I have had no very consecutive relations with the curÉ of my village. Many things stand between us. Our age, our occupations, our ideas. He follows one path, I another. Which does not prevent our occasionally meeting out in the country, or at the cross roads. We exchange greetings which vary according to the time of day; we occasionally talk of the weather, as it is, and as it should be to satisfy the peasants. In the crops we find yet another subject for a brief conversation. But we rarely venture beyond this circle of observations. His breviary claims him, and the finger marking the page of his interrupted reading is a delicate hint that the talk had best be brief. I have partridges to deliver, and must not linger, either. There is a slight awkwardness between us, even in saying good-bye. I am anxious not to say anything that may offend the simplicity of his faith, but I always fear one of those somewhat indiscreet suggestions which priests regard as part of their duty. On his side, it is evident that he dreads my so far forgetting myself as to make remarks which will oblige him to stand on the defensive. I cannot help seeing that I am an incomprehensible enigma to him, whereas his state of mind is not in the least puzzling to me. How can I explain this mystery to him, without cruelly wounding him? We therefore part, after a few conventional words, regretting the necessity to stop short on the verge of a conversation which tempts us both, and aware that we have something to say to each other which we shall never say. To his last day he will undoubtedly regard me as an agent of the Devil. And on my side I can only silently sympathize with his sorrow in the recesses of my mind.

AbbÉ Mignot is a tall, robust, florid Burgundian, whose muscular frame seems better suited to field labour than to the unctuous gestures of the sacred ministry. The son of a vintner, he had begun life as a plowboy, when an aged singer, who had been a great sinner while she trod the boards of light opera in Paris, returned to her native village, there to acquire spiritual merit by good works, which the remuneration for vice out in the world enabled her to do. She reared altars, and munificently endowed them. She enriched the church with incomparable raiment. The pulpit praised the zeal of the excellent donor, who was earning Heaven by the virtues belonging to old age, and by preaching austerity to others.

One day this saintly lady, in quest of redemption, met at the edge of the village a dishevelled boy who was subduing the fierceness of a young bullock by the aid of sounding oaths and a shower of blows. The picture seemed to her beautiful, even though the music was profane. She questioned the child, whose precocious adolescence called up distant memories connected with this same muddy, rustic setting, and being suddenly vouchsafed light from on high, she conceived the plan of redeeming her very earliest sin (which had led to so many others), by means of the young bullock driver who seemed to her on the brink of perdition. Providence, and not chance, had set on her path this innocence to be saved from imminent peril. What an admirable priest the youth would make, when properly scrubbed, with his great clear eyes, his blond curls, his laughing insolence of a conquering hero! So the sinner who had turned away so many souls from the path to Heaven would redeem the past forever by leaving behind her an authentic servant of God, to keep up the necessary expiatory work after her death.

All would have been well had not the vintner hung mightily back. His son had cost him "a lot of money." He was just about to "bring him in something" now. This was not the time for sending him away.

"If he goes," he said, "I shall have to hire a servant.... That costs a great deal, counting his food. I can't afford it."

But the more obdurate the peasant was, the more obstinate became the devout lady in her resolve to accomplish the duty laid upon her by Heaven, as she declared. Negotiations were difficult, for Father Mignot had no liking for "skullcaps," as he called priests, and a double argument had to be used: one bag of money to repay him for his "pecuniary loss," and a second bag to allay the scruples of anticlericalism, aggravated by the circumstances. And this is what was called "The vocation of ArsÈne Mignot."

More than twenty years later, AbbÉ Mignot came to us with the remnants of his family: a widowed sister and three nephews without means of support. As I am telling nothing but what is strictly true, I have to admit that he met with a chilly reception. The old curÉ, whom we had just lost, had had enough to do to guard his eighty years from the heat and the cold, and to quaver out his masses. Our peasants are not fond of being too closely questioned. When they saw this new man, still under forty, carrying his need for action into their very houses, breaking, from one day to the next, the happy-go-lucky traditions which had made his predecessor popular, they silently assumed the attitude of self-defence. But the curÉ, being a peasant, knew his peasants. When he discovered his mistake, he had the sense to change his course, and to win back the discontented, one by one, without noise or waste of words.

And so, our village would have had no story, but for a hospital belonging to it, and standing in a hamlet two miles away. This hospital, privately endowed, was tended by four nuns of I know not what order. Disease, however, never marred the spot by its presence. Against the express wish of the founder, a school had been established in it, and any sick person coming to ask admission was told that his presence would be dangerous to the school children, upon which he obediently went to die elsewhere. Two elderly spinsters, who did the work of servants, figured in the Sisters' conversation as "our incurables." By this means they were entitled to retain the inscription on the wall, announcing that hospital care might there be obtained.

Concerning the Sisters themselves there is nothing to say. They taught the catechism, sang off the key at mass, and made a great show of zeal toward the one they called "Mother." Their chief entertainment was luncheon at the curÉ's on Sunday after church. A sweet dish and a little glass of Chartreuse crowned this extravagance. Then there would be much puerile chatter on topics drawn chiefly from the Religious Weekly. New recruits were proudly enumerated, eyes were rolled heavenward at talk of "apostates," and the latest miracles were related in minutest detail. A touch of politics occasionally spiced the heroic resolution to brave martyrdom. At parting, all were in a state of edification.

