you noticed,' said Serge one morning during these uneasy
+intervals, 'there is a painting of a woman over the door there? She is
+like you.'
+
+He laughed noisily as he finished speaking. They both turned to the
+paintings and dragged the table once more alongside the wall, with a
+nervous desire to occupy themselves.
+
+'Oh! no,' murmured Albine. 'She is much fatter than I am. But one can't
+see her very well; her position is so queer.'
+
+They relapsed into silence. From the decayed, faded painting a scene,
+which they had never before noticed, now showed forth. It was as if the
+picture had taken shape and substance again beneath the influence of the
+summer heat. You could sea a nymph with arms thrown back and pliant
+figure on a bed of flowers which had been strewn for her by young
+cupids, who, sickle in hand, ever added fresh blossoms to her rosy
+couch. And nearer, you could also see a cloven-hoofed faun who had
+surprised her thus. But Albine repeated, 'No, she is not like me, she is
+very plain.'
+
+Serge said nothing. He looked at the girl and then at Albine, as though
+he were comparing them one with the other. Albine pulled up one of her
+sleeves, as if to show that her arm was whiter than that of the pictured
+girl. Then they subsided into silence again, and gazed at the painting;
+and for a moment Albine's large blue eyes turned to Serge's grey ones,
+which were glowing.
+
+'You have got all the room painted again, then?' she cried, as she
+sprang from the table. 'These people look as though they were all coming
+to life again.'
+
+They began to laugh, but there was a nervous ring about their merriment
+as they glanced at the nude and frisking cupids which started to life
+again on all the panels. They no longer took those survivals of
+voluptuous eighteenth century art to represent mere children at play.
+They were disturbed by the sight of them, and as Albine felt Serge's hot
+breath on her neck she started and left his side to seat herself on the
+sofa. 'They frighten me,' she murmured. 'The men are like robbers, and
+the women, with their dying eyes, look like people who are being
+murdered.'
+
+Serge sat down in a chair, a little distance away, and began to talk of
+other matters. But they remained uneasy. They seemed to think that all
+those painted figures were gazing at them. It was as if the trooping
+cupids were springing out of the panelling, casting the flowers they
+held around them, and threatening to bind them together with the blue
+ribbons which already enchained two lovers in one corner of the ceiling.
+And the whole story of the nymph and her faun lover, from his first peep
+at her to his triumph among the flowers, seemed to burst into warm life.
+Were all those lovers, all those impudent shameless cupids about to step
+down from their panels and crowd around them? They already seemed to
+hear their panting sighs, and to feel their breath filling the spacious
+room with the perfume of voluptuousness.
+
+'It's quite suffocating, isn't it?' sighed Albine. 'In spite of every
+airing I have given it, the room has always seemed close to me!
+
+'The other night,' said Serge, 'I was awakened by such a penetrating
+perfume, that I called out to you, thinking you had come into the room.
+It was just like the soft warmth of your hair when you have decked it
+with heliotropes. . . . In the earlier times it seemed to be wafted to
+me from a distance, it was like the lingering memory of a perfume; but
+now I can't sleep for it, and it is so strong and penetrating that it
+quite stupefies me. The alcove grows so hot, too, at night that I shall
+be obliged to lie on the couch.'
+
+Albine laid her fingers on her lips, and whispered, 'It is the dead
+girl--she who once lived here.'
+
+They sniffed the odorous air with forced gaiety, but in reality feeling
+very troubled. Certainly never before had the room exhaled such a
+disquieting aroma. The very walls seemed to be still echoing the faint
+rustling of perfumed skirts; and the floor had retained the fragrance of
+satin slippers dropped by the bedside, and near the head of the bed
+itself Serge thought he could trace the imprint of a little hand, which
+had left behind it a clinging scent of violets. Over all the furniture
+the phantom presence of the dead girl still lingered fragrantly.
+
+'See, this is the armchair where she used to sit,' cried Albine; 'there
+is the scent of her shoulders at the back of it yet.'
+
+She sat down in it herself, and bade Serge drop upon his knees and kiss
+her hand.
+
+'You remember the day when I first let you in and said, "Good morrow, my
+dear lord!" But that wasn't all, was it? He kissed her hands when the
+door was closed. There they are, my hands. They are yours.'
+
+Then they tried to resume their old frolics in order that they might
+forget the Paradou, whose joyous murmur they heard ever rising outside,
+and that they might no longer think of the pictures nor yield to the
+languor-breathing influence of the room. Albine put on an affected
+manner, leant back in her chair, and finally laughed at the foolish
+figure which Serge made at her feet.
+
+'You stupid!' she said, 'take me round the waist, and say pretty things
+to me, since you are supposed to be in love with me. Don't you know how
+to make love then?'
+
+But as soon as she felt him clasp her with eager impetuosity, she began
+to struggle, and freed herself from his embrace.
+
+'No, no; leave me alone. I can't bear it. I feel as though I were
+choking in this room.'
+
+From that day forward they felt the same kind of fear for the room as
+they already felt for the garden. Their one remaining harbour of refuge
+was now a place to be shunned and dreaded, a spot where they could no
+longer find themselves together without watching each other furtively.
+Albine now scarcely ventured to enter it, but remained near the
+threshold, with the door wide open behind her so as to afford her an
+immediate retreat. Serge lived there in solitude, a prey to sickening
+restlessness, half-stifling, lying on the couch and vainly trying to
+close his ears to the sighs of the soughing park and his nostrils to the
+haunting fragrance of the old furniture. At night he dreamt wild
+passionate dreams, which left him in the morning nervous and disquieted.
+He believed that he was falling ill again, that he would never recover
+plenitude of health. For days and days he remained there in silence,
+with dark rings round his sleepy eyes, only starting into wakefulness
+when Albine came to visit him. They would remain face to face, gazing at
+one another sadly, and uttering but a few soft words, which seemed to
+choke them. Albine's eyes were even darker than Serge's, and were filled
+with an imploring gaze.
+
+Then, after a week had gone by, Albine's visit never lasted more than a
+few minutes. She seemed to shun him. When she came to the room, she
+appeared thoughtful, remained standing, and hurried off as soon as
+possible. When he questioned her about this change in her demeanour
+towards him, and reproached her for no longer being friendly, she turned
+her head away and avoided replying. He never could get her to tell him
+how she spent the mornings that she passed alone. She would only shake
+her head, and talk about being very idle. If he pressed her more
+closely, she bounded out of the room, just wishing him a hasty
+good-night as she disappeared through the doorway. He often noticed,
+however, that she had been crying. He observed, too, in her expression
+the phases of a hope that was never fulfilled, the perpetual struggling
+of a desire eager to be satisfied. Sometimes she seemed quite
+overwhelmed with melancholy, dragging herself about with an air of utter
+discouragement, like one who no longer had any pleasure in living. At
+other times she laughed lightly, her face shone with an expression of
+triumphant hope, of which, however, she would not yet speak, and her
+feet could not remain still, so eager was she to dart away to what
+seemed to her some last certainty. But on the following day, she would
+sink again into desperation, to soar afresh on the morrow on the pinions
+of renewed hope. One thing which she could not conceal from Serge was
+that she suffered from extreme lassitude. Even during the few moments
+they spent together she could not prevent her head from nodding, or keep
+herself from dozing off.
+
+Serge, recognising that she was unwilling to reply, had ceased to
+question her; and, when she now entered his room, he contented himself
+with casting an anxious glance at her, fearful lest some evening she
+should no longer have strength enough to come to him. Where could she
+thus reduce herself to such exhaustion? What perpetual struggle was it
+that brought about those alternations of joy and despair? One morning he
+started at the sound of a light footfall beneath his window. It could
+not be a roe venturing abroad in that manner. Moreover he could
+recognise that light footfall. Albine was wandering about the Paradou
+without him. It was from the Paradou that she returned to him with all
+those hopes and fears and inward wrestlings, all that lassitude which
+was killing her. And he could well guess what she was seeking out there,
+alone in the woody depths, with all the silent obstinacy of a woman who
+has vowed to effect her purpose. After that he used to listen for her
+steps. He dared not draw aside the curtain and watch her as she hurried
+along through the trees; but he experienced strange, almost painful
+emotion, in listening to ascertain what direction she took, whether she
+turned to right or to left, whether she went straight on through the
+flower-beds, and how far her ramble extended. Amidst all the noisy life
+of the Paradou, amidst the soughing chorus of the trees, the rustling of
+the streams, and the ceaseless songs of the birds, he could distinguish
+the gentle pit-pat of her shoes so plainly that he could have told
+whether she was stepping over the gravel near the rivers, the crumbling
+mould of the forest, or the bare ledges of the rocks. In time he even
+learned to tell, from the sound of her nervous footfall, whether she
+came back hopeful or depressed. As soon as he heard her step on the
+staircase, he hurried from the window, and he never let her know that he
+had thus followed her from afar in her wanderings. But she must have
+guessed it, for with a glance she always afterwards told him where she
+had been.
+
+'Stay indoors, and don't go out,' he begged her, with clasped hands, one
+morning when he saw her still unrecovered from the fatigue of the
+previous day. 'You drive me to despair.'
+
+But she hastened away in irritation. The garden, now that it rang with
+Albine's footfalls, seemed to have a more depressing influence than ever
+upon Serge. The pit-pat of her feet was yet another voice that called
+him; an imperious voice that echoed ever more and more loudly within
+him. He closed his ears and tried to shut out the sound, but the distant
+footsteps still echoed to him in the throbbings of his heart. And when
+she came back, in the evening, it was the whole park that came back with
+her, with the memories of their walks together, and of the slow dawn of
+their love, in the midst of conniving nature. She seemed to have grown
+taller and graver, mellowed, matured by her solitary rambles. There was
+nothing left in her of the frolicsome child, and his teeth would
+suddenly set at times when he looked at her and beheld her so desirable.
+
+One day, about noon, Serge heard Albine returning in hot haste. He had
+restrained himself from listening for her steps when she went away.
+Usually, she did not return till late, and he was amazed at her
+impetuosity as she sped along, forcing her way through the branches that
+barred her path. As she passed beneath his window, he heard her laugh;
+and as she mounted the stairway, she panted so heavily that he almost
+thought he could feel her hot breath streaming against his face. She
+threw the door wide open, and cried out: 'I have found it!'
+
+Then she sat down and repeated softly, breathlessly: 'I have found it! I
+have found it!'
+
+Serge, distracted, laid his fingers on her lips, and stammered: 'Don't
+tell me anything, I beg you. I want to know nothing of it. It will kill
+me, if you speak.'
+
+Then she sank into silence with gleaming eyes and lips tightly pressed
+lest the words she kept back should spring out in spite of her. And she
+stayed in the room till evening, trying to meet Serge's glance, and
+imparting to him, each time that their eyes met, something of that which
+she had discovered. Her whole face beamed with radiance, she exhaled a
+delicious odour, she was full of life; and Serge felt that she permeated
+him through all his senses. Despairingly did he struggle against this
+gradual invasion of his being.
+
+On the morrow she returned to his room as soon as she was up.
+
+'Aren't you going out?' he asked, conscious that he would be vanquished
+should she remain there.
+
+'No,' she said; she wasn't going out any more. As by degrees she
+recovered from her fatigue he felt her becoming stronger, more
+triumphant. She would soon be able to take him by the hand and drag him
+to that spot, whose charm her silence proclaimed so loudly. That day,
+however, she did not speak; she contented herself with keeping him
+seated on a cushion at her feet. It was not till the next morning that
+she ventured to say: 'Why do you shut yourself up here? It is so
+pleasant under the trees.'
+
+He rose from her feet, and stretched out his arms entreatingly. But she
+laughed at him.
+
+'Well, well, then, we won't go out, since you would rather
+not. . . . But this room has such a strange scent, and we should be
+much more comfortable in the garden. It is very wrong of you to have
+taken such a dislike to it.'
+
+He had again settled himself at her feet in silence, his eyelids
+lowered, his features quivering with passionate emotion.
+
+'We won't go out,' she repeated, 'so don't worry. But do you really
+prefer these pictures to the grass and flowers in the park? Do you
+remember all we saw together? It is these paintings which make us feel
+so unhappy. They are a nuisance, always looking and watching us as they
+do.'
+
+As Serge gradually leant more closely against her, she passed her arm
+round his neck and laid his head upon her lap, while murmuring in yet a
+lower tone: 'There is a little corner there I know, where we might be so
+very happy. Nothing would trouble us there; the fresh air would cool
+your feverishness.'
+
+Then she stopped, as she felt him quivering. She was afraid lest she
+might again revive his old fears. But she gradually conquered him merely
+by the caressing gaze of her blue eyes. His eyelids were now raised, and
+he rested there quietly, wholly hers, his tremor past.
+
+'Ah! if you only knew!' she softly breathed; and seeing that he
+continued to smile, she went on boldly: 'It is all a lie; it is not
+forbidden. You are a man now and ought not to be afraid. If we went
+there, and any danger threatened me, you would protect me, you would
+defend me, would you not? You could carry me off on your back, couldn't
+you? I am never the least afraid when I have you with me. Look how
+strong your arms have grown. What is there for any one with such strong
+arms as yours to be afraid of?'
+
+She caressed him beguilingly as she spoke, stroking his hair and neck
+and shoulders with her hand.
+
+'No, it is not forbidden,' she resumed. 'That is only a story for
+stupids, and was invented, long ago, by some one who didn't want to be
+disturbed in the most charming spot in the whole garden. As soon as you
+sat down on that grassy carpet, you would be happy and well again.
+Listen, then, come with me.'
+
+He shook his head but without any sign of vexation, as though indeed he
+liked thus being teased. Then after a short silence, grieved to see her
+pouting, and longing for a renewal of her caresses, he opened his lips
+and asked: 'Where is it?'
+
+She did not answer him immediately. Her eyes seemed to be wandering far
+away: 'It is over yonder,' she murmured at last. 'I cannot explain to
+you clearly. One has to go down the long avenue, and then to turn to the
+left, and then again to the left. We must have passed it at least a
+score of times. You might look for it for ever without finding it, if I
+didn't go with you to show you. I could find my way to it quite
+straight, though I could never explain it to you.'
+
+'And who took you there?'
+
+'I don't know. That morning the trees and plants seemed to drive me
+there. The long branches pushed me on, the grass bent down before me
+invitingly, the paths seemed to open expressly for me to take them. And
+I believe the animals themselves helped to lead me there, for I saw a
+stag trotting on before me as though he wanted me to follow; while a
+company of bullfinches flitted on from tree to tree, and warned me with
+their cries whenever I was about to take a wrong direction.'
+
+'And is it very beautiful?'
+
+Again she did not reply. Deep ecstasy filled her eyes; at last, when she
+was able to speak again, she said: 'Ah! so beautiful, that I could never
+tell you of it. I was so charmed that I was conscious only of some
+supreme joy, which I could not name, falling from the leaves and
+slumbering amid the grass. And I ran back here to take you along with me
+that I might not be without you.'
+
+Then she clasped her arms round his neck again, and entreated him
+passionately, her lips almost pressed to his own.
+
+'Oh! you will come!' she stammered; 'you must come; you will make me so
+miserable if you don't. You can't want me to be miserable. . . . And
+even if you knew that you would die there, even if that shade should be
+fatal to both of us, would you hesitate or cast a regretful look behind?
+We should remain there, at the foot of the tree, and sleep on quietly
+for ever, in one anther's arms. Ah! would it not be bliss indeed?'
+
+'Yes, yes!' he stammered, transported by her passionate entreaties.
+
+'But we shall not die,' she continued, raising her voice, and laughing
+with the laugh which proclaims woman's victory; 'we shall live to love
+each other. It is a tree of life, a tree whose shadow will make us
+stronger, more perfect, more complete. You will see that all will now go
+happily. Some blessed joy will assuredly descend on us from heaven! Will
+you come?'
+
+His face paled, and his eyelids quivered, as though too powerful a light
+were suddenly beating against them.
+
+'Will you come? will you come?' she cried again, yet more passionately,
+and already half rising to her feet.
+
+He sprang up and followed her, at first with tottering steps and then
+with his arm thrown round her waist, as if he could endure no separation
+from her. He went where she went, carried along in the warm fragrance
+that streamed from her hair. And as he thus remained slightly in the
+rear, she turned upon him a face so radiant with love, such tempting
+lips and eyes, which so imperiously bade him follow, that he would have
+gone with her anywhere, trusting and unquestioning, like a dog.
+
+
+
+                                 XV
+
+They went down and out into the garden without the smile fading from
+Serge's face. All that he saw of the greenery around him was such as was
+reflected in the clear depths of Albine's eyes. As they approached, the
+garden smiled and smiled again, a murmur of content sped from leaf to
+leaf and from bough to bough to the furthest depths of the avenues. For
+days and days the garden must have been hoping and expecting to see them
+thus, clinging to one another, making their peace again with the trees
+and searching for their lost love on the grassy banks. A solemn warning
+breath sighed through the branches; the afternoon sky was drowsy with
+heat; the plants raised their bowing heads to watch them pass.
+
+'Listen,' whispered Albine. 'They drop into silence as we come near
+them; but over yonder they are expecting us, they are telling each other
+the way they must lead us. . . . I told you we should have no trouble
+about the paths, the trees themselves will direct us with their
+spreading arms.'
+
+The whole park did, indeed, appear to be impelling them gently onward.
+In their rear it seemed as if a barrier of brush-wood had bristled up to
+prevent them from retracing their steps; while, in front of them, the
+grassy lawns spread out so invitingly, that they glided along the soft
+slopes, without thought of choosing their way.
+
+'And the birds are coming with us, too,' said Albine. 'It is the tomtits
+this time. Don't you see them? They are skimming over the hedges, and
+they stop at each turning to see that we don't lose our way.' Then she
+added: 'All the living things of the park are with us. Can't you hear
+them? There is a deep rustling close behind us. It is the birds in the
+trees, the insects in the grass, the roebucks and the stags in the
+coppices, and even the little fishes splashing the quiet water with
+their beating fins. Don't turn round, or you will frighten them. Ah! I
+am sure we have a rare train behind us.'
+
+They still walked on, unfatigued. Albine spoke only to charm Serge with
+the music of her voice, while Serge obeyed the slightest pressure of her
+hand. They knew not what they passed, but they were certain that they
+were going straight towards their goal. And as they went along, the
+garden became gradually graver, more discreet; the soughing of the
+branches died away, the streams hushed their plashing waters, the birds,
+the beasts, and the insects fell into silence. All around them reigned
+solemn stillness.
+
+Then Albine and Serge instinctively raised their heads. In front of them
+they beheld a colossal mass of foliage; and, as they hesitated for a
+moment, a roe, after gazing at them with its sweet soft eyes, bounded
+into the thickets.
+
+'It is there,' said Albine.
+
+She led the way, her face again turned towards Serge, whom she drew with
+her, and they disappeared amid the quivering leaves, and all grew quiet
+again. They were entering into delicious peace.
+
+In the centre there stood a tree covered with so dense a foliage that
+one could not recognise its species. It was of giant girth, with a trunk
+that seemed to breathe like a living breast, and far-reaching boughs
+that stretched like protecting arms around it. It towered up there
+beautiful, strong, virile, and fruitful. It was the king of the garden,
+the father of the forest, the pride of the plants, the beloved of the
+sun, whose earliest and latest beams smiled daily on its crest. From its
+green vault poured all the joys of creation: fragrance of flowers, music
+of birds, gleams of golden light, wakeful freshness of dawn, slumbrous
+warmth of evening twilight. So strong was the sap that it burst through
+the very bark, bathing the tree with the powers of fruitfulness, making
+it the symbol of earth's virility. Its presence sufficed to give the
+clearing an enchanting charm. The other trees built up around it an
+impenetrable wall, which isolated it as in a sanctuary of silence and
+twilight. There was but greenery there, not a scrap of sky, not a
+glimpse of horizon; nothing but a swelling rotunda, draped with green
+silkiness of leaves, adorned below with mossy velvet. And one entered,
+as into the liquid crystal of a source, a greenish limpidity, a sheet of
+silver reposing beneath reflected reeds. Colours, perfumes, sounds,
+quivers, all were vague, indeterminate, transparent, steeped in a
+felicity amidst which everything seemed to faint away. Languorous
+warmth, the glimmer of a summer's night, as it fades on the bare
+shoulder of some fair girl, a scarce perceptible murmur of love sinking
+into silence, lingered beneath the motionless branches, unstirred by the
+slightest zephyr. It was hymeneal solitude, a chamber where Nature lay
+hidden in the embraces of the sun.
+
+Albine and Serge stood there in an ecstasy of joy. As soon as the tree
+had received them beneath its shade, they felt eased of all the anxious
+disquiet which had so long distressed them. The fears which had made
+them avoid each other, the fierce wrestling of spirit which had torn and
+wounded them, without consciousness on their part of what they were
+really contending against, vanished, and left them in perfect peace.
+Absolute confidence, supreme serenity, now pervaded them, they yielded
+unhesitatingly to the joy of being together in that lonely nook, so
+completely hidden from the outside world. They had surrendered
+themselves to the garden, they awaited in all calmness the behests of
+that tree of life. It enveloped them in such ecstasy of love that the
+whole clearing seemed to disappear from before their eyes, and to leave
+them wrapped in an atmosphere of perfume.
+
+'The air is like ripe fruit,' murmured Albine.
+
+And Serge whispered in his turn: 'The grass seems so full of life and
+motion, that I could almost think I was treading on your dress.'
+
+It was a kind of religious feeling which made them lower their voices.
+No sentiment of curiosity impelled them to raise their heads and scan
+the tree. The consciousness of its majesty weighed heavily upon them.
+With a glance Albine asked whether she had overrated the enchantment of
+the greenery, and Serge answered her with two tears that trickled down
+his cheeks. The joy that filled them at being there could not be
+expressed in words.
+
+'Come,' she whispered in his ear, in a voice that was softer than a
+sigh.
+
+And she glided on in front of him, and seated herself at the very foot
+of the tree. Then, with a fond smile, she stretched out her hands to
+him; while he, standing before her, grasped them in his own with a
+responsive smile. Then she drew him slowly towards her and he sank down
+by her side.
+
+'Ah! do you remember,' he said, 'that wall which seemed to have grown up
+between us? Now there is nothing to keep us apart--you are not unhappy
+now?'
+
+'No, no,' she answered; 'very happy.'
+
+For a moment they relapsed into silence whilst soft emotion stole over
+them. Then Serge, caressing Albine, exclaimed: 'Your face is mine; your
+eyes, your mouth, your cheeks are mine. Your arms are mine, from your
+shoulders to the tips of your nails. You are wholly mine.' And as he
+spoke he kissed her lips, her eyes, her cheeks. He kissed her arms, with
+quick short kisses, from her fingers to her shoulders. He poured upon
+her a rain of kisses hot as a summer shower, deluging her cheeks, her
+forehead, her lips, and her neck.
+
+'But if you are mine, I am yours,' said he; 'yours for ever; for I now
+well know that you are my queen, my sovereign, whom I must worship on
+bended knee. I am here only to obey you, to lie at your feet, to
+anticipate your wishes, to shelter you with my arms, to drive away
+whatever might trouble your tranquillity. And you are my life's goal.
+Since I first awoke in this garden, you have ever been before me; I have
+grown up that I might be yours. Ever, as my end, my reward, have I gazed
+upon your grace. You passed in the sunshine with the sheen of your
+golden hair; you were a promise that I should some day know all the
+mysteries and necessities of creation, of this earth, of these trees,
+these waters, these skies, whose last secret is yet unrevealed. I belong
+to you; I am your slave; I will listen to you and obey you, with my lips
+upon your feet.'
+
+He said this, bowed to the ground, adoring Woman. And Albine, full of
+pride, allowed herself to be adored. She yielded her hands, her cheeks,
+her lips, to Serge's rapturous kisses. She felt herself indeed a queen
+as she saw him, who was so strong, bending so humbly before her. She had
+conquered him, and held him there at her mercy. With a single word she
+could dispose of him. And that which helped her to recognise her
+omnipotence was that she heard the whole garden rejoicing at her
+triumph, with gradually swelling paeans of approval.
+
+'Ah! if we could fly off together, if we could but die even, in one
+another's arms,' faltered Serge, scarce able to articulate. But Albine
+had strength enough to raise her finger as though to bid him listen.
+
+It was the garden that had planned and willed it all. For weeks and
+weeks it had been favouring and encouraging their passion, and at last,
+on that supreme day, it had lured them to that spot, and now it became
+the Tempter whose every voice spoke of love. From the flower-beds, amid
+the fragrance of the languid blossoms, was wafted a soft sighing, which
+told of the weddings of the roses, the love-joys of the violets; and
+never before had the heliotropes sent forth so voluptuous a perfume.
+Mingled with the soft air which arose from the orchard were all the
+exhalations of ripe fruit, the vanilla of apricots, the musk of oranges,
+all the luscious aroma of fruitfulness. From the meadows came fuller
+notes, the million sighs of the sun-kissed grass, the multitudinous
+love-plaints of legions of living things, here and there softened by the
+refreshing caresses of the rivulets, on whose banks the very willows
+palpitated with desire. And the forest proclaimed the mighty passion of
+the oaks. Through the high branches sounded solemn music, organ strains
+like the nuptial marches of the ashes and the birches, the hornbeams and
+the planes, while from the bushes and the young coppices arose noisy
+mirth like that of youthful lovers chasing one another over banks and
+into hollows amid much crackling and snapping of branches. From afar,
+too, the faint breeze wafted the sounds of the rocks splitting in their
+passion beneath the burning heat, while near them the spiky plants loved
+in a tragic fashion of their own, unrefreshed by the neighbouring
+springs, which themselves glowed with the love of the passionate sun.
+
+'What do they say?' asked Serge, half swooning, as Albine pressed him to
+her bosom. The voices of the Paradou were growing yet more distinct. The
+animals, in their turn, joined in the universal song of nature. The
+grasshoppers grew faint with the passion of their chants; the
+butterflies scattered kisses with their beating wings. The amorous
+sparrows flew to their mates; the rivers rippled over the loves of the
+fishes; whilst in the depths of the forest the nightingales sent forth
+pearly, voluptuous notes, and the stags bellowed their love aloud.
+Reptiles and insects, every species of invisible life, every atom of
+matter, the earth itself joined in the great chorus. It was the chorus
+of love and of nature--the chorus of the whole wide world; and in the
+very sky the clouds were radiant with rapture, as to those two children
+Love revealed the Eternity of Life.
+
+
+
+                                XVI
+
+Albine and Serge smiled at one another.
+
+'I love you, Albine,' said Serge.
+
+'Serge, I love you,' Albine answered.
+
+And never before had those syllables 'I love you' had for them so
+supreme a meaning. They expressed everything. Joy pervaded those young
+lovers, who had attained to the fulness of life. They felt that they
+were now on a footing of equality with the forces of the world; and with
+their happiness mingled the placid conviction that they had obeyed the
+universal law. And Serge seemed to have awakened to life, lion-like, to
+rule the whole far expanse under the free heavens. His feet planted
+themselves more firmly on the ground, his chest expanded, there was
+pride and confidence in his gait and demeanour. He took Albine by the
+hands, she was trembling, and he was obliged to support her.
+
+'Don't be afraid,' he said; 'you are she whom I love.'
+
+It was Albine now who had become the submissive one. She drooped her
+head upon his shoulder, glancing up at him with anxious scrutiny. Would
+he never bear her spite for that hour of adoration in which he had
+called himself her slave? But he smiled, and stroked her hair, while she
+said to him: 'Let me stay like this, in your arms, for I cannot walk
+without you. I will make myself so small and light, that you will
+scarcely know I am there.' Then becoming very serious she added, 'You
+must always love me; and I will be very obedient and do whatever you
+wish. I will yield to you in all things if you but love me.'
+
+Serge felt more powerful and virile on seeing her so humble. 'Why are
+you trembling so?' he asked her; 'I can have no cause to reproach you.'
+
+But she did not answer him, she gazed almost sadly upon the tree and the
+foliage and the grass around them.
+
+'Foolish child!' he said, laughing; 'are you afraid that I shall be
+angry with you for your love? We have loved as we were meant to love.
+Let me kiss you.'
+
+But, dropping her eyelids so that she might not see the tree, she said,
+in a low whisper, 'Take me away!'
+
+Serge led her thence, pacing slowly and giving one last glance at the
+spot which love had hallowed. The shadows in the clearing were growing
+darker, and a gentle quiver coursed through the foliage. When they
+emerged from the wood and caught sight of the sun, still shining
+brightly in the horizon, they felt easier. Everything around Serge now
+seemed to bend down before him and pay homage to his love. The garden
+was now nothing but an appanage of Albine's beauty, and seemed to have
+grown larger and fairer amid the love-kisses of its rulers.
+
+But Albine's joy was still tinged with disquietude. She would suddenly
+pause amid her laughter and listen anxiously.
+
+'What is the matter?' asked Serge.
+
+'Nothing,' she replied, casting furtive glances behind her.
+
+They did not know in what out-of-the-way corner of the park they were.
+To lose themselves in their capricious wanderings only served to amuse
+them as a rule; but that day they experienced anxious embarrassment. By
+degrees they quickened their pace, plunging more and more deeply into a
+labyrinth of bushes.
+
+'Don't you hear?' asked Albine, nervously, as she suddenly stopped
+short, almost breathless.
+
+Serge listened, a prey, in his turn, to the anxiety which the girl could
+no longer conceal.
+
+'All the coppice seems full of voices,' she continued. 'It sounds as
+though there were people deriding us. Listen! Wasn't that a laugh that
+sounded from that tree? And over yonder did not the grass murmur
+something as my dress brushed against it?'
+
+'No, no,' he said, anxious to reassure her, 'the garden loves us; and,
+if it said anything, it would not be to vex or annoy us. Don't you
+remember all the sweet words which sounded through the leaves? You are
+nervous and fancy things.'
+
+But she shook her head and faltered: 'I know very well that the garden
+is our friend. . . . So it must be some one who has broken into it. I am
+certain I hear some one. I am trembling all over. Oh! take me away and
+hide me somewhere, I beseech you.'
+
+Then they went on again, scanning every tree and bush, and imagining
+that they could see faces peering at them from behind every trunk.
+Albine was certain, she said, that there were steps pursuing them in the
+distance. 'Let us hide ourselves,' she begged.
+
+She had turned quite scarlet. It was new-born modesty, a sense of shame
+which had laid hold of her like a fever, mantling over the snowy
+whiteness of her skin, which never previously had known that flush.
+Serge was alarmed at seeing her thus crimson, her face full of distress,
+her eyes brimming with tears. He tried to clasp her in his arms again
+and to soothe her with a caress; but she slipped away from him, and,
+with a despairing gesture, made sign that they were not alone. And her
+blushes grew deeper as her eyes fell upon her bare arms. She shuddered
+when her loose hanging hair stirred against her neck and shoulders. The
+slightest touch of a waving bough or a passing insect, the softest
+breath of air, now made her tremble as if some invisible hand were
+grasping at her.
+
+'Calm yourself,' begged Serge, 'there is no one. You are as crimson as
+though you had a fever. Let us rest here for a moment. Do; I beg you.'
+
+She had no fever at all, she said, but she wanted to get back as quickly
+as possible, so that no one might laugh at her. And, ever increasing her
+pace, she plucked handfuls of leaves and tendrils from the hedges, which
+she entwined about her. She fastened a branch of mulberry over her hair,
+twisted bindweed round her arms, and tied it to her wrists, and circled
+her neck with such long sprays of laurustinus, that her bosom was hidden
+as by a veil of leaves.
+
+And that shame of hers proved contagious. Serge, who first had jested,
+asking her if she were going to a ball, glanced at himself, and likewise
+felt alarmed and ashamed, to a point that he also wound foliage about
+his person.
+
+Meantime, they could discover no way out of the labyrinth of bushes, but
+all at once, at the end of the path, they found themselves face to face
+with an obstacle, a tall, grey, grave mass of stone. It was the wall of
+the Paradou.
+
+'Come away! come away!' cried Albine.
+
+And she sought to drag him thence; but they had not taken another twenty
+steps before they again came upon the wall. They then skirted it at a
+ran, panic-stricken. It stretched along, gloomy and stern, without a
+break in its surface. But suddenly, at a point where it fringed a
+meadow, it seemed to fall away. A great breach gaped in it, like a huge
+window of light opening on to the neighbouring valley. It must have been
+the very hole that Albine had one day spoken of, which she said she had
+blocked up with brambles and stones. But the brambles now lay scattered
+around like severed bits of rope, the stones had been thrown some
+distance away, and the breach itself seemed to have been enlarged by
+some furious hand.
+
+
+
+                                XVII
+
+'Ah! I felt sure of it,' cried Albine, in accents of supreme despair. 'I
+begged you to take me away--Serge, I beseech you, don't look through
+it.'
+
+But Serge, in spite of himself, stood rooted to the ground, on the
+threshold of the breach through which he gazed. Down below, in the
+depths of the valley, the setting sun cast a sheet of gold upon the
+village of Les Artaud, which showed vision-like amidst the twilight in
+which the neighbouring fields were already steeped. One could plainly
+distinguish the houses that straggled along the high road; the little
+yards with their dunghills, and the narrow gardens planted with
+vegetables. Higher up, the tall cypress in the graveyard reared its
+dusky silhouette, and the red tiles on the church glowed brazier-like,
+the dark bell looking down on them like a human face, while the old
+parsonage at the side threw its doors and windows open to the evening
+air.
+
+'For pity's sake,' sobbed Albine, 'don't look out, Serge. Remember that
+you promised you would always love me. Ah! will you ever love me enough,
+now? Stay, let me cover your eyes with my hands. You know it was my
+hands that cured you. You won't push me away.'
