He prostrated himself and continued stammering in the dust.  The church triumphed.  It remained firm and unshaken over the priest’s head, with its altars and its confessional, its pulpit, its crosses, and its holy images.  The world had ceased to exist.  Temptation was extinguished like a fire that was henceforth unnecessary for the Abbe’s purification.  He was entering into supernatural peace.  And he raised this supreme cry: 

’To the exclusion of life and its creatures and of everything that be in it, I belong to Thee, O God; to Thee, Thee alone, through all eternity!’

XIV

At that moment Albine was still wandering about the Paradou with all the mute agony of a wounded animal.  She had ceased to weep.  Her face was very white and a deep crease showed upon her brow.  Why did she have to suffer that deathlike agony?  Of what fault had she been guilty, that the garden no longer kept the promises it had held out to her since her childhood’s days?  She questioned herself as she walked along, never heeding the avenues through which the gloom was slowly stealing.  She had always obeyed the voices of the trees.  She could not remember having injured a single flower.  She had ever been the beloved daughter of the greenery, hearkening to it submissively, yielding to it with full belief in the happiness which it promised to her.  And when, on that supreme day, the Paradou had cried to her to cast herself beneath the giant-tree, she had done so in compliance with its voice.  If she then had nothing to reproach herself with, it must be the garden which had betrayed her; the garden which was torturing her for the mere sake of seeing her suffer.

She halted and looked around her.  The great gloomy masses of foliage preserved deep silence.  The paths were blocked with black walls of darkness.  The distant lawns were lulling to sleep the breezes that kissed them.  And she thrust out her hands with a gesture of hopelessness and raised a cry of protest.  It could not all end thus.  But her voice choked beneath the silent trees.  Thrice did she implore the Paradou to answer her, but never an explanation fell from its lofty branches, not a leaf seemed to be moved with pity for her.  Then she resumed her weary wandering, and felt that she was entering into the fatal sternness of winter.  Now that she had ceased to rebelliously question the earth, she caught sound of a gentle murmur speeding along the ground.  It was the farewell of the plants, wishing one another a happy death.  To have drunk in the sunshine for a whole season, to have lived ever blossoming, to have breathed continual perfume, and then, at the first blast, to depart, with the hope of springing up again elsewhere, was not that sufficiently long and full a life which obstinate craving for further existence would mar?  Ah! how sweet death must be; how sweet to have an endless night before one, wherein to dream of the short days of life and to recall eternally its fugitive joys!