angias; but as the latter suddenly
broke into an angry grunt, he added, 'Why, Cure, so you bring your pig
out with you?'

'Take care, you bandit!' hissed the Brother, clenching his fists.

Jeanbernat, whose stick was still raised, then pretended to recognise
him.

'Hands off!' he cried. 'Ah! it's you, you soul-saver! I ought to have
known you by your smell. We have a little account to settle together,
remember. I have sworn to cut off your ears in the middle of your
school. It will amuse the children you are poisoning.'

The Brother fell back before the raised staff, a flood of abuse rising
to his lips; but he began to stammer and went on disjointedly:

'I will set the gendarmes after you, scoundrel! You spat on the church;
I saw you. You give the plague to the poor people who merely pass your
door. At Saint-Eutrope you made a girl die by forcing her to chew a
consecrated wafer which you had stolen. At Beage you went and dug up the
bodies of little dead children and carried them away on your back. You
are an old sorcerer! Everybody knows it, you scoundrel! You are the
disgrace of the district. Whoever strangles you will gain heaven for the
deed.'

The old man listened with a sneer, twirling the while his staff between
his fingers. And between the Brother's successive insults he ejaculated
in an undertone:

'Go on, go on; relieve yourself, you viper. I'll break your back for you
by-and-by.'

Abbe Mouret tried to interfere, but Brother Archangias pushed him away,
exclaiming: 'You are led by him yourself! Didn't he make you trample
upon the cross? Deny it, if you dare!' Then again, turning to
Jeanbernat, he yelled: 'Ah! Satan, you must have chuckled and no mistake
when you held a priest in your grasp! May Heaven curse those who abetted
you in that sacrilege! What was it you did, at night, while he slept?
You came and moistened his tonsure with your saliva, eh? so that his
hair might grow more quickly. And then you breathed upon his chin and
his cheeks that his beard might grow a hand's breadth in a single night.
And you rubbed all your philters into his body, and breathed into his
mouth the lasciviousness of a dog. You turned him into a brute-beast,
Satan.'

'He's idiotic,' said Jeanbernat, resting his stick on his shoulder. 'He
quite bores me.'

The Brother, however, growing bolder, thrust his fists under the old
man's nose.

'And that drab of yours!' he cried, 'you can't deny that you set her on
to damn t