+
+But he put her from him gently. Then, while she fell down and clung to
+his legs, he passed his hands across his face, as though he were wiping
+from his brow and eyes some last lingering traces of sleep. It was
+yonder, then, that lay the unknown world, the strange land of which he
+had never dreamed without vague fear. Where had he seen that country?
+From what dream was he awakening, that he felt such keen anguish
+swelling up in his breast till it almost choked him? The village was
+breaking out into life at the close of the day's work. The men were
+coming home from the fields with weary gait, their jackets thrown over
+their shoulders; the women, standing by their doors, were beckoning to
+them to hasten on; while the children, in noisy bands, chased the fowls
+about and pelted them with stones. In the churchyard a couple of
+scapegraces, a lad and a girl, were creeping along under the shelter of
+the wall in order to escape notice. Swarms of sparrows were retiring to
+roost beneath the eaves of the church; and, on the steps of the
+parsonage, a blue calico skirt had just appeared, of such spreading
+dimensions as to quite block the doorway.
+
+'Oh! he is looking out! he is looking out!' sobbed Albine. 'Listen to
+me. It was only just now that you promised to obey me. I beg of you to
+turn round and to look upon the garden. Haven't you been very happy in
+the garden? It was the garden which gave me to you. Think of the happy
+days it has in store for us, what lasting bliss and enjoyment. Instead
+of which it will be death that will force its way through that hole, if
+you don't quickly flee and take me with you. See, all those people
+yonder will come and thrust themselves between us. We were so quite
+alone, so secluded, so well guarded by the trees! Oh! the garden is our
+love! Look on the garden, I beg it of you on my knees!'
+
+But Serge was quivering. He had began to recollect. The past was
+re-awakening. He could distinctly hear the stir of the village life.
+Those peasants, those women and children, he knew them. There was the
+mayor, Bambousse, returning from Les Olivettes, calculating how much the
+approaching vintage would yield him; there were the Brichets, the
+husband crawling along, and the wife moaning with misery. There was
+Rosalie flirting with big Fortune behind a wall. He recognised also the
+pair in the churchyard, that mischievous Vincent and that bold hussy
+Catherine, who were catching big grasshoppers amongst the tombstones.
+Yes, and they had Voriau, the black dog, with them, helping them and
+ferreting about in the dry grass, and sniffing at every crack in the old
+stones. Under the eaves of the church the sparrows were twittering and
+bickering before going to roost. The boldest of them flew down and
+entered the church through the broken windows, and, as Serge followed
+them with his eyes, he recollected all the noise they had formerly made
+below the pulpit and on the step by the altar rails, where crumbs were
+always put for them. And that was La Teuse yonder, on the parsonage
+doorstep, looking fatter than ever in her blue calico dress. She was
+turning her head to smile at Desiree, who was coming up from the yard,
+laughing noisily. Then they both vanished indoors, and Serge, distracted
+with all these revived memories, stretched out his arms.
+
+'It is all over now,' faltered Albine, as she sank down amongst the
+broken brambles. 'You will never love me enough again.'
+
+She wept, while Serge stood rooted by the breach, straining his ears to
+catch the slightest sound that might be wafted from the village,
+waiting, as it were, for some voice that might fully awaken him. The
+bell in the church-tower had begun to sway, and slowly through the quiet
+evening air the three chimes of the _Angelus_ floated up to the Paradou.
+It was a soft and silvery summons. The bell now seemed to be alive.
+
+'O God!' cried Serge, falling on his knees, quite overcome by the
+emotion which the soft notes of the bell had excited in him.
+
+He bent down towards the ground, and he felt the three peals of the
+_Angelus_ pass over his neck and echo through his heart. The voice of
+the bell seemed to grow louder. It was raised again sternly, pitilessly,
+for a few moments which seemed to him to be years. It summoned up before
+him all his old life, his pious childhood, his happy days at the
+seminary, and his first Masses in that burning valley of Les Artaud,
+where he had dreamt of a solitary, saintly life. He had always heard it
+speaking to him as it was doing now. He recognised every inflection of
+that sacred voice, which had so constantly fallen upon his ears, like
+the grave and gentle voice of a mother. Why had he so long ceased to
+hear it? In former times it had promised him the coming of Mary. Had
+Mary come then and taken him and carried him off into those happy green
+fastnesses, which the sound of the bell could not reach? He would never
+have lapsed into forgetfulness if the bell had not ceased to ring. And
+as he bent his head still lower towards the earth, the contact of his
+beard with his hands made him start. He could not recognise his own self
+with that long silky beard. He twisted it and fumbled about in his hair
+seeking for the bare circle of the tonsure, but a heavy growth of curls
+now covered his whole head from his brow to the nape of his neck.
+
+'Ah! you were right,' he said, casting a look of despair at Albine. 'It
+was forbidden. We have sinned, and we have merited some terrible
+punishment. . . . But I, indeed, I tried to reassure you, I did not hear
+the threats which sounded in your ears through the branches.'
+
+Albine tried to clasp him in her arms again as she sobbed out, 'Get up,
+and let us escape together. Perhaps even yet there is time for us to
+love each other.'
+
+'No, no; I haven't the strength. I should stumble and fall over the
+smallest pebble in the path. Listen to me. I am afraid of myself. I know
+not what man dwells in me. I have murdered myself, and my hands are red
+with blood. If you took me away, you would never see aught in my eyes
+save tears.'
+
+She kissed his wet eyes, as she answered passionately, 'No matter! Do
+you love me?'
+
+He was too terrified to answer her. A heavy step set the pebbles rolling
+on the other side of the wall. A growl of anger seemed to draw nigh.
+Albine had not been mistaken. Some one was, indeed, there, disturbing
+the woodland quiet with jealous inquisition. Then both Albine and Serge,
+as if overwhelmed with shame, sought to bide themselves behind a bush.
+But Brother Archangias, standing in front of the breach, could already
+see them.
+
+The Brother remained for a moment silent, clenching his fists and
+looking at Albine clinging round Serge's neck, with the disgust of a man
+who has espied some filth by the roadside.
+
+'I suspected it,' he mumbled between his teeth. 'It was virtually
+certain that they had hidden him here.'
+
+Then he took a few steps, and cried out: 'I see you. It is an
+abomination. Are you a brute beast to go coursing through the woods with
+that female? She has led you far astray, has she not? She has besmeared
+you with filth, and now you are hairy like a goat. . . . Pluck a branch
+from the trees wherewith to smite her on the back.'
+
+Again Albine whispered in an ardent, prayerful voice: 'Do you love me?
+Do you love me?'
+
+But Serge, with bowed head, kept silence, though he did not yet drive
+her from him.
+
+'Fortunately, I have found you,' continued Brother Archangias. 'I
+discovered this hole. . . . You have disobeyed God, and have slain your
+own peace. Henceforward, for ever, temptation will gnaw you with its
+fiery tooth, and you will no longer have ignorance of evil to help you
+to fight it. It was that creature who tempted you to your fall, was it
+not? Do you not see the serpent's tail writhing amongst her hair? The
+mere sight of her shoulders is sufficient to make one vomit with
+disgust. . . . Leave her. Touch her not, for she is the beginning of
+hell. In the name of God, come forth from that garden.'
+
+'Do you love me? Oh! do you love me?' reiterated Albine.
+
+But Serge hastily drew away from her as though her bare arms and
+shoulders really scorched him.
+
+'In the name of God! In the name of God!' cried the Brother, in a voice
+of thunder.
+
+Serge unresistingly stepped towards the breach. As soon as Brother
+Archangias, with rough violence, had dragged him out of the Paradou,
+Albine, who had fallen half fainting to the ground, with hands wildly
+stretched towards the love which was deserting her, rose up again,
+choking with sobs. And she fled, vanished into the midst of the trees,
+whose trunks she lashed with her streaming hair.
+
+
+
+                              BOOK III
+
+
+
+                                 I
+
+When Abbe Mouret had said the _Pater_, he bowed to the altar, and went
+to the Epistle side. Then he came down, and made the sign of the cross
+over big Fortune and Rosalie, who were kneeling, side by side, before
+the altar-rails.
+
+'_Ego conjungo vos in matrimonium, in nomine Patris, et Filii, et
+Spiritus Sancti_.'
+
+'_Amen_,' responded Vincent, who was serving the mass, and glancing
+curiously at his big brother out of the corner of his eye.
+
+Fortune and Rosalie bent their heads, affected by some slight emotion,
+although they had nudged each other with their elbows when they knelt
+down, by way of making one another laugh. But Vincent went to get the
+basin and the sprinkler. Fortune placed the ring in the basin, a thick
+ring of solid silver. When the priest had blessed it, sprinkling it
+crosswise, he returned it to Fortune, who slipped it upon Rosalie's
+finger. Her hand was still discoloured with grass-stains, which soap had
+not been able to remove.
+
+'_In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti_,' Abbe Mouret murmured
+again, giving them a final benediction.
+
+'_Amen_,' responded Vincent.
+
+It was early morning. The sun was not yet shining through the big
+windows of the church. Outside one could hear the noisy twittering of
+the sparrows in the branches of the service tree, whose foliage shot
+through the broken panes. La Teuse, who had not previously had time to
+clean the church, was now dusting the altar, craning up on her sound leg
+to wipe the feet of the ochre and lake-bedaubed Christ, and arranging
+the chairs as quietly as possible; all the while bowing and crossing
+herself, and following the service, but not omitting a single sweep of
+her feather broom. Quite alone, at the foot of the pulpit, was mother
+Brichet, praying in a very demonstrative fashion. She kept on her knees,
+and repeated the prayers in so loud a whisper that it seemed as if a
+swarm of bluebottles had taken possession of the nave.
+
+At the other end of the church near the confessional, Catherine held an
+infant in swaddling clothes. As it began to cry, she turned her back
+upon the altar, and tossed it up, and amused it with the bell-rope,
+which dangled just over its nose.
+
+'_Dominus vobiscum_,' said the priest, turning round, and spreading out
+his hands.
+
+'_Et cum spiritu tuo_,' responded Vincent.
+
+At that moment three big girls came into the church. They were too shy
+to go far up, though they jostled one another to get a better view of
+what was going on. They were three friends of Rosalie, who had dropped
+in for a minute or two on their way to the fields, curious as they were
+to hear what his reverence would say to the bride and bridegroom. They
+had big scissors hanging at their waists. At last they hid themselves
+behind the font, where they pinched each other and twisted themselves
+about, while trying to choke their bursts of laughter with their
+clenched fists.
+
+'Well,' whispered La Rousse, a finely built girl, with copper-coloured
+skin and hair, 'there won't be any scrimmage to get out of church when
+it's all over.'
+
+'Oh! old Bambousse is quite right,' murmured Lisa, a short dark girl,
+with gleaming eyes; 'when one has vines, one looks after them. Since his
+reverence so particularly desired to marry Rosalie, he can very well do
+it all alone.'
+
+The other girl, Babet, who was humpbacked, tittered. 'There's mother
+Brichet,' she said; 'she is always here. She prays for the whole family.
+Listen, do you hear how she's buzzing? All that will mean something in
+her pocket. She knows very well what she is about, I can tell you.'
+
+'She is playing the organ for them,' retorted La Rousse.
+
+At this all three burst into a laugh. La Teuse, in the distance,
+threatened them with her broom. At the altar, Abbe Mouret was taking the
+sacrament. As he went from the Epistle side towards Vincent, so that the
+water of ablution might be poured upon his thumb and fore-finger, Lisa
+said more softly: 'It's nearly over. He will begin to talk to them
+directly.'
+
+'Yes,' said La Rousse, 'and so big Fortune will still be able to go to
+his work, and Rosalie won't lose her day's pay at the vintage. It is
+very convenient to be married so early in the morning. He looks very
+sheepish, that big Fortune.'
+
+'Of course,' murmured Babet. 'It tires him, keeping so long on his
+knees. You may be sure that he has never knelt so long since his first
+communion.'
+
+But the girls' attention was suddenly distracted by the baby which
+Catherine was dangling in her arms. It wanted to get hold of the
+bell-rope, and was quite blue with rage, frantically stretching out
+its little hands and almost choking itself with crying.
+
+'Ah! so the youngster is there,' said La Rousse.
+
+The baby now burst into still louder wailing, and struggled like a
+little Imp.
+
+'Turn it over on its stomach, and let it suck,' said Babet to Catherine.
+
+Catherine lifted up her head, and began to laugh, with the shamelessness
+of a little minx. 'It's not at all amusing,' she said, giving the baby a
+shake. 'Be quiet, will you, little pig! My sister plumped it down on my
+knees.'
+
+'Naturally,' said Babet, mischievously. 'You could scarcely have
+expected her to give the brat to Monsieur le Cure to nurse.'
+
+At this sally, La Rousse almost fell over in a fit of laughter. She
+leaned against the wall, holding her sides with her hands. Lisa threw
+herself against her, and attempted to soothe her by pinching her back
+and shoulders; while Babet laughed with a hunchback's laugh, which
+grated on the ear like the sound of a saw.
+
+'If it hadn't been for the little one,' she continued, 'Monsieur le Cure
+would have lost all use for his holy water. Old Bambousse had made up
+his mind to marry Rosalie to young Laurent, of Figuieres.'
+
+However, the girls' merriment and their chatter now came to an end, for
+they saw La Teuse limping furiously towards them. At this the three big
+hussies felt alarmed, stepped back, and subsided into sedateness.
+
+'You worthless things!' hissed La Teuse. 'You come to talk a lot of
+filth here, do you? Aren't you ashamed of yourself, La Rousse? You ought
+to be there, on your knees, before the altar, like Rosalie. I will throw
+you outside if you stir again. Do you hear?'
+
+La Rousse's copper cheeks were tinged with a rising blush, and Babet
+glanced at her and tittered.
+
+'And you,' continued La Teuse, turning towards Catherine, 'just you
+leave that baby alone. You are pinching it on purpose to make it scream.
+Don't tell me you are not. Give it to me.'
+
+She took the child, hushed it in her arms for a moment, and then laid it
+upon a chair, where it went to sleep, peacefully like a cherub. The
+church then subsided into solemn quietness, disturbed only by the
+chattering of the sparrows on the rowan tree outside. At the altar,
+Vincent had carried the missal to the right again, and Abbe Mouret had
+just folded the corporal and slipped it within the burse. He was now
+saying the concluding prayers with a solemn earnestness, which neither
+the screams of the baby nor the giggling of the three girls had been
+able to disturb. He seemed to hear nothing of them, but to be wholly
+absorbed in the prayers which he was offering up to Heaven for the
+happiness of the pair whose union he had just blessed. The sky that
+morning was grey with a hazy heat, which veiled the sun. Through the
+broken windows a russet vapour streamed into the church, betokening a
+stormy day. Along the walls the gaudily coloured pictures of the
+Stations of the Cross displayed their red, blue, and yellow patches; at
+the bottom of the nave the dry woodwork of the gallery creaked and
+strained; and under the doorway the tall grass by the steps thrust
+ripening straw, all alive with little brown grasshoppers. The clock, in
+its wooden case, made a whirring noise, as though it were some
+consumptive trying to clear his throat, and then huskily struck
+half-past six.
+
+'_Ite, missa est_,' said the priest, turning round to the congregation.
+
+'_Deo gratias_,' responded Vincent.
+
+Then, having kissed the altar, Abbe Mouret once more turned round, and
+murmured over the bent heads of the newly married pair the final
+benediction: '_Deus Abraham, Deus Isaac, et Deus Jacob vobiscum sit_'
+--his voice dying away into a gentle whisper.
+
+'Now, he's going to address them,' said Babet to her friends.
+
+'He is very pale,' observed Lisa. 'He isn't a bit like Monsieur Caffin,
+whose fat face always seemed to be on the laugh. My little sister Rose
+says that she daren't tell him anything when she goes to confess.'
+
+'All the same,' murmured La Rousse, 'he's not ugly. His illness has aged
+him a little, but it seems to suit him. He has bigger eyes, and lines at
+the corners of his mouth which make him look like a man. Before he had
+the fever, he was too much like a girl.'
+
+'I believe he's got some great trouble,' said Babet. 'He looks as though
+he were pining away. His face is deadly pale, but how his eyes glitter!
+When he drops his eyelids, it is just as though he were doing it to
+extinguish the fire in his eyes.'
+
+La Teuse again shook her broom at them. 'Hush!' she hissed out, so
+energetically that it seemed as if a blast of wind had burst into the
+church.
+
+Meantime Abbe Mouret had collected himself, and he began, in a rather
+low voice:
+
+'My dear brother, my dear sister, you are joined together in Jesus. The
+institution of marriage symbolises the sacred union between Jesus and
+His Church. It is a bond which nothing can break; which God wills shall
+be eternal, so that man may not sever those whom Heaven has joined. In
+making you flesh of each other's flesh, and bone of each other's bone,
+God teaches you that it is your duty to walk side by side through life,
+a faithful couple, along the paths which He, in His omnipotence,
+appoints for you. And you must love each other with God-like love. The
+slightest ill-feeling between you will be disobedience to the Creator,
+Who has joined you together as a single body. Remain, then, for ever
+united, after the likeness of the Church, which Jesus has espoused, in
+giving to us all His body and blood.'
+
+Big Fortune and Rosalie sat listening, with their noses peaked up
+inquisitively.
+
+'What does he say?' asked Lisa, who was a little deaf.
+
+'Oh! he says what they all say,' answered La Rousse. 'He has a glib
+tongue, like all the priests have.'
+
+Abbe Mouret went on with his address, his eyes wandering over the heads
+of the newly wedded couple towards a shadowy corner of the church. And
+by degrees his voice became more flexible, and he put emotion into the
+words he spoke, words which he had formerly learned by heart from a
+manual intended for the use of young priests. He had turned slightly
+towards Rosalie, and whenever his memory failed him, he added sentences
+of his own:
+
+'My dear sister, submit yourself to your husband, as the Church submits
+itself to Jesus. Remember that you must leave everything to follow him,
+like a faithful handmaiden. You must give up father and mother, you must
+cleave only to your husband, and you must obey him that you may obey God
+also. And your yoke will be a yoke of love and peace. Be his comfort,
+his happiness, the perfume of his days of strength, the support of his
+days of weakness. Let him find you, as a grace, ever by his side. Let
+him have but to reach out his hand to find yours grasping it. It is thus
+that you will step along together, never losing your way, and that you
+will meet with happiness in the carrying out of the divine laws. Oh! my
+dear sister, my dear daughter, your humility will hear sweet fruit; it
+will give birth to all the domestic virtues, to the joys of the hearth,
+and the prosperity that attends a God-fearing family. Have for your
+husband the love of Rachel, the wisdom of Rebecca, the constant fidelity
+of Sarah. Tell yourself that a pure life is the source of all happiness.
+Pray to God each morning that He may give you strength to live as a
+woman who respects her responsibilities and duties; for the punishment
+you would otherwise incur is terrible: you would lose your love. Oh! to
+live loveless, to tear flesh from flesh, to belong no more to the one
+who is half of your very self, to live on in pain and agony, bereft of
+the one you have loved! In vain would you stretch out your arms to him;
+he would turn away from you. You would yearn for happiness, but you
+would find in your heart nothing but shame and bitterness. Hear me, my
+daughter, it is in your own conduct, in your obedience, in your purity,
+in your love, that God has established the strength of your union.'
+
+As Abbe Mouret spoke these words, there was a burst of laughter at the
+other end of the church. The baby had just woke up on the chair where La
+Teuse had laid it. But it was no longer in a bad temper. Having kicked
+itself free of its swaddling clothes, it was laughing merrily, and
+shaking its rosy little feet in the air. It was the sight of these
+little feet that made it laugh.
+
+Rosalie, who was beginning to find the priest's address rather tedious,
+turned her head to smile at the child. But, when she saw it kicking
+about on the chair, she grew alarmed, and cast an angry look at
+Catherine.
+
+'Oh! you can look at me as much as you like,' said Catherine. 'I'm not
+going to take it any more. It would only begin to cry again.'
+
+And she turned aside to ferret in an ant-hole at a corner of one of the
+stone flags under the gallery.
+
+'Monsieur Caffin didn't talk so long,' now remarked La Rousse. 'When he
+married Miette, he just gave her two taps on the cheek and told her to
+be good.'
+
+My dear brother,' resumed Abbe Mouret, turning towards big Fortune, 'it
+is God who, to-day, gives you a companion, for He does not wish that man
+should live alone. But, if He ordains that she shall be your servant, He
+demands from you that you shall be to her a master full of gentleness
+and love. You will love her, because she is part of your own flesh, of
+your own blood, and your own bone. You will protect her, because God has
+given you strong arms only that you may stretch them over her head in
+the hour of danger. Remember that she is entrusted to you, and that you
+cannot abuse her submission and weakness without sin. Oh! my dear
+brother, what proud happiness should be yours! Henceforth, you will no
+longer live in the selfish egotism of solitude. At all hours you will
+have a lovable duty before you. There is nothing better than to love,
+unless it be to protect those whom we love. Your heart will expand; your
+manly strength will increase a hundredfold. Oh! to be a support and
+stay, to have a love given into your keeping, to see a being sink her
+existence in yours and say, "Take me and do with me what you will! I
+trust myself wholly to you!" And may you be accursed if you ever abandon
+her! It would be a cowardly desertion which God would assuredly punish.
+From the moment she gives herself to you, she becomes yours for ever.
+Carry her rather in your arms, and set her not upon the ground until it
+be certain that she will be there in safety. Give up everything, my dear
+brother--'
+
+But here the Abbe's voice faltered, and only an indistinct murmur came
+from his lips. He had quite closed his eyes, his face was deathly white,
+and his voice betokened such deep distress that big Fortune himself shed
+tears without knowing why.
+
+'He hasn't recovered yet,' said Lisa. 'It is wrong of him to fatigue
+himself. See, there's Fortune crying!'
+
+'Men are softer-hearted than women,' murmured Babet.
+
+'He spoke very well, all the same,' remarked La Rousse. 'Those priests
+think of a lot of things that wouldn't occur to anybody else.'
+
+'Hush!' cried La Teuse, who was already making ready to extinguish the
+candles.
+
+But Abbe Mouret still stammered on, trying to utter a few more
+sentences. 'It is for this reason, my dear brother, my dear sister, that
+you must live in the Catholic Faith, which alone can ensure the peace of
+your hearth. Your families have taught you to love God, to pray to Him
+every morning and evening, to look only for the gifts of His mercy--'
+
+He was unable to finish. He turned round, took the chalice off the
+altar, and retired, with bowed head, into the vestry, preceded by
+Vincent, who almost let the cruets and napkin fall, in trying to see
+what Catherine might be doing at the end of the church.
+
+'Oh! the heartless creature!' said Rosalie, who left her husband to go
+and take her baby in her arms. The child laughed. She kissed it, and
+rearranged its swaddling clothes, while threatening Catherine with her
+fist. 'If it had fallen,' she cried out, 'I would have boxed your ears
+for you, nicely.'
+
+Big Fortune now came slouching along. The three girls stepped towards
+him, with compressed lips.
+
+'See how proud he is,' murmured Babet to the others. 'He is sure of
+inheriting old Bambousse's money now. I used to see him creeping along
+every night under the little wall with Rosalie.'
+
+Then they giggled, and big Fortune, standing there in front of them,
+laughed even louder than they did. He pinched La Rousse, and let Lisa
+jeer at him. He was a sturdy young blood, and cared nothing for anybody.
+The priest's address had annoyed him.
+
+'Hallo! mother, come on!' he called in his loud voice. But mother
+Brichet was begging at the vestry door. She stood there, tearful and
+wizen, before La Teuse, who was slipping some eggs into the pocket of
+her apron. Fortune didn't seem to feel the least sense of shame. He just
+winked and remarked: 'She is a knowing old card, my mother is. But then
+the Cure likes to see people at mass.'
+
+Meanwhile, Rosalie had grown calm again. Before leaving the church, she
+asked Fortune if he had begged the priest to come and bless their room,
+according to the custom of the country. So Fortune ran off to the
+vestry, striding heavily through the church, as if it were a field. He
+soon reappeared, shouting that his reverence would come. La Teuse, who
+was scandalised at the noise made by all these people, who seemed to
+think themselves in a public street, gently clapped her hands, and
+pushed them towards the door.
+
+'It is all over,' said she; 'go away and get to your work.'
+
+She thought they had all gone, when her eye caught sight of Catherine,
+whom Vincent had joined. They were bending anxiously over the ants'
+nest. Catherine was poking a long straw into the hole so roughly, that a
+swarm of frightened ants had rushed out upon the floor. Vincent
+declared, however, that she must get her straw right to the bottom if
+she wished to find the queen.
+
+'Ah! you young imps!' cried La Teuse, 'what are you after there? Can't
+you leave the poor little things alone? That is Mademoiselle Desiree's
+ants' nest. She would be nicely pleased if she saw you!'
+
+At this the children promptly took to their heels.
+
+
+
+                                 II
+
+Abbe Mouret, now wearing his cassock but still bareheaded, had come back
+to kneel at the foot of the altar. In the grey light that streamed
+through the window, his tonsure showed like a large livid spot amidst
+his hair; and a slight quiver, as if from cold, sped down his neck. With
+his hands tightly clasped he was praying earnestly, so absorbed in his
+devotions that he did not hear the heavy footsteps of La Teuse, who
+hovered around without daring to disturb him. She seemed to be grieved
+at seeing him bowed down there on his knees. For a moment, she thought
+that he was in tears, and thereupon she went behind the altar to watch
+him. Since his return, she had never liked to leave him in the church
+alone, for one evening she had found him lying in a dead faint upon the
+flagstones, with icy lips and clenched teeth, like a corpse.
+
+'Come in, mademoiselle!' she said to Desiree, who was peeping through
+the vestry-doorway. 'He is still here, and he will lay himself up. You
+know you are the only person that he will listen to.'
+
+'It is breakfast-time,' she replied softly, 'and I am very hungry.'
+
+Then she gently sidled up to the priest, passed an arm round his neck,
+and kissed him.
+
+'Good morning, brother,' she said. 'Do you want to make me die of hunger
+this morning?'
+
+The face he turned upon her was so intensely sad, that she kissed him
+again on both his cheeks. He was emerging from agony. Then, on
+recognising her, he tried to put her from him, but she kept hold of one
+of his hands and would not release it. She would scarcely allow him to
+cross himself, but insisted upon leading him away.
+
+'Come! Come! for I am very hungry. You must be hungry too.'
+
+La Teuse had laid out the breakfast beneath two big mulberry trees,
+whose spreading branches formed a sheltering roof at the bottom of the
+little garden. The sun, which had at last succeeded in dissipating the
+stormy-looking vapours of early morning, was warming the beds of
+vegetables, while the mulberry-trees cast a broad shadow over the
+rickety table, on which were laid two cups of milk and some thick slices
+of bread.
+
+'You see how nice it looks,' said Desiree, delighted at breakfasting in
+the fresh air.
+
+She was already cutting some of the bread into strips, which she ate
+with eager appetite. And as she saw La Teuse still standing in front of
+them, she said, 'Why don't you eat something?'
+
+'I shall, presently,' the old servant answered. 'My soup is warming.'
+
+Then, after a moment's silence, looking with admiration at the girl's
+big bites, she said to the priest: 'It is quite a pleasure to see her.
+Doesn't she make you feel hungry, Monsieur le Cure? You should force
+yourself.'
+
+Abbe Mouret smiled as he glanced at his sister. 'Yes, yes,' he murmured;
+'she gets on famously, she grows fatter every day.'
+
+'That's because I eat,' said Desiree. 'If you would eat you would get
+fat, too. Are you ill again? You look very melancholy. I don't want to
+have it all over again, you know. I was so very lonely when they took
+you away to cure you.'
+
+'She is right,' said La Teuse. 'You don't behave reasonably, Monsieur le
+Cure. You can't expect to be strong, living, as you do, on two or three
+crumbs a day, as though you were a bird. You don't make blood; and
+that's why you are so pale. Don't you feel ashamed of keeping as thin as
+a lath when we are so fat; we who are only women? People will begin to
+think that we gobble up everything and leave you nothing but the empty
+plates.'
+
+Then both La Teuse and Desiree, brimful of health and strength, scolded
+him affectionately. His eyes seemed very large and bright, but empty,
+expressionless. He was still gently smiling.
+
+'I am not ill,' he said; 'I have nearly finished my milk.' He had
+swallowed two mouthfuls of it, but had not touched the bread.
+
+'The animals, now,' said Desiree, thoughtfully, 'seem to get on much
+more comfortably than we do. The fowls never have headaches, have they?
+The rabbits grow as fat as ever one wants them to be. And you never saw
+my pig looking sad.'
+
+Then, turning towards her brother, she went on with an air of rapture:
+
+'I have named it Matthew, because it is so like that fat man who brings
+the letters. It is growing so big and strong. It is very unkind of you
+to refuse to come and look at it as you always do. You will come to see
+it some day, won't you?'
+
+While she was thus talking she had laid hold of her brother's share of
+bread, and was eating away at it. She had already finished one piece,
+and was beginning the second, when La Teuse became aware of what she was
+doing.
+
+'That doesn't belong to you, that bread! You are actually stealing his
+food from him now!'
+
+'Let her have it,' said Abbe Mouret, gently. 'I shouldn't have touched
+it myself. Eat it all, my dear, eat it all.'
+
+For a moment Desiree fell into confusion, with her eyes fixed upon the
+bread, whilst she struggled to check her rising tears. Then she began to
+laugh, and finished the slice.
+
+'My cow,' said she, continuing her remarks, 'is never as sad as you are.
+You were not here when uncle Pascal gave her to me, on the promise that
+I would be a good girl, or you would have seen how pleased she was when
+I kissed her for the first time.'
+
+She paused to listen. A cock crowed in the yard, and a great uproar
+followed, with flapping of wings and cackling, grunting, and hoarse
+cries as if the whole yard were in a state of commotion.
+
+'Ah! you know,' resumed Desiree, clapping her hands, 'she must be in
+calf now. I took her to the bull at Beage, three leagues from here.
+There are very few bulls hereabouts, you know.'
+
+La Teuse shrugged her shoulders, and glanced at the priest with an
+expression of annoyance.
+
+'It would be much better, mademoiselle,' said she, 'if you were to go
+and quiet your fowls. They all seem to be murdering one another.'
+
+Indeed, the uproar in the yard had now become so great that the girl was
+already hurrying off with a great rustling of her petticoats, when the
+priest called her back. 'The milk, my dear; you have not finished the
+milk.'
+
+He held out his cup to her, which he had scarcely touched. And she came
+back and drank the milk without the slightest scruple, in spite of La
+Teuse's angry look. Then she again set off for the poultry-yard, where
+they soon heard her reducing the fowls to peace and order. She had,
+perhaps, sat down in the midst of them, for she could be heard gently
+humming as though she were trying to lull them to sleep.
+
+
+
+                                III
+
+'Now my soup is too hot!' grumbled La Teuse, as she returned from the
+kitchen with a basin, from which a wooden spoon was projecting.
+
+She placed herself just in front of Abbe Mouret, and began to eat very
+cautiously from the edge of the spoon. She wanted to enliven the Abbe
+and to draw him out of his melancholy moodiness. Ever since he had
+returned from the Paradou, he had declared himself well again, and had
+never complained. Often, indeed, he smiled in so soft and sweet a
+fashion, that his fever seemed to have increased his saintliness, at
+least so thought the villagers. But, at intervals, he had fits of gloomy
+silence, and appeared to be suffering torture which he strove to bear
+uncomplainingly. It was a mute agony which bore down upon him, and, for
+hours at a time, left him stupefied, a prey to a frightful inward
+struggle, the violence of which could only be guessed by the sweat of
+anguish that streamed down his face.
+
+At such times La Teuse refused to leave him, and overwhelmed him with a
+torrent of gossip, until he had gradually recovered tranquillity by
+crushing the rebellion of his blood. On that particular morning, the old
+servant foresaw a more grievous attack than usual, and poured forth an
+amazing flood of talk, while continuing her wary manoeuvres with the
+spoon, which threatened to burn her tongue.
+
+'Well, well,' said she, 'one has to live among a lot of wild beasts to
+see such goings-on. Would any one ever think in a decent village of
+being married by candlelight? It shows what a poor sort these Artauds
+are. When I was in Normandy, I used to see weddings that threw every one
+into commotion for a couple of leagues round. They would feast for three
+whole days. The priest would be there, and the mayor, too; and at the
+marriage of one of my cousins, all the firemen came as well. And didn't
+they have a fine time of it! But to make a priest get up before sunrise
+and marry people before even the chickens have left their roost, why,
+there's no sense in it! If I had been your reverence, I should have
+refused to do it. You haven't had your proper sleep, and you may have
+caught cold in the church. It is that which has upset you. Besides which
+it would be better to marry brute beasts than that Rosalie and her ugly
+lout. That brat of theirs dirtied one of the chairs.--But you ought to
+tell me when you feel poorly, and I could make you something warm.--Eh!
+Monsieur le Cure, speak to me!'
+
+He answered, in a feeble voice, that he was quite well, and only needed
+a little fresh air. He had just leant against one of the mulberry-trees,
+and was breathing rather quickly, as if faint.
+
+'Oh! all right,' went on La Teuse, 'do just as you like. Go on marrying
+people when you haven't the strength for it, and when you know very well
+that it's bound to upset you. I knew how it would be; I told you so
+yesterday. And if you took my advice, you wouldn't stay where you are.
