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.’