e was constantly out of temper. The home of these three had again
become a hell.

Then suddenly the condition of affairs was still further aggravated. A
Capuchin monk of great sanctity, such as often pass through the towns
of the South, came to Plassans to conduct a mission. The pulpit of
St. Saturnin resounded with his bursts of eloquence. He was a sort of
apostle, a popular and fiery orator, a florid speaker, much given to the
use of metaphors. And he preached on the nothingness of modern science
with an extraordinary mystical exaltation, denying the reality of this
world, and disclosing the unknown, the mysteries of the Beyond. All the
devout women of the town were full of excitement about his preaching.

On the very first evening on which Clotilde, accompanied by Martine,
attended the sermon, Pascal noticed her feverish excitement when
she returned. On the following day her excitement increased, and she
returned home later, having remained to pray for an hour in a dark
corner of a chapel. From this time she was never absent from the
services, returning languid, and with the luminous eyes of a seer; and
the Capuchin's burning words haunted her; certain of his images stirred
her to ecstasy. She grew irritable, and she seemed to have conceived a
feeling of anger and contempt for every one and everything around her.

Pascal, filled with uneasiness, determined to have an explanation
with Martine. He came down early one morning as she was sweeping the
dining-room.

"You know that I leave you and Clotilde free to go to church, if
that pleases you," he said. "I do not believe in oppressing any one's
conscience. But I do not wish that you should make her sick."

The servant, without stopping in her work, said in a low voice:

"Perhaps the sick people are those who don't think that they are sick."

She said this with such an air of conviction that he smiled.

"Yes," he returned; "I am the sick soul whose conversion you pray for;
while both of you are in possession of health and of perfect wisdom.
Martine, if you continue to torment me and to torment yourselves, as you
are doing, I shall grow angry."

He spoke in so furious and so harsh a voice that the servant stopped
suddenly in her sweeping, and looked him full in the face. An infinite
tenderness, an immense desolation passed over the face of the old maid
cloistered in his service. And tears filled her eyes and she hurried out
of the room stammering:

"Ah, monsie