+The smell of the yard is bad for you. It is frightful just now. I can't
+imagine what Mademoiselle Desiree can be stirring about there. She's
+singing away, and doesn't seem to mind it at all. Ah! that reminds me of
+something I want to tell you. You know that I did all I could to keep
+her from taking the cow to Beage; but she's like you, obstinate, and
+will go her own way. Fortunately, however, for her, she's none the worse
+for it. She delights to be amongst the animals and their young ones. But
+come now, your reverence, do be reasonable. Let me take you to your
+room. You must lie down and rest a little. What, you don't want to!
+Well, then, so much the worse for you, if you suffer! Besides, it's
+absurd to keep one's worries locked up in one's heart till they stifle
+one.'
+
+Then, in her indignation, she hastily swallowed a big spoonful of soup
+at the risk of burning her throat. She rattled the handle of the spoon
+against the bowl, muttering and grumbling to herself.
+
+'There never was such a man,' said she. 'He would die rather than say a
+word. But it's all very well for him to keep silent. I know quite
+enough, and it doesn't require much cleverness to guess the rest. Well!
+well! let him keep it to himself. I dare say it is better.'
+
+La Teuse was jealous. Dr. Pascal had had a tremendous fight with her in
+order to get her patient away at the time when he had come to the
+conclusion that the young priest's case would be quite hopeless if he
+should remain at the parsonage. He had then explained to her that the
+sound of the bell would aggravate and intensify Serge's fever, that the
+religious pictures and statuettes scattered about his room would fill
+his brain with hallucinations, and that entirely new surroundings were
+necessary if he was to be restored to health and strength and
+peacefulness of mind. She, however, had vigorously shaken her head, and
+declared that her 'dear child' would nowhere find a better nurse than
+herself. Still, she had ended by yielding. She had even resigned herself
+to seeing him go to the Paradou, though protesting against this
+selection of the doctor's, which astonished her. But she retained a
+strong feeling of hatred for the Paradou; and she was hurt by the
+silence which Abbe Mouret maintained as to the time he had spent there.
+She had frequently laid all sorts of unsuccessful traps to induce him to
+talk of it. That morning, exasperated by his ghastly pallor, and his
+obstinacy in suffering in silence, she ended by waving her spoon about
+and crying:
+
+'You should go back yonder again, Monsieur le Cure, if you were so happy
+there--I dare say there is some one there who would nurse you better
+than I do.'
+
+It was the first time she had ventured upon a direct allusion to her
+suspicions. The blow was so painful to the priest that he could not
+check a slight cry, as he raised his grief-racked countenance. At this
+La Teuse's kindly heart was filled with regret.
+
+'Ah!' she murmured, 'it is all the fault of your uncle Pascal. I told
+him what it would be. But those clever men cling so obstinately to their
+own ideas. Some of them would kill you, just for the sake of rummaging
+in your body afterwards--It made me so angry that I would never speak of
+it to any one. Yes, Monsieur le Cure, you have me to thank that nobody
+knew where you were; I was so angry about it. I thought it abominable!
+When Abbe Guyot, from Saint-Eutrope, who took your place during your
+absence, came to say mass here on Sundays, I told him all sorts of
+stories. I said you had gone to Switzerland. I don't even know where
+Switzerland is.--Well! well! I surely don't want to say anything to pain
+you, but it was certainly over yonder that you got your trouble. Very
+finely they've cured you indeed! It would have been very much better if
+they had left you with me. I shouldn't have thought of trying to turn
+your head.'
+
+Abbe Mouret, whose brow was again lowered, made no attempt to interrupt
+her. La Teuse had seated herself upon the ground a few yards away from
+him, in order if possible to catch his eye. And she went on again in her
+motherly way, delighted at his seeming complacency in listening to her.
+
+'You would never let me tell you about Abbe Caffin. As soon as I began
+to speak of him, you always made me stop. Well, well; Abbe Caffin had
+had his troubles in my part of the world, at Canteleu. And yet he was a
+very holy man, with an irreproachable character. But, you see, he was a
+man of very delicate taste, and liked soft pretty things. Well, there
+was a young party who was always prowling round him, the daughter of a
+miller, whom her parents had sent to a boarding-school. Well, to put it
+shortly, what was likely to happen did happen. When the story got about,
+all the neighbourhood was very indignant with the Abbe. But he managed
+to escape to Rouen, and poured out his grief to the Archbishop there.
+Then he was sent here. The poor man was punished quite enough by being
+made to live in this hole of a place. I heard of the girl afterwards.
+She had married a cattle-dealer, and was very happy.'
+
+La Teuse, delighted at having been allowed to tell her story,
+interpreted the priest's silence as an encouragement to continue her
+gossiping. So she drew a little nearer to him and said:
+
+'He was very friendly with me, was good Monsieur Caffin, and often spoke
+to me of his sin. It won't keep him out of heaven, I'm sure. He can rest
+quite peacefully out there under the turf, for he never harmed any one.
+For my part, I can't understand why people should get so angry with a
+priest when such a thing unhappily befalls him. Of course it's wrong,
+and likely to anger God; but then one can confess and repent, and get
+absolution. Isn't it so, your reverence, that when one truly repents,
+one is saved in spite of one's sins?'
+
+Abbe Mouret slowly raised his head. By a supreme effort he had overcome
+his agony, and though his face was still very pale, he exclaimed in a
+firm voice, 'One should never sin; never! never!'
+
+'Ah! sir,' cried the old servant, 'you are too proud and reserved. It is
+not a nice thing, that pride of yours.--If I were in your place, I would
+not harden myself like that. I would talk of what was troubling me, and
+not try to rend my heart in pieces. You should reconcile yourself to the
+separation gradually. The worry wears off little by little. But, instead
+of that, you won't even allow people's names to be uttered. You forbid
+them to be mentioned. It is as though they were dead. Since you came
+back, I have not dared to tell you the least bit of news. Well, well, I
+am going to speak now, and I shall tell you all I know; because I see
+quite well that it is all this silence that is preying upon your heart.'
+
+He looked at her sternly, and lifted his finger to silence her.
+
+'Yes, yes,' she went on, 'I get news from over yonder, very often
+indeed, and I am going to tell it to you. To begin with, there is some
+one there who is no happier than you are.'
+
+'Silence! Silence!' said Abbe Mouret, summoning all his strength to rise
+and move away.
+
+But La Teuse also rose and barred his way with her bulky figure. She was
+angry, and cried out:
+
+'There, you see, you want to be off already! But you are going to listen
+to me. You know quite well that I am not over fond of the people yonder,
+don't you? If I talk to you about them, it is for your own good. Some
+people say that I am jealous. Well, one day I mean to take you over
+there. You would be with me, and you wouldn't be afraid of any harm
+happening. Will you go?'
+
+He motioned her away from him with his hands, and his face was calm
+again as he said:
+
+'I desire nothing. I wish to know nothing. There is high mass to-morrow.
+You must see that the altar is made ready.'
+
+Then, as he walked away, he added, smiling:
+
+'Don't be uneasy, my good Teuse. I am stronger than you imagine. I shall
+be able to cure myself without any one's assistance.'
+
+With these words he went off, bearing himself sturdily, with his head
+erect, for he had vanquished his feelings. His cassock rustled very
+gently against the borders of thyme. La Teuse, who for a moment had
+remained rooted to the spot where she was standing, sulkily picked up
+her basin and wooden spoon. Then, shrugging her big shoulders again and
+again, she mumbled between her teeth:
+
+'That's all bravado of his. He imagines that he is differently made from
+other men, just because he is a priest. Well, as a matter of fact, he is
+very firm and determined. I have known some who wouldn't have had to be
+wheedled so long. And he is quite capable of crushing his heart, just as
+one might crush a flea. It must be the Almighty who gives him his
+strength.'
+
+As she returned to the kitchen she saw Abbe Mouret standing by the gate
+of the farmyard. Desiree had stopped him there to make him feel a capon
+which she had been fattening for some weeks past. He told her pleasantly
+that it was very heavy, and the big child chuckled with glee.
+
+'Ah! well,' said La Teuse in a fury, 'that bird has got to crush its
+heart too. But then it can't help itself.'
+
+
+
+                                 IV
+
+Abbe Mouret spent his days at the parsonage. He shunned the long walks
+which he had been wont to take before his illness. The scorched soil of
+Les Artaud, the ardent heat of that valley where the vines could never
+even grow straight, distressed him. On two occasions, in the morning, he
+had attempted to go out and read his breviary as he strolled along the
+road; but he had not gone beyond the village. He had returned home,
+overcome by the perfumes, the heat, the breadth of the landscape. It was
+only in the evening, in the cool twilight air, that he ventured to
+saunter a little in front of the church, on the terrace which led to the
+graveyard. In the afternoons, to fill up his time, and satisfy his
+craving for some kind of occupation, he had imposed upon himself the
+task of pasting paper over the broken panes of the church windows, This
+had kept him for a week mounted on a ladder, arranging his paper panes
+with great exactness, and laying on the paste with the most scrupulous
+care in order to avoid any mess.
+
+La Teuse stood at the foot of the ladder and watched him. And Desiree
+urged that he must not fill up all the windows, or else the sparrows
+would no longer be able to get through. To please her, the priest left a
+pane or two in each window unfilled. Then, having completed these
+repairs, he was seized with the ambition of decorating the church,
+without summoning to his aid either mason or carpenter or painter. He
+would do it all himself. This sort of handiwork would amuse him, he
+said, and help to bring back his strength. Uncle Pascal encouraged him
+every time he called at the parsonage, assuring him that such exercise
+and fatigue were better than all the drugs in the world. And so Abbe
+Mouret began to stop up the holes in the walls with plaster, to drive
+fresh nails into the disjoined altars, and to crush and mix paints,
+in order that he might put a new coating on the pulpit and
+confessional-box. It was quite an event in the district, and folks
+talked of it for a couple of leagues round. Peasants would come and
+stand gazing, with their hands behind their backs, at his reverence's
+work. The Abbe himself, with a blue apron tied round his waist, and his
+hands all soiled with his labour, became absorbed in it, and used it as
+an excuse for no longer going out. He spent his days in the midst of his
+repairs, and was more tranquil than he had been before; almost cheerful,
+indeed, as he forgot the outer world, the trees and the sunshine and the
+warm breezes, which had formerly disturbed him so much.
+
+'Monsieur le Cure is free to do as he pleases, since the parish hasn't
+got to find the money,' said old Bambousse, who came round every evening
+to see how the work was progressing.
+
+Abbe Mouret spent all his savings on it. Some of his decorations,
+indeed, were so awkward that they would have excited many people's
+smiles. The replastering of the stonework soon tired him: so he
+contented himself with patching up the church walls all round to a
+height of some six feet from the ground. La Teuse mixed the plaster.
+When she talked of repairing the parsonage as well, for she was
+continually fearing that it would topple down on their heads, he told
+her that he did not think he could manage it, that a regular workman
+would be necessary; a reply which led to a terrible quarrel between
+them. La Teuse said it was quite ridiculous to go on ornamenting the
+church, where nobody slept, while their bedrooms were in such a crazy
+condition, for she was quite sure they would all be found, one morning,
+crushed to death by the fallen ceilings.
+
+'I shall end by bringing my bed here, and placing it behind the altar,'
+she grumbled. 'I feel quite terrified sometimes at night.'
+
+However, when the plaster was all used up, she said no more about
+repairing the parsonage. The painting which the priest executed quite
+delighted her. It was the chief charm of the improvements. The Abbe, who
+had repaired the woodwork everywhere with bits of boards, took
+particular pleasure in spreading his big brush, dipped in bright yellow
+paint, over all this woodwork. The gentle, up-and-down motion of the
+brush lulled him, left him thoughtless for hours whilst he gazed on the
+oily streaks of paint. When everything was quite yellow, the pulpit, the
+confessional-box, the altar rails, even the clock-case itself, he
+ventured to try his hand at imitation marble work by way of touching up
+the high altar. Then, growing bolder, he painted it all over. Glistening
+with white and yellow and blue, it was pronounced superb. People who had
+not been to mass for fifty years streamed into the church to see it.
+
+And now the paint was dry. All that remained for Abbe Mouret to do was
+to edge the panels with brown beading. So, that afternoon, he set to
+work at it, wishing to get it done by evening; for on the following day,
+as he had reminded La Teuse, there would be high mass. She was there
+ready to arrange the altar. She had already placed on the credence the
+candlesticks and the silver cross, the porcelain vases filled with
+artificial roses, and the laced cloth which was only used on great
+festivals. The beading, however, proved so difficult of execution, that
+it was not completed till late in the evening. It was growing quite dark
+as the Abbe finished his last panel.
+
+'It will be really too beautiful,' said a rough voice from amidst the
+greyish gloom of twilight which was filling the church.
+
+La Teuse, who had knelt down to get a better view of the Abbe's brush as
+it glided along his rule, started with alarm.
+
+'Ah! it's Brother Archangias,' she said, turning round. 'You came in by
+the sacristy then? You gave me quite a turn. Your voice seemed to sound
+from under the floor.'
+
+Abbe Mouret had resumed his work, after greeting the Brother with a
+slight nod. The Brother remained standing there in silence, with his fat
+hands clasped in front of his cassock. Then, shrugging his shoulders, as
+he observed with what scrupulous care the priest sought to make his
+beading perfectly straight, he repeated:
+
+'It will be really too beautiful.'
+
+La Teuse, who knelt near by in ecstasy, started again.
+
+'Dear me!' she said, 'I had quite forgotten you were there. You really
+ought to cough before you speak. You have a voice that comes on one so
+suddenly that one might think it was a voice from the grave.'
+
+She rose up and drew back a little the better to admire the Abbe's work.
+
+'Why too beautiful?' she asked. 'Nothing can be too beautiful when it is
+done for the Almighty. If his reverence had only had some gold, he would
+have done it with gold, I'm sure.'
+
+When the priest had finished, she hastened to change the altar-cloth,
+taking the greatest care not to smudge the beading. Then she arranged
+the cross, the candlesticks, and the vases symmetrically. Abbe Mouret
+had gone to lean against the wooden screen which separated the choir
+from the nave, by the side of Brother Archangias. Not a word passed
+between them. Their eyes were fixed upon the silver crucifix, which, in
+the increasing gloom, still cast some glimmer of light on the feet and
+the left side and the right temple of the big Christ. When La Teuse had
+finished, she came down towards them, triumphantly.
+
+'Doesn't it look lovely?' she asked. 'Just you see what a crowd there
+will be at mass to-morrow! Those heathens will only come to God's house
+when they think He is well-to-do. Now, Monsieur le Cure, we must do as
+much for the Blessed Virgin's altar.'
+
+'Waste of money!' growled Brother Archangias.
+
+But La Teuse flew into a tantrum; and, as Abbe Mouret remained silent,
+she led them both before the altar of the Virgin, pushing them and
+dragging them by their cassocks.
+
+'Just look at it,' said she; 'it is too shabby for anything, now that
+the high altar is so smart. It looks as though it had never been painted
+at all. However much I may rub it of a morning, the dust sticks to it.
+It is quite black; it is filthy. Do you know what people will say about
+you, your reverence? They will say that you care nothing for the Blessed
+Virgin; that's what they'll say.'
+
+'Well, what of it?' queried Brother Archangias.
+
+La Teuse looked at him, half suffocated by indignation.
+
+'What of it? It would be sinful, of course,' she muttered. 'This altar
+is like a neglected tomb in a graveyard. If it were not for me, the
+spiders would spin their webs across it, and moss would soon grow over
+it. From time to time, when I can spare a bunch of flowers, I give it to
+the Virgin. All the flowers in our garden used to be for her once.'
+
+She had mounted the altar steps, and she took up two withered bunches of
+flowers, which had been left there, forgotten.
+
+'See! it is just as it is in the graveyards,' she said, throwing the
+flowers at Abbe Mouret's feet.
+
+He picked them up, without replying. It was quite dark now, and Brother
+Archangias stumbled about amongst the chairs and nearly fell. He growled
+and muttered some angry words, in which the names of Jesus and Mary
+recurred. When La Teuse, who had gone for a lamp, returned into the
+church, she asked the priest:
+
+'So I can put the brushes and pots away in the attic, then?'
+
+'Yes,' he answered. 'I have finished. We will see about the rest later
+on.'
+
+She walked away in front of them, carrying all the things with her, and
+keeping silence, lest she should say too much. And as Abbe Mouret had
+kept the withered bunches of flowers in his hand, Brother Archangias
+said to him, as they passed the farmyard: 'Throw those things away.'
+
+The Abbe took a few steps more, with downcast head; and then over the
+palings he flung the flowers upon a manure-heap.
+
+
+
+                                 V
+
+The Brother, who had already had his own meal, seated himself astride a
+chair, while the priest dined. Since Serge's return to Les Artaud, the
+Brother had thus spent most of his evenings at the parsonage; but never
+before had he imposed his presence upon the other in so rough a fashion.
+He stamped on the tiled floor with his heavy boots, his voice thundered
+and he smote the furniture, whilst he related how he had whipped some of
+his pupils that morning, or expounded his moral principles in terms as
+stern, as uncompromising as bludgeon-blows. Then feeling bored, he
+suggested that he and La Teuse should have a game at cards. They had
+endless bouts of 'Beggar-my-neighbour' together, that being the only
+game which La Teuse had ever been able to learn. Abbe Mouret would
+smilingly glance at the first few cards flung on the table and would
+then gradually sink into reverie, remaining for hours forgetful of his
+self-restraint, oblivious of his surroundings, beneath the suspicious
+glances of Brother Archangias.
+
+That evening La Teuse felt so cross that she had talked of going to bed
+as soon as the cloth was removed. The Brother, however, wanted his game
+of cards. So he caught hold of her shoulders and sat her down, so
+roughly that the chair creaked beneath her. And forthwith he began to
+shuffle the cards. Desiree, who hated him, had gone off carrying her
+dessert, which she generally took upstairs with her every evening to eat
+in bed.
+
+'I want the red cards,' said La Teuse.
+
+Then the struggle began. The old woman at first won some of the
+Brother's best cards. But before long two aces fell together on the
+table.
+
+'Here's a battle!' she cried, wild with excitement.
+
+She threw down a nine, which rather alarmed her, but as the Brother, in
+his turn, only put down a seven, she picked up the cards with a
+triumphant air. At the end of half an hour, however, she had only gained
+two aces, so that the chances remained fairly equal. And a quarter of an
+hour later she lost an ace. The knaves and kings and queens were
+perpetually coming and going as the battle furiously progressed.
+
+'It's a splendid game, eh?' said Brother Archangias, turning towards
+Abbe Mouret.
+
+But when he saw him sitting there, so absorbed in his reverie, with such
+a gentle smile playing unconsciously round his lips, he roughly raised
+his voice:
+
+'Why, Monsieur le Cure, you are not paying any attention to us! It isn't
+polite of you. We are only playing on your account. We were trying to
+amuse you. Come and watch the game. It would do you more good than
+dozing and dreaming away there. Where were you just now?'
+
+The priest started. He said nothing, but with quivering eyelids tried to
+force himself to look at the game. The play went on vigorously. La Teuse
+won her ace back, and then lost it again. On some evenings they would
+fight in this way over the aces for quite four hours, and often they
+would go off to bed, angry at having failed to bring the contest to a
+decisive issue.
+
+'But, dear me! I've only just remembered it!' suddenly cried La Teuse,
+who greatly feared that she was going to be beaten. 'His reverence has
+to go out to-night. He promised Fortune and Rosalie that he would go to
+bless their room, according to the custom. Make haste, Monsieur le Cure!
+The Brother will go with you.'
+
+Abbe Mouret had already risen from his chair, and was looking for his
+hat. But Brother Archangias, still holding his cards, flew into a
+tantrum: 'Oh! don't bother about it,' said he. 'What does it want to be
+blessed for that pigsty of theirs? It is a custom that you should do
+away with. I can't see any sense in it. Stay here and let us finish the
+game. That is much the best thing to do.'
+
+'No,' said the priest, 'I promised to go. Those good people might feel
+hurt if I didn't. You stay here and play your game out while you are
+waiting for me.'
+
+La Teuse glanced uneasily at Brother Archangias.
+
+'Well, yes, I will stay here,' cried the Brother. 'It is really too
+absurd.'
+
+But before Abbe Mouret could open the door, he flung his cards on the
+table and rose to follow him. Then half turning back he called to La
+Teuse:
+
+'I should have won. Leave the cards as they are, and we will play the
+game out to-morrow.'
+
+'Oh! they are all mixed now,' answered the old servant, who had lost no
+time in shuffling them together. 'Did you suppose that I was going to
+put your hand away under a glass case? And, besides, I might very well
+have won, for I still had an ace left.'
+
+A few strides brought Brother Archangias up with Abbe Mouret, who was
+walking down the narrow path that led to the village. The Brother had
+undertaken the task of keeping watch over the Abbe's movements. He
+incessantly played the spy upon him, accompanying him everywhere, or, if
+he could not go in person, sending some school urchin to follow him.
+With that terrible laugh of his, he was wont to remark that he was
+'God's gendarme.'
+
+And, in truth, the Abbe seemed like a culprit ever guarded by the black
+shadow of the Brother's cassock; a culprit to be treated distrustfully,
+since in his weakness he might well lapse into fresh crime were he left
+free from surveillance for a single moment. Thus he was watched and
+guarded with all the spiteful eagerness that some jealous old maid might
+have displayed, the overreaching zeal of a gaoler who might carry
+precautions so far as to exclude even such rays of light as might creep
+through the chinks of the prison-house. Brother Archangias was always on
+the watch to keep out the sunlight, to prevent even a whiff of air from
+entering, to shut up his prison so completely that nothing from outside
+could gain access to it. He noted the Abbe's slightest fits of weakness,
+and by his glance divined his tender thoughts, which with a word he
+pitilessly crushed, as though they were poisonous vermin. The priest's
+intervals of silence, his smiles, the paling of his brow, the faint
+quivering of his limbs, were all noted by the Brother. But he never
+spoke openly of the transgression. His presence alone was a sufficient
+reproach. The manner in which he uttered certain words imparted to them
+all the sting of a whip stroke. With a mere gesture he expressed his
+utter disgust for the priest's sin. Like one of those betrayed husbands
+who enjoy torturing their wives with cruel allusions, he contented
+himself with recalling the scene at the Paradou, in an indirect fashion,
+by some word or phrase which sufficed to annihilate the Abbe, whenever
+the latter's flesh rebelled.
+
+It was nearly ten o'clock and most of the villagers of Les Artaud had
+retired to rest. But from a brightly lighted house at the far end, near
+the mill, there still came sounds of merriment. While keeping the best
+rooms for his own use, old Bambousse had given a corner of his house to
+his daughter and son-in-law. They were all assembled there, drinking a
+last glass, while waiting for the priest.
+
+'They are drunk,' growled Brother Archangias. 'Don't you hear the row
+they are making?'
+
+Abbe Mouret made no reply. It was a lovely night and all looked bluish
+in the moonlight, which lent to the distant part of the valley the
+aspect of a sleeping lake. The priest slackened his pace that he might
+the more fully enjoy the charm of that soft radiance, and now and then
+he even stopped as he came upon some expanse of light, experiencing the
+delightful quiver which the proximity of fresh water brings one on a hot
+day. But the Brother continued striding along, grumbling and calling
+him.
+
+'Come along; come along! It isn't good to loiter out of doors at this
+time of night. You would be much better in bed.'
+
+All at once, however, just as they were entering the village, Archangias
+himself stopped short in the middle of the road. He was looking towards
+the heights, where the white lines of the roads vanished amidst black
+patches of pine-woods, and he growled to himself, like a dog that scents
+danger.
+
+'Who can be coming down so late?' he muttered.
+
+But the priest, who neither saw nor heard anything, was now, in his
+turn, anxious to press on.
+
+'Stay! stay! there he is,' eagerly added Brother Archangias. 'He has
+just turned the corner. See! he is in the moonlight now. One can see him
+plainly. It is a tall man, with a stick.'
+
+Then, after a moment's silence, he resumed, in a voice husky with fury:
+'It is he, that beggar! I felt sure it was!'
+
+Thereupon, the new-comer having now reached the bottom of the hill, Abbe
+Mouret saw that it was Jeanbernat. In spite of his eighty years, the old
+man set his feet down with such force, that his heavy, nailed boots sent
+sparks flying from the flints on the road. And he walked along as
+upright as an oak, without the aid of his stick, which he carried across
+his shoulder like a musket.
+
+'Ah! the villain!' stammered the Brother, still standing motionless.
+'May the fiend light all the blazes of hell under his feet!'
+
+The priest, who felt greatly disturbed, and despaired of inducing his
+companion to come on, turned round to continue his journey, hoping that,
+by a quick walk to the Bambousses' house, he might yet manage to avoid
+Jeanbernat. But he had not taken five strides before he heard the
+bantering voice of the old man close behind him.
+
+'Hie! Cure! wait for me. Are you afraid of me?'
+
+And as Abbe Mouret stopped, he came up and continued: 'Ah! those
+cassocks of yours are tiresome things, aren't they? They prevent your
+getting along too quickly. It's such a fine clear night, too, that one
+can recognise you by your gown a long way off. When I was right at the
+top of the hill, I said to myself, "Surely that is the little priest
+down yonder." Oh! yes, I still have very good eyes. . . . Well, so you
+never come to see us now?'
+
+'I have had so much to do,' murmured the priest, who had turned very
+pale.
+
+'Well, well, every one's free to please himself. If I've mentioned the
+matter, it's only because I want you to know that I don't bear you any
+grudge for being a priest. We wouldn't even talk about your religion,
+it's all one and the same to me. But the little one thinks that it's I
+who prevents your coming. I said to her, "The priest is an idiot," and I
+think so, indeed. Did I try to eat you during your illness? Why, I
+didn't even go upstairs to see you. Every one's free, you know.'
+
+He spoke on in the most unconcerned manner, pretending that he did not
+notice the presence of Brother Archangias; but as the latter suddenly
+broke into an angry grunt, he added, 'Why, Cure, so you bring your pig
+out with you?'
+
+'Take care, you bandit!' hissed the Brother, clenching his fists.
+
+Jeanbernat, whose stick was still raised, then pretended to recognise
+him.
+
+'Hands off!' he cried. 'Ah! it's you, you soul-saver! I ought to have
+known you by your smell. We have a little account to settle together,
+remember. I have sworn to cut off your ears in the middle of your
+school. It will amuse the children you are poisoning.'
+
+The Brother fell back before the raised staff, a flood of abuse rising
+to his lips; but he began to stammer and went on disjointedly:
+
+'I will set the gendarmes after you, scoundrel! You spat on the church;
+I saw you. You give the plague to the poor people who merely pass your
+door. At Saint-Eutrope you made a girl die by forcing her to chew a
+consecrated wafer which you had stolen. At Beage you went and dug up the
+bodies of little dead children and carried them away on your back. You
+are an old sorcerer! Everybody knows it, you scoundrel! You are the
+disgrace of the district. Whoever strangles you will gain heaven for the
+deed.'
+
+The old man listened with a sneer, twirling the while his staff between
+his fingers. And between the Brother's successive insults he ejaculated
+in an undertone:
+
+'Go on, go on; relieve yourself, you viper. I'll break your back for you
+by-and-by.'
+
+Abbe Mouret tried to interfere, but Brother Archangias pushed him away,
+exclaiming: 'You are led by him yourself! Didn't he make you trample
+upon the cross? Deny it, if you dare!' Then again, turning to
+Jeanbernat, he yelled: 'Ah! Satan, you must have chuckled and no mistake
+when you held a priest in your grasp! May Heaven curse those who abetted
+you in that sacrilege! What was it you did, at night, while he slept?
+You came and moistened his tonsure with your saliva, eh? so that his
+hair might grow more quickly. And then you breathed upon his chin and
+his cheeks that his beard might grow a hand's breadth in a single night.
+And you rubbed all your philters into his body, and breathed into his
+mouth the lasciviousness of a dog. You turned him into a brute-beast,
+Satan.'
+
+'He's idiotic,' said Jeanbernat, resting his stick on his shoulder. 'He
+quite bores me.'
+
+The Brother, however, growing bolder, thrust his fists under the old
+man's nose.
+
+'And that drab of yours!' he cried, 'you can't deny that you set her on
+to damn the priest.'
+
+Then he suddenly sprang backwards, with a shriek, for the old man,
+swinging his stick with all his strength, had just broken it over his
+back. Retreating yet a little further, Archangias picked from a heap of
+stones beside the road a piece of flint twice the size of a man's fist,
+and threw it at Jeanbernat. It would surely have split the other's
+forehead open if he had not bent down. He, however, now likewise crossed
+over to a heap of stones, sheltered himself behind it, and provided
+himself with missiles; and from one heap to the other a terrible combat
+began, with a perfect hail of flints. The moon now shone very brightly,
+and their dark shadows fell distinctly on the ground.
+
+'Yes, yes, you set that hussy on to ruin him!' repeated the Brother,
+wild with rage. 'Ah! you are astonished that I know all about it! You
+hope for some monstrous result from it all. Every morning you make the
+thirteen signs of hell over that minx of yours! You would like her to
+become the mother of Antichrist. You long for Antichrist, you villain!
+But may this stone blind you!'
+
+'And may this one bung your mouth up!' retorted Jeanbernat, who was now
+quite calm again. 'Is he cracked, the silly fellow, with all those
+stories of his? . . . Shall I have to break your head for you, before I
+can get on my way? Is it your catechism that has turned your brain?'
+
+'Catechism, indeed! Do you know what catechism is taught to accursed
+ones like you? Ah! I will show you how to make the sign of the cross.
+--This stone is for the Father, and this for the Son, and this for the
+Holy Ghost. Ah! you are still standing. Wait a bit, wait a bit. Amen!'
+Then he threw a handful of small pebbles like a volley of grape-shot.
+Jeanbernat, who was struck upon the shoulder, dropped the stones he was
+holding, and quietly stepped forwards, while Brother Archangias picked
+two fresh handfuls from the heap, blurting out:
+
+I am going to exterminate you. It is God who wills it. God is acting
+through my arm.'
+
+'Will you be quiet!' said the old man, grasping him by the nape of the
+neck.
+
+Then came a short struggle amidst the dust of the road, all bluish with
+moonlight. The Brother, finding himself the weaker of the two, tried to
+bite. But Jeanbernat's sinewy limbs were like coils of rope which
+pinioned him so tightly that he could almost feel them cutting into his
+flesh. He panted and ceased to struggle, meditating some act of
+treachery.
+
+The old man, having got the other under him, scoffingly exclaimed:
+'I have a good mind to break one of your arms. You see that it isn't
+you who are the stronger, but that it is I who am exterminating
+you. . . . Now I'm going to cut your ears off. You have tried my
+endurance too far.'
+
+Jeanbernat calmly drew his knife from his pocket. But Abbe Mouret, who
+had several times attempted to part the combatants, now raised such
+strenuous opposition to the old man's design that he consented to defer
+the operation till another time.
+
+'You are acting foolishly, Cure,' said he. 'It would do this scoundrel
+good to be well bled; but, since it seems to displease you, I'll wait a
+little longer; I shall be meeting him again in some quiet corner.'
+
+And as the Brother broke out into a growl, Jeanbernat cried
+threateningly: 'If you don't keep still I will cut your ears off at
+once!'
+
+'But you are sitting on his chest,' said the priest, 'get up and let him
+breathe.'
+
+'No, no; he would begin his tomfoolery again. I will give him his
+liberty when I go away, but not before. . . . Well, I was telling you,
+Cure, when this good-for-nothing interrupted us, that you would be very
+welcome yonder. The little one is mistress, you know; I don't attempt to
+interfere with her any more than I do with my salad-plants. There are
+only fools like this croaker here who see any harm in it. Where did you
+see anything wrong, scoundrel? It was yourself who imagined it, villain
+that you are!'
+
+And thereupon he gave the Brother another shaking. 'Let him get up,'
+begged Abbe Mouret.
+
+'By-and-by. The little one has not been well for a long time. I did not
+notice anything myself, but she told me; and now I am on my way to tell
+your uncle Pascal, at Plassans. I like the night for walking; it is
+quiet, and, as a rule, one isn't delayed by meeting people. . . . Yes,
+yes, the little one is quite ailing.'
+
+The priest could not find a word to say. He staggered, and his head
+sank.
+
+'It made her so happy to look after you,' continued the old man. 'While
+I smoked my pipe I used to hear her laugh. That was quite sufficient for
+me. Girls are like the hawthorns; when they break out into blossom, they
+do all they can. Well, now, you will come, if your heart prompts you to
+it. I am sure it would please the little one. Good night, Cure.'
+
+He got up slowly, keeping a firm grasp of the Brother's wrists, to guard
+against any treacherous attack. Then he proceeded on his way, with
+swinging strides, without once turning his head. The Brother silently
+crept to the heap of stones, and waited till the old man was some
+distance off. Then, with both hands, and with mad violence, he again
+began flinging stones, but they fell harmlessly upon the dusty road.
+Jeanbernat did not condescend to notice them, but went his way, upright
+like a tree, through the clear night.
+
+'The accursed one!--Satan carries him on!' shrieked Brother Archangias,
+as he hurled his last stone. 'An old scoundrel, that the least touch
+ought to upset! But he is baked in hell's fire. I smelt his claws.'
+
+The Brother stamped with impotent rage on the scattered flints. Then he
+suddenly attacked Abbe Mouret. 'It was all your fault,' he cried; 'you
+ought to have helped me, and, between us, we could have strangled him.'
+
+Meantime, at the other end of the village, the uproar in the Bambousses'
+house had become greater than ever. The rhythmic tapping of glasses on a
+table could be distinctly heard. The priest resumed his walk without
+raising his head, making his way towards the flood of bright light that
+streamed out of the window like the flare of a fire of vine-cuttings.
+The Brother followed him gloomily; his cassock soiled with dust, and one
+of his cheeks bleeding from a stone-cut. And, after a short interval of
+silence, he asked, in his harsh voice: 'Shall you go?'