The trouble was that AbbÉ Mignot, without income, had four mouths to feed. The cost of the luncheon could not be brought within the limits of his budget. He made a frank confession of this to the "Mother," who answered haughtily that privation was the luxury of her estate, and that the Sisters would uncomplainingly return to sharing the "bread of the sick," at the hospital. Her words came true, for the very next week there was a patient at the hospital: the "Mother" herself, whom an attack of erysipelas carried off in three days. The school had to be dismissed and everything scientifically disinfected, before the scholars could return. This duty fell upon the new Mother, a charming young nun, whose beautiful eyes, gentle speech, and affable manners, created a sensation in the countryside.

Mother Rosalie was gifted with a beautiful soprano voice, which proved to be a source of divine refreshment to AbbÉ Mignot, who was fond of playing the organ. There can be no music without work. Work at their music threw the Mother and the curÉ together. And as one study leads to another, the visits of Mother Rosalie to AbbÉ Mignot came to be fairly frequent. Presently there was gossip, and after a time what had at first been a playful buzzing became rumblings of scandal. Is it credible? The first threat of a storm came from the three Sisters at the hospital. These old maids, who had until that moment been totally insignificant, felt surging in them, of a sudden, an irrepressible wave of spleen, intensified and again intensified by the acid of celibacy. Although touched in a sensitive spot by the discontinuance of luncheon at the rectory on Sundays, sole amusement of their lives, they had made no sign. But the moment their one-time host laid himself open to criticism, the hurricane burst, and the flood of heinous words came beating against the very walls of the sacred edifice.

Nothing can be hidden in a village. Life is carried on in broad daylight. The ditches, the stones, the bushes have eyes. Everyone knew very well that AbbÉ Mignot and "the pretty Mother," as she was currently called, had never met anywhere but in the church, the door of which was open to all. The pealing of the organ and the pure voice rising to the rafters ought, it would seem, to have counteracted the poison of malevolent insinuations.

"Certainly," said the peasants, "they are doing no harm, as long as they keep on singing!"

Occasionally, when the organ was silent, Mother Rosalie knelt in the confessional. Busybodies, stationed behind pillars, considered that she remained there too long, and that she confessed oftener than necessary. This was all that any one could find to say against them. I did my best to defend them, when occasion arose, but the only effect of my pleading, I fear, was to give more importance to the spiteful words.

Meanwhile, AbbÉ Mignot and Mother Rosalie continued happy in their music and their friendship. I never knew Mother Rosalie, and will not invent a psychology for her. We exchanged a few words on several occasions, and I received the impression of a remarkably refined nature. Whatever I might say beyond this would be drawn from my imagination. With regard to the AbbÉ, the reader is as well qualified to judge him as I. Bound over to continence by an adept in the reverse, he resigned himself to inevitable fate, the cruelty of which he had recognized when it was too late. Heaven, chance, or destiny had thrown a friendly soul in his path, a prisoner of the same destiny. He surrendered to the delight of the association, happy to come out of himself, to give a little of his life, to receive something of a human life in return, and to feel his pleasure shared. They did not conceal themselves, having nothing to conceal. This seemed to them a safeguard, under the eyes of their brothers in humanity.

The "scandal" lasted three months. One fine day, without warning, an elderly, hunchbacked Sister descended from the coach, and having entered the hospital, exhibited, along with her titles as the new "Mother," the order to "Sister Rosalie" to return within the hour to the convent. Sister Rosalie bowed her head in submission, asked whether time would be allowed her for one leave-taking, and upon receiving a negative answer, retired to her chamber, "to pray and to obey." She came out with faltering steps, and departed never to return.

The following day was Sunday. The event had been kept secret for the sake of a more dramatic climax. When the priest, coming before the altar, met the shock of the sardonic joy twisting the lips of the hunchbacked Mother and her three acolytes in the charity of the Lord, he fell a step backward, as if mocked by Satan himself. Pale, shaken, he was unable to restrain the trembling of his lips. The thunderbolt had struck. In the anguish of death he retained the appearance of life, and must play the part of a living man. By an heroic effort he regained self command. Violently the Introit rang out, as if from depths beyond the grave, and in it were mingled the tragedy of the man and of the God.

There was but one word at the end of mass:

"Monsieur le curÉ made the pretty Mother sing too much. She has gone away to rest."

Last month I met AbbÉ Mignot out among the rocks of Deux Fontaines. He sat with knitted brows at the foot of a bush, and nervously turned the pages of his breviary. He was evidently making a desperate effort to fasten down his wandering attention. He did not notice me, and had not my dog run up to him, I should have turned and walked away, to avoid disturbing him in his lonely struggle. When he saw me he rose, afraid of having been caught betraying something of himself. I held out my hand in friendship, and this time I would gladly have stopped for a talk had I not seemed to read in his eyes an entreaty to pass on without speaking. I obeyed the silent appeal. But yielding to an obscure need—

"Monsieur le curÉ," I said, "you ought to be careful. There are snakes among those stones. You must have been warned before?"

"Yes, I know," he answered in a muffled voice. "This place is infested with vipers—most pernicious beasts, Monsieur. I hope that on your side you will be able to guard against them."