in front of the church. The priest, on relating his
interview with Bambousse, was surprised to find that the Brother thought
the peasant's reply quite natural.

'The man's right,' said the Ignorantin.* 'You don't give away chattels
like that. Rosalie is no great bargain, but it's always hard to see your
own daughter throw herself away on a pauper.'

* A popular name in France for a Christian Brother.--ED.

'Still,' rejoined Abbe Mouret, 'a marriage is the only way of stopping
the scandal.'

The Brother shrugged his big shoulders and laughed aggravatingly.
'Do you think you'll cure the neighbourhood with that marriage?' he
exclaimed. 'Before another two years Catherine will be following her
sister's example. They all go the same way, and as they end by marrying,
they snap their fingers at every one. These Artauds flourish in it all,
as on a congenial dungheap. There is only one possible remedy, as I
have told you before: wring all the girls' necks if you don't want the
country to be poisoned. No husbands, Monsieur le Cure, but a good thick
stick!'

Then calming down a bit, he added: 'Let every one do with their own as
they think best.'

He went on to speak about fixing the hours for the catechism classes;
but Abbe Mouret replied in an absent-minded way, his eyes dwelling on
the village at his feet in the setting sun. The peasants were wending
their way homewards, silently and slowly, with the dragging steps of
wearied oxen returning to their sheds. Before the tumble-down houses
stood women calling to one another, carrying on bawling conversations
from door to door, while bands of children filled the roadway with the
riot of their big clumsy shoes, grovelling and rolling and pushing
each other about. A bestial odour ascended from that heap of tottering
houses, and the priest once more fancied himself in Desiree's
poultry-yard, where life ever increased and multiplied. Here, too, was
the same incessant travail, which so disturbed him. Since morning his
mind had been running on that episode of Rosalie and Fortune, and now
his thoughts returned to it, to the foul features of existence, the
incessant, fated task of Nature, which sowed men broadcast like grains
of wheat. The Artauds were a herd penned in between four ranges of
hills, increasing, multiplying, spreading more and more thickly over the
land with each successive generation.

'See,' cried Brother Archangias, interrupting his discourse to point
to a tall g