+
+Then as Abbe Mouret did not answer, he went on: 'Take care! You are
+lapsing into sin again. It was sufficient for that man to pass by to
+send a thrill through your whole body. I saw you by the light of the
+moon looking as pale as a girl. Take care! take care! Do you hear me?
+Another time God will not pardon you--you will sink into the lowest
+abyss! Ah! wretched piece of clay that you are, filth is mastering you!'
+
+Thereupon, the priest at last raised his head. Big tears were streaming
+from his eyes, and it was in gentle heartbroken accents that he spoke:
+'Why do you speak to me like that?--You are always with me, and you know
+my ceaseless struggles. Do not doubt me, leave me strength to master
+myself.'
+
+Those simple words, bathed with silent tears, fell on the night air
+with such an expression of superhuman suffering, that even Brother
+Archangias, in spite of all his harshness, felt touched. He made no
+reply, but shook his dusty cassock, and wiped his bleeding cheek. When
+they reached the Bambousses' house, he refused to go inside. He seated
+himself, a few yards away, on the body of an overturned cart, where he
+waited for the Abbe with dog-like patience.
+
+'Ah! here is Monsieur le Cure!' cried all the company of Bambousses and
+Brichets as Serge entered.
+
+They filled their glasses once more. Abbe Mouret was compelled to take
+one, too. There had been no regular wedding-feast; but, in the evening,
+after dinner, a ten-gallon 'Dame Jane' had been placed upon the table,
+and they were making it their business to empty it before going to bed.
+There were ten of them, and old Bambousse was already with one hand
+tilting over the jar whence only a thread of red liquor now flowed.
+Rosalie, in a very sportive frame of mind, was dipping her baby's chin
+into her glass, while big Fortune showed off his strength by lifting up
+the chairs with his teeth. All the company passed into the bedroom.
+Custom required that the priest should there drink the glass of wine
+which had been poured out for him. It brought good luck, and prevented
+quarrels in the household. In Monsieur Coffin's time, it had always been
+a very merry ceremony, for the old priest loved a joke. He had even
+gained a reputation for the skilful way in which he could drain his
+glass, without leaving a single drop at the bottom of it; and the Artaud
+women pretended that every drop undrunk meant a year's less love for the
+newly married pair. But with Abbe Mouret they dare not joke so freely.
+However, he drank his wine at one gulp, which seemed to greatly please
+old Bambousse. Mother Brichet looked at the bottom of the glass and saw
+but a drop or two of the liquid remaining there. Then, after a few
+jokes, they all returned to the living room, where Vincent and Catherine
+had remained by themselves. Vincent, standing upon a chair, was clasping
+the huge jar in his arms, and draining the last drops of wine into
+Catherine's open mouth.
+
+'We are much obliged to you, Monsieur le Cure,' said old Bambousse, as
+he escorted the priest to the door. 'Well, they're married now, so I
+suppose you are satisfied. And they are not likely to complain, I'm
+sure. . . . Good night, sleep well, your reverence.'
+
+Brother Archangias had slowly risen from his seat on the old cart.
+
+'May the devil pile hot coals over them, and roast them!' he murmured.
+
+Then without again opening his lips he accompanied Abbe Mouret to the
+parsonage. And he waited outside till the door was closed. Even then he
+did not go off without twice looking round to make sure that the Abbe
+was not coming out again. As for the priest, when he reached his
+bedroom, he threw himself in his clothes upon his bed, clasping his
+hands to his ears, and pressing his face to the pillow, in order that he
+might shut out all sound and sight. And thus stilling his senses he fell
+into death-like slumber.
+
+
+
+                                 VI
+
+The next day was Sunday. As the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy
+Cross fell on a high mass day, Abbe Mouret desired to celebrate the
+festival with especial solemnity. He was now full of extraordinary
+devotion for the Cross, and had replaced the image of the Immaculate
+Conception in his bedroom by a large crucifix of black wood, before
+which he spent long hours in worship. To exalt the Cross, to plant it
+before him, above all else, in a halo of glory, as the one object of his
+life, gave him the strength he needed to suffer and to struggle. He
+sometimes dreamed of hanging there himself, in Jesus's place, his head
+crowned with thorns, nails driven through his hands and feet, and his
+side rent by spears. What a coward he must be to complain of an
+imaginary wound, when God bled there from His whole body, and yet
+preserved on His lips the blessed smile of the Redemption! And however
+unworthy it might be, he offered up his wound as a sacrifice, ended by
+falling into ecstasy, and believing that blood did really stream from
+his brow and side and limbs. Those were hours of relief, for he fancied
+that all the impurity within him flowed forth from his wounds. And he
+then usually drew himself up with the heroism of a martyr, and longed to
+be called upon to suffer the most frightful tortures, in order that he
+might bear them without a quiver of the flesh.
+
+At early dawn that day he knelt before the crucifix, and grace came upon
+him abundantly as dew. He made no effort, he simply fell upon his knees,
+to receive it in his heart, to be permeated with it to the marrow of his
+bones in sweetest and most refreshing fulness. On the previous day he
+had prayed for grace in agony, and it had not come. At times it long
+remained deaf to his entreaties, and then, when he simply clasped his
+hands, in quite childlike fashion, it flowed down to succour him. It
+came upon him that morning like a benediction, bringing perfect
+serenity, absolute trusting faith. He forgot his anguish of the previous
+days, and surrendered himself wholly to the triumphant joy of the Cross.
+He seemed to be cased in such impenetrable armour that the world's most
+deadly blows would glide off from it harmlessly. When he came down from
+his bedroom, he stepped along with an air of serenity and victory. La
+Teuse was astonished, and went to find Desiree, that he might kiss her;
+and both of them clapped their hands, and said that they had not seen
+him looking so well for the last six months.
+
+But it was in the church, at high mass, that the priest felt that he
+had really recovered divine grace. It was a long time since he had
+approached the altar with such loving emotion; and he had to make a
+great effort to restrain himself from weeping whilst he remained with
+his lips pressed to the altar-cloth. It was a solemn high mass. The
+local rural guard, an uncle of Rosalie, chanted in a deep bass voice
+which rumbled through the low nave like a hoarse organ. Vincent, robed
+in a surplice much too large for him, which had formerly belonged to
+Abbe Caffin, carried an old silver censer, and was vastly amused by the
+tinkling of its chains; he swung it to a great height, so as to produce
+copious clouds of smoke, and glanced behind him every now and then to
+see if he had succeeded in making any one cough. The church was almost
+full, for everybody wanted to see his reverence's painting. Peasant
+women laughed with pleasure because the place smelt so nice, while the
+men, standing under the gallery, jerked their heads approvingly at each
+deeper and deeper note that came from the rural guard. Filtering through
+the paper window panes the full morning sun lighted up the brightly
+painted walls, on which the women's caps cast shadows resembling huge
+butterflies. The artificial flowers, with which the altar was decorated,
+almost seemed to possess the moist freshness of natural ones newly
+gathered; and when the priest turned round to bless the congregation, he
+felt even stronger emotion than before, as he saw his church so clean,
+so full, and so steeped in music and incense and light.
+
+After the offertory, however, a buzzing murmur sped through the peasant
+women. Vincent inquisitively turned his head, and in doing so, almost
+let the charcoal in his censer fall upon the priest's chasuble. And,
+wishing to excuse himself, as he saw the Abbe looking at him with an
+expression of reproof, he murmured: 'It is your reverence's uncle, who
+has just come in.'
+
+At the end of the church, standing beside one of the slender wooden
+pillars that supported the gallery, Abbe Mouret then perceived Doctor
+Pascal. The doctor was not wearing his usual cheerful and slightly
+scoffing expression. Hat in hand, he stood there looking very grave, and
+followed the service with evident impatience. The sight of the priest at
+the altar, his solemn demeanour, his slow gestures, and the perfect
+serenity of his countenance, appeared to gradually increase his
+irritation. He could not stay there till the end of the mass, but left
+the church, and walked up and down beside his horse and gig, which he
+had secured to one of the parsonage shutters.
+
+'Will that nephew of mine never have finished censing himself?' he asked
+of La Teuse, who was just coming out of the vestry.
+
+'It is all over,' she replied. 'Won't you come into the drawing-room?
+His reverence is unrobing. He knows you are here.'
+
+'Well, unless he were blind, he couldn't very well help it,' growled the
+doctor, as he followed La Teuse into the cold-looking, stiffly furnished
+chamber, which she pompously called the drawing-room. Here for a few
+minutes he paced up and down. The gloomy coldness of his surroundings
+seemed to increase his irritation. As he strode about, flourishing a
+stick he carried, he kept on striking the well-worn chair-seats of
+horsehair which sounded hard and dead as stone. Then, tired of walking,
+he took his stand in front of the mantelpiece, in the centre of which a
+gaudily painted image of Saint Joseph occupied the place of a clock.
+
+'Ah! here he comes at last,' he said, as he heard the door opening. And
+stepping towards the Abbe he went on: 'Do you know that you made me
+listen to half a mass? It is a very long time since that happened to me.
+But I was bent on seeing you to-day. I have something to say to you.'
+
+Then he stopped, and looked at the priest with an expression of
+surprise. Silence fell. 'You at all events are quite well,' he resumed,
+in a different voice.
+
+'Yes, I am very much better than I was,' replied Abbe Mouret, with a
+smile. 'I did not expect you before Thursday. Sunday isn't your day for
+coming. Is there something you want to tell me?'
+
+Uncle Pascal did not give an immediate answer. He went on looking at the
+Abbe. The latter was still fresh from the influence of the church and
+the mass. His hair was fragrant with the perfume of the incense, and in
+his eyes shone all the joy of the Cross. His uncle jogged his head, as
+he noticed that expression of triumphant peace.
+
+'I have come from the Paradou,' he said, abruptly. 'Jeanbernat came to
+fetch me there. I have seen Albine, and she disquiets me. She needs much
+careful treatment.'
+
+He kept his eyes fixed upon the priest as he spoke, but he did not
+detect so much as a quiver of Serge's eyelids.
+
+'She took great care of you, you know,' he added, more roughly. 'Without
+her, my boy, you might now be in one of the cells at Les Tulettes, with
+a strait waistcoat on. . . . Well, I promised that you would go to see
+her. I will take you with me. It will be a farewell meeting. She is
+anxious to go away.'
+
+'I can do nothing more than pray for the person of whom you speak,' said
+Abbe Mouret, softly.
+
+And as the doctor, losing his temper, brought his stick down heavily
+upon the couch, he added calmly, but in a firm voice:
+
+'I am a priest, and can only help with prayers.'
+
+'Ah, well! Yes, you are right,' said Uncle Pascal, dropping down into an
+armchair, 'it is I who am an old fool. Yes, I wept like a child, as I
+came here alone in my gig. That is what comes of living amongst books.
+One learns a lot from them, but one makes a fool of oneself in the
+world. How could I guess that it would all turn out so badly?'
+
+He rose from his chair and began to walk about again, looking
+exceedingly troubled.
+
+'But yes, but yes, I ought to have guessed. It was all quite natural.
+Though with one in your position, it was bound to be abominable! You are
+not as other men. But listen to me, I assure you that otherwise you
+would never have recovered. It was she alone, with the atmosphere she
+set round you, who saved you from madness. There is no need for me to
+tell you what a state you were in. It is one of my most wonderful cures.
+But I can't take any pride, any pleasure in it, for now the poor girl is
+dying of it!'
+
+Abbe Mouret remained there erect, perfectly calm, his face reflecting
+all the quiet serenity of a martyr whom nothing that man might do could
+disturb.
+
+'God will take mercy upon her,' he said.
+
+'God! God!' muttered the doctor below his breath. 'Ah! He would do
+better not to interfere. We might manage matters if we were left to
+ourselves.' Then, raising his voice, he added: 'I thought I had
+considered everything carefully, that is the most wonderful part of it.
+Oh! what a fool I was! You would stay there, I thought, for a month to
+recover your strength. The shade of the trees, the cheerful chatter of
+the girl, all the youthfulness about you would quickly bring you round.
+And then you, on your side, it seemed to me, would do something to
+reclaim the poor child from her wild ways; you would civilise her, and,
+between us, we should turn her into a young lady, for whom we should,
+by-and-by, find a suitable husband. It seemed such a perfect scheme. And
+then how was I to guess that old philosophising Jeanbernat would never
+stir an inch from his lettuce-beds? Well! well! I myself never left my
+own laboratory. I had such pressing work there. . . . And it is all my
+fault! Ah! I am a stupid bungler!'
+
+He was choking, and wished to go off. And he began to look about him for
+his hat, though, all the while, he had it on his head.
+
+'Good-bye!' he stammered; 'I am going. So you won't come? Do, now--for
+my sake! You see how miserable, how upset I am. I swear to you that she
+shall go away immediately afterwards. That is all settled. My gig is
+here; you might be back in an hour. Come, do come, I beg you.'
+
+The priest made a sweeping gesture; such a gesture as the doctor had
+seen him make before the altar.
+
+'No,' he said, 'I cannot.'
+
+Then, as he accompanied his uncle out of the room, he added:
+
+'Tell her to fall on her knees and pray to God. God will hear her as He
+heard me, and He will comfort her as He has comforted me. There is no
+other means of salvation.'
+
+The doctor looked him full in the face, and shrugged his shoulders.
+
+'Good-bye, then,' he repeated. 'You are quite well now, and have no
+further need of me.'
+
+But, as he was unfastening his horse, Desiree, who had heard his voice,
+came running up. She was extremely attached to her uncle. When she had
+been younger he had been wont to listen to her childish prattle for
+hours without showing the least sign of weariness. And, even now, he did
+his best to spoil her, and manifested the greatest interest in her
+farmyard, often spending a whole afternoon with her amongst her fowls
+and ducks, and smiling at her with his bright eyes. He seemed to
+consider her superior to other girls. And so she now flung herself
+round his neck, in an impulse of affection, and cried:
+
+'Aren't you going to stay and have some lunch with us?'
+
+But having kissed her, he said he could not remain, and unfastened her
+arms from his neck with a somewhat pettish air. She laughed however, and
+again clasped her arms round him.
+
+'Oh! but you must,' she persisted. 'I have some eggs that have only just
+been laid. I have been looking in the nests, and there are fourteen eggs
+this morning. And, if you will stay, we can have a fowl, the white one,
+that is always quarrelling with the others. When you were here on
+Thursday, you know, it pecked the big spotted hen's eye out.'
+
+But her uncle persisted in his refusal. He was irritated to find that he
+could not unfasten the knot in which he had tied his reins. And then she
+began to skip round him, clapping her hands and repeating in a sing-song
+voice: 'Yes! yes! you'll stay, and we will eat it up, we'll eat it up!'
+
+Her uncle could no longer resist her blandishments; he raised his head
+and smiled at her. She seemed so full of life and health and sincerity;
+her gaiety was as frank and natural as the sheet of sunlight which was
+gilding her bare arms.
+
+'You big silly!' he said; and clasping her by the wrists as she
+continued skipping gleefully about him, he went on: 'No, dear; not
+to-day. I have to go to see a poor girl who is ill. But I will come some
+other morning. I promise you faithfully.'
+
+'When? when?' she persisted. 'On Thursday? The cow is in calf, you know,
+and she hasn't seemed at all well these last two days. You are a doctor,
+and you ought to be able to give her something to do her good.'
+
+Abbe Mouret, who had calmly remained there, could not restrain a slight
+laugh.
+
+The doctor gaily got into his gig and exclaimed: 'All right, my dear, I
+will attend to your cow. Come and let me kiss you. Ah! how nice and
+healthy you are! And you are worth more than all the others put
+together. Ah! if every one was like my big silly, this earth would be
+too beautiful!'
+
+He set his horse off with a cluck of his tongue, and continued talking
+to himself as the gig rattled down the hill.
+
+'Yes, yes! there should be nothing but animals. Ah! if they were mere
+animals, how happy and gay and strong they would all be! It has gone
+well with the girl, who is as happy as her cow; but it has gone badly
+with the lad, who is in torture beneath his cassock. A drop too much
+blood, a little too much nerve, and one's whole life is wrecked!
+. . . They are true Rougons and true Macquarts those children there!
+The tail-end of the stock--its final degeneracy.'
+
+Then, urging on his horse, he drove at a trot up the hill that led to
+the Paradou.
+
+
+
+                                VII
+
+Sunday was a busy day for Abbe Mouret. He had to think of vespers, which
+he generally said to empty seats, for even mother Brichet did not carry
+her piety so far as to go back to church in the afternoon. Then, at four
+o'clock, Brother Archangias brought the little rogues from his school to
+repeat their catechism to his reverence. This lesson sometimes lasted
+until late. When the children showed themselves quite intractable, La
+Teuse was summoned to frighten them with her broom.
+
+On that particular Sunday, about four o'clock, Desiree found herself
+quite alone in the parsonage. As she felt a little bored, she went to
+gather some food for her rabbits in the churchyard, where there were
+some magnificent poppies, of which rabbits are extremely fond. Dragging
+herself about on her knees between the grave-stones, she gathered
+apronfuls of juicy verdure on which her pets fell greedily.
+
+'Oh! what lovely plantains!' she muttered, stooping before Abbe Caffin's
+tombstone, and delighted with the discovery she had made.
+
+There were, indeed, some magnificent plantains spreading out their broad
+leaves beside the stone. Desiree had just finished filling her apron
+with them when she fancied she heard a strange noise behind her. A
+rustling of branches and a rolling of small pebbles came from the ravine
+which skirted one side of the graveyard, and at the bottom of which
+flowed the Mascle, a stream which descended from the high lands of the
+Paradou. But the ascent here was so rough, so impracticable, that
+Desiree imagined that the noise could only have been made by some lost
+dog or straying goat. She stepped quickly to the edge, and, as she
+looked over, she was amazed to see amidst the brambles a girl who was
+climbing up the rocks with extraordinary agility.
+
+'I will give you a hand,' she said. 'You might easily break your neck
+there.'
+
+The girl, directly she saw she was discovered, started back, as though
+she would rather go down again, but after a moment's hesitation she
+ventured to take the hand that was held out to her.
+
+'Oh! I know who you are,' said Desiree, with a beaming smile, and
+letting her apron fall that she might grasp the girl by the waist. 'You
+once gave me some blackbirds, but they all died, poor little dears. I
+was so sorry about it.--Wait a bit, I know your name, I have heard it
+before. La Teuse often mentions it when Serge isn't there; but she told
+me that I was not to repeat it. Wait a moment, I shall remember it
+directly!'
+
+She tried to recall the name, and grew quite grave in the attempt. Then,
+having succeeded in remembering it, she became gay again, and seemingly
+found great pleasure in dwelling upon its musical sound.
+
+'Albine! Albine!---- What a sweet name it is! At first I used to think
+you must be a tomtit, because I once had a tomtit with a name very like
+yours, though I don't remember exactly what it was.'
+
+Albine did not smile. Her face was very pale, and there was a feverish
+gleam in her eyes. A few drops of blood trickled from her hands. When
+she had recovered her breath, she hastily exclaimed:
+
+No! no! leave it alone. You will only stain your handkerchief. It
+is nothing but a scratch. I didn't want to come by the road, as I
+should have been seen--so I preferred coming along the bed of the
+torrent---- Is Serge there?'
+
+Desiree did not feel at all shocked at hearing the girl pronounce her
+brother's name thus familiarly and with an expression of subdued
+passion. She simply replied that he was in the church hearing the
+children say their catechism.
+
+'You must not speak at all loudly,' she added, raising her finger to her
+lips. 'Serge forbade me to talk loudly when he is catechising the
+children, and we shall get into trouble if we don't keep quiet. Let us
+go into the stable--shall we? We can talk better there.'
+
+'I want to see Serge,' said Albine, simply.
+
+Desiree cast a hasty glance at the church, and then whispered, 'Yes,
+yes; Serge will be finely caught. Come with me. We will hide ourselves,
+and keep quite quiet. We shall have some fine fun!'
+
+She had picked up the herbage which had fallen from her apron, and
+quitting the graveyard she stole back to the parsonage, telling Albine
+to hide herself behind her and make herself as little as possible. As
+they stealthily glided through the farmyard, they caught sight of La
+Teuse, who was crossing over to the vestry, but she did not appear to
+notice them.
+
+'There! There!' said Desiree, quite delighted, as they stowed themselves
+away in the stable; 'keep quiet, and no one will know that we are here.
+There is some straw there for you to lie down upon.'
+
+Albine seated herself on a truss of straw.
+
+'And Serge?' she asked, persisting in her one fixed idea.
+
+'Listen! You can hear his voice. When he claps his hands, it will be all
+over, and the children will go away--Listen! he is telling them a tale.'
+
+They could indeed just hear Abbe Mouret's voice, which was wafted to
+them through the vestry doorway which La Teuse had doubtless left open.
+It came to them like a solemn murmur, in which they could distinguish
+the name of Jesus thrice repeated. Albine trembled. She sprang up as
+though to hasten to that beloved voice whose caressing accents she knew
+so well, but all sound of it suddenly died away, shut off by the closing
+of the door. Then she sat down again, to wait, her hands tightly
+clasped, and her clear eyes gleaming with the intensity of her thoughts.
+Desiree, who was lying at her feet, gazed up at her with innocent
+admiration.
+
+'How beautiful you are!' she whispered. 'You are like an image that
+Serge used to have in his bedroom. It was quite white like you are, with
+great curls floating about the neck; and the heart was quite bare and
+uncovered, just in the place where I can feel yours beating---- But you
+are not listening to me. You are looking quite sad. Let us play at
+something? Will you?'
+
+Then she stopped short, holding her breath and saying between her teeth:
+'Ah! the wretches! they will get us caught!' She still had her apron
+full of herbage with her, and her pets were taking it by assault. A
+troop of fowls had surrounded her, clucking and calling each other, and
+pecking at the hanging green stuff. The goat pushed its head slyly under
+her arm, and began to eat the longer leaves. Even the cow, which was
+tethered to the wall, strained at its cord and poked out its nose,
+kissing her with its warm breath.
+
+'Oh! you thieves!' cried Desiree. 'But this is for the rabbits, not for
+you! Leave me alone, won't you! You, there, will get your ears boxed, if
+you don't go away! And you too will have your tail pulled if I catch you
+at it again. The wretches! they will be eating my hands soon!'
+
+She drove the goat off, dispersed the fowls with her feet, and tapped
+the cow's nose with her fists. But the creatures just shook themselves,
+and then came back more greedily than ever, surrounding her, jumping on
+her, and tearing open her apron. At this she whispered to Albine, as
+though she were afraid the animals might hear her.
+
+'Aren't they amusing, the dears? Watch them eat.'
+
+Albine looked on with a grave expression.
+
+'Now, now, be good,' resumed Desiree; 'you shall all have some, but you
+must wait your turns. Now, big Lisa, you first. Eh! how fond you are of
+plantain, aren't you?'
+
+Big Lisa was the cow. She slowly munched a handful of the juicy leaves
+which had grown beside Abbe Caffin's tomb. A thread of saliva hung down
+from her mouth, and her great brown eyes shone with quiet enjoyment.
+
+'There! now it's your turn,' continued Desiree, turning towards the
+goat. 'You are fond of poppies, I know; and you like the flowers best,
+don't you? The buds that shine in your teeth like red-hot butterflies!
+See, here are some splendid ones; they came from the left-hand corner,
+where there was a burial last year.'
+
+As she spoke, she gave the goat a bunch of scarlet flowers, which the
+animal ate from her hand. When there was nothing left in her grasp but
+the stalks, she pushed these between its teeth. Behind her, in the
+meanwhile, the fowls were desperately pecking away at her petticoats.
+She threw them some wild chicory and dandelions which she had gathered
+amongst the old slabs that were ranged alongside the church walls. It
+was particularly over the dandelions that the fowls quarrelled, so
+voraciously indeed, with such scratchings and flapping of wings, that
+the other fowls in the yard heard them. And then came a general
+invasion. The big yellow cock, Alexander, was the first to appear;
+having seized a dandelion and torn it in halves, without attempting to
+eat it, he called to the hens who were still outside to come and peck.
+Then a white hen strutted in, then a black one, and then a whole crowd
+of hens, who hustled one another, and trod on one another's tails, and
+ended by forming a wild flood of feathers. Behind the fowls came the
+pigeons, and the ducks, and the geese, and, last of all, the turkeys.
+Desiree laughed at seeing herself thus surrounded by this noisy,
+squabbling mob.
+
+'This is what always happens,' said she, 'every time that I bring any
+green stuff from the graveyard. They nearly kill each other to get at
+it; they must find it very nice.'
+
+Then she made a fight to keep a few handfuls of the leaves from the
+greedy beaks which rose all round her, saying that something must really
+be saved for the rabbits. She would surely get angry with them if they
+went on like that, and give them nothing but dry bread in future.
+However, she was obliged to give way. The geese tugged at her apron so
+violently that she was almost pulled down upon her knees; the ducks
+gobbled away at her ankles; two of the pigeons flew upon her head, and
+some of the fowls fluttered about her shoulders. It was the ferocity of
+creatures who smell flesh: the fat plantains, the crimson poppies, the
+milky dandelions, in which remained some of the life of the dead.
+Desiree laughed loudly, and felt that she was on the point of slipping
+down, and letting go of her last two handfuls, when the fowls were
+panic-stricken by a terrible grunting.
+
+'Ah! it's you, my fatty,' she exclaimed, quite delighted; 'eat them up,
+and set me at liberty.'
+
+The pig waddled in; he was no longer the little pig of former days--pink
+as a newly painted toy, with a tiny little tail, like a bit of string;
+but a fat wobbling creature, fit to be killed, with a belly as round as
+a monk's, and a back all bristling with rough hairs, that reeked of
+fatness. His stomach had grown quite yellow from his habit of sleeping
+on the manure heap. Waddling along on his shaky feet, he charged with
+lowered snout at the scared fowls, and so left Desiree at liberty to
+escape, and take the rabbits the few scraps of green stuff which she had
+so strenuously defended. When she came back, all was peace again. The
+stupid, ecstatic-looking geese were lazily swaying their long necks
+about, the ducks and turkeys were waddling in ungainly fashion alongside
+the wall; the fowls were quietly clucking and peaking at invisible
+grains on the hard ground of the stable; while the pig, the goat, and
+the big cow, were drowsily blinking their eyes, as though they were
+falling asleep. Outside it had just begun to rain.
+
+'Ah! well, there's a shower coming on!' cried Desiree, throwing herself
+down on the straw. 'You had better stay where you are, my dears, if you
+don't want to get soaked.'
+
+Then she turned to Albine and added: 'How stupid they all look, don't
+they? They only wake up just to eat!'
+
+Albine still remained silent. The merry laughter of that buxom girl as
+she struggled amidst those greedy necks and gluttonous beaks, which
+tickled and kissed her, and seemed bent on devouring her very flesh, had
+rendered the unhappy daughter of the Paradou yet paler than she had been
+before. So much gaiety, so much vitality, so much boisterous health made
+her despair. She strained her feverish arms to her desolate bosom, which
+desertion had parched.
+
+'And Serge?' she asked again, in the same clear, stubborn voice.
+
+'Hush!' said Desiree. 'I heard him just now. He hasn't finished
+yet---- We have been making a pretty disturbance; La Teuse must
+surely have grown deaf this afternoon---- Let us keep quiet now.
+I like to hear the rain fall.'
+
+The shower beat in at the open doorway, casting big drops upon the
+threshold. The restless fowls, after venturing out for a moment, had
+quickly retreated to the far end of the stable; where, indeed, with the
+exception of three ducks who remained quietly walking in the rain, all
+the pets had now taken refuge, clustering round the girl's skirts. It
+was growing very warm amongst the straw. Desiree pulled two big trusses
+together, made a bed of them, and lay down at full length. She felt
+extremely comfortable there.
+
+'It is so nice,' she murmured. 'Come and lie down like me. It is so
+springy and soft, all this straw; and it tickles one so funnily in the
+neck. Do you roll about in the straw at home? There is nothing I am
+fonder of---- Sometimes I tickle the soles of my feet with it. That is
+very funny, too----'
+
+But at that moment, the big yellow cock, who had been gravely stalking
+towards her, jumped upon her breast.
+
+'Get away with you, Alexander! get away!' she cried. 'What a tiresome
+creature he is! The idea of his perching himself on me---- You are too
+rough, sir, and you scratch me with your claws. Do you hear me? I don't
+want you to go away, but you must be good, and mustn't peck at my hair.'
+
+Then she troubled herself no further about him. The cock still
+maintained his position, every now and then glancing inquisitively at
+the girl's chin with his gleaming eye. The other birds all began to
+cluster round her. After rolling amongst the straw, she was now lying
+lazily on her back with her arms stretched out.
+
+'Ah! how pleasant it is,' she said; 'but then it makes me feel so
+sleepy. Straw always makes one drowsy, doesn't it? Serge doesn't like
+it. Perhaps you don't either. What do you like? Tell me, so that I may
+know.'
+
+She was gradually dozing off. For a moment she opened her eyes widely,
+as though she were looking for something, and then her eyelids fell with
+a tranquil smile of content. She seemed to be asleep, but after a few
+minutes she opened her eyes again, and said:
+
+'The cow is going to have a calf---- That will be so nice, and will
+please me more than anything.'
+
+Then she sank into deep slumber. The fowls had ended by perching on her
+body; she was buried beneath a wave of living plumage. Hens were
+brooding over her feet; geese stretched their soft downy necks over her
+legs. The pig lay against her left side, while on the right, the goat
+poked its bearded head under her arm. The pigeons were roosting and
+nestling all over her, on her hands, her waist, and her shoulders. And
+there she lay asleep, in all her rosy freshness, caressed by the cow's
+warm breath, while the big cock still squatted just below her bosom with
+gleaming comb and quivering wings.
+
+Outside, the rain was falling less heavily. A sunbeam, escaping from
+beneath a cloud, gilded the fine drops of water. Albine, who had
+remained perfectly still, watched the slumber of Desiree, that big,
+plump girl who found her great delight in rolling about in the straw.
+She wished that she, too, could slumber away so peacefully, and feel
+such pleasure, because a few straws had tickled her neck. And she felt
+jealous of those strong arms, that firm bosom, all that vitality, all
+that purely animal development which made the other like a tranquil
+easy-minded sister of the big red and white cow.
+
+However, the rain had now quite ceased. The three cats of the parsonage
+filed out into the yard one after the other, keeping close to the wall,
+and taking the greatest precautions to avoid wetting their paws. They
+peeped into the stable, and then stalked up to the sleeping girl, and
+lay down, purring, close by her. Moumou, the big black cat, curled
+itself up close to her cheek, and gently licked her chin.
+
+'And Serge?' murmured Albine, quite mechanically.
+
+What was it that kept them apart? Who was it that prevented them from
+being happy together? Why might she not love him, and why might she not
+be loved, freely and in the broad sunlight, as the trees lived and
+loved? She knew not, but she felt that she had been forsaken, and had
+received a mortal wound. Yet she was possessed by a stubborn, determined
+longing, a very necessity, indeed, of once more clasping her love in her
+arms, of concealing him somewhere, that he might be hers in all
+felicity. She rose to her feet. The vestry door had just been opened
+again. A clapping of hands sounded, followed by the uproar of a swarm of
+children clattering in wooden shoes over the stone flags. The
+catechising was over. Then Albine gently glided out of the stable, where
+she had been waiting for an hour amidst the reeking warmth that emanated
+from Desiree's pets.
+
+As she quietly slipped through the passage that led to the vestry, she
+caught sight of La Teuse, who was going to her kitchen, and who
+fortunately did not turn her head. Certain, now, of not being seen and
+stopped, Albine softly pushed the door which was before her, keeping
+hold of it in order that it might make no noise as it closed again.
+
+And she found herself in the church.
+
+
+
+                                VIII
+
+At first she could see nobody. Outside, the rain had again begun to fall
+in fine close drops. The church looked very grey and gloomy. She passed
+behind the high altar, and walked on towards the pulpit. In the middle
+of the nave, there were only a number of empty benches, left there in
+disorder by the urchins of the catechism class. Amidst all this void
+came a low tic-tac from the swaying pendulum. She went down the church
+to knock at the confessional-box, which she saw standing at the other
+end. But, just as she passed the Chapel of the Dead, she caught sight of
+Abbe Mouret prostrated before the great bleeding Christ. He did not
+stir; he must have thought that it was only La Teuse putting the seats
+in order behind him.
+
+But Albine laid her hand upon his shoulder.
+
+'Serge,' she said, 'I have come for you.'
+
+The priest raised his head with a start. His face was very pale. He
+remained on his knees and crossed himself, while his lips still quivered
+with the words of his prayer.
+
+'I have been waiting for you,' she continued. 'Every morning and
+every evening I looked to see if you were not coming. I have counted
+the days till I could keep the reckoning no longer. Ah! for weeks and
+weeks---- Then, when I grew sure that you were not coming, I set out
+myself, and came here. I said to myself: "I will fetch him away with
+me." Give me your hand and let us go.'
+
+She stretched out her hands, as though to help him to rise. But he only
+crossed himself, afresh. He still continued his prayers as he looked at
+her. He had succeeded in calming the first quiver of his flesh. From the
+Divine grace which had been streaming around him since the early
+morning, like a celestial bath, he derived a superhuman strength.
+
+'It is not right for you to be here,' he said, gravely. 'Go away. You
+are aggravating your sufferings.'
+
+'I suffer no longer,' she said, with a smile. 'I am well again; I am
+cured, now that I see you once more---- Listen! I made myself out worse
+than I really was, to induce them to go and fetch you. I am quite
+willing to confess it now. And that promise of going away, of leaving
+the neighbourhood, you didn't suppose I should have kept it, did you?
