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.’