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