+No, indeed, unless I had carried you away with me on my shoulders. The
+others don't know it, but you must know that I cannot now live anywhere
+but at your side.'
+
+She grew quite cheerful again, and drew close to the priest with the
+caressing ways of a child of nature, never noticing his cold and rigid
+demeanour. And she became impatient, clapped her hands, and exclaimed:
+
+'Come, Serge; make up your mind and come. We are only losing time. There
+is no necessity to think so much about it. It is quite simple; I am
+going to take you with me. If you don't want any one to see you, we will
+go along by the Mascle. It is not very easy walking, but I managed it
+all by myself; and, when we are together, we can help each other. You
+know the way, don't you? We cross the churchyard, we descend to the
+torrent, and then we shall only have to follow its course right up to
+the garden. And one is quite at home down there. Nobody can see us,
+there is nothing but brambles and big round stones. The bed of the
+stream is nearly dry. As I came along, I thought: "By-and-by, when he is
+with me, we will walk along gently together and kiss one another." Come,
+Serge, be quick; I am waiting for you.'
+
+The priest no longer appeared to hear her. He had betaken himself to his
+prayers again, and was asking Heaven to grant him the courage of the
+saints. Before entering upon the supreme struggle, he was arming himself
+with the flaming sword of faith. For a moment he had feared he was
+wavering. He had required all a martyr's courage and endurance to remain
+firmly kneeling there on the flagstones, while Albine was calling him:
+his heart had leapt out towards her, all his blood had surged
+passionately through his veins, filling him with an intense yearning to
+clasp her in his arms and kiss her hair. Her mere breath had awakened
+all the memory of their love; the vast garden, their saunters beneath
+the trees, and all the joy of their companionship.
+
+But Divine grace was poured down upon him more abundantly, and the
+torturing strife, during which all his blood seemed to quit his veins,
+lasted but a moment. Nothing human then remained within him. He had
+become wholly God's.
+
+Albine, however, again touched him on the shoulder. She was growing
+uneasy and angry.
+
+'Why do you not speak to me?' she asked. 'You can't refuse; you will
+come with me? Remember that I shall die if you refuse. But no! you
+can't; it is impossible. We lived together once; it was vowed that we
+should never separate. Twenty times, at least, did you give yourself to
+me. You bade me take you wholly, your limbs, your breath, your very life
+itself. I did not dream it all. There is nothing of you that you have
+not given to me; not a hair in your head which is not mine. Your hands
+are mine. For days and days have I held them clasped in mine. Your face,
+your lips, your eyes, your brow, all, all are mine, and I have lavished
+my love upon them. Do you hear me, Serge?'
+
+She stood erect before him, full of proud assertion, with outstretched
+arms. And, in a louder voice, she repeated:
+
+'Do you hear me, Serge? You belong to me.'
+
+Then Abbe Mouret slowly rose to his feet. He leant against the altar,
+and replied:
+
+'No. You are mistaken. I belong to God.'
+
+He was full of serenity. His shorn face seemed like that of some stone
+saint, whom no impulse of the flesh can disturb. His cassock fell around
+him in straight folds like a black winding-sheet, concealing all the
+outlines of his body. Albine dropped back at the sight of that sombre
+phantom of her former love. She missed his freely flowing beard, his
+freely flowing curls. And in the midst of his shorn locks she saw the
+pallid circle of his tonsure, which disquieted her as if it had been
+some mysterious evil, some malignant sore which had grown there, and
+would eat away all memory of the happy days they had spent together. She
+could recognise neither his hands, once so warm with caresses, nor his
+lissom neck, once so sonorous with laughter; nor his agile feet, which
+had carried her into the recesses of the woodlands. Could this, indeed,
+be the strong youth with whom she had lived one whole season--the youth
+with soft down gleaming on his bare breast, with skin browned by the
+sun's rays, with every limb full of vibrating life? At this present hour
+he seemed fleshless; his hair had fallen away from him, and all his
+virility had withered within that womanish gown, which left him sexless.
+
+'Oh! you frighten me,' she murmured. 'Did you think then that I was
+dead, that you put on mourning? Take off that black thing; put on a
+blouse. You can tuck up the sleeves, and we will catch crayfishes again.
+Your arms used to be as white as mine.'
+
+She laid her hand on his cassock, as though to tear it off him; but he
+repulsed her with a gesture, without touching her. He looked at her now
+and strengthened himself against temptation by never allowing his eyes
+to leave her. She seemed to him to have grown taller. She was no longer
+the playful damsel adorned with bunches of wild-flowers, and casting to
+the winds gay, gipsy laughter, nor was she the amorosa in white skirts,
+gracefully bending her slender form as she sauntered lingeringly beside
+the hedges. Now, there was a velvety bloom upon her lips; her hips were
+gracefully rounded; her bosom was in full bloom. She had become a woman,
+with a long oval face that seemed expressive of fruitfulness. Life
+slumbered within her. And her cheeks glowed with luscious maturity.
+
+The priest, bathed in the voluptuous atmosphere that seemed to emanate
+from all that feminine ripeness, took a bitter pleasure in defying the
+caresses of her coral lips, the tempting smile of her eyes, the witching
+charm of her bosom, and all the intoxication which seemed to pour from
+her at every movement. He even carried his temerity so far as to search
+with his gaze for the spots that he had once so hotly kissed, the
+corners of her eyes and lips, her narrow temples, soft as satin, and the
+ambery nape of her neck, which was like velvet. And never, even in her
+embrace, had he tasted such felicity as he now felt in martyring
+himself, by boldly looking in the face the love that he refused. At
+last, fearing lest he might there yield to some new allurement of the
+flesh, he dropped his eyes, and said, very gently:
+
+'I cannot hear you here. Let us go out, if you, indeed, persist in
+adding to the pain of both of us. Our presence in this place is a
+scandal. We are in God's house.'
+
+'God!' cried Albine, excitedly, suddenly becoming a child of nature once
+more. 'God! Who is He? I know nothing of your God! I want to know
+nothing of Him if He has stolen you away from me, who have never harmed
+Him. My uncle Jeanbernat was right then when he said that your God was
+only an invention to frighten people, and make them weep! You are lying;
+you love me no longer, and that God of yours does not exist.'
+
+'You are in His house now,' said Abbe Mouret, sternly. 'You blaspheme.
+With a breath He might turn you into dust.'
+
+She laughed with proud disdain, and raised her hands as if to defy
+Heaven.
+
+'Ah! then,' said she, 'you prefer your God to me. You think He is
+stronger than I am, and you imagine that He will love you better than I
+did. Oh! but you are a child, a foolish child. Come, leave all this
+folly. We will return to the garden together, and love each other, and
+be happy and free. That, that is life!'
+
+This time she succeeded in throwing an arm round his waist, and she
+tried to drag him away. But he, quivering all over, freed himself from
+her embrace, and again took his stand against the altar.
+
+'Go away!' he faltered. 'If you still love me, go away. . . . O Lord,
+pardon her, and pardon me too, for thus defiling this Thy house. Should
+I go with her beyond the door, I might, perhaps, follow her. Here, in
+Thy presence, I am strong. Suffer that I may remain here, to protect
+Thee from insult.'
+
+Albine remained silent for a moment. Then, in a calm voice, she said:
+
+'Well, let us stay here, then. I wish to speak to you. You cannot,
+surely, be cruel. You will understand me. You will not let me go away
+alone. Oh! do not begin to excuse yourself. I will not lay my hands upon
+you again, since it distresses you. I am quite calm now as you can see.
+We will talk quietly, as we used to do in the old days when we lost our
+way, and did not hurry to find it again, that we might have the more
+time to talk together.'
+
+She smiled at that memory, and continued:
+
+'I don't know about these things myself. My uncle Jeanbernat used to
+forbid me to go to church. "Silly girl," he'd say to me, "why do you
+want to go to a stuffy building when you have got a garden to run about
+in?" I grew up quite happy and contented. I used to look in the birds'
+nests without even taking the eggs. I did not even pluck the flowers,
+for fear of hurting the plants; and you know that I could never torture
+an insect. Why, then, should God be angry with me?'
+
+'You should learn to know Him, pray to Him, and render Him the constant
+worship which is His due,' answered the priest.
+
+'Ah! it would please you if I did, would it not?' she said. 'You would
+forgive me, and love me again? Well, I will do all that you wish me.
+Tell me about God, and I will believe in Him, and worship Him. All that
+you tell me shall be a truth to which I will listen on my knees. Have I
+ever had a thought that was not your own? We will begin our long walks
+again; and you shall teach me, and make of me whatever you will. Say
+"yes," I beg of you.'
+
+Abbe Mouret pointed to his cassock.
+
+'I cannot,' he simply said. 'I am a priest.'
+
+'A priest!' she repeated after him, the smile dying out of her eyes. 'My
+uncle says that priests have neither wife, nor sister, nor mother. So
+that is true, then. But why did you ever come? It was you who took me
+for your sister, for your wife. Were you then lying?'
+
+The priest raised his pale face, moist with the sweat of agony. 'I have
+sinned,' he murmured.
+
+'When I saw you so free,' the girl went on, 'I thought that you were no
+longer a priest. I believed that all that was over, that you would
+always remain there with me, and for my sake.---- And now, what would
+you have me do, if you rob me of my whole life?'
+
+'What I do,' he answered; 'kneel down, suffer on your knees, and never
+rise until God pardons you.'
+
+'Are you a coward, then?' she exclaimed, her anger roused once more, her
+lips curving scornfully.
+
+He staggered, and kept silence. Agony held him by the throat; but he
+proved stronger than pain. He held his head erect, and a smile almost
+played about his trembling lips. Albine for a moment defied him with her
+fixed glance; then, carried away by a fresh burst of passion, she
+exclaimed:
+
+'Well, answer me. Accuse me! Say it was I who came to tempt you! That
+will be the climax! Speak, and say what you can for yourself. Strike me
+if you like. I should prefer your blows to that corpse-like stiffness
+you put on. Is there no blood left in your veins? Have you no spirit?
+Don't you hear me calling you a coward? Yes, indeed, you are a coward.
+You should never have loved me, since you may not be a man. Is it that
+black robe of yours which holds you back? Tear it off! When you are
+naked, perhaps you will remember yourself again.'
+
+The priest slowly repeated his former words:
+
+'I have sinned. I had no excuse for my sin. I do penitence for my sin
+without hope of pardon. If I tore off my cassock, I should tear away my
+very flesh, for I have given myself wholly to God, soul and body. I am a
+priest.'
+
+'And I! what is to become of me?' cried Albine.
+
+He looked unflinchingly at her.
+
+'May your sufferings be reckoned against me as so many crimes! May I be
+eternally punished for the desertion in which I am forced to leave you!
+That will be only just. All unworthy though I be, I pray for you each
+night.'
+
+She shrugged her shoulders with an air of great discouragement. Her
+anger was subsiding. She almost felt inclined to pity him.
+
+'You are mad,' she murmured. 'Keep your prayers. It is you yourself that
+I want. But you will never understand me. There were so many things I
+wanted to tell you! Yet you stand there and irritate me with your
+chatter of another world. Come, let us try to talk sensibly. Let us wait
+for a moment till we are calmer. You cannot dismiss me in this way, I
+cannot leave you here. It is because you are here that you are so
+corpse-like, so cold that I dare not touch you. We won't talk any more
+just now. We will wait a little.'
+
+She ceased speaking, and took a few steps, examining the little church.
+The rain was still gently pattering against the windows; and the cold
+damp light seemed to moisten the walls. Not a sound came from outside
+save the monotonous plashing of the rain. The sparrows were doubtless
+crouching for shelter under the tiles, and the rowan-tree's deserted
+branches showed but indistinctly in the veiling, drenching downpour.
+Five o'clock struck, grated out, stroke by stroke, from the wheezy chest
+of the old clock; and then the silence fell again, seeming to grow yet
+deeper, dimmer, and more despairing. The priest's painting work, as yet
+scarcely dry, gave to the high altar and the wainscoting an appearance
+of gloomy cleanliness, like that of some convent chapel where the sun
+never shines. Grievous anguish seemed to fill the nave, splashed with
+the blood that flowed from the limbs of the huge Christ; while, along
+the walls, the fourteen scenes of the Passion displayed their awful
+story in red and yellow daubs, reeking with horror. It was life that was
+suffering the last agonies there, amidst that deathlike quiver of the
+atmosphere, upon those altars which resembled tombs, in that bare vault
+which looked like a sepulchre. The surroundings all spoke of slaughter
+and gloom, terror and anguish and nothingness. A faint scent of incense
+still lingered there, like the last expiring breath of some dead girl,
+who had been hurriedly stifled beneath the flagstones.
+
+'Ah,' said Albine at last, 'how sweet it used to be in the sunshine!
+Don't you remember? One morning we walked past a hedge of tall rose
+bushes, to the left of the flower-garden. I recollect the very colour of
+the grass; it was almost blue, shot with green. When we reached the end
+of the hedge we turned and walked back again, so sweet was the perfume
+of the sunny air. And we did nothing else, that morning; we took just
+twenty paces forward and then twenty paces back. It was so sweet a spot
+you would not leave it. The bees buzzed all around; and there was a
+tomtit that never left us, but skipped along by our side from branch to
+branch. You whispered to me, "How delightful is life!" Ah! life! it was
+the green grass, the trees, the running waters, the sky, and the sun,
+amongst which we seemed all fair and golden.'
+
+She mused for another moment and then continued: 'Life 'twas the
+Paradou. How vast it used to seem to us! Never were we able to find the
+end of it. The sea of foliage rolled freely with rustling waves as far
+as the eye could reach. And all that glorious blue overhead! we were
+free to grow, and soar, and roam, like the clouds without meeting more
+obstacles than they. The very air was ours!'
+
+She stopped and pointed to the low walls of the church.
+
+'But, here, you are in a grave. You cannot stretch out your hand without
+hurting it against the stones. The roof hides the sky from you and blots
+out the sun. It is all so small and confined that your limbs grow stiff
+and cramped as though you were buried alive.'
+
+'No,' answered the priest. 'The church is wide as the world.'
+
+But she waved her hands towards the crosses, and the dying Christ, and
+the pictures of the Passion.
+
+'And you live in the very midst of death. The grass, the trees, the
+springs, the sun, the sky, all are in the death throes around you.'
+
+'No, no; all revives, all grows purified and reascends to the source of
+light.'
+
+He had now drawn himself quite erect, with flashing eyes. And feeling
+that he was now invincible, so permeated with faith as to disdain
+temptation, he quitted the altar, took Albine's hand, and led her, as
+though she had been his sister, to the ghastly pictures of the Stations
+of the Cross.
+
+'See,' he said, 'this is what God suffered! Jesus is cruelly scourged.
+Look! His shoulders are naked; His flesh is torn; His blood flows down
+His back. . . . And Jesus is crowned with thorns. Tears of blood trickle
+down His gashed brow. On His temple is a jagged wound. . . . Again Jesus
+is insulted by the soldiers. His murderers have scoffingly thrown a
+purple robe around His shoulders, and they spit upon His face and strike
+Him, and press the thorny crown deep into His flesh.'
+
+Albine turned away her head, that she might not see the crudely painted
+pictures, in which the ochreous flesh of Christ had been plentifully
+bedaubed with carmine wounds. The purple robe round His shoulders seemed
+like a shred of His skin torn away.
+
+'Why suffer? why die?' she said. 'O Serge, if you would only
+remember! . . . You told me, that morning, that you were tired. But
+I knew that you were only pretending, for the air was quite cool and we
+had only been walking for a quarter of an hour. But you wanted to sit
+down that you might hold me in your arms. Right down in the orchard, by
+the edge of a stream, there was a cherry tree--you remember it, don't
+you?--which you never could pass without wishing to kiss my hands. And
+your kisses ran all up my arms and shoulders to my lips. Cherry time was
+over, and so you devoured my lips. . . . It used to make us feel so sad
+to see the flowers fading, and one day, when you found a dead bird in
+the grass, you turned quite pale, and caught me to your breast, as if to
+forbid the earth to take me.'
+
+But the priest drew her towards the other Stations of the Cross.
+
+'Hush! hush!' he cried, 'look here, and here! Bow down in grief and
+pity---- Jesus falls beneath the weight of His cross. The ascent of
+Calvary is very tiring. He has dropped down on His knees. But He does
+not stay to wipe even the sweat from His brow, He rises up again and
+continues His journey. . . . And again Jesus falls beneath the weight of
+His cross. At each step He staggers. This time He has fallen on His
+side, so heavily that for a moment He lies there quite breathless. His
+lacerated hands have relaxed their hold upon the cross. His bruised and
+aching feet leave blood-stained prints behind them. Agonising weariness
+overwhelms Him, for He carries upon His shoulders the sins of the whole
+world.'
+
+Albine gazed at the pictured Jesus, lying in a blue shirt prostrate
+beneath the cross, the blackness of which bedimmed the gold of His
+aureole. Then, with her glance wandering far away, she said:
+
+'Oh! those meadow-paths! Have you no memory left, Serge? Have you
+forgotten those soft grassy walks through the meadows, amidst very seas
+of greenery? On the afternoon I am telling you of, we had only meant to
+stay out of doors an hour; but we went wandering on and were still
+wandering when the stars came out above us. Ah! how velvety it was, that
+endless carpet, soft as finest silk! It was just like a green sea whose
+gentle waters lapped us round. And well we knew whither those beguiling
+paths that led nowhere, were taking us! They were taking us to our love,
+to the joy of living together, to the certainty of happiness.'
+
+With his hands trembling with anguish, Abbe Mouret pointed to the
+remaining pictures.
+
+'Jesus,' he stammered, 'Jesus is nailed to the cross. The nails are
+hammered through His outspread hands. A single nail suffices for his
+feet, whose bones split asunder. He, Himself, while His flesh quivers
+with pain, fixes His eyes upon heaven and smiles. . . . Jesus is
+crucified between two thieves. The weight of His body terribly
+aggravates His wounds. From His brow, from His limbs, does a bloody
+sweat stream down. The two thieves insult Him, the passers-by mock at
+Him, the soldiers cast lots for His raiment. And the shadowy darkness
+grows deeper and the sun hides himself. . . . Jesus dies upon the cross.
+He utters a piercing cry and gives up the ghost. Oh! most terrible of
+deaths! The veil of the temple is rent in twain from top to bottom. The
+earth quakes, the stones are broken, and the very graves open.'
+
+The priest had fallen on his knees, his voice choked by sobs, his eyes
+fixed upon the three crosses of Calvary, where writhed the gaunt pallid
+bodies of the crucified. Albine placed herself in front of the paintings
+in order that he might no longer see them.
+
+'One evening,' she said, 'I lay through the long gloaming with my head
+upon your lap. It was in the forest, at the end of that great avenue of
+chestnut-trees, through which the setting sun shot a parting ray. Ah!
+what a caressing farewell He bade us! He lingered awhile by our feet
+with a kindly smile, as if saying "Till to-morrow." The sky slowly grew
+paler. I told you merrily that it was taking off its blue gown, and
+donning its gold-flowered robe of black to go out for the evening. And
+it was not night that fell, but a soft dimness, a veil of love and
+mystery, reminding us of those dusky paths, where the foliage arches
+overhead, one of those paths in which one hides for a moment with the
+certainty of finding the joyousness of daylight at the other end.
+
+'That evening the calm clearness of the twilight gave promise of a
+splendid morrow. When I saw that it did not grow dark as quickly as you
+wished, I pretended to fall asleep. I may confess it to you now, but I
+was not really sleeping while you kissed me on the eyes. I felt your
+kisses and tried to keep from laughing. And then, when the darkness
+really came, it was like one long caress. The trees slept no more than I
+did. At night, don't you remember, the flowers always breathed a
+stronger perfume.'
+
+Then, as he still remained on his knees, while tears streamed down his
+face, she caught him by the wrists, and pulled him to his feet, resuming
+passionately:
+
+'Oh! if you knew you would bid me carry you off; you would fasten your
+arms about my neck, lest I should go away without you. . . . Yesterday I
+had a longing to see the garden once more. It seems larger, deeper, more
+unfathomable than ever. I discovered there new scents, so sweetly
+aromatic that they brought tears into my eyes. In the avenues I found a
+rain of sunbeams that thrilled me with desire. The roses spoke to me of
+you. The bullfinches were amazed at seeing me alone. All the garden
+broke out into sighs. Oh! come! Never has the grass spread itself out
+more softly. I have marked with a flower the hidden nook whither I long
+to take you. It is a nest of greenery in the midst of a tangle of
+brushwood. And there one can hear all the teeming life of the garden, of
+the trees and the streams and the sky. The earth's very breathing will
+softly lull us to rest there. Oh! come! come! and let us love one
+another amidst that universal loving!'
+
+But he pushed her from him. He had returned to the Chapel of the
+Dead and stood in front of the painted papier-mache Christ, big as a
+ten-year-old boy, that writhed in such horridly realistic agony. There
+were real iron nails driven into the figure's limbs, and the wounds
+gaped in the torn and bleeding flesh.
+
+'O Jesus, Who hast died for us!' cried the priest, 'convince her of our
+nothingness! Tell her that we are but dust, rottenness, and damnation!
+Ah! suffer that I may hide my head in a hair-cloth and rest it against
+Thy feet and stay there, motionless, until I rot away in death. The
+earth will no longer exist for me. The sun will no longer shine. I shall
+see nothing more, feel nothing, hear nothing. Nought of all this
+wretched world will come to turn my soul from its adoration of Thee.'
+
+He was gradually becoming more and more excited, and he stepped towards
+Albine with upraised hands.
+
+'You said rightly. It is Death that is present here; Death that is
+before my eyes; Death that delivers and saves one from all rottenness.
+Hear me! I renounce, I deny life, I wholly refuse it, I spit upon it.
+Those flowers of yours stink; your sun dazzles and blinds; your grass
+makes lepers of those that lie upon it; your garden is but a
+charnel-place where all rots and putrefies. The earth reeks with
+abomination. You lie when you talk of love and light and gladsome life
+in the depths of your palace of greenery. There is nought but darkness
+there. Those trees of yours exhale a poison which transforms men into
+beasts; your thickets are charged with the venom of vipers; your streams
+carry pestilence in their blue waters. If I could snatch away from that
+world of nature, which you extol, its kirtle of sunshine and its girdle
+of greenery, you would see it hideous like a very fury, a skeleton,
+rotting away with disease and vice.
+
+'And even if you spoke the truth, even if your hands were really filled
+with pleasures, even if you should carry me to a couch of roses and
+offer me the dreams of Paradise, I would defend myself yet the more
+desperately from your embraces. There is war between us; war eternal and
+implacable. See! the church is very small; it is poverty-stricken; it is
+ugly; its confessional-box and pulpit are made of common deal, its font
+is merely of plaster, its altars are formed of four boards which I have
+painted myself. But what of that? It is yet vaster than your garden,
+greater than the valley, greater, even, than the whole earth. It is an
+impregnable fortress which nothing can ever break down. The winds, the
+sun, the forests, the ocean, all that is, may combine to assault it; yet
+it will stand erect and unshaken for ever!
+
+'Yes, let all the jungles tower aloft and assail the walls with their
+thorny arms, let all the legions of insects swarm out of their holes in
+the ground and gnaw at the walls; the church, ruinous though it may
+seem, will never fall before the invasion of life. It is Death, Death
+the inexpugnable! . . . And do you know what will one day happen? The
+tiny church will grow and spread to such a colossal size, and will cast
+around such a mighty shadow, that all that nature, you speak of, will
+give up the ghost. Ah! Death, the Death of everything, with the skies
+gaping to receive our souls, above the curse-stricken ruins of the
+world!'
+
+As he shouted those last words, he pushed Albine forcibly towards the
+door. She, extremely pale, retreated step by step. When he had finished
+in a gasping voice she very gravely answered:
+
+'It is all over, then? You drive me away? Yet, I am your wife. It is you
+who made me so. And God, since He permitted it, cannot punish us to such
+a point as this.'
+
+She was now on the threshold, and she added:
+
+'Listen! Every day, at sunset, I go to the end of the garden, to the
+spot where the wall has fallen in. I shall wait for you there.'
+
+And then she disappeared. The vestry door fell back with a sound like a
+deep sigh.
+
+
+
+                                 IX
+
+The church was perfectly silent, except for the murmuring sound of the
+rain, which was falling heavily once more. In that sudden change to
+quietude the priest's anger subsided, and he even felt moved. It was
+with his face streaming with tears, his frame shaken by sobs, that he
+went back to throw himself on his knees before the great crucifix. A
+torrent of ardent thanksgiving burst from his lips.
+
+'Thanks be to Thee, O God, for the help which Thou hast graciously
+bestowed upon me. Without Thy grace I should have hearkened unto the
+promptings of my flesh, and should have miserably returned to my sin. It
+was Thy grace that girded my loins as with armour for battle; Thy grace
+was indeed my armour, my courage, the support of my soul, that kept me
+erect, beyond weakness. Oh! my God, Thou wert in me; it was Thy voice
+that spoke in me, for I no longer felt the cowardice of the flesh, I
+could have cut asunder my very heart-strings. And now, O God, I offer
+Thee my bleeding heart. It no longer belongs to any creature of this
+world; it is Thine alone. To give it to Thee I have wrenched it from all
+worldly affection. But think not, O God, that I take any pride to myself
+for this victory. I know that without Thee I am nothing; and I humbly
+cast myself at Thy feet.'
+
+He sank down upon the altar steps, unable to utter another word, while
+his breath panted incense-like from his parted lips. The divine grace
+bathed him in ineffable ecstasy. He sought Jesus in the recesses of his
+being, in that sanctuary of love which he was ever preparing for His
+worthy reception. And Jesus was now present there. The Abbe knew it by
+the sweet influences which permeated him. And thereupon he joined with
+Jesus in that spiritual converse which at times bore him away from earth
+to companionship with God. He sighed out the verse from the 'Song of
+Solomon,' 'My beloved is mine, and I am his; He feedeth his flock among
+the lilies, until the day be cool, and the shadows flee away.' He
+pondered over the words of the 'Imitation:' 'It is a great art to know
+how to talk with Jesus, and it requires much prudence to keep Him near
+one.' And then, with adorable condescension, Jesus came down to him, and
+spoke with him for hours of his needs, his happiness, and his hopes.
+Their confidences were not less affectionate and touching than those of
+two friends, who meet after long separation and quietly retire to
+converse on the bank of some lonely stream; for during those hours of
+divine condescension Jesus deigned to be his friend, his best, most
+faithful friend, one who never forsook him, and who in return for a
+little love gave him all the treasures of eternal life. That day the
+priest was eager to prolong the sweet converse, and indeed, when six
+o'clock sounded through the quiet church, he was still listening to the
+words which echoed through his soul.
+
+On his side there was unreserved confession, unimpeded by the restraints
+of language, natural effusion of the heart which spoke even more quickly
+than the mind. Abbe Mouret told everything to Jesus, as to a God who had
+come down in all the intimacy of the most loving tenderness, and who
+would listen to everything. He confessed that he still loved Albine; and
+he was surprised that he had been able to speak sternly to her and drive
+her away, without his whole being breaking out into revolt. He marvelled
+at it, and smiled as though it were some wonderful miracle performed by
+another. And Jesus told him that he must not be astonished, and that the
+greatest saints were often but unconscious instruments in the hands of
+God. Then the Abbe gave expression to a doubt. Had he not lost merit in
+seeking refuge in the Cross and even in the Passion of his Saviour? Had
+he not shown that he possessed as yet but little courage, since he had
+not dared to fight unaided? But Jesus evinced kindly tolerance, and
+answered that man's weakness was God's continual care, and that He
+especially loved those suffering souls, to whose assistance He went,
+like a friend to the bedside of a sick companion.
+
+But was it a sin to love Albine, a sin for which he, Serge, would be
+damned? No; if his love was clean of all fleshly taint, and added
+another hope to his desire for eternal life. But, then, how was he to
+love her? In silence; without speaking a word to her, without taking a
+step towards her; simply allowing his pure affection to breathe forth,
+like a sweet perfume, pleasing unto heaven. And Jesus smiled with
+increasing kindliness, drawing nearer as if to encourage confession, in
+such wise that the priest grew bolder and began to recapitulate Albine's
+charms. She had hair that was fair and golden as an angel's; she was
+very white, with big soft eyes, like those of the aureoled saints. Jesus
+seemed to listen to this in silence, though a smile still played upon
+His face. And the priest continued: She had grown much taller. She was
+now like a queen, with rounded form and splendid shoulders. Oh! to clasp
+her waist, were it only for a second, and to feel her shoulders drawn
+close by his embrace! But the smile on the divine countenance then
+paled and died away, as a star sinks and falls beneath the horizon.
+Abbe Mouret now spoke all alone. Ah! had he not shown himself too
+hard-hearted? Why had he driven her away without one single word of
+affection, since Heaven allowed him to love her?
+
+'I do love her! I do love her!' he cried aloud, in a distracted voice,
+that rang through the church.
+
+He thought he saw her still standing there. She was stretching out her
+arms to him; she was beautiful enough to make him break all his vows. He
+threw himself upon her bosom without thought of the reverence due to his
+surroundings, he clasped her and rained kisses upon her face. It was
+before her that he now knelt, imploring her mercy, and beseeching her to
+forgive him his unkindness. He told her that, at times a voice which was
+not his own spoke through his lips. Could he himself ever have treated
+her harshly? It was the strange voice that had repulsed her. It could
+not, surely, be he himself, for he would have been unable to touch a
+hair of her head without loving emotion. And yet he had driven her away.
+The church was really empty! Whither should he hasten to find her again,
+to bring her back, and wipe her tears away with kisses? The rain was
+streaming down more violently than ever. The roads must be rivers of
+mud. He pictured her to himself lashed by the downpour, tottering
+alongside the ditches, her clothes soaked and clinging to her skin. No!
+no! it could not have been himself; it was that other voice, the jealous
+voice that had so cruelly sought to slay his love.
+
+'O Jesus!' he cried in desperation, 'be merciful and give her back to
+me!'
+
+But his Lord was no longer there. Then Abbe Mouret, awaking with a
+start, turned horribly pale. He understood it all. He had not known how
+to keep Jesus with him. He had lost his friend, and had been left
+defenceless against the powers of evil. Instead of that inward light,
+which had shone so brightly within him as he received his God, he now
+found utter darkness, a foul vapour that irritated his senses. Jesus had
+withdrawn His grace on leaving him; and he, who since early morning had
+been so strong with heaven-sent help, now felt utterly miserable,
+forsaken, weak and helpless as an infant. How frightful was his fall!
+How galling its bitterness! To have straggled so heroically, to have
+remained unshaken, invincible, implacable, while the temptress actually
+stood before him, with all her warm life, her swelling bosom and superb
+shoulders, her perfume of love and passion; and then to fall so
+shamefully, to throb with desire, when she had disappeared, leaving
+behind her but the echo of her skirts, and the fragrance diffused from
+her white neck! Now, these mere recollections sufficed to make her all
+powerful, her influence permeated the church.
+
+'Jesus! Jesus!' cried the priest, once more, 'return, come back to me;
+speak to me once again!'
+
+But Jesus remained deaf to his cry. For a moment Abbe Mouret raised his
+arms to heaven in desperate entreaty. His shoulders cracked and strained
+beneath the wild violence of his supplications. But soon his hands fell
+down again in discouragement. Heaven preserved that hopeless silence
+which suppliants at times encounter. Then he once more sat down on the
+altar steps, heart-crushed and with ashen face, pressing his elbows to
+his sides, as though he were trying to reduce his flesh to the smallest
+proportions possible.
+
+'My God! Thou deserted me!' he murmured. 'Nevertheless, Thy will be
+done!'
+
+He spoke not another word, but sat there, panting breathlessly, like a
+hunted beast that cowers motionless in fear of the hounds. Ever since
+his sin, he had thus seemed to be the sport of the divine grace. It
+denied itself to his most ardent prayers; it poured down upon him,
+unexpectedly and refreshingly, when he had lost all hope of winning it
+for long years to come.
+
+At first he had been inclined to rebel against this dispensation of
+Heaven, complaining like a betrayed lover, and demanding the immediate
+return of that consoling grace, whose kiss made him so strong. But
+afterwards, after unavailing outbursts of anger, he had learned to
+understand that humility profited him most and could alone enable him to
+endure the withdrawal of the divine assistance. Then, for hours and for
+days, he would humble himself and wait for comfort which came not. In
+vain he cast himself unreservedly into the hands of God, annihilated
+himself before the Divinity, wearied himself with the incessant
+repetition of prayers. He could not perceive God's presence with him;
+and his flesh, breaking free from all restraint, rose up in rebellious
+desire. It was a slow agony of temptation, in which the weapons of faith
+fell, one by one, from his faltering hands, in which he lay inert in the
+clutch of passion, in which he beheld with horror his own ignominy,
+without having the courage to raise his little finger to free himself
+from the thraldom of sin.
+
+Such was now his life. He had felt sin's attacks in every form. Not a
+day passed that he was not tried. Sin assumed a thousand guises,
+assailed him through his eyes and ears, flew boldly at his throat,
+leaped treacherously upon his shoulders, or stole torturingly into his
+bones. His transgression was ever present, he almost always beheld
+Albine dazzling as the sunshine, lighting up the greenery of the
+Paradou. He only ceased to see her in those rare moments when the divine
+grace deigned to close his eyes with its cool caresses. And he strove to
+hide his sufferings as one hides those of some disgraceful disease. He
+wrapped himself in the endless silence, which no one knew how to make
+him break, filling the parsonage with his martyrdom and resignation, and
+exasperating La Teuse, who, at times, when his back was turned, would
+shake her fist at heaven.
