ediness she held the worm high above them. At last
she opened her fingers, and forthwith the fowls hustled one another and
pounced upon the worm. One of them fled with it in her beak, pursued
by the others; it was thus taken, snatched away, and retaken many times
until one hen, with a mighty gulp, swallowed it altogether. At that
they all stopped short with heads thrown back, and eyes on the alert for
another worm. Desiree called them by their names, and talked pettingly
to them; while Abbe Mouret retreated a few steps from this display of
voracious life.

'No, I am not at all comfortable,' he said to his sister, when she tried
to make him feel the weight of a fowl she was fattening. 'It always
makes me uneasy to touch live animals.'

He tried to smile, but Desiree taxed him with cowardice.

'Ah well, what about my ducks, and geese, and turkeys?' said she. 'What
would you do if you had all those to look after? Ducks are dirty, if you
like. Do you hear them shaking their bills in the water? And when they
dive, you can only see their tails sticking straight up like ninepins.
Geese and turkeys, too, are not easy to manage. Isn't it fun to see them
walking along with their long necks, some quite white and others quite
black? They look like ladies and gentlemen. And I wouldn't advise you
to trust your finger to them. They would swallow it at a gulp. But my
fingers, they only kiss--see!'

Her words were cut short by a joyous bleat from the goat, which had at
last forced the door of the stable open. Two bounds and the animal was
close to her, bending its forelegs, and affectionately rubbing its horns
against her. To the priest, with its pointed beard and obliquely set
eyes, it seemed to wear a diabolical grin. But Desiree caught it round
the neck, kissed its head, played and ran with it, and talked about how
she liked to drink its milk. She often did so, she said, when she was
thirsty in the stable.

'See, it has plenty of milk,' she added, pointing to the animal's udder.

The priest lowered his eyes. He could remember having once seen in
the cloister of Saint-Saturnin at Plassans a horrible stone gargoyle,
representing a goat and a monk; and ever since he had always looked on
goats as dissolute creatures of hell. His sister had only been allowed
to get one after weeks of begging. For his part, whenever he came to
the yard, he shunned all contact with the animal's long silky coat, and
carefully guarded his cassock from t