He fetched a bottle and three glasses, and stood them on an old table which he brought out into the shade.  Then, having filled the glasses to the brim, he insisted on clinking them.  His anger had given place to jeering cheerfulness.

‘It won’t poison you, Monsieur le Cure,’ he said.  ’A glass of good wine isn’t a sin.  Upon my word, however, this is the first time I ever clinked a glass with a cassock, but no offence to you.  That poor Abbe Caffin, your predecessor, refused to argue with me.  He was afraid.’

Jeanbernat gave vent to a hearty laugh, and then went on:  ’Just fancy, he had pledged himself that he would prove to me that God exists.  So, whenever I met him, I defied him to do it; and he sloped off crestfallen, I can tell you.’

‘What, God does not exist!’ cried Abbe Mouret, roused from his silence.

‘Oh! just as you please,’ mockingly replied Jeanbernat.  ’We’ll begin together all over again, if it’s any pleasure to you.  But I warn you that I’m a tough hand at it.  There are some thousands of books in one of the rooms upstairs, which were rescued from the fire at the Paradou:  all the philosophers of the eighteenth century, a whole heap of old books on religion.  I’ve learned some fine things from them.  I’ve been reading them these twenty years.  Marry! you’ll find you’ve got some one who can talk, Monsieur le Cure.’

He had risen, slowly waving his hand towards the surrounding horizon, to the earth and to the sky, and repeating solemnly:  ’There’s nothing, nothing, nothing.  When the sun is snuffed out, all will be at an end.’

Doctor Pascal nudged Abbe Mouret with his elbow.  With blinking eyes he was curiously observing the old man and nodding approvingly in order to induce him to talk.  ‘So you are a materialist, Jeanbernat?’ he said.

‘Oh, I am only a poor man,’ replied the old fellow, relighting his pipe.  ’When Count de Corbiere, whose foster-brother I was, died from a fall from his horse, his children sent me here to look after this park of the Sleeping Beauty, in order to get rid of me.  I was sixty years old then, and I thought I was about done.  But death forgot me; and I had to make myself a burrow.  If one lives all alone, look you, one gets to see things in rather a queer fashion.  The trees are no longer trees, the earth puts on the ways of a living being, the stones seem to tell you tales.  A parcel of rubbish, eh?  But I know some secrets that would fairly stagger you.  Besides, what do you think there is to do in this devilish desert?  I read the old books; it was more amusing than shooting.  The Count, who used to curse like a heathen, was always saying to me:  “Jeanbernat, my boy, I fully expect to meet you again in the hot place, so that you will be able to serve me there as you have up here."’

Once more he waved his hand to the horizon and added:  ’You hear, nothing; there’s nothing.  It’s all foolery.’

Dr. Pascal began to laugh.