A waiter brought him his “bock,” which
he swallowed at a gulp. But, in taking up his
pipe again, trembling as he was, he broke it.
“Confound it!” he said, with a gesture
of annoyance. “That is a real sorrow.
It will take me a month to color another!”
And he called out across the vast hall, now reeking
with smoke and full of men drinking, his everlasting:
“Garcon, un ’bock’—and
a new pipe.”
“My darlings,” said the comtesse, “you
might go to bed.”
The three children, two girls and a boy, rose and
kissed their grandmother. Then they said good-night
to M. le Cure, who had dined at the chateau, as was
his custom every Thursday.
The Abbe Mauduit lifted two of the children on his
knees, passing his long arms clad in black round their
necks, and kissing them tenderly on the forehead as
he drew their heads toward him as a father might.
Then he set them down on the ground, and the little
beings went off, the boy ahead, and the girls following.
“You are fond of children, M. le Cure,”
said the comtesse.
“Very fond, madame.”
The old woman raised her bright eyes toward the priest.
“And—has your solitude never weighed
too heavily on you?”
“Yes, sometimes.”
He became silent, hesitated, and then added:
“But I was never made for ordinary life.”
“What do you know about it?”
“Oh! I know very well. I was made
to be a priest; I followed my vocation.”
The comtesse kept staring at him:
“Come now, M. le Cure, tell me this—tell
me how it was you resolved to renounce forever all
that makes the rest of us love life—all
that consoles and sustains us? What is it that
drove you, impelled you, to separate yourself from
the great natural path of marriage and the family?
You are neither an enthusiast nor a fanatic, neither
a gloomy person nor a sad person. Was it some
incident, some sorrow, that led you to take life vows?”
The Abbe Mauduit rose and approached the fire, then,
holding toward the flame his big shoes, such as country
priests generally wear, he seemed still hesitating
as to what reply he should make.
He was a tall old man with white hair, and for the
last twenty years had been pastor of the parish of
Saint-Antoine-du-Rocher. The peasants said of
him: “There’s a good man for you!”
And indeed he was a good man, benevolent, friendly
to all, gentle, and, to crown all, generous. Like
Saint Martin, he would have cut his cloak in two.
He laughed readily, and wept also, on slight provocation,
just like a woman—which prejudiced him
more or less in the hard minds of the country folk.
The old Comtesse de Saville, living in retirement
in her chateau of Rocher, in order to bring up her
grandchildren, after the successive deaths of her
son and her daughter-in-law, was very much attached
to her cure, and used to say of him: “What
a heart he has!”
