‘Get down, will you?’ she cried to her.  ’You are a cool one, and no mistake, my lass!—­Hurry up, off you go with your bundle.’

‘What for, I’d like to know?’ said Rosalie boldly.  ’You can’t say I have stolen it.’

The other girls drew closer, feigning innocence and exchanging sparkling glances.

‘Clear out,’ repeated La Teuse, ’you have no business here, do you hear?’

Then, quite losing her scanty patience, she gave vent to a very coarse epithet, which provoked a titter of delight among the peasant girls.

‘Well, what next?’ said Rosalie.  ’Mind your own business.  Is it any concern of yours?’

Then she burst into a fit of sobbing and threw down her boughs, but let the Abbe lead her aside and give her a severe lecture.  He had already tried to silence La Teuse; for he was beginning to feel uneasy amidst the big shameless hussies who filled the church with their armfuls of foliage.  They were pushing right up to the altar step, enclosing him with a belt of woodland, wafting in his face a rank perfume of aromatic shoots.

‘Let us make haste, be quick!’ he exclaimed, clapping his hands lightly.

‘Goodness knows I would rather be in my bed,’ grumbled La Teuse.  ’It’s not so easy as you think to fasten all these bits of stuff.’

Finally, however, she succeeded in setting some lofty plumes of foliage between the candlesticks.  Next she folded the steps, which were laid behind the high altar by Catherine.  And then she only had to arrange two clumps of greenery at the sides of the altar table.  The last boughs sufficed for this, and indeed there were some left which the girls strewed over the sanctuary floor up to the wooden rails.  The Lady altar now looked like a grove, a shrubbery with a verdant lawn before it.

At present La Teuse was willing to make way for Abbe Mouret, who ascended the altar steps, and, again lightly clapping his hands, exclaimed:  ’Young ladies, to-morrow we will continue the devotions of the month of Mary.  Those who may be unable to come ought at least to say their Rosary at home.’

He knelt, and the peasant girls, with a mighty rustle of skirts, sank down and settled themselves on their heels.  They followed his prayer with a confused muttering, through which burst here and there a giggle.  One of them, on being pinched from behind, burst into a scream, which she attempted to stifle with a sudden fit of coughing; and this so diverted the others that for a moment after the Amen they remained writhing with merriment, their noses close to the stone flags.

La Teuse dismissed them; while the priest, after crossing himself, remained absorbed before the altar, no longer hearing what went on behind him.

‘Come, now, clear out,’ muttered the old woman.  ’You’re a pack of good-for-nothings, who can’t even respect God.  It’s shameful, it’s unheard of, for girls to roll about on the floor in church like beasts in a meadow——­ What are you doing there, La Rousse?  If I see you pinching any one, you’ll have to deal with me!  Oh, yes, you may put out your tongue at me; I’ll tell his reverence about it.  Out you get; out you get, you minxes!’