of thirst, and flying away in clouds of dust at the least breath of
wind. But at the farthest point where the crumbling hills on the horizon
had left a breach one espied some distant fresh moist greenery, a
stretch of the neighbouring valley fertilised by the Viorne, a river
flowing down from the gorges of the Seille.

The priest lowered his dazzled glance upon the village, whose few
scattered houses straggled away below the church--wretched hovels they
were of rubble and boards strewn along a narrow path without sign of
streets. There were about thirty of them altogether, some squatting
amidst muck-heaps, and black with woeful want; others roomier and more
cheerful-looking with their roofs of pinkish tiles. Strips of garden,
victoriously planted amidst stony soil, displayed plots of vegetables
enclosed by quickset hedges. At this hour Les Artaud was empty, not a
woman was at the windows, not a child was wallowing in the dust; parties
of fowls alone went to and fro, ferreting among the straw, seeking food
up to the very thresholds of the houses, whose open doors gaped in the
sunlight. A big black dog seated on his haunches at the entrance to the
village seemed to be mounting guard over it.

Languor slowly stole over Abbe Mouret. The rising sun steeped him in
such warmth that he leant back against the church door pervaded by a
feeling of happy restfulness. His thoughts were dwelling on that hamlet
of Les Artaud, which had sprung up there among the stones like one of
the knotty growths of the valley. All its inhabitants were related,
all bore the same name, so that from their very cradle they were
distinguished among themselves by nicknames. An Artaud, their ancestor,
had come hither and settled like a pariah in this waste. His family had
grown with all the wild vitality of the herbage that sucked life from
the rocky boulders. It had at last become a tribe, a rural community,
in which cousin-ships were lost in the mists of centuries. They
intermarried with shameless promiscuity. Not an instance could be cited
of any Artaud taking himself a wife from any neighbouring village; only
some of the girls occasionally went elsewhere. The others were born and
died fixed to that spot, leisurely increasing and multiplying on their
dunghills with the irreflectiveness of trees, and with no definite
notion of the world that lay beyond the tawny rocks, in whose midst they
vegetated. And yet there were already rich and poor among them; f