+
+This time he was alone now, and need take no care to hide his torment.
+Sin had just struck him such an overwhelming blow, that he had not
+strength left to move from the altar steps, where he had fallen. He
+remained there, sighing, and groaning, parched with agony, incapable of
+a single tear. And he thought of the calm unruffled life that had once
+been his. Ah! the perfect peace, the full confidence of his first days
+at Les Artaud! The path of salvation had seemed so straight and easy
+then! He had smiled at the very mention of temptation. He had lived in
+the midst of wickedness, without knowledge of it, without fear of it,
+certain of being able to withstand it. He had been a model priest, so
+pure and chaste, so inexperienced and innocent in God's sight, that God
+had led him by the hand like a little child.
+
+But now, all that childlike innocence was dead, God visited him in the
+morning, and forthwith tried him. A state of temptation became his life
+on earth. Now that full manhood and sin had come upon him, he entered
+into the everlasting struggle. Could it be that God really loved him
+more now than before? The great saints have all left fragments of their
+torn flesh upon the thorns of the way of sorrow. He tried to gather some
+consolation from this circumstance. At each laceration of his flesh,
+each racking of his bones, he tried to assure himself of some exceeding
+great reward. And then, no infliction that Heaven might now cast upon
+him could be too heavy. He even looked back with scorn on his former
+serenity, his easy fervour, which had set him on his knees with mere
+girlish enthusiasm, and left him unconscious even of the bruising of the
+hard stones. He strove also to discover pleasure in pain, in plunging
+into it, annihilating himself in it. But, even while he poured out
+thanks to God, his teeth chattered with growing terror, and the voice of
+his rebellious blood cried out to him that this was all falsehood, and
+that the only happiness worth desiring was in Albine's arms, amongst the
+flowers of the Paradou.
+
+Yet he had put aside Mary for Jesus, sacrificing his heart that he might
+subdue his flesh, and hoping to implant some virility in his faith. Mary
+disquieted him too much, with her smoothly braided hair, her
+outstretched hands, and her womanly smile. He could never kneel before
+her without dropping his eyes, for fear of catching sight of the hem of
+her dress. Then, too, he accused her of having treated him too tenderly
+in former times. She had kept him sheltered so long within the folds of
+her robe, that he had let himself slip from her arms to those of a human
+creature without being conscious even of the change of his affection. He
+thought of all the roughness of Brother Archangias, of his refusal to
+worship Mary, of the distrustful glances with which he had seemed to
+watch her. He himself despaired of ever rising to such a height of
+roughness, and so he simply left her, hiding her images and deserting
+her altar. Yet she remained in his heart, like some love which, though
+unavowed, is ever present. Sin, with sacrilege whose very horror made
+him shudder, made use of her to tempt him.
+
+Whenever he still invoked her, as he did at times of irrepressible
+emotion, it was Albine who showed herself beneath the white veil, with
+the blue scarf knotted round her waist and the golden roses blooming on
+her bare feet. All the representations of the Virgin, the Virgin with
+the royal mantle of cloth-of-gold, the Virgin crowned with stars, the
+Virgin visited by the Angel of the Annunciation, the peaceful Virgin
+poised between a lily and a distaff, all brought him some memory of
+Albine, her smiling eyes or her delicately curved mouth or her softly
+rounded cheeks.
+
+Thereupon, by a supreme effort, he drove the female element from his
+worship, and sought refuge in Jesus, though even His gentle mildness
+sometimes proved a source of disquietude to him. What he needed was a
+jealous God, an implacable God, the Jehovah of the Old Testament, girded
+with thunder and manifesting Himself only to chastise the terrified
+world. He had done with the saints and the angels and the Divine Mother;
+he bowed down before God Himself alone, the omnipotent Master, who
+demanded from him his every breath. And he felt the hand of this God
+laid heavily upon him, holding him helpless at His mercy through space
+and time, like a guilty atom. Ah! to be nothing, to be damned, to dream
+of hell, to wrestle vainly against hideous temptations, all that was
+surely good.
+
+From Jesus he took but the cross. He was seized with that passion for
+the cross which has made so many lips press themselves again and again
+to the crucifix till they were worn away with kissing. He took up the
+cross and followed Jesus. He sought to make it heavier, the mightiest of
+burdens; it was great joy to him to fall beneath its weight, to drag it
+on his knees, his back half broken. In it he beheld the only source of
+strength for the soul, of joy for the mind, of the consummation of
+virtue and the perfection of holiness. In it lay all that was good; all
+ended in death upon it. To suffer and to die, those words ever sounded
+in his ears, as the end and goal of mortal wisdom. And, when he had
+fastened himself to the cross, he enjoyed the boundless consolation of
+God's love. It was no longer, now, upon Mary that he lavished filial
+tenderness or lover's passion. He loved for love's mere sake, with an
+absolute abstract love. He loved God with a love that lifted him out of
+himself, out of all else, and wrapped him round with a dazzling radiance
+of glory. He was like a torch that burns away with blazing light. And
+death seemed to him to be only a great impulse of love.
+
+But what had he omitted to do that he was thus so sorely tried? With
+his hand he wiped away the perspiration that streamed down his brow,
+and reflected that, that very morning, he had made his usual
+self-examination without finding any great guilt within him. Was he not
+leading a life of great austerity and mortification of the flesh? Did he
+not love God solely and blindly? Ah! how he would have blessed His Holy
+Name had He only restored him his peace, deeming him now sufficiently
+punished for his transgression! But, perhaps, that sin of his could
+never be expiated. And then, in spite of himself, his mind reverted to
+Albine and the Paradou, and all their memories.
+
+At first he tried to make excuses for himself. He had fallen, one
+evening, senseless upon the tiled floor of his bedroom, stricken with
+brain fever. For three weeks he had remained unconscious. His blood
+surged furiously through his veins and raged within him like a torrent
+that had burst its banks. His whole body, from the crown of his head to
+the soles of his feet, was so scoured and renewed and wrought afresh by
+the mighty labouring of his ailment, that in his delirium he had
+sometimes thought he could hear the very hammer blows of workmen that
+nailed his bones together again. Then, one morning, he had awakened,
+feeling like a new being. He was born a second time, freed of all that
+his five-and-twenty years of life had successively implanted in him. His
+childish piety, his education at the seminary, the faith of his early
+priesthood, had all vanished, had been carried off, and their place was
+bare and empty. In truth, it could be hell alone that had thus prepared
+him for the reception of evil, disarming him of all his former weapons,
+and reducing his body to languor and softness, through which sin might
+readily enter.
+
+He, perfectly unconscious of it all, unknowingly surrendered himself to
+the gradual approach of evil. When he had reopened his eyes in the
+Paradou, he had felt himself an infant once more, with no memory of the
+past, no knowledge of his priesthood. He experienced a gentle pleasure,
+a glad feeling of surprise at thus beginning life afresh, as though it
+were all new and strange to him and would be delightful to learn. Oh!
+the sweet apprenticeship, the charming observations, the delicious
+discoveries! That Paradou was a vast abode of felicity; and hell, in
+placing him there, had known full well that he would be defenceless.
+Never, in his first youth, had he known such enjoyment in growing. That
+first youth of his, when he now thought of it, seemed quite black and
+gloomy, graceless, wan and inactive, as if it had been spent far away
+from the sunlight.
+
+But at the Paradou, how joyfully had he hailed the sun! How admiringly
+had he gazed at the first tree, at the first flower, at the tiniest
+insect he had seen, at the most insignificant pebble he had picked up!
+The very stones charmed him. The horizon was a source of never-ending
+amazement. One clear morning, the memory of which still filled his eyes,
+bringing back a perfume of jasmine, a lark's clear song, he had been so
+affected by emotion that he felt all power desert his limbs. He had long
+found pleasure in learning the sensations of life. And, ah! the morning
+when Albine had been born beside him amidst the roses! As he thought of
+it, an ecstatic smile broke out upon his face. She rose up like a star
+that was necessary to the very sun's existence. She illumined
+everything, she made everything clear. She made his life complete.
+
+Then in fancy he once again walked with her through the Paradou. He
+remembered the little curls that waved behind her neck as she ran on
+before him. She exhaled delicious scent, and the touch of her warm
+swaying skirts seemed like a caress. And when she clasped him with her
+supple curving arms, he half expected to see her, so slight and slender
+she was, twine herself around him. It was she who went foremost. She led
+him through winding paths, where they loitered, that their walk might
+last the longer. It was she who instilled into him love for nature; and
+it was by watching the loves of the plants that he had learned to love
+her, with a love that was long, indeed, in bursting into life, but whose
+sweetness had been theirs at last. Beneath the shade of the giant tree
+they had reached their journey's goal. Oh! to clasp her once again--yet
+once again!
+
+A low groan suddenly came from the priest. He hastily sprang up and
+then flung himself down again. Temptation had just assailed him
+afresh. Into what paths were his recollections leading him? Did he
+not know, only too well, that Satan avails himself of every wile to
+insinuate his serpent-head into the soul, even when it is absorbed in
+self-examination? No! no! he had no excuse. His illness had in no wise
+authorised him to sin. He should have set strict guard upon himself, and
+have sought God anew upon recovering from his fever. And what a
+frightful proof he now had of his vileness: he was not even able to make
+calm confession of his sin. Would he never be able to silence his
+nature? He wildly thought of scooping his brains out of his skull that
+he might be able to think no more, and of opening his veins that his
+blood might no longer torment him. For a moment he buried his face
+within his hands, shuddering as though the beasts that he felt prowling
+around him might infect him with the hot breath of temptation.
+
+But his thoughts strayed on in spite of himself, and his blood throbbed
+wildly in his very heart. Though he held his clenched fists to his eyes,
+he still saw Albine, dazzling like a sun. Every effort that he made to
+press the vision from his sight only made her shine out before him with
+increased brilliancy. Was God, then, utterly forsaking him, that he
+could find no refuge from temptation? And, in spite of all his efforts
+to control his thoughts, he espied every tiny blade of grass that thrust
+itself up by Albine's skirts; he saw a little thistle-flower fastened in
+her hair, against which he remembered that he had pricked his lips.
+Even the perfumed atmosphere of the Paradou floated round him, and
+well-remembered sounds came back, the repeated call of a bird, then an
+interval of hushed silence, then a sigh floating through the trees.
+
+Why did not Heaven at once strike him dead with its lightning? That
+would have been less cruel. It was with a voluptuous pang, like the
+pangs which assail the damned, that he recalled his transgression. He
+shuddered when he again heard in his heart the abominable words that he
+had spoken at Albine's feet. Their echoes were now accusing him before
+the throne of God. He had acknowledged Woman as his sovereign. He had
+yielded to her as a slave, kissing her feet, longing to be the water she
+drank and the bread she ate. He began to understand now why he could no
+longer recover self-control. God had given him over to Woman. But he
+would chastise her, scourge her, break her very limbs to force her to
+let him go! It was she who was the slave; she, the creature of impurity,
+to whom the Church should have denied a soul. Then he braced himself,
+and shook his fists at the vision of Albine; but his fists opened and
+his hands glided along her shoulders in a loving caress, while his lips,
+just now breathing out anger and insult, pressed themselves to her hair,
+stammering forth words of adoration.
+
+Abbe Mouret opened his eyes again. The burning apparition of Albine
+vanished. It was sudden and unexpected solace. He was able to weep.
+Tears flowed slowly and refreshingly down his cheeks, and he drew a long
+breath, still fearing to move, lest the Evil One should again grip him
+by the neck, for he yet thought that he heard the snarl of a beast
+behind him. And then he found such pleasure in the cessation of his
+sufferings that his one thought was to prolong the enjoyment of it.
+
+Outside the rain had ceased falling. The sun was setting in a vast
+crimson glow, which spread across the windows like curtains of
+rose-coloured satin. The church was quite warm and bright in the parting
+breath of the sinking luminary. The priest thanked God for the respite
+He had been pleased to vouchsafe to him. A broad ray of light, like a
+beam of gold-dust, streamed through the nave and illumined the far end
+of the building, the clock, the pulpit, and the high altar. Perhaps the
+Divine grace was returning to him from heaven along that radiant path.
+He watched with interest the atoms that came and went with prodigious
+speed through the ray, like a swarm of busy messengers ever hastening
+with news from the sun to the earth. A thousand lighted candles
+would not have filled the church with such splendour. Curtains of
+cloth-of-gold seemed to hang behind the high altar; treasures of the
+goldsmith's art covered all the ledges; candle-holders arose in dazzling
+sheaves; censers glowed full of burning gems; sacred vases gleamed like
+fiery comets; and around all there seemed to be a rain of luminous
+flowers amidst waving lacework--beds, bouquets, and garlands of roses,
+from whose expanding petals dropped showers of stars.
+
+Never had Abbe Mouret desired such magnificence for his poor church. He
+smiled, and dreamt of how he might retain all that splendour there, and
+then arrange it most effectively. He would have preferred to see the
+curtains of cloth-of-gold hung rather higher; the vases, too, needed
+more careful arrangement; and he thought that the bouquets of flowers
+might be tied up more neatly, and the garlands be more regularly shaped.
+Yet how wondrously magnificent it all was! He was the pontiff of a
+church of gold. Bishops, princes, princesses, arrayed in royal mantles,
+multitudes of believers, bending to the ground, were coming to visit it,
+encamping in the valley, waiting for weeks at the door until they should
+be able to enter. They kissed his feet, for even his feet had turned to
+gold, and worked miracles. The bath of gold mounted to his knees. A
+golden heart was beating within his golden breast, with so clear a
+musical pulsation that the waiting crowds could hear it from outside.
+Then a feeling of overweening pride seized upon him. He was an idol. The
+golden beam mounted still higher, the high altar was all ablaze with
+glory, and the priest grew certain that the Divine grace must be
+returning to him, such was his inward satisfaction. The fierce snarl
+behind him had now grown gentle and coaxing, and he only felt on his
+shoulder a soft velvety pressure, as though some giant cat were lightly
+caressing him.
+
+He still pursued his reverie. Never before had he seen things under such
+a favourable light. Everything seemed quite easy to him now that he once
+more felt full of strength. Since Albine was waiting for him, he would
+go and join her. It was only natural. On the previous morning he had
+married Fortune and Rosalie. The Church did not forbid marriages. He saw
+that young couple again as they knelt before him, smiling and nudging
+each other while his hands were held over them in benediction. Then, in
+the evening, they had shown him their room. Each word that he had spoken
+to them echoed loudly in his ear. He had told Fortune that God had sent
+him a companion, because He did not wish man to live alone; and he had
+told Rosalie that she must cleave to her husband, never leaving him, but
+always acting as his obedient helpmate. But he had said these things
+also for Albine and himself. Was she not his companion, his obedient
+helpmate, whom God had sent to him that his manhood might not wither up
+in solitude? Besides, they had been joined the one to the other. He felt
+surprised that he had not understood and recognised it at once; that he
+had not gone away with her, as his duty plainly required that he should
+have done. But he had quite made up his mind now; he would certainly
+join her in the morning. He could be with her in half an hour. He would
+go through the village, and take the road up the hill; it was much the
+shortest way. He could do what he pleased; he was the master, and no one
+would presume to say anything to him. If any one looked at him, a wave
+of his hand would force them to bend their heads. He would live with
+Albine. He would call her his wife. They would be very happy together.
+
+The golden stream mounted still higher, and played amongst his fingers.
+Again did he seem to be immersed in a bath of gold. He would take the
+altar-vases away to ornament his house, he would keep up a fine
+establishment, he would pay his servants with fragments of chalices
+which he could easily break with his fingers. He would hang his
+bridal-bed with the cloth-of-gold that draped the altar; and he would
+give his wife for jewels the golden hearts and chaplets and crosses that
+hung from the necks of the Virgin and the saints. The church itself, if
+another storey were added to it, would supply them with a palace. God
+would have no objection to make since He had allowed them to love each
+other. And, besides, was it not he who was now God, with the people
+kissing his golden miracle-working feet?
+
+Abbe Mouret rose. He made that sweeping gesture of Jeanbernat's, that
+wide gesture of negation, that took in everything as far as the horizon.
+
+'There is nothing, nothing, nothing!' he said. 'God does not exist.'
+
+A mighty shudder seemed to sweep through the church. The terrified
+priest turned deadly pale and listened. Who had spoken? Who was it that
+had blasphemed? Suddenly the velvety caress, whose gentle pressure he
+had felt upon his shoulder, turned fierce and savage: sharp talons
+seemed to be rending his flesh, and once more he felt his blood
+streaming forth. Yet he remained on his feet, struggling against the
+sudden attack. He cursed and reviled the triumphant sin that sniggered
+and grinned round his temples, whilst all the hammers of the Evil One
+battered at them. Why had he not been on his guard against Satan's
+wiles? Did he not know full well that it was his habit to glide up
+softly with gentle paws that he might drive them like blades into the
+very vitals of his victim?
+
+His anger increased as he thought how he had been entrapped, like a mere
+child. Was he destined, then, to be ever hurled to the ground, with sin
+crouching victoriously on his breast? This time he had actually denied
+his God. It was all one fatal descent. His transgression had destroyed
+his faith, and then dogma had tottered. One single doubt of the flesh,
+pleading abomination, sufficed to sweep heaven away. The divine
+ordinances irritated one; the divine mysteries made one smile. Then came
+other temptations and allurements; gold, power, unrestrained liberty, an
+irresistible longing for enjoyment, culminating in luxuriousness,
+sprawling on a bed of wealth and pride. And then God was robbed. His
+vessels were broken to adorn woman's impurity. Ah! well, then, he was
+damned. Nothing could make any difference to him now. Sin might speak
+aloud. It was useless to struggle further. The monsters who had hovered
+about his neck were battening on his vitals now. He yielded to them with
+hideous satisfaction. He shook his fists at the church. No; he believed
+no longer in the divinity of Christ; he believed no longer in the Holy
+Trinity; he believed in naught but himself, and his muscles and the
+appetites of his body. He wanted to live. He felt the necessity of being
+a man. Oh! to speed along through the open air, to be lusty and strong,
+to owe obedience to no jealous master, to fell one's enemies with
+stones, to carry off the fair maidens that passed upon one's shoulders.
+He would break out from that living tomb where cruel hands had thrust
+him. He would awaken his manhood, which had only been slumbering. And
+might he die of shame if he should find that it were really dead! And
+might the Divinity be accursed if, by the touch of His finger, He had
+made him different from the rest of mankind.
+
+The priest stood erect, his mind all dazed and scared. He fancied that,
+at this fresh outburst of blasphemy, the church was falling down upon
+him. The sunlight, which had poured over the high altar, had gradually
+spread and mounted the walls like ruddy fire. Flames soared and licked
+the rafters, then died away in a sanguineous, ember-like glow. And all
+at once the church became quite black. It was as though the fires of the
+setting sun had burst the roof asunder, pierced the walls, thrown open
+wide breaches on every side to some exterior foe. The gloomy framework
+seemed to shake beneath some violent assault. Night was coming on
+quickly.
+
+Then, in the far distance, the priest heard a gentle murmur rising from
+the valley of Les Artaud. The time had been when he had not understood
+the impassioned language of those burning lands, where writhed but
+knotted vine-stocks, withered almond-trees, and decrepit olives
+sprawling with crippled limbs. Protected by his ignorance, he had passed
+undisturbed through all that world of passion. But, to-day, his ear
+detected the slightest sigh of the leaves that lay panting in the heat.
+Afar off, on the edge of the horizon, the hills, still hot with the
+sinking luminary's farewell, seemed to set themselves in motion with the
+tramp of an army on the march. Nearer at hand, the scattered rocks, the
+stones along the road, all the pebbles in the valley, throbbed and
+rolled as if possessed by a craving for motion. Then the tracts of ruddy
+soil, the few fields that had been reduced to cultivation, seemed to
+heave and growl like rivers that had burst their banks, bearing along in
+a blood-like flood the engenderings of seeds, the births of roots, the
+embraces of plants. Soon everything was in motion. The vine-branches
+appeared to crawl along like huge insects; the parched corn and the dry
+grass formed into dense, lance-waving battalions; the trees stretched
+out their boughs like wrestlers making ready for a contest; the fallen
+leaves skipped forward; the very dust on the road rolled on. It was a
+moving multitude reinforced by fresh recruits at every step; a legion,
+the sound of whose coming went on in front of it; an outburst of
+passionate life, sweeping everything along in a mighty whirlwind of
+fruitfulness. And all at once the assault began. From the limits of the
+horizon, the whole countryside, the hills and stones and fields and
+trees, rushed upon the church. At the first shock, the building quivered
+and cracked. The walls were pierced and the tiles on the roof were
+thrown down. But the great Christ, although shaken, did not fall.
+
+A short respite followed. Outside, the voices sounded more angrily, and
+the priest could now distinguish human ones amongst them. The Artauds,
+those bastards who sprang up out of the rocky soil with the persistence
+of brambles, were now in their turn blowing a blast that reeked of
+teeming life. They had planted everywhere forests of humanity that
+swallowed up all around them. They came up to the church, they shattered
+the door with a push, and threatened to block up the very nave with the
+invading scions of their race. Behind them came the beasts; the oxen
+that tried to batter down the walls with their horns, the flocks of
+asses, goats, and sheep, that dashed against the ruined church like
+living waves, while swarms of wood-lice and crickets attacked the
+foundations and reduced them to dust with their sawlike teeth. Yet
+again, on the other side, there was Desiree's poultry-yard, where the
+dunghill reeked with suffocating fumes. Here the big cock, Alexander,
+sounded the assault, and the hens loosened the stones with their beaks,
+and the rabbits burrowed under the very altars; whilst the pig, too fat
+to stir, grunted and waited till all the sacred ornaments should be
+reduced to warm ashes in which he might wallow at his ease.
+
+A great roar ascended, and a second assault was delivered. The
+villagers, the animals, all that overflowing sea of life assailed the
+church with such impetuosity that the rafters bent and curved. This time
+a part of the walls tottered and fell down, the ceiling shook, the
+woodwork of the windows was carried away, and the grey mist of the
+evening streamed in through the frightful gaping breaches. The great
+Christ now only clung to His cross by the nail that pierced His left
+hand.
+
+A mighty shout hailed the downfall of the block of wall. Yet the church
+still stood there firmly, in spite of the injuries it had received. It
+offered a stern, silent, unflinching resistance, clutching desperately
+to the tiniest stones of its foundations. It seemed as though, to keep
+itself from falling, it required only the support of its slenderest
+pillar, which, by some miracle of equilibration, held up the gaping
+roof. Then Abbe Mouret beheld the rude plants of the plateau, the
+dreadful-looking growths that had become hard as iron amidst the arid
+rocks, that were knotted like snakes and bossy with muscles, set
+themselves to work. The rust-hued lichens gnawed away at the rough
+plasterwork like fiery leprosy. Then the thyme-plants thrust their roots
+between the bricks like so many iron wedges. The lavenders insinuated
+hooked fingers into the loosened stonework, and by slow persistent
+efforts tore the blocks asunder. The junipers, the rosemaries, the
+prickly holly bushes, climbed higher and battered the walls with
+irresistible blows; and even the grass, the grass whose dry blades
+slipped beneath the great door, stiffened itself into steel-like spears
+and made its way down the nave, where it forced up the flagstones with
+powerful levers. It was a victorious revolt, it was revolutionary nature
+constructing barricades out of the overturned altars, and wrecking the
+church which had for centuries cast too deep a shadow over it. The other
+combatants had fallen back, and let the plants, the thyme and the
+lavender and the lichens, complete the overthrow of the building with
+their ceaseless little blows, their constant gnawing, which proved more
+destructive than the heavier onslaught of the stronger assailants.
+
+Then, suddenly, the end came. The rowan-tree, whose topmost branches had
+already forced their way through the broken windows under the vaulted
+roof, rushed in violently with its formidable stream of greenery. It
+planted itself in the centre of the nave and grew there monstrously. Its
+trunk expanded till its girth became so colossal that it seemed as
+though it would burst the church asunder like a girdle spanning it too
+closely. Its branches shot out in knotted arms, each one of which broke
+down a piece of the wall or thrust off a strip of the roof, and they
+went on multiplying without cessation, each branch ramifying, till a
+fresh tree sprang out of each single knot, with such impetuosity of
+growth that the ruins of the church, pierced through and through like a
+sieve, flew into fragments, scattering a fine dust to the four quarters
+of the heavens.
+
+Now the giant tree seemed to reach the stars; its forest of branches was
+a forest of legs, arms, and breasts full of sap; the long locks of women
+streamed down from it; men's heads burst out from the bark; and up aloft
+pairs of lovers, lying languid by the edges of their nests, filled the
+air with the music of their delights.
+
+A final blast of the storm which had broken over the church swept away
+the dust of its remains: the pulpit and the confessional-box, which had
+been ground into powder, the lacerated holy pictures, the shattered
+sacred vessels, all the litter at which the legion of sparrows that had
+once dwelt amongst the tiles was eagerly pecking. The great Christ, torn
+from the cross, hung for a moment from one of the streaming women's
+curls, and then was whirled away into the black darkness, in the depths
+of which it sank with a loud crash. The Tree of Life had pierced the
+heavens; it overtopped the stars.
+
+Abbe Mouret was filled with the mad joy of an accursed spirit at the
+sight before him. The church was vanquished; God no longer had a house.
+And thenceforward God could no longer trouble him. He was free to rejoin
+Albine, since it was she who triumphed. He laughed at himself for having
+declared, an hour previously, that the church would swallow up the whole
+earth with its shadow. The earth, indeed, had avenged itself by
+consuming the church. The mad laughter into which he broke had the
+effect of suddenly awakening him from his hallucination. He gazed
+stupidly round the nave, which the evening shadows were slowly
+darkening. Through the windows he could see patches of star-spangled
+sky; and he was about to stretch out his arms to feel the walls, when he
+heard Desiree calling to him from the vestry-passage:
+
+'Serge! Serge! Are you there? Why don't you answer? I have been looking
+for you for this last half-hour.'
+
+She came in; she was holding a lighted lamp; and the priest then saw
+that the church was still standing. He could no longer understand
+anything, but remained in a horrible state of doubt betwixt the
+unconquerable church, springing up again from its ashes, and Albine, the
+all-powerful, who could shake the very throne of God by a single breath.
+
+
+
+                                 X
+
+Desiree came up to him, full of merry chatter.
+
+'Are you there? Are you there?' she cried. 'Why are you playing at
+hide-and-seek? I called out to you at the top of my voice at least a
+dozen times. I thought you must have gone out.'
+
+She pried into all the gloomy corners with an inquisitive glance, and
+even stepped up to the confessional-box, as though she had expected to
+surprise some one hiding there. Then she came back to Serge,
+disappointed, and continued:
+
+'So you are quite alone? Have you been asleep? What amusement do you
+find in shutting yourself up all alone in the dark? Come along; it is
+time we went to dinner.'
+
+The Abbe drew his feverish hands across his brow to wipe away the traces
+of the thoughts which he feared were plain for all the world to read. He
+fumbled mechanically at the buttons of his cassock, which seemed to him
+all disarranged. Then he followed his sister with stern-set face and
+never a sign of emotion, stiffened by that priestly energy which throws
+the dignity of sacerdotalism like a veil over the agonies of the flesh.
+Desiree did not even suspect that there was anything the matter with
+him. She simply said as they entered the dining-room:
+
+'I have had such a good sleep; but you have been talking too much, and
+have made yourself quite pale.'
+
+In the evening, after dinner, Brother Archangias came in to have his
+game of cards with La Teuse. He was in a very merry mood that night;
+and, when the Brother was merry, it was his habit to prod La Teuse in
+the sides with his big fists, an attention which she returned by
+heartily boxing his ears. This skirmishing made them both laugh, with a
+laughter that shook the very ceiling. The Brother, too, when he was in
+these gay humours, would devise all kinds of pranks. He would try to
+smash plates with his nose, and would offer to wager that he could break
+through the dining-room door in battering-ram fashion. He would also
+empty the snuff out of his box into the old servant's coffee, or would
+thrust a handful of pebbles down her neck. The merest trifle would give
+rise to these noisy outbursts of gaiety in the very midst of his wonted
+surliness. Some little incident, at which nobody else laughed, often
+sufficed to throw him into a state of wild hilarity, make him stamp his
+feet, twirl himself round like a top, and hold in his splitting sides.
+
+'What is it that makes you so gay to-night?' La Teuse inquired.
+
+He made no reply, bestriding a chair and galloping round the table on
+it.
+
+'Well! well! go on making a baby of yourself!' said the old woman; 'and,
+my gracious, what a big baby you are! If the Lord is looking at you, He
+must be very well pleased with you!'
+
+The Brother had just slipped off the chair and was lying on the floor,
+with his legs in the air.
+
+'He does see me, and is pleased to see me as I am. It is His wish that I
+should be gay. When He wishes me to be merry for a time, He rings a bell
+in my body, and then I begin to roll about; and all Paradise smiles as
+it watches me.'
+
+He dragged himself on his back to the wall, and then, supporting himself
+on the nape of his neck, he hoisted up his body as high as he could and
+began drumming on the wall with his heels. His cassock slipped down and
+exposed to view his black breeches, which were patched at the knees with
+green cloth.
+
+'Look, Monsieur le Cure,' he said, 'you see how high I can reach with my
+heels. I dare bet that you couldn't do as much. Come! look amused and
+laugh a little. It is better to drag oneself along on one's back than to
+think about a hussy as you are always doing. You know what I mean. For
+my part, when I take to scratching myself I imagine myself to be God's
+dog, and that's what makes me say that all Paradise looks out of the
+windows to smile at me. You might just as well laugh too, Monsieur le
+Cure. It's all done for the saints and you. See! here's a turn-over for
+Saint Joseph; here's another for Saint Michael, and another for Saint
+John, and another for Saint Mark, and another for Saint Matthew----'
+
+So he went on, enumerating a whole string of saints, and turning
+somersaults all round the room.
+
+Abbe Mouret, who had been sitting in perfect silence, with his hands
+resting on the edge of the table, was at last constrained to smile. As a
+rule, the Brother's sportiveness only disquieted him. La Teuse, as
+Archangias rolled within her reach, kicked at him with her foot.
+
+'Come!' she said, 'are we to have our game to-night?'
+
+His only reply was a grunt. Then, upon all fours, he sprang towards La
+Teuse as if he meant to bite her. But in lieu thereof he spat upon her
+petticoats.
+
+'Let me alone! will you?' she cried. 'What are you up to now? I begin to
+think you have gone crazy. What it is that amuses you so much I can't
+conceive.'
+
+'What makes me gay is my own affair,' he replied, rising to his feet and
+shaking himself. 'It is not necessary to explain it to you, La Teuse.
+However, as you want a game of cards, let us have it.'
+
+Then the game began. It was a terrible struggle. The Brother hurled his
+cards upon the table. Whenever he cried out the windows shook
+sonorously. La Teuse at last seemed to be winning. She had secured three
+aces for some time already, and was casting longing eyes at the fourth.
+But Brother Archangias began to indulge in fresh outbursts of gaiety. He
+pushed up the table, at the risk of breaking the lamp. He cheated
+outrageously, and defended himself by means of the most abominable lies,
+'Just for a joke,' said he. Then he suddenly began to sing the
+'Vespers,' beating time on the palm of his left hand with his cards.
+When his gaiety reached a climax, and he could find no adequate means of
+expressing it, he always took to chanting the 'Vespers,' which he
+repeated for hours at a time. La Teuse, who well knew his habits, cried
+out to him, amidst the bellowing with which he shook the room:
+
+'Make a little less noise, do! It is quite distracting. You are much too
+lively to-night.'
+
+But he set to work on the 'Complines.' Abbe Mouret had now seated
+himself by the window. He appeared to pay no attention to what went on
+around him, apparently neither hearing nor seeing anything of it. At
+dinner he had eaten with his ordinary appetite and had even managed to
+reply to Desiree's everlasting rattle of questions. But now he had given
+up the struggle, his strength at an end, racked, exhausted as he was by
+the internal tempest that still raged within him. He even lacked the
+courage to rise from his seat and go upstairs to his own room. Moreover,
+he was afraid that if he turned his face towards the lamplight, the
+tears, which he could no longer keep from his eyes, would be noticed. So
+he pressed his face close to the window and gazed out into the darkness,
+growing gradually more drowsy, sinking into a kind of nightmare stupor.
+
+Brother Archangias, still busy at his psalm-singing, winked and nodded
+in the direction of the dozing priest.
+
+'What's the matter?' asked La Teuse.
+
+The Brother replied by a yet more significant wink.
+
+'Well, what do you mean? Can't you speak? Ah! there's a king. That's
+capital!--so I take your queen.'
+
+The Brother laid down his cards, bent over the table, and whispered
+close to La Teuse's face: 'That hussy has been here.'
+
+'I know that well enough,' answered La Teuse. 'I saw her go with
+mademoiselle into the poultry-yard.'
+
+At this he gave her a terrible look, and shook his fist in her face.
+
+'You saw her, and you let her come in! You ought to have called me, and
+we would have hung her up by the feet to a nail in your kitchen.'
+
+But at this the old woman lost her temper, and, lowering her voice
+solely in order that she might not awaken Abbe Mouret, she replied:
+'Don't you go talking about hanging people up in my kitchen! I certainly
+saw her, and I even kept my back turned when she went to join his
+reverence in the church when the catechising was over. But all that was
+no business of mine. I had my cooking to attend to! As for the girl
+herself, I detest her. But if his reverence wishes to see her--why, she
+is welcome to come whenever she pleases. I'd let her in myself!'
+
+'If you were to do that, La Teuse,' retorted the Brother ragefully, 'I
+would strangle you, that I would.'
+
+But she laughed at him.
