ten o'clock, Monsieur le Cure,' she said, drawing near the
priest, who was still on his knees. 'You might as well come up now.'

He made no answer, but only bowed his head.

'All right, I know what that means,' continued La Teuse. 'In
another hour he will still be on the stones there, giving himself a
stomach-ache. I'm off, as I shall only bore him. All the same, I can't
see much sense in it, eating one's lunch when others are at dinner,
and going to bed when the fowls get up!---- I worry you, don't I, your
reverence? Good-night. You're not at all reasonable!'

She made ready to go, but suddenly came back to put out one of the two
lamps, muttering the while that such late prayers spelt ruination in
oil. Then, at last, she did go off, after passing her sleeve brushwise
over the cloth of the high altar, which seemed to her grey with dust.
Abbe Mouret, his eyes uplifted, his arms tightly clasped against his
breast, then remained alone.

XIV

With only one lamp burning amid the verdure on the altar of the Virgin,
huge floating shadows filled the church at either end. From the pulpit a
sheet of gloom projected to the rafters of the ceiling. The confessional
looked quite black under the gallery, showing strange outlines
suggestive of a ruined sentry-box. All the light, softened and tinted as
it were by the green foliage, rested slumberingly upon the tall gilded
Virgin, who seemed to descend with queenly mien, borne upon the cloud
round which gambolled the winged cherubim. At sight of that round lamp
gleaming amid the boughs one might have thought the pallid moon
was rising on the verge of a wood, casting its light upon a regal
apparition, a princess of heaven, crowned and clothed with gold, who
with her nude and Divine Infant had come to stroll in the mysterious
woodland avenues. Between the leaves, along the lofty plumes of
greenery, within the large ogival arbour, and even along the branches
strewing the flagstones, star-like beams glided drowsily, like the milky
rain of light that filters through the bushes on moonlit nights. Vague
sounds and creakings came from the dusky ends of the church; the
large clock on the left of the chancel throbbed slowly, with the heavy
breathing of a machine asleep. And the radiant vision, the Mother with
slender bands of chestnut hair, as if reassured by the nocturnal quiet
of the nave, came lower and lower, scarce bending the blades of grass in
the clearings beneath the gentle fl