s napkin tied in a
sailor's knot in my cupboard and came to breakfast, luncheon, or dinner
when he pleased, waking up my house abandoned by the marsh with his good
humour, joking with Suzette, my little maid-of-all-work, until her fair
cheeks grew the rosier, and rousing me out of the blues with his quick
wit and his hearty laugh.

It seems impossible to me that he is guilty of what he is accused of,
yet the facts seem undeniable.

Only the good go wrong, is it not so? The bad have become so
commonplace, they do not attract our attention.

Now the ways of the cure were always just. I have never known him to do
a mean thing in his life, far less a dishonest one. I have known him to
give the last few sous he possessed to a hungry fisherwoman who needed
bread for herself and her brood of children and content himself with
what was left among the few remaining vegetables in his garden. There
are days, too, when he is forced to live frugally upon a peasant soup
and a pear for dinner, and there have been occasions to my knowledge,
when the soup had to be omitted and his menu reduced to a novel, a
cigarette and the pear.

It is a serious matter, the separation of the state from the church in
France, since it has left the priest with the munificent salary of four
hundred francs a year, out of which he must pay his rent and give to the
poor.

Once we dined nobly together upon two fat sparrows, and again we had a
blackbird for dinner. He had killed it that morning from his window,
while shaving, for I saw the lather dried on the stock of his duck gun.

Monsieur le Cure is ingenious when it comes to hard times.

Again, there are days when he is in luck, when some generous parishioner
has had the forethought to restock his larder. Upon such bountiful
occasions he insists on Tanrade and myself dining with him at the
presbytery as long as these luxuries last, refusing to dine with either
of us until there is no more left of his own to give.

The last time I saw him, I had noticed a marked change in his reverence.
He was moody and unshaven, and his saucerlike hat was as dusty and
spotted as his frayed soutane. Only now and then he gave out flashes of
his old geniality and even they seemed forced. I was amazed at the
change in him, and yet, when I consider all I have heard since, I do not
wonder much at his appearance.

Tanrade tells me (and he evidently believes it) that some fifteen
hundred francs, raised by Alice's concert