+
+'Don't talk any of your nonsense to me, my man! Don't you know that it
+is forbidden you to lay your hands upon a woman, just as it's forbidden
+for a donkey to have anything to do with the _Pater Noster_? Just you
+try to strangle me and you'll see what I'll do! But do be quiet now, and
+let us finish the game. See, here's another king.'
+
+But the Brother, holding up a card, went on growling:
+
+'She must have come by some road that the devil alone knows for me to
+have missed her to-day. Every afternoon I go and keep guard up yonder by
+the Paradou. If ever I find them together again, I will acquaint the
+hussy with a stout dogwood stick which I have cut expressly for her
+benefit. And I shall keep a watch in the church as well now.'
+
+He played his card, which La Teuse took with a knave. Then he threw
+himself back in his chair and again burst into one of his loud laughs.
+He did not seem to be able to work himself up into a genuine rage that
+evening.
+
+'Well, well,' he grumbled, 'never mind, even if she did see him, she had
+a smacking fall on her nose. I'll tell you all about it, La Teuse. It
+was raining, you know. I was standing by the school-door when I caught
+sight of her coming down from the church. She was walking along quite
+straight and upright, in her stuck-up fashion, in spite of the pouring
+rain. But when she got into the road, she tumbled down full length, no
+doubt because the ground was so slippery. Oh! how I did laugh! How I did
+laugh! I clapped my hands, too. When she picked herself up again, I saw
+she was bleeding at the wrist. I shall feel happy over it for a week. I
+cannot think of her lying there on the ground without feeling the
+greatest delight.'
+
+Then, turning his attention to the game, he puffed out his cheeks and
+began to chant the _De profundis_. When he had got to the end of it, he
+began it all over again. The game came to a conclusion in the midst of
+this dirge. It was he who was beaten, but his defeat did not seem to vex
+him in the least.
+
+When La Teuse had locked the door behind him, after first awakening Abbe
+Mouret, his voice could still be heard, as he went his way through the
+black night, singing the last verse of the psalm, _Et ipse redimet
+Israel ex omnibus iniquitatibus ejus_, with extraordinary jubilation.
+
+
+
+                                 XI
+
+That night Abbe Mouret slept very heavily. When he opened his eyes in
+the morning, later than usual, his face and hands were wet with tears.
+He had been weeping all through the night while he slept. He did not say
+his mass that day. In spite of his long rest, he had not recovered from
+his excessive weariness of the previous evening, and he remained in his
+bedroom till noon, sitting in a chair at the foot of his bed. The
+condition of stupor into which he more and more deeply sank, took all
+sensation of suffering away from him. He was conscious only of a great
+void and blank as he sat there overpowered and benumbed. Even to read
+his breviary cost him a great effort. Its Latin seemed to him a
+barbarous language, which he would never again be able to pronounce.
+
+Having tossed the book upon his bed he gazed for hours through his open
+window at the surrounding country. In the far distance he saw the long
+wall of the Paradou, creeping like a thin white line amongst the gloomy
+patches of the pine plantations to the crest of the hills. On the left,
+hidden by one of those plantations, was the breach. He could not see it,
+but he knew it was there. He remembered every bit of bramble scattered
+among the stones. On the previous night he would not have thus dared to
+gaze upon that dreaded scene. But now with impunity he allowed himself
+to trace the whole line of the wall, as it emerged again and again from
+the clumps of verdure which here and there concealed it. His blood
+pulsed none the faster for this scrutiny. Temptation, as though
+disdaining his present weakness, left him free from attack. Forsaken by
+the Divine grace, he was incapable of entering upon any struggle, the
+thought of sin could no longer even impassion him; it was sheer stupor
+alone that now rendered him willing to accept that which he had the day
+before so strenuously refused.
+
+At one moment he caught himself talking aloud and saying that, since the
+breach in the wall was still open, he would go and join Albine at
+sunset. This decision brought him a slight feeling of worry, but he did
+not think that he could do otherwise. She was expecting him to go, and
+she was his wife. When he tried to picture her face, he could only
+imagine her as very pale and a long way off. Then he felt a little
+uneasy as to their future manner of life together. It would be difficult
+for them to remain in the neighbourhood; they would have to go away
+somewhere, without any one knowing anything about it. And then, when
+they had managed to conceal themselves, they would need a deal of money
+in order to live happily and comfortably. He tried a score of times to
+hit upon some scheme by which they could get away and live together like
+happy lovers, but he could devise nothing satisfactory. Now that he was
+no longer wild with passion, the practical side of the situation alarmed
+him. He found himself, in all his weakness, face to face with a
+complicated problem with which he was incompetent to grapple.
+
+Where could they get horses for their escape? And if they went away on
+foot, would they not be stopped and detained as vagabonds? Was he
+capable of securing any employment by which he could earn bread for his
+wife? He had never been taught any kind of trade. He was quite ignorant
+of actual life. He ransacked his memory, and he could remember nothing
+but strings of prayers, details of ceremonies, and pages of Bouvier's
+'Instruction Theologique,' which he had learned by heart at the
+seminary. He worried too over matters of no real concern. He asked
+himself whether he would dare to give his arm to his wife in the street.
+He certainly could not walk with a woman clinging to his arm. He would
+surely appear so strange and awkward that every one would turn round to
+stare at him. They would guess that he was a priest and would insult
+Albine. It would be vain for him to try to obliterate the traces of his
+priesthood. He would always wear that mournful pallor and carry the
+odour of incense about with him. And what if he should have children
+some day? As this thought suddenly occurred to him, he quite started. He
+felt a strange repugnance at the very idea. He felt sure that he should
+not care for any children that might be born to him. Suppose there were
+two of them, a little boy and a little girl. He could never let them get
+on his knees; it would distress him to feel their hands clutching at his
+clothes. The thought of the little girl troubled him the most; he could
+already see womanly tenderness shining in the depths of her big,
+childish eyes. No! no! he would have no children.
+
+Nevertheless he resolved that he would flee with Albine that evening.
+But when the evening came, he felt too weary. So he deferred his flight
+till the next morning. And the next morning he made a fresh pretext for
+delay. He could not leave his sister alone with La Teuse. He would
+prepare a letter, directing that she should be taken to her uncle
+Pascal's. For three days he was ever on the point of writing that
+letter, and the paper and pen and ink were lying ready on the table in
+his room. Then, on the third day, he went off, leaving the letter
+unwritten. He took up his hat quite suddenly and set off for the Paradou
+in a state of mingled stupor and resignation, as though he were
+unwillingly performing some compulsory task which he saw no means of
+avoiding. Albine's image was now effaced from his memory; he no longer
+beheld her, but he was driven on by old resolves whose lingering
+influence, though they themselves were dead, still worked upon him in
+his silence and loneliness.
+
+He took no pains to escape notice when he set foot out of doors. He
+stopped at the end of the village to talk for a moment to Rosalie. She
+told him that her baby was suffering from convulsions; but she laughed,
+as she spoke, with the laugh that was natural to her. Then he struck out
+through the rocks, and walked straight on towards the breach in the
+wall. By force of habit he had brought his breviary with him. Finding
+the way long, he opened the book and read the regulation prayers. When
+he put it back again under his arm, he had forgotten the Paradou. He
+went on walking steadily, thinking about a new chasuble that he wished
+to purchase to replace the old gold-broidered one, which was certainly
+falling into shreds. For some time past he had been saving up
+twenty-sous pieces, and he calculated that by the end of seven months he
+would have got the necessary amount of money together. He had reached
+the hills when the song of a peasant in the distance reminded him of a
+canticle which had been familiar to him at the seminary. He tried to
+recall the first lines of it, but his recollection failed him. It vexed
+him to find that his memory was so poor. And when, at last, he succeeded
+in remembering the words, he found a soothing pleasure in humming the
+verses, which came back to his mind one by one. It was a hymn of homage
+to Mary. He smiled as though some soft breath from the days of his
+childhood were playing upon his face. Ah! how happy he had then been!
+Why shouldn't he be as happy again? He had not grown any bigger, he
+wanted nothing more than the same old happiness, unruffled peace, a nook
+in the chapel, where his knees marked his place, a life of seclusion,
+enlivened by the delightful puerilities of childhood. Little by little
+he raised his voice, singing the canticle in flutelike tones, when he
+suddenly became aware of the breach immediately in front of him.
+
+For a moment he seemed surprised. Then, the smile dying from his face,
+he murmured quietly:
+
+'Albine must be expecting me. The sun is already setting.'
+
+But just as he was about to push some stones aside to make himself a
+passage, he was startled by a snore. He sprang down again: he had only
+just missed setting his foot upon the very face of Brother Archangias,
+who was lying on the ground there sleeping soundly. Slumber had
+overtaken him while he kept guard over the entrance to the Paradou. He
+barred the approach to it, lying at full length before its threshold,
+with arms and legs spread out. His right hand, thrown back behind his
+head, still clutched his dogwood staff, which he seemed to brandish like
+a fiery sword. And he snored loudly in the midst of the brambles, his
+face exposed to the sun, without a quiver on his tanned skin. A swarm of
+big flies was hovering over his open mouth.
+
+Abbe Mouret looked at him for a moment. He envied the slumber of that
+dust-wallowing saint. He wished to drive the flies away, but they
+persistently returned, and clung around the purple lips of the Brother,
+who was quite unconscious of their presence. Then the Abbe strode over
+his big body and entered the Paradou.
+
+
+
+                                XII
+
+Albine was seated on a patch of grass a few paces away from the wall.
+She sprang up as she caught sight of Serge.
+
+'Ah! you have come!' she cried, trembling from head to foot.
+
+'Yes,' he answered calmly, 'I have come.'
+
+She flung herself upon his neck, but she did not kiss him. To her bare
+arms the beads of his neckband seemed very cold. She scrutinised him,
+already feeling uneasy, and resuming:
+
+'What is the matter with you? Why don't you kiss my cheeks as you used
+to do? Oh! if you are ill, I will cure you once again. Now that you are
+here, all our old happiness will return. There will be no more
+wretchedness. . . . See! I am smiling. You must smile, too, Serge.'
+
+But his face remained grave.
+
+'I have been troubled, too,' she went on. 'I am still quite pale, am I
+not? For a whole week I have been living on that patch of grass, where
+you found me. I wanted one thing only, to see you coming back through
+the breach in the wall. At every sound I sprang up and rushed to meet
+you. But, alas! it was not you I heard. It was only the leaves rustling
+in the wind. But I was sure that you would come. I should have waited
+for you for years.'
+
+Then she asked him:
+
+'Do you still love me?'
+
+'Yes,' he answered, 'I love you still.'
+
+They stood looking at each other, feeling rather ill at ease. And deep
+silence fell between them. Serge, who evinced perfect calmness, did not
+attempt to break it. Albine twice opened her mouth to speak, but closed
+it immediately, surprised at the words that rose to her lips. She could
+summon up nothing but expressions tinged with bitterness. She felt tears
+welling into her eyes. What could be the matter with her that she did
+not feel happy now that her love had come back?
+
+'Listen to me,' she said at last. 'We must not stay here. It is that
+hole that freezes us! Let us go back to our old home. Give me your
+hand.'
+
+They plunged into the depths of the Paradou. Autumn was fast
+approaching, and the trees seemed anxious as they stood there with their
+yellowing crests from which the leaves were falling one by one. The
+paths were already littered with dead foliage soaked with moisture,
+which gave out a sound as of sighing beneath one's tread. And away
+beyond the lawns misty vapour ascended, throwing a mourning veil over
+the blue distance. And the whole garden was wrapped in silence, broken
+only by some sorrowful moans that sounded quiveringly.
+
+Serge began to shiver beneath the avenue of tall trees, along which they
+were walking.
+
+'How cold it is here!' said he in an undertone.
+
+'You are cold indeed,' murmured Albine, sadly. 'My hand is no longer
+able to warm you. Shall I wrap you round with part of my dress? Come,
+all our love will now be born afresh.'
+
+She led him to the parterre, the flower-garden. The great thicket-like
+rosary was still fragrant with perfume, but there was a tinge of
+bitterness in the scent of the surviving blossoms, and their foliage,
+which had expanded in wild profusion, lay strewn upon the ground. Serge
+displayed such unwillingness to enter the tangled jungle, that they
+lingered on its borders, trying to detect in the distance the paths
+along which they had passed in the spring-time. Albine recollected every
+little nook. She pointed to the grotto where the marble woman lay
+sleeping; to the hanging screens of honeysuckle and clematis; the fields
+of violets; the fountain that spurted out crimson carnations; the steps
+down which flowed golden gilliflowers; the ruined colonnade, in the
+midst of which the lilies were rearing a snowy pavilion. It was there
+that they had been born again beneath the sunlight. And she
+recapitulated every detail of that first day together, how they had
+walked, and how fragrant had been the air beneath the cool shade. Serge
+seemed to be listening, but he suddenly asked a question which showed
+that he had not understood her. The slight shiver which made his face
+turn pale never left him.
+
+Then she led him towards the orchard, but they could not reach it. The
+stream was too much swollen. Serge no longer thought of taking Albine
+upon his back and lightly bounding across with her to the other side.
+Yet there the apple-trees and the pear-trees were still laden with
+fruit, and the vines, now with scantier foliage, bent beneath the weight
+of their gleaming clusters, each grape freckled by the sun's caress. Ah!
+how they had gambolled beneath the appetising shade of those ancient
+trees! What merry children had they then been! Albine smiled as she
+thought of how she had clambered up into the cherry-tree that had broken
+down beneath her. He, Serge, must at least remember what a quantity of
+plums they had eaten. He only answered by a nod. He already seemed quite
+weary. The orchard, with its green depths and chaos of mossy trunks,
+disquieted him and suggested to his mind some dark, dank spot, teeming
+with snakes and nettles.
+
+Then she led him to the meadow-lands, where he had to take a few steps
+amongst the grass. It reached to his shoulders now, and seemed to him
+like a swarm of clinging arms that tried to bind his limbs and pull him
+down and drown him beneath an endless sea of greenery. He begged Albine
+to go no further. She was walking on in front, and at first she did not
+stop; but when she saw how distressed he appeared, she halted and came
+back and stood beside him. She also was growing gradually more
+low-spirited, and at last she shuddered like himself. Still she went on
+talking. With a sweeping gesture she pointed out to him the streams, the
+rows of willows, the grassy expanse stretching far away towards the
+horizon. All that had formerly been theirs. For whole days they had
+lived there. Over yonder, between those three willows by the water's
+edge, they had played at being lovers. And they would then have been
+delighted if the grass had been taller than themselves so that they
+might have lost themselves in its depths, and have been the more
+secluded, like larks nesting at the bottom of a field of corn. Why,
+then, did he tremble so to-day, when the tip of his foot just sank into
+the grass?
+
+Then she led him to the forest. But the huge trees seemed to inspire
+Serge with still greater dread. He did not know them again, so sternly
+solemn seemed their bare black trunks. Here, more than anywhere else,
+amidst those austere columns, through which the light now freely
+streamed, the past seemed quite dead. The first rains had washed the
+traces of their footsteps from the sandy paths, the winds had swept
+every other lingering memorial into the underbrush. But Albine, with
+grief at her throat, shot out a protesting glance. She could still
+plainly see their lightest footprints on the sandy gravel, and, as they
+passed each bush, the warmth with which they had once brushed against it
+surged to her cheeks. With eyes full of soft entreaty, she still strove
+to awaken Serge's memory. It was along that path that they had walked in
+silence, full of emotion, but as yet not daring to confess that they
+loved one another. It was in that clearing that they had lingered one
+evening till very late watching the stars, which had rained upon them
+like golden drops of warmth. Farther, beneath that oak they had
+exchanged their first kiss. Its fragrance still clung to the tree, and
+the very moss still remembered it. It was false to say that the forest
+had become voiceless and bare.
+
+Serge, however, turned away his head, that he might escape the gaze of
+Albine's eyes, which oppressed him.
+
+Then she led him to the great rocks. There, perhaps, he would no longer
+shudder with that appearance of debility which so distressed her. At
+that hour the rocks were still warm with the red glow of the setting
+sun. They still wore an aspect of tragic passion, with their hot ledges
+of stone whereon the fleshy plants writhed monstrously. Without speaking
+a word, without even turning her head, Albine led Serge up the rough
+ascent, wishing to take him ever higher and higher, far up beyond the
+springs, till they should emerge into the full light on the summit. They
+would there see the cedar, beneath whose shade they had first felt the
+thrill of desire, and there amidst the glowing stones they would
+assuredly find passion once more. But Serge soon began to stumble
+pitiably. He could walk no further. He fell a first time on his knees.
+Albine, by a mighty effort, raised him and for a moment carried him
+along, but afterwards he fell again, and remained, quite overcome, on
+the ground. In front of him, beneath him, spread the vast Paradou.
+
+'You have lied!' cried Albine. 'You love me no longer!'
+
+She burst into tears as she stood there by his side, feeling that she
+could not carry him any higher. There was no sign of anger in her now.
+She was simply weeping over their dying love. Serge lay dazed and
+stupefied.
+
+'The garden is all dead. I feel so very cold,' he murmured. But she took
+his head between her hands, and showed him the Paradou.
+
+'Look at it! Ah! it is your eyes that are dead; your ears and your limbs
+and your whole body. You have passed by all the scenes of our happiness
+without seeing them or hearing them or feeling their presence. You have
+done nothing but slip and stumble, and now you have fallen down here in
+sheer weariness and boredom. . . . You love me no more.'
+
+He protested, but in a gentle, quiet fashion. Then, for the first time,
+she spoke out passionately.
+
+'Be quiet! As if the garden could ever die! It will sleep for the
+winter, but it will wake up again in May, and will restore to us all the
+love we have entrusted to its keeping. Our kisses will blossom again
+amongst the flower-beds, and our vows will bud again with the trees and
+plants. If you could only see it and understand it, you would know that
+it throbs with even deeper passion, and loves even more absorbingly at
+this autumn-time, when it falls asleep in its fruitfulness. . . . But
+you love me no more, and so you can no longer understand.'
+
+He raised his eyes to her as if begging her not to be angry. His face
+was pinched and pale with an expression of childish fear. The sound of
+her voice made him tremble. He ended by persuading her to rest a little
+while by his side. They could talk quietly and discuss matters. Then,
+with the Paradou spreading out in front of them, they began to speak of
+their love, but without even touching one another's fingers.
+
+'I love you; indeed I love you,' said Serge, in his calm, quiet voice.
+'If I did not love you, I should not be here: I should not have come. I
+am very weary, it is true. I don't know why. I thought I should find
+that pleasant warmth again, of which the mere memory was so delightful.
+But I am cold, the garden seems quite black. I cannot see anything of
+what I left here. But it is not my fault. I am trying hard to be as you
+would wish me and to please you.'
+
+'You love me no longer!' Albine repeated once more.
+
+'Yes, I do love you. I suffered grievously the other day after I had
+driven you away. . . . Oh! I loved you with such passion that, had you
+come back and thrown yourself in my arms, I should almost have crushed
+you to death. . . . And for hours your image remained present before me.
+When I shut my eyes, you gleamed out with all the brightness of the sun
+and threw a flame around me. . . . Then I trampled down every obstacle,
+and came here.'
+
+He remained silent for a moment, as if in thought. Then he spoke again:
+
+'And now my arms feel as though they were broken. If I tried to clasp
+you, I could not hold you; I should let you fall. . . . Wait till this
+shudder has passed away. Give me your hands, and let me kiss them again.
+Be gentle and do not look at me with such angry eyes. Help me to find my
+heart again.'
+
+He spoke with such genuine sadness, such evident longing to begin the
+past anew, that Albine was touched. For a moment all her wonted
+gentleness returned to her, and she questioned him anxiously:
+
+'What is the matter with you? What makes you so ill?'
+
+'I do not know. It is as though all my blood had left my veins. Just
+now, as I was coming here, I felt as if some one had flung a robe of
+ice around my shoulders, which turned me into stone from head to
+foot. . . . I have felt it before, but where I don't remember.'
+
+She interrupted him with a kindly laugh.
+
+'You are a child. You have caught cold, that's all. At any rate, it is
+not I that you are afraid of, is it? We won't stop in the garden during
+the winter, like a couple of wild things. We will go wherever you like,
+to some big town. We can love each other there, amongst all the people,
+as quietly as amongst the trees. You will see that I can be something
+else than a wilding, for ever bird's-nesting and tramping about for
+hours. When I was a little girl, I used to wear embroidered skirts and
+fine stockings and laces and all kinds of finery. I dare say you never
+heard of that.'
+
+He was not listening to her. He suddenly gave vent to a little cry, and
+said: 'Ah! now I recollect!'
+
+She asked him what he meant, but he would not answer her. He had just
+remembered the feeling he had long ago experienced in the chapel of the
+seminary. That was the icy robe enwrapping his shoulders and turning him
+to stone. And then his life as a priest took complete possession of his
+thoughts. The vague recollections which had haunted him as he walked
+from Les Artaud to the Paradou became more and more distinct and assumed
+complete mastery over him. While Albine talked on of the happy life that
+they would lead together, he heard the tinkling of the sanctuary bell
+that signalled the elevation of the Host, and he saw the monstrance
+trace gleaming crosses over the heads of kneeling multitudes.
+
+'And for your sake,' Albine was saying, 'I will put on my broidered
+skirts again. . . . I want you to be bright and gay. We will try to find
+something to make you lively. Perhaps you will love me better when you
+see me looking beautiful and prettily dressed, like a fine lady. I will
+wear my comb properly and won't let my hair fall wildly about my neck
+any more. And I won't roll my sleeves up over my elbows; I will fasten
+my dress so as to hide my shoulders. I still know how to bow and how to
+walk along quite properly. Yes, I will make you a nice little wife, as I
+walk through the streets leaning on your arm.'
+
+'Did you ever go to church when you were a little girl?' he asked her in
+an undertone, as if, in spite of himself, he were continuing aloud the
+reverie which prevented him from hearing her. 'I could never pass a
+church without entering it. As soon as the door closed silently behind
+me, I felt as though I were in Paradise itself, with the angels
+whispering stories of love in my ears and the saints caressing me with
+their breath. Ah! I would have liked to live there for ever, in that
+absorbing beatitude.'
+
+She looked at him with steady eyes, a passing blaze kindling in her
+loving glance. Nevertheless, submissive still, she answered:
+
+'I will do as you may fancy. I learned music once. I was quite a clever
+young lady and was taught all the accomplishments. I will go back to
+school and start music again. If there is any tune you would like to
+hear me play, you will only have to tell me, and I will practise it for
+months and months, so as to play it to you some evening in our own home
+when we are by ourselves in some snug little room, with the curtains
+closely drawn. And you will pay me with just one kiss, won't you? A kiss
+right on the lips, which will awaken all your love again!'
+
+'Yes, yes,' he murmured, answering his own thoughts only; 'my great
+pleasure at first was to light the candles, prepare the cruets, and
+carry the missal. Then, afterwards, I was filled with bliss at the
+approach of God, and felt as though I could die of sheer love. Those are
+my only recollections. I know of nothing else. When I raise my hand, it
+is to give a benediction. When my lips protrude it is to kiss the altar.
+If I look for my heart, I can no longer find it. I have offered it to
+God, and He has taken it.'
+
+Albine grew very pale and her eyes gleamed like fire. In a quivering
+voice she resumed:
+
+'I should not like my little girl to leave me. You can send the boy to
+college, if you wish, but the little girl must always keep with me. I
+myself will teach her to read. Oh! I shall remember everything, and if
+indeed there be anything that I find I have forgotten, I will have
+masters to teach me. . . . Yes, we will keep our dear little ones always
+about our knees. You will be happy so, won't you? Speak to me; tell me
+that you will then feel warm again, and will smile, and feel no regrets
+for anything you have left behind.'
+
+But Serge continued:
+
+'I have often thought of the stone-saints that have been censed in their
+niches for centuries past. They must have become quite saturated with
+incense; and I am like one of them. I have the fragrance of incense in
+the inmost parts of my being. It is that embalmment that gives me
+serenity, deathlike tranquillity of body, and the peace which I enjoy in
+no longer living. . . . Ah! may nothing ever disturb my quiescence! May
+I ever remain cold and rigid, with a ceaseless smile on my granite lips,
+incapable of descending among men! That is my one, my only desire!'
+
+At this Albine sprang to her feet, exasperated, threatening. She shook
+Serge and cried:
+
+'What are you saying? What is it you are dreaming aloud? Am I not your
+wife? Haven't you come here to be my husband?'
+
+He recoiled, trembling yet more violently.
+
+'No! Leave me! I am afraid!' he faltered.
+
+'But our life together, our happiness, the children we shall have?'
+
+'No, no; I am afraid.' And he broke out into a supreme cry: 'I cannot! I
+cannot!'
+
+For a moment Albine remained silent, gazing at the unhappy man who lay
+shivering at her feet. Her face flared. She opened her arms as if to
+seize him and strain him to her breast with wild angry passion. But
+another idea came to her, and she merely took him by the hand and raised
+him to his feet.
+
+'Come!' said she.
+
+She led him away to that giant tree, to the very spot where their love
+had reigned supreme. There was the same bliss-inspiring shade, there was
+the same trunk as of yore, the same branches spreading far around, like
+sheltering and protecting arms. The tree still towered aloft, kindly,
+robust, powerful, and fertile. As on the day of their nuptials,
+languorous warmth, the glimmer of a summer's night fading on the bare
+shoulder of some fair girl, a sob of love dying away into passionate
+silence, lingered about the clearing as it lay there bathed in dim green
+light. And, in the distance, the Paradou, in spite of the first chills
+of autumn, sighed once more with passion, again becoming love's
+accomplice. From the parterre, from the orchard, from the meadow-lands,
+from the forest, from the great rocks, from the spreading heavens, came
+back a ripple of voluptuous joy. Never had the garden, even on the
+warmest evenings of spring-time, shown such deep tenderness as now, on
+this fair autumn evening, when the plants and trees seemed to be bidding
+one another goodnight ere they sank to sleep. And the scent of ripened
+germs wafted the intoxication of desire athwart the scanty leaves.
+
+'Do you hear? Do you hear?' faltered Albine in Serge's ear, when she had
+let him slip upon the grass at the foot of the tree.
+
+Serge was weeping.
+
+'You see that the Paradou is not dead,' she added. 'It is crying out to
+us to love each other. It still desires our union. Oh, do remember!
+Clasp me to your heart!'
+
+Serge still wept.
+
+Albine said nothing more. She flung her arms around him; she pressed her
+warm lips to his corpse-like face; but tears were still his only answer.
+
+Then, after a long silence, Albine spoke. She stood erect, full of
+contempt and determination.
+
+'Away with you! Go!' she said, in a low voice.
+
+Serge rose with difficulty. He picked up his breviary, which had fallen
+upon the grass. And he walked away.
+
+'Away with you! Go!' repeated Albine, in louder tones, as she followed
+and drove him before her.
+
+Thus she urged him on from bush to bush till she had driven him back to
+the breach in the wall, in the midst of the stern-looking trees. And
+there, as she saw Serge hesitate, with lowered head she cried out
+violently:
+
+'Away with you Go!'
+
+And slowly she herself went back into the Paradou, without even turning
+her head. Night was fast falling, and the garden was but a huge bier of
+shadows.
+
+
+
+                                XIII
+
+Brother Archangias, aroused from his slumber, stood erect in the breach,
+striking the stones with his stick and swearing abominably.
+
+'May the devil break their legs for them! May he drag them to hell by
+their feet, with their noses trailing in their abomination!'
+
+But when he saw Albine driving away the priest, he stopped for a moment
+in surprise. Then he struck the stones yet more vigorously, and burst
+into a roar of laughter.
+
+'Good-bye, you hussy! A pleasant journey to you! Go back to your mates
+the wolves! A priest is no fit companion for such as you.'
+
+Then, looking at Abbe Mouret, he growled:
+
+'I knew you were in there. I saw that the stones had been
+disturbed. . . . Listen to me, Monsieur le Cure. Your sin has made
+me your superior, and God tells you, through my mouth, that hell has
+no torments severe enough for a priest who lets himself succumb to
+the lusts of the flesh. If He were to pardon you now, He would be too
+indulgent, it would be contrary to His own justice.'
+
+They slowly walked down the hill towards Les Artaud. The priest had not
+opened his lips; but gradually he raised his head erect: he was no
+longer trembling. As in the distance he caught sight of the Solitaire
+looming blackly against the purplish sky, and the ruddy glow of the
+tiles on the church, a faint smile came to his lips, while to his calm
+eyes there rose an expression of perfect serenity.
+
+Meantime the Brother was every now and then giving a vicious kick at the
+stones that came in his way. Presently he turned to his companion:
+
+'Is it all over this time?' he asked. 'When I was your age I was
+possessed too. A demon was ever gnawing at me. But, after a time, he
+grew weary of it, and took himself off. Now that he has gone I live
+quietly enough. . . . Oh! I knew very well that you would go. For three
+weeks past I have been keeping watch upon you. I used to look into the
+garden through the breach in the wall. I should have liked to cut the
+trees down. I have often hurled stones at them; it was delightful to
+break the branches. Tell me, now, is it so very nice to be there?'
+
+He made Abbe Mouret stop in the middle of the road, and glared at him
+with a terrible expression of jealousy. The thought of the priest's life
+in the Paradou tortured him. But the Abbe kept perfect silence, so
+Archangias set off again, jeering as he went. Then, in a louder voice,
+he said:
+
+'You see, when a priest behaves as you have done, he scandalises every
+other priest. I myself felt sullied by your conduct. However, you are
+now behaving more sensibly. There is no need for you to make any
+confession. I know what has happened well enough. Heaven has broken your
+back for you, as it has done for so many others. So much the better! So
+much the better!'
+
+He clapped his hands triumphantly. But Abbe Mouret, immersed in deep
+reverie, with a smile spreading over his whole face, did not even hear
+him. When the Brother quitted him at the parsonage door, he went round
+and entered the church. It was grey and gloomy, as on that terrible
+rainy evening when temptation had racked him so violently. And it still
+remained poverty-stricken and meditative, bare of all that gleaming gold
+and sighing passion that had seemed to him to sweep in from the
+countryside. It preserved solemn silence. But a breath of mercy seemed
+to fill it.
+
+Kneeling before the great Christ and bursting into tears, which he let
+flow down his cheeks as though they were so many blessings, the priest
+murmured:
+
+'O God, it is not true that Thou art pitiless. I know it, I feel it:
+Thou hast already pardoned me. I feel it in the outpouring of Thy grace,
+which, for hours now, has been flowing through me in a sweet stream,
+bringing me back, slowly but surely, perfect peace and spiritual health.
+O God, it was at the very moment when I was about to forsake Thee that
+Thou didst protect me most effectually. Thou didst hide Thyself from me,
+the better to rescue me from evil. Thou didst allow my flesh to run its
+course, that I might be convinced of its nothingness. And now, O God, I
+see that Thou hast for ever marked me with Thy seal, that awful seal,
+pregnant with blessings, which sets a man apart from other men, and
+whose mark is so ineffaceable that, sooner or later, it makes itself
+manifest even upon those who sin. Thou hast broken me with sin and
+temptation. Thou hast ravaged me with Thy flames. Thou hast willed that
+there should be nought left of me save ruins wherein Thou mightest
+safely descend. I am an empty tabernacle wherein Thou may'st dwell.
+Blessed art Thou, O God!'
+
+He prostrated himself and continued stammering in the dust. The church
+triumphed. It remained firm and unshaken over the priest's head, with
+its altars and its confessional, its pulpit, its crosses, and its holy
+images. The world had ceased to exist. Temptation was extinguished like
+a fire that was henceforth unnecessary for the Abbe's purification. He
+was entering into supernatural peace. And he raised this supreme cry:
+
+'To the exclusion of life and its creatures and of everything that be in
+it, I belong to Thee, O God; to Thee, Thee alone, through all eternity!'
+
+
+
+                                XIV
+
+At that moment Albine was still wandering about the Paradou with all
+the mute agony of a wounded animal. She had ceased to weep. Her face
+was very white and a deep crease showed upon her brow. Why did she have
+to suffer that deathlike agony? Of what fault had she been guilty, that
+the garden no longer kept the promises it had held out to her since her
+childhood's days? She questioned herself as she walked along, never
+heeding the avenues through which the gloom was slowly stealing. She had
+always obeyed the voices of the trees. She could not remember having
+injured a single flower. She had ever been the beloved daughter of the
+greenery, hearkening to it submissively, yielding to it with full
+belief in the happiness which it promised to her. And when, on that
+supreme day, the Paradou had cried to her to cast herself beneath the
+giant-tree, she had done so in compliance with its voice. If she then
+had nothing to reproach herself with, it must be the garden which had
+betrayed her; the garden which was torturing her for the mere sake of
+seeing her suffer.
+
+She halted and looked around her. The great gloomy masses of foliage
+preserved deep silence. The paths were blocked with black walls of
+darkness. The distant lawns were lulling to sleep the breezes that
+kissed them. And she thrust out her hands with a gesture of hopelessness
+and raised a cry of protest. It could not all end thus. But her voice
+choked beneath the silent trees. Thrice did she implore the Paradou to
+answer her, but never an explanation fell from its lofty branches, not a
+leaf seemed to be moved with pity for her. Then she resumed her weary
+wandering, and felt that she was entering into the fatal sternness of
+winter. Now that she had ceased to rebelliously question the earth, she
+caught sound of a gentle murmur speeding along the ground. It was the
+farewell of the plants, wishing one another a happy death. To have drunk
+in the sunshine for a whole season, to have lived ever blossoming, to
+have breathed continual perfume, and then, at the first blast, to
+depart, with the hope of springing up again elsewhere, was not that
+sufficiently long and full a life which obstinate craving for further
+existence would mar? Ah! how sweet death must be; how sweet to have an
+endless night before one, wherein to dream of the short days of life and
+to recall eternally its fugitive joys!
+
+She stayed her steps once more; but she no longer protested as she stood
+there amidst the deep stillness of the Paradou. She now believed that
+she understood everything. The garden doubtless had death in store for
+her as a supreme culminating happiness. It was to death that it had all
+along been leading her in its tender fashion. After love, there could be
+nought but death. And never had the garden loved her so much as it did
+now; she had shown herself ungrateful in accusing it, for all the time
+she had remained its best beloved child. The motionless boughs, the
+paths blocked up with darkness, the lawns where the breezes fell asleep,
+had only become mute in order that they might lure her on to taste the
+joys of long silence. They wished her to be with them in their winter
+rest, they dreamt of carrying her off, swathed in their dry leaves with
+her eyes frozen like the waters of the springs, her limbs stiffened like
+the bare branches, and her blood sleeping the sleep of the sap. And,
+yes, she would live their life to the very end, and die their death.
+Perhaps they had already willed that she should spring up next summer as
+a rose in the flower-garden, or a pale willow in the meadow-lands, or a
+tender birch in the forest. Yes, it was the great law of life; she was
+about to die.
+
+Then, for the last time, she resumed her walk through the Paradou in
+quest of death. What fragrant plant might need her sweet-scented tresses
+to increase the perfume of its leaves? What flower might wish the gift
+of her satinlike skin, the snowy whiteness of her arms, the tender pink
+of her bosom? To what weakly tree should she offer her young blood? She
+would have liked to be of service to the weeds vegetating beside the
+paths, to slay herself there so that from her flesh some huge greenery
+might spring, lofty and sapful, laden with birds at May-time, and
+passionately caressed by the sun. But for a long while the Paradou still
+maintained silence as if it had not yet made up its mind to confide to
+her in what last kiss it would spirit away her life. She had to wander
+all over it again, seeking, pilgrim-like, for her favourite spots. Night
+was now more swiftly approaching, and it seemed to her as if she were
+being gradually sucked into the earth. She climbed to the great rocks
+and questioned them, asking whether it was upon their stony beds that
+she must breathe her last breath. She crossed the forest with lingering
+steps, hoping that some oak would topple down and bury her beneath the
+majesty of its fall. She skirted the streams that flowed through the
+meadows, bending down at almost every step she took so as to peep into
+the depths and see whether a couch had not been prepared for her amongst
+the water lilies. But nowhere did Death call her; nowhere did he offer
+her his cold hands. Yet, she was not mistaken. It was, indeed, the
+Paradou that was about to teach her to die, as, indeed, it had taught
+her to love. She again began to scour the bushes, more eagerly even than
+on those warm mornings of the past when she had gone searching for love.
+And, suddenly, just as she was reaching the parterre, she came upon
+death, amidst all the evening fragrance. She ran forward, breaking out
+into a rapturous laugh. She was to die amongst the flowers.
+
+First she hastened to the thicket-like rosary. There, in the last
+flickering of the gloaming, she searched the beds and gathered all the
+roses that hung languishing at the approach of winter. She plucked them
+from down below, quite heedless of their thorns; she plucked them in
+front of her, with both hands; she plucked them from above, rising upon
+tip-toes and pulling down the boughs. So eager was she, so desperate was
+her haste, that she even broke the branches, she, who had ever shown
+herself tender to the tiniest blades of grass. Soon her arms were full
+of roses, she tottered beneath her burden of flowers. And having quite
+stripped the rose trees, carrying away even the fallen petals, she
+turned her steps to the pavilion; and when she had let her load of
+blossoms slip upon the floor of the room with the blue ceiling, she
+again went down to the garden.
+
+This time she sought the violets. She made huge bunches of them, which
+she pressed one by one against her breast. Then she sought the
+carnations, plucking them all, even to the buds; massing them together
+in big sheaves of white blossoms that suggested bowls of milk, and big
+sheaves of the red ones, that seemed like bowls of blood. Then, too, she
+sought the stocks, the patches of mirabilis, the heliotropes and the
+lilies. She tore the last blossoming stocks off by the handful,
+pitilessly crumpling their satin ruches; she devastated the beds of
+mirabilis, whose flowers were scarcely opening to the evening air; she
+mowed down the field of heliotropes, piling her harvest of blooms into a
+heap; and she thrust bundles of lilies under her arms like handles of
+reeds. When she was again laden with as much as she could carry, she
+returned to the pavilion to cast the violets, the carnations, the
+lilies, the stocks, the heliotrope, and the mirabilis by the side of the
+roses. And then, without stopping to draw breath, she went down yet
+again.
+
+This time she repaired to that gloomy corner which seemed like the
+graveyard of the flower-garden. A warm autumn had there brought on a
+second crop of spring flowers. She raided the borders of tuberoses and
+hyacinths; going down upon her knees, and gathering her harvest with all
+a miser's care, lest she should miss a single blossom. The tuberoses
+seemed to her to be extremely precious flowers, which would distil drops
+of gold and wealth and wondrous sweetness. The hyacinths, beaded with
+pearly blooms, were like necklets, whose every pearl would pour forth
+joys unknown to man. And although she almost buried herself beneath the
+mass of tuberoses and hyacinths which she plucked, she next stripped a
+field of poppies, and even found means to crop an expanse of marigolds
+farther on. All these she heaped over the tuberoses and hyacinths, and
+then ran back to the room with the blue ceiling, taking the greatest
+care as she went that the breeze should not rob her of a single pistil.
+And once more did she come downstairs.
+
+But what was she to gather now? She had stripped the parterre bare. As
+she rose upon the tips of her shoes in the dim gloom, she could only see
+the garden lying there naked and dead, deprived of the tender eyes of
+its roses, the crimson smile of its carnations, and the perfumed locks
+of its heliotropes. Nevertheless, she could not return with empty arms.
+So she laid hands upon the herbs and leafy plants. She crawled over the
+ground, as though she would have carried off the very soil itself in a
+clutch of supreme passion. She filled her skirt with a harvest of
+aromatic plants, southernwood, mint, verbenas. She came across a border
+of balm, and left not a leaf of it unplucked. She even broke off two big
+fennels which she threw over her shoulders like a couple of trees. Had
+she been able, she would have carried all the greenery of the garden
+away with her between her teeth. When she reached the threshold of the
+pavilion, she turned round and gave a last look at the Paradou. It was
+quite dark now. The night had fully come and cast a black veil over
+everything. Then for the last time she went up the stairs, never more to
+step down them.
+
+The spacious room was quickly decked. She had placed a lighted lamp upon
+the table. She sorted out the flowers heaped upon the floor and arranged
+them in big bunches, which she distributed about the room. First she
+placed some lilies behind the lamp on the table, forming with them a
+lofty lacelike screen which softened the light with its snowy purity.
+Then she threw handfuls of carnations and stocks over the old sofa,
+which was already strewn with red bouquets that had faded a century ago,
+till all these were hidden, and the sofa looked like a huge bed of
+stocks bristling with carnations. Next she placed the four armchairs in
+front of the alcove. On the first one she piled marigolds, on the second
+poppies, on the third mirabilis, and on the fourth heliotrope. The
+chairs were completely buried in bloom, with nothing but the tips of
+their arms visible. At last she thought of the bed. She pushed a little
+table near the head of it, and reared thereon a huge pile of violets.
+Then she covered the whole bed with the hyacinths and tuberoses she had
+plucked. They were so abundant that they formed a thick couch
+overflowing all around, so that the bed now looked like one colossal
+bloom.
+
+The roses still remained. And these she scattered chancewise all over
+the room, without even looking to see where they fell. Some of them
+dropped upon the table, the sofa, and the chairs; and a corner of the
+bed was inundated with them. For some minutes there was a rain of roses,
+a real downpour of heavy blossoms, which settled in flowery pools in the
+hollows of the floor. But as the heap seemed scarcely diminished, she
+finished by weaving garlands of roses which she hung upon the walls. She
+twined wreaths around the necks and arms and waists of the plaster
+cupids that sported over the alcove. The blue ceiling, the oval panels,
+edged with flesh-coloured ribbon, the voluptuous paintings, preyed upon
+by time, were all hung with a mantle, a drapery of roses. The big room
+was fully decked at last. Now she could die there.
+
+For a moment she remained standing, glancing around her. She was looking
+to see if death was there. And she gathered up the aromatic greenery,
+the southernwood, the mint, the verbenas, the balm, and the fennel. She
+broke them and twisted them and made wedges of them with which to stop
+up every little chink and cranny about the windows and the door. Then
+she drew the white coarsely sewn calico curtains and, without even a
+sigh, laid herself upon the bed, on all the florescence of hyacinths and
+tuberoses.
+
+And then a final rapture was granted her. With her eyes wide open she
+smiled at the room. Ah! how she had loved there! And how happily she was
+there going to die! At that supreme moment the plaster cupids suggested
+nothing impure to her; the amorous paintings disturbed her no more. She
+was conscious of nothing beneath that blue ceiling save the intoxicating
+perfume of the flowers. And it seemed to her as if this perfume was none
+other than the old love-fragrance which had always warmed the room, now
+increased a hundredfold, till it had become so strong and penetrating
+that it would surely suffocate her. Perchance it was the breath of the
+lady who had died there a century ago. In perfect stillness, with her
+hands clasped over her heart, she continued smiling, while she listened
+to the whispers of the perfumes in her buzzing head. They were singing
+to her a soft strange melody of fragrance, which slowly and very gently
+lulled her to sleep.
+
+At first there was a prelude, bright and childlike; her hands, that had
+just now twisted and twined the aromatic greenery, exhaled the pungency
+of crushed herbage, and recalled her old girlish ramblings through the
+wildness of the Paradou. Then there came a flutelike song, a song of
+short musky notes, rising from the violets that lay upon the table near
+the head of the bed; and this flutelike strain, trilling melodiously to
+the soft accompaniment of the lilies on the other table, sang to her of
+the first joys of love, its first confession, and first kiss beneath the
+trees of the forest. But she began to stifle as passion drew nigh with
+the clove-like breath of the carnations, which burst upon her in brazen
+notes that seemed to drown all others. She thought that death was nigh
+when the poppies and the marigolds broke into a wailing strain, which
+recalled the torment of desire. But suddenly all grew quieter; she felt
+that she could breathe more freely; she glided into greater serenity,
+lulled by a descending scale that came from the throats of the stocks,
+and died away amidst a delightful hymn from the heliotropes, which, with
+their vanilla-like breath, proclaimed the approach of nuptial bliss.
+Here and there the mirabilis gently trilled. Then came a hush. And
+afterwards the roses languidly made their entry. Their voices streamed
+from the ceiling, like the strains of a distant choir. It was a chorus
+of great breadth, to which she at first listened with a slight quiver.
+Then the volume of the strain increased, and soon her whole frame
+vibrated with the mighty sounds that burst in waves around her. The
+nuptials were at hand, the trumpet blasts of the roses announced them.
+She pressed her hands more closely to her heart as she lay there
+panting, gasping, dying. When she opened her lips for the kiss which was
+to stifle her, the hyacinths and tuberoses shot out their perfume and
+enveloped her with so deep, so great a sigh that the chorus of the roses
+could be heard no more.
+
+And then, amidst the final gasp of the flowers, Albine died.
+
+
+
+                                 XV
+
+About three o'clock the next afternoon, La Teuse and Brother Archangias,
+who were chatting on the parsonage-steps, saw Doctor Pascal's gig come
+at full gallop through the village. The whip was being vigorously
+brandished from beneath the lowered hood.
+
+'Where can he be off to at that rate?' murmured the old servant. 'He
+will break his neck.'
+
+The gig had just reached the rising ground on which the church was
+built. Suddenly, the horse reared and stopped, and the doctor's head,
+with its long white hair all dishevelled appeared from under the hood.
+
+'Is Serge there?' he cried, in a voice full of indignant excitement.
+
+La Teuse had stepped to the edge of the hill. 'Monsieur le Cure is in
+his room,' she said. 'He must be reading his breviary. Do you want to
+speak to him? Shall I call him?'
+
+Uncle Pascal, who seemed almost distracted, made an angry gesture with
+his whip hand. Bending still further forward, at the risk of falling
+out, he replied:
+
+'Ah! he's reading his breviary, is he? No! no! don't call him. I should
+strangle him, and that would do no good. I wanted to tell him that
+Albine was dead. Dead! do you hear me? Tell him, from me, that she is
+dead!'
+
+And he drove off, lashing his horse so fiercely that it almost bolted.
+But, twenty paces away, he pulled up again, and once more stretching out
+his head, cried loudly:
+
+'Tell him, too, from me, that she was _enceinte_! It will please him to
+know that.'
+
+Then the gig rolled on wildly again, jolting dangerously as it ascended
+the stony hill that led to the Paradou. La Teuse was quite dumbfounded.
+But Brother Archangias sniggered and looked at her with savage delight
+glittering in his eyes. She noticed this at last, and thrust him away
+from her, almost making him fall down the steps.
+
+'Be off with you!' she stammered, full of anger, seeking to relieve her
+feelings by abusing him. 'I shall grow to hate you. Is it possible to
+rejoice at any one's death? I wasn't fond of the girl, myself; but it is
+very sad to die at her age. Be off with you, and don't go on sniggering
+like that, or I will throw my scissors in your face!'
+
+It was only about one o'clock that a peasant, who had gone to Plassans
+to sell vegetables, had told Doctor Pascal of Albine's death, and had
+added that Jeanbernat wished to see him. The doctor now was feeling a
+little relieved by what he had just shouted as he passed the parsonage.
+He had gone out of his way expressly to give himself that satisfaction.
+He reproached himself for the death of the girl as for a crime in which
+he had participated. All along the road he had never ceased overwhelming
+himself with insults, and though he wiped the tears from his eyes that
+he might see where to guide his horse, he ever angrily drove his gig
+over heaps of stones, as if hoping that he would overturn himself and
+break one of his limbs. However, when he reached the long lane that
+skirted the endless wall of the park, a glimmer of hope broke upon him.
+Perhaps Albine was only in a dead faint. The peasant had told him that
+she had suffocated herself with flowers. Ah! if he could only get there
+in time, if he could only save her! And he lashed his horse ferociously
+as though he were lashing himself.
+
+It was a lovely day. The pavilion was all bathed in sunlight, just as it
+had been in the fair spring-time. But the leaves of the ivy which
+mounted to the roof were spotted and patched with rust, and bees no
+longer buzzed round the tall gilliflowers. Doctor Pascal hastily
+tethered his horse and pushed open the gate of the little garden. All
+around still prevailed that perfect silence amidst which Jeanbernat had
+been wont to smoke his pipe; but, to-day, the old man was no longer
+seated on his bench watching his lettuces.
+
+'Jeanbernat!' called the doctor.
+
+No one answered. Then, on entering the vestibule, he saw something that
+he had never seen before. At the end of the passage, below the dark
+staircase, was a door opening into the Paradou, and he could see the
+vast garden spreading there beneath the pale sunlight, with all its
+autumn melancholy, its sere and yellow foliage. The doctor hurried
+through the doorway and took a few steps over the damp grass.
+
+'Ah! it is you, doctor!' said Jeanbernat in a calm voice.
+
+The old man was digging a hole at the foot of a mulberry-tree. He had
+straightened his tall figure on hearing the approach of footsteps. But
+he promptly betook himself to his task again, throwing out at each
+effort a huge mass of rich soil.
+
+'What are you doing there?' asked Doctor Pascal.
+
+Jeanbernat straightened himself again and wiped the sweat off his face
+with the sleeve of his jacket. 'I am digging a hole,' he answered
+simply. 'She always loved the garden, and it will please her to sleep
+here.'
+
+The doctor nearly choked with emotion. For a moment he stood by the edge
+of the grave, incapable of speaking, but watching Jeanbernat as the
+other sturdily dug on.
+
+'Where is she?' he asked at last.
+
+'Up there, in her room. I left her on the bed. I should like you to go
+and listen to her heart before she is put away in here. I listened
+myself, but I couldn't hear anything at all.'
+
+The doctor went upstairs. The room had not been disturbed. Only a window
+had been opened. There the withered flowers, stifled by their own
+perfumes, exhaled but the faint odour of dead beauty. Within the alcove,
+however, there still hung an asphyxiating warmth, which seemed to
+trickle into the room and gradually disperse in tiny puffs. Albine,
+snowy-pale, with her hands upon her heart and a smile playing over her
+face, lay sleeping on her couch of hyacinths and tuberoses. And she was
+quite happy, since she was quite dead. Standing by the bedside, the
+doctor gazed at her for a long time, with a keen expression such as
+comes into the eyes of scientists who attempt to work resurrections. But
+he did not even disturb her clasped hands. He kissed her brow, on the
+spot where her latent maternity had already set a slight shadow. Below,
+in the garden, Jeanbernat was still driving his spade into the ground in
+heavy, regular fashion.
+
+A quarter of an hour later, however, the old man came upstairs. He had
+completed his work. He found the doctor seated by the bedside, buried in
+such a deep reverie that he did not seem conscious of the heavy tears
+that were trickling down his cheeks.
+
+The two men only glanced at each other. Then, after an interval of
+silence, Jeanbernat slowly said:
+
+'Well, was I not right? There is nothing, nothing, nothing. It is all
+mere nonsense.'
+
+He remained standing and began to pick up the roses that had fallen from
+the bed, throwing them, one by one, upon Albine's skirts.
+
+'The flowers,' he said, 'live only for a day, while the rough nettles,
+like me, wear out the very stones amidst which they spring. . . . Now
+it's all over; I can kick the bucket; I am nearly distracted. My last
+ray of sunlight has been snuffed out. It's all nonsense, as I said
+before.'
+
+He threw himself upon one of the chairs in his turn. He did not shed a
+tear; he bore himself with rigid despair, like some automaton whose
+mechanism is broken. Mechanically he reached out his hand and took a
+book that lay on the little table strewn with violets. It was one of the
+books stored away in the loft, an odd volume of Holbach,* which he had
+been reading since the morning, while watching by Albine's body. As the
+doctor still remained silent, buried in distressful thought, he began to
+turn its pages over. But a sadden idea occurred to him.
+
+  * Doubtless Holbach's now forgotten _Catechism of Nature_, into
+    which M. Zola himself may well have peeped whilst writing this
+    story.--ED.
+
+'If you will help me,' he said to the doctor, 'we will carry her
+downstairs, and bury her with all her flowers.'
+
+Uncle Pascal shuddered. Then he explained to the old man that it was not
+allowed for one to keep the dead in that fashion.
+
+'What! it isn't allowed!' cried Jeanbernat. 'Well, then, I will allow it
+myself! Doesn't she belong to me? Isn't she mine? Do you think I am
+going to let the priests walk off with her? Let them try, if they want
+to get a shot from my gun!'
+
+He sprang to his feet and waved his book about with a terrible gesture.
+But the doctor caught hold of his hands and clasped them within his own,
+beseeching him to be calm. And for a long time he talked to him, saying
+all that he had upon his mind. He blamed himself, made fragmentary
+confessions of his fault, and vaguely hinted at those who had killed
+Albine.
+
+'Listen,' he said in conclusion, 'she is yours no longer; you must give
+her up.'
+
+But Jeanbernat shook his head, and again waved his hand in token of
+refusal. However, his obstinate resolution was shaken; and at last he
+said:
+
+'Well, well, let them take her, and may she break their arms for them! I
+only wish that she could rise up out of the ground and kill them all
+with fright. . . . By the way. I have a little business to settle over
+there. I will go to-morrow. . . . Good-bye, then, doctor. The hole will
+do for me.'
+
+And, when the doctor had left, he again sat down by the dead girl's
+side, and gravely resumed the perusal of his book.
+
+
+
+                                XVI
+
+That morning there was great commotion in the yard at the parsonage. The
+Artaud butcher had just slaughtered Matthew, the pig, in the shed.
+Desiree, quite enthusiastic about it all, had held Matthew's feet, while
+he was being bled, kissing him on the back that he might feel the pain
+of the knife less, and telling him that it was absolutely necessary that
+he should be killed, now that he had got so fat. No one could cut off a
+goose's neck with a single stroke of the hatchet more unconcernedly than
+she could, or gash open a fowl's throat with a pair of scissors. However
+much she loved her charges, she looked upon their slaughter with great
+equanimity. It was quite necessary, she would say. It made room for the
+young ones who were growing up. And that morning she was very gay.
+
+'Mademoiselle,' grumbled La Teuse every minute, 'you will end by making
+yourself ill. There is no sense in working yourself up into such a
+state, just because a pig has been slaughtered. You are as red as if you
+had been dancing a whole night.'
+
+But Desiree only clapped her hands and turned away and bustled about
+again. La Teuse, for her part, complained that her legs were sinking
+under her. Since six o'clock in the morning her big carcass had been
+perpetually rolling between the kitchen and the yard, for she had black
+puddings to make. It was she who had whisked the blood in two large
+earthenware pans, and she had thought that she would never get finished,
+since mademoiselle was for ever calling her away for mere nothings.
+
+It must be admitted that, at the very moment when the butcher was
+bleeding Matthew, Desiree had been thrilled with wild excitement, for
+Lisa, the cow, was about to calve. And the girl's delight at this had
+quite turned her head.
+
+'One goes and another comes!' she cried, skipping and twirling round.
+'Come here, La Teuse! come here!'
+
+It was eleven o'clock. Every now and then the sound of chanting was
+wafted from the church. A confused murmur of doleful voices, a muttering
+of prayers could be heard amidst scraps of Latin pronounced in louder
+and clearer tones.
+
+'Come! oh, do come!' repeated Desiree for the twentieth time.
+
+'I must go and toll the bell, now,' muttered the old servant. 'I shall
+never get finished really. What is it that you want now, mademoiselle?'
+
+But she did not wait for an answer. She threw herself upon a swarm of
+fowls, who were greedily drinking the blood from the pans. And having
+angrily kicked them away, and then covered up the pans, she called to
+Desiree:
+
+'It would be a great deal better if, instead of tormenting me, you only
+came to look after these wretched birds. If you let them do as they like
+there will be no black-pudding for you. Do you hear?'
+
+Desiree only laughed. What of it, if the fowls did drink a few drops of
+the blood? It would fatten them. Then she again tried to drag La Teuse
+off to the cow, but the old servant refused to go.
+
+'I must go and toll the bell. The procession will be coming out of
+church directly. You know that quite well.'
+
+At this moment the voices in the church rose yet more loudly, and a
+sound of steps could be distinctly heard.
+
+'No! no!' insisted Desiree, dragging La Teuse towards the stable. 'Just
+come and look at her, and tell me what ought to be done.'
+
+La Teuse shrugged her shoulders. All that the cow wanted was to be left
+alone and not bothered. Then she set off towards the vestry, but, as she
+passed the shed, she raised a fresh cry:
+
+'There! there!' she shrieked, shaking her fist. 'Ah! the little wretch!'
+
+Matthew was lying at full length on his back, with his feet in the air,
+under the shed, waiting to be singed.* The gash which the knife had made
+in his neck was still quite fresh, and was beaded with drops of blood.
+And a little white hen was very delicately picking off these drops of
+blood one by one.
+
+  * In some parts of France pigs, when killed, are singed, not scalded,
+    as is, I think, the usual practice in England.--ED.
+
+'Why, of course,' quietly remarked Desiree, 'she's regaling herself.'
+And the girl stooped and patted the pig's plump belly, saying: 'Eh! my
+fat fellow, you have stolen their food too often to grudge them a wee
+bit of your neck now!'
+
+La Teuse hastily doffed her apron and threw it round Matthew's neck.
+Then she hurried away and disappeared within the church. The great door
+had just creaked on its rusty hinges, and a burst of chanting rose in
+the open air amidst the quiet sunshine. Suddenly the bell began to toll
+with slow and regular strokes. Desiree, who had remained kneeling beside
+the pig patting his belly, raised her head to listen, while still
+continuing to smile. When she saw that she was alone, having glanced
+cautiously around, she glided away into the cow's stable and closed the
+door behind her.
+
+The little iron gate of the graveyard, which had been opened quite wide
+to let the body pass, hung against the wall, half torn from its hinges.
+The sunshine slept upon the herbage of the empty expanse, into which the
+funeral procession passed, chanting the last verse of the _Miserere_.
+Then silence fell.
+
+'_Requiem oeternam dona ei, Domine_,' resumed Abbe Mouret, in solemn
+tones.
+
+'_Et lux perpetua luceat ei_,' Brother Archangias bellowed.
+
+At the head walked Vincent, wearing a surplice and bearing the cross, a
+large copper cross, half the silver plating of which had come off. He
+lifted it aloft with both his hands. Then followed Abbe Mouret, looking
+very pale in his black chasuble, but with his head erect, and without a
+quiver on his lips as he chanted the office, gazing into the distance
+with fixed eyes. The flame of the lighted candle which he was carrying
+scarcely showed in the daylight. And behind him, almost touching him,
+came Albine's coffin, borne by four peasants on a sort of litter,
+painted black. The coffin was clumsily covered with too short a pall,
+and at the lower end of it the fresh deal of which it was made could be
+seen, with the heads of the nails sparkling with a steely glitter. Upon
+the pall lay flowers: handfuls of white roses, hyacinths, and tuberoses,
+taken from the dead girl's very bed.
+
+'Just be careful!' cried Brother Archangias to the peasants, as they
+slightly tilted the litter in order to get it through the gateway. 'You
+will be upsetting everything on to the ground!'
+
+He kept the coffin in its place with one of his fat hands. With the
+other--as there was no second clerk--he was carrying the holy-water
+vessel, and he likewise represented the choirman, the rural guard, who
+had been unable to come.
+
+'Come in, too, you others,' he exclaimed, turning round.
+
+There was a second funeral, that of Rosalie's baby, who had died the
+previous day from an attack of convulsions. The mother, the father, old
+mother Brichet, Catherine, and two big girls, La Rousse and Lisa, were
+there. The two last were carrying the baby's coffin, one supporting each
+end.
+
+Suddenly all voices were hushed again, and there came another interval
+whilst the bell continued tolling in slow and desolate accents. The
+funeral procession crossed the entire burial-ground, going towards
+the corner which was formed by the church and the wall of Desiree's
+poultry-yard. Swarms of grasshoppers leaped away at the approaching
+footsteps, and lizards hurried into their holes. A heavy warmth hung
+over this corner of the loamy cemetery. The crackling of the dry grass
+beneath the tramp of the mourners sounded like choking sobs.
+
+'There! stop where you are!' cried the Brother, barring the way before
+the two big girls who were carrying the baby's coffin. 'Wait for your
+turn. Don't be getting in our legs here.'
+
+The two girls laid the baby on the ground. Rosalie, Fortune, and old
+mother Brichet were lingering in the middle of the graveyard, while
+Catherine slyly followed Brother Archangias. Albine's grave was on the
+left hand of Abbe Caffin's tomb, whose white stone seemed in the
+sunshine to be flecked with silvery spangles. The deep cavity, freshly
+dug that morning, yawned amidst thick tufts of grass. Big weeds, almost
+uprooted, drooped over the edges, and a fallen flower lay at the bottom,
+staining the dark soil with its crimson petals. When Abbe Mouret came
+forward, the soft earth crumbled and gave way beneath his feet; he was
+obliged to step back to keep himself from slipping into the grave.
+
+'_Ego sum_--' he began in a full voice, which rose above the mournful
+tolling of the bell.
+
+During the anthem, those who were present instinctively cast furtive
+glances towards the bottom of the empty grave. Vincent, who had planted
+the cross at the foot of the cavity opposite the priest, pushed the
+loose earth with his foot, and amused himself by watching it fall. This
+drew a laugh from Catherine, who was leaning forward from behind him to
+get a better view. The peasants had set the litter on the grass and were
+stretching their arms, while Brother Archangias prepared the sprinkler.
+
+'Come here, Voriau!' called Fortune.
+
+The big black dog, who had gone to sniff at the coffin, came back
+sulkily.
+
+'Why has the dog been brought?' exclaimed Rosalie.
+
+'Oh! he followed us,' said Lisa, smiling quietly.
+
+They were all chatting together in subdued tones round the baby's
+coffin. The father and mother occasionally forgot all about it, but on
+catching sight of it again, lying between them at their feet, they
+relapsed into silence.
+
+'And so old Bambousse wouldn't come?' said La Rousse. Mother Brichet
+raised her eyes to heaven.
+
+'He threatened to break everything to pieces yesterday when the little
+one died,' said she. 'No, no, I must say that he is not a good man.
+Didn't he nearly strangle me, crying out that he had been robbed, and
+that he would have given one of his cornfields for the little one to
+have died three days before the wedding?'
+
+'One can never tell what will happen,' remarked Fortune with a knowing
+look.
+
+'What's the good of the old man putting himself out about it? We are
+married, all the same, now,' added Rosalie.
+
+Then they exchanged a smile across the little coffin while Lisa and La
+Rousse nudged each other with their elbows. But afterwards they all
+became very serious again. Fortune picked up a clod of earth to throw at
+Voriau, who was now prowling about amongst the old tombstones.
+
+'Ah! they've nearly finished over there, now!' La Rousse whispered very
+softly.
+
+Abbe Mouret was just concluding the _De profundis_ in front of Albine's
+grave. Then, with slow steps, he approached the coffin, drew himself up
+erect, and gazed at it for a moment without a quiver in his glance. He
+looked taller, his face shone with a serenity that seemed to transfigure
+him. He stooped and picked up a handful of earth, and scattered it over
+the coffin crosswise. Then, in a voice so steady and clear that not a
+syllable was lost, he said:
+
+'_Revertitur in terrain suam unde erat, et spiritus redit ad Deum qui
+dedit illum_.'
+
+A shudder ran through those who were present. Lisa seemed to reflect for
+a moment, and then remarked with an expression of worry: 'It is not very
+cheerful, eh, when one thinks that one's own turn will come some day or
+other.'
+
+But Brother Archangias had now handed the sprinkler to the priest, who
+took it and shook it several times over the corpse.
+
+'_Requiescat in pace_,' he murmured.
+
+'_Amen_,' responded Vincent and the Brother together, in tones so
+respectively shrill and deep that Catherine had to cram her fist into
+her mouth to keep from laughing.
+
+'No, indeed, it is certainly not cheerful,' continued Lisa. 'There
+really was nobody at all at that funeral. The graveyard would be quite
+empty without us.'
+
+'I've heard say that she killed herself,' said old mother Brichet.
+
+'Yes, I know,' interrupted La Rousse. 'The Brother didn't want to let
+her be buried amongst Christians, but Monsieur le Cure said that
+eternity was for everybody. I was there. But all the same the
+Philosopher might have come.'
+
+At that very moment Rosalie reduced them all to silence by murmuring:
+'See! there he is, the Philosopher.'
+
+Jeanbernat was, indeed, just entering the graveyard. He walked straight
+to the group that stood around Albine's grave; and he stepped along with
+so lithe, so springy a gait, that none of them heard him coming. When he
+was close to them, he remained for a moment behind Brother Archangias
+and seemed to fix his eyes, for an instant, on the nape of the Brother's
+neck. Then, just as the Abbe Mouret was finishing the office, he calmly
+drew a knife from his pocket, opened it, and with a single cut sliced
+off the Brother's right ear.
+
+There had been no time for any one to interfere. The Brother gave a
+terrible yell.
+
+'The left one will be for another occasion,' said Jeanbernat quietly, as
+he threw the ear upon the ground. Then he went off.
+
+So great and so general was the stupefaction that nobody followed him.
+Brother Archangias had dropped upon the heap of fresh soil which had
+been thrown out of the grave. He was staunching his bleeding wound with
+his handkerchief. One of the four peasants who had carried the coffin,
+wanted to lead him away, conduct him home; but he refused with a gesture
+and remained where he was, fierce and sullen, wishing to see Albine
+lowered into the pit.
+
+'There! it's our turn at last!' said Rosalie with a little sigh.
+
+But Abbe Mouret still lingered by the grave, watching the bearers who
+were slipping cords under Albine's coffin in order that they might let
+it down gently. The bell was still tolling; but La Teuse must have been
+getting tired, for it tolled irregularly, as though it were becoming a
+little irritated at the length of the ceremony.
+
+The sun was growing hotter and the Solitaire's shadow crept slowly over
+the grass and the grave mounds. When Abbe Mouret was obliged to step
+back in order to give the bearers room, his eyes lighted upon the marble
+tombstone of Abbe Coffin, that priest who also had loved, and who was
+now sleeping there so peacefully beneath the wild-flowers.
+
+Then, all at once, even as the coffin descended, supported by the cords,
+whose knots made it strain and creak, a tremendous uproar arose in the
+poultry-yard on the other side of the wall. The goat began to bleat. The
+ducks, the geese, and the turkeys raised their loudest calls and flapped
+their wings. The fowls all cackled at once. The yellow cock, Alexander,
+crowed forth his trumpet notes. The rabbits could even be heard leaping
+in their hutches and shaking their wooden floors. And, above all this
+lifeful uproar of the animal creation, a loud laugh rang out. There was
+a rustling of skirts. Desiree, with her hair streaming, her arms bare to
+the elbows, and her face crimson with triumph, burst into sight, her
+hands resting upon the coping of the wall. She had doubtless climbed
+upon the manure-heap.
+
+'Serge! Serge!' she cried.
+
+At that moment Albine's coffin had reached the bottom of the grave. The
+cords had just been withdrawn. One of the peasants was throwing the
+first shovelful of earth into the cavity.
+
+'Serge! Serge!' Desiree cried, still more loudly, clapping her hands,
+'the cow has got a calf!'
+
+
+
+                              THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Abbe Mouret's Transgression, by Emile Zola
+
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