She drove them slowly towards the door, while running and bobbling round them frantically.  And she had succeeded, as she thought, in getting every one of them outside, when she caught sight of Catherine and Vincent calmly installed in the confessional, where they were eating something with an air of great enjoyment.  She drove them away; and as she popped her head outside the church, before closing the door, she espied Rosalie throwing her arm over the shoulder of Fortune, who had been waiting for her.  The pair of them vanished in the darkness amid a faint sound of kisses.

‘To think that such creatures dare to come to our Lady’s altar!’ La Teuse stuttered as she shot the bolts.  ’The others are no better, I am sure.  If they came to-night with their boughs, it was only for a bit of fun and to get kissed by the lads on going off!  Not one of them will put herself out of the way to-morrow; his reverence will have to say his Aves by himself——­ We shall only see the jades who have got assignations.’

Thus soliloquising, she thrust the chairs back into their places, and looked round to see if anything suspicious was lying about before going off to bed.  In the confessional she picked up a handful of apple-parings, which she threw behind the high altar.  And she also found a bit of ribbon torn from some cap, and a lock of black hair, which she made up into a small parcel, with the view of opening an inquiry into the matter.  With these exceptions the church seemed to her tidy.  There was oil enough for the night in the bracket-lamp of the sanctuary, and as to the flags of the choir, they could do without washing till Saturday.

‘It’s nearly ten o’clock, Monsieur le Cure,’ she said, drawing near the priest, who was still on his knees.  ‘You might as well come up now.’

He made no answer, but only bowed his head.

‘All right, I know what that means,’ continued La Teuse.  ’In another hour he will still be on the stones there, giving himself a stomach-ache.  I’m off, as I shall only bore him.  All the same, I can’t see much sense in it, eating one’s lunch when others are at dinner, and going to bed when the fowls get up!——­ I worry you, don’t I, your reverence?  Good-night.  You’re not at all reasonable!’

She made ready to go, but suddenly came back to put out one of the two lamps, muttering the while that such late prayers spelt ruination in oil.  Then, at last, she did go off, after passing her sleeve brushwise over the cloth of the high altar, which seemed to her grey with dust.  Abbe Mouret, his eyes uplifted, his arms tightly clasped against his breast, then remained alone.

XIV