and soon her whole frame vibrated with the mighty sounds that burst in waves around her.  The nuptials were at hand, the trumpet blasts of the roses announced them.  She pressed her hands more closely to her heart as she lay there panting, gasping, dying.  When she opened her lips for the kiss which was to stifle her, the hyacinths and tuberoses shot out their perfume and enveloped her with so deep, so great a sigh that the chorus of the roses could be heard no more.

And then, amidst the final gasp of the flowers, Albine died.

XV

About three o’clock the next afternoon, La Teuse and Brother Archangias, who were chatting on the parsonage-steps, saw Doctor Pascal’s gig come at full gallop through the village.  The whip was being vigorously brandished from beneath the lowered hood.

‘Where can he be off to at that rate?’ murmured the old servant.  ’He will break his neck.’

The gig had just reached the rising ground on which the church was built.  Suddenly, the horse reared and stopped, and the doctor’s head, with its long white hair all dishevelled appeared from under the hood.

‘Is Serge there?’ he cried, in a voice full of indignant excitement.

La Teuse had stepped to the edge of the hill.  ’Monsieur le Cure is in his room,’ she said.  ’He must be reading his breviary.  Do you want to speak to him?  Shall I call him?’

Uncle Pascal, who seemed almost distracted, made an angry gesture with his whip hand.  Bending still further forward, at the risk of falling out, he replied: 

’Ah! he’s reading his breviary, is he?  No! no! don’t call him.  I should strangle him, and that would do no good.  I wanted to tell him that Albine was dead.  Dead! do you hear me?  Tell him, from me, that she is dead!’

And he drove off, lashing his horse so fiercely that it almost bolted.  But, twenty paces away, he pulled up again, and once more stretching out his head, cried loudly: 

’Tell him, too, from me, that she was enceinte!  It will please him to know that.’

Then the gig rolled on wildly again, jolting dangerously as it ascended the stony hill that led to the Paradou.  La Teuse was quite dumbfounded.  But Brother Archangias sniggered and looked at her with savage delight glittering in his eyes.  She noticed this at last, and thrust him away from her, almost making him fall down the steps.

‘Be off with you!’ she stammered, full of anger, seeking to relieve her feelings by abusing him.  ’I shall grow to hate you.  Is it possible to rejoice at any one’s death?  I wasn’t fond of the girl, myself; but it is very sad to die at her age.  Be off with you, and don’t go on sniggering like that, or I will throw my scissors in your face!’