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.