The road grew better.  On coming down the slope Les Artaud reappeared in the midst of the scorched plain.  When the gig reached the turning to the village, Abbe Mouret would not let his uncle drive him back to the vicarage.  He jumped down, saying: 

‘No, thanks, I prefer to walk:  it will do me good.’

‘Well, just as you like,’ at last answered the doctor.  And with a clasp of the hand, he added:  ’Well, if you only had such parishioners as that old brute Jeanbernat, you wouldn’t often be disturbed.  However, you yourself wanted to come.  And mind you keep well.  At the slightest ache, night or day, send for me.  You know I attend all the family gratis. . . .  There, good-bye, my boy.’

X

Abbe Mouret felt more at ease when he found himself again alone, walking along the dusty road.  The stony fields brought him back to his dream of austerity, of an inner life spent in a desert.  From the trees all along the sunken road disturbing moisture had fallen on his neck, which now the burning sun was drying.  The sight of the lean almond trees, the scanty corn crops, the weak vines, on either side of the way, soothed him, delivered him from the perturbation into which the lusty atmosphere of the Paradou had thrown him.  Amid the blinding glare that flowed from heaven over the bare land, Jeanbernat’s blasphemies no longer cast even a shadow.  A thrill of pleasure ran through the priest as he raised his head and caught sight of the solitaire’s motionless bar-like silhouette and the pink patch of tiles on the church.

But, as he walked on, fresh anxiety beset the Abbe.  La Teuse would give him a fine reception; for his luncheon must have been waiting nearly two hours for him.  He pictured her terrible face, the flood of words with which she would greet him, the angry clatter of kitchen ware which he would hear the whole afternoon.  When he had got through Les Artaud, his fear became so lively that he hesitated, full of trepidation, and wondered if it would not be better to go round and reach the parsonage by way of the church.  But, while he deliberated, La Teuse herself appeared on the doorstep of the parsonage, her cap all awry, and her hands on her hips.  With drooping head he had perforce to climb the slope under her storm-laden gaze, which he could feel weighing upon his shoulders.

‘I believe I am rather late, my good Teuse,’ he stammered, as he turned the path’s last bend.

La Teuse waited till he stood quite close before her.  She then gave him a furious glance, and, without a word, turned and stalked before him into the dining-room, banging her big heels upon the floor-tiles and so rigid with ire that she hardly limped at all.

‘I have had so many things to do,’ began the priest, scared by this dumb reception.  ‘I have been running about all the morning.’

But she cut him short with another look, so fixed, so full of anger, that he felt his legs give way under him.  He sat down, and began to eat.  She waited on him in the sharp, mechanical manner of an automaton, all but breaking the plates with the violence with which she set them down.  The silence became so awful that, choking with emotion, he was unable to swallow his third mouthful.