‘But the child?’ interrupted the priest.

’The child indeed!  There’ll be time enough to think of that when it’s born.’

Rosalie, perceiving the turn the priest’s application was taking, now thought it proper to ram her fists into her eyes and whimper.  And she even let herself fall upon the ground.

‘Shut up, will you, you hussy!’ howled her father in a rage.  And he proceeded to revile her in the coarsest terms, which made her laugh silently behind her clenched fists.

‘You won’t shut up? won’t you?  Just wait a minute then, you jade!’ continued old Bambousse.  And thereupon he picked up a clod of earth and flung it at her.  It burst upon her knot of hair, crumbling down her neck and smothering her in dust.  Dizzy from the blow, she bounded to her feet and fled, sheltering her head between her hands.  But Bambousse had time to fling two more clods at her, and if the first only grazed her left shoulder, the next caught her full on the base of the spine, with such force that she fell upon her knees.

‘Bambousse!’ cried the priest, as he wrenched from the peasant’s hand a number of stones which he had just picked up.

‘Let be, Monsieur le Cure,’ said the other.  ’It was only soft earth.  I ought to have thrown these stones at her.  It’s easy to see that you don’t know girls.  Hard as nails, all of them.  I might duck that one in the well, I might break all her bones with a cudgel, and she’d still be just the same.  But I’ve got my eye on her, and if I catch her! . . .  Ah! well, they are all like that.’

He was already comforted.  He took a good pull at a big flat bottle of wine, encased in wicker-work, which lay warming on the hot ground.  And breaking once more into a laugh, he said:  ’If I only had a glass, Monsieur le Cure, I would offer you some with pleasure.’

‘So then,’ again asked the priest, ‘this marriage?’

’No, it can’t be; I should get laughed at.  Rosalie is a stout wench.  She’s worth a man to me.  I shall have to hire a lad the day she goes off. . . .  We can have another talk about it after the vintage.  Besides, I don’t want to be robbed.  Give and take, say I. That’s fair.  What do you think?’

Nevertheless for another long half-hour did the priest remain there preaching to Bambousse, speaking to him of God, and plying him with all the reasons suited to the circumstances.  But the old man had resumed his work; he shrugged his shoulders, jested, and grew more and more obstinate.  At last, he broke out:  ’But if you asked me for a sack of corn, you would give me money, wouldn’t you?  So why do you want me to let my daughter go for nothing?’

Much discomfited, Abbe Mouret left him.  As he went down the path he saw Rosalie rolling about under an olive tree with Voriau, who was licking her face.  With her arms whirling, she kept on repeating:  ’You tickle me, you big stupid.  Leave off!’