eriodical presents. 'What do you say, Brichet? we are
not such bad Christians as to go against his reverence?'

Fortune sniggered.

'Oh, I'm quite ready,' he said, 'and so is Rosalie. I saw her yesterday
at the back of the mill. We haven't quarrelled. We stopped there to have
a bit of a laugh.'

But Abbe Mouret interrupted him: 'Very well, I am now going to speak to
Bambousse. He is over there, at Les Olivettes, I believe.'

The priest was going off when the mother asked him what had become of
her younger son Vincent, who had left in the early morning to serve
mass. There was a lad now who badly needed his reverence's admonitions.
And she walked by the priest's side for another hundred yards, bemoaning
her poverty, the failure of the potato crop, the frost which had nipped
the olive trees, the hot weather which threatened to scorch up the
scanty corn. Then, as she left him, she solemnly declared that her son
Fortune always said his prayers, both morning and evening.

Voriau now ran on in front, and suddenly, at a turn in the road, he
bolted across the fields. The priest then struck into a small path
leading up a low hill. He was now at Les Olivettes, the most fertile
spot in the neighbourhood, where the mayor of the commune, Artaud,
otherwise Bambousse, owned several fields of corn, olive plantations,
and vines. The dog was now romping round the skirts of a tall brunette,
who burst into a loud laugh as she caught sight of the priest.

'Is your father here, Rosalie?' the latter asked.

'Yes, just across there,' she said, pointing with her hand and still
smiling.

Leaving the part of the field she had been weeding, she walked on before
him with the vigorous springiness of a hard-working woman, her head
unshielded from the sun, her neck all sunburnt, her hair black and
coarse like a horse's mane. Her green-stained hands exhaled the odour of
the weeds she had been pulling up.

'Father,' she called out, 'here's Monsieur le Cure asking for you.'

And there she remained, bold, unblushing, with a sly smile still
hovering over her features. Bambousse, a stout, sweating, round-faced
man, left his work and gaily came towards the priