‘Pretty well,’ answered Jeanbernat.  ’She’s never here.  She often disappears all day long—­still, she may be in the upstair rooms.’

He raised his head and called:  ‘Albine!  Albine!’ Then with a shrug of his shoulders, he added:  ’Yes, my word, she is a nice hussy. . . .  Well, till next time, Monsieur le Cure.  I’m always at your disposal.’

Abbe Mouret, however, had no time to accept the Philosopher’s challenge.  A door suddenly opened at the end of the vestibule; a dazzling breach was made in the black darkness of the wall, and through the breach came a vision of a virgin forest, a great depth of woodland, beneath a flood of sunbeams.  In that sudden blaze of light the priest distinctly perceived certain far-away things:  a large yellow flower in the middle of a lawn, a sheet of water falling from a lofty rock, a colossal tree filled with a swarm of birds; and all this steeped, lost, blazing in such a tangle of greenery, such riotous luxuriance of vegetation, that the whole horizon seemed one great burst of shooting foliage.  The door banged to, and everything vanished.

‘Ah! the jade!’ cried Jeanbernat, ‘she was in the Paradou again!’

Albine was now laughing on the threshold of the vestibule.  She wore an orange-coloured skirt, with a large red kerchief fastened round her waist, thus looking like some gipsy in holiday garb.  And she went on laughing, her head thrown back, her bosom swelling with mirth, delighted with her flowers, wild flowers which she had plaited into her fair hair, fastened to her neck, her bodice, and her bare slender golden arms.  She seemed like a huge nosegay, exhaling a powerful perfume.

‘Ay, you are a beauty!’ growled the old man.  ’You smell of weeds enough to poison one—­would any one think she was sixteen, that doll?’

Albine remained unabashed, however, and laughed still more heartily.  Doctor Pascal, who was her great friend, let her kiss him.

‘So you are not frightened in the Paradou?’ he asked.

‘Frightened?  What of?’ she said, her eyes wide open with astonishment.  ’The walls are too high, no one can get in.  There’s only myself.  It is my garden, all my very own.  A fine big one, too.  I haven’t found out where it ends yet.’

‘And the animals?’ interrupted the doctor.

‘The animals?  Oh! they don’t hurt; they all know me well.’

‘But it is very dark under the trees?’

’Course! there’s shade:  if there were none, the sun would burn my face up.  It is very pleasant in the shade among the leaves.’

She flitted about, filling the little garden with the rustling sweep of her skirts, and scattering round the pungent odour of wild flowers which clung to her.  She had smiled at Abbe Mouret without trace of shyness, without heed of the astonished look with which he observed her.  The priest had stepped aside.  That fair-haired maid, with long oval face, glowing with life, seemed to him to be the weird mysterious offspring of the forest of which he had caught a glimpse in a sheet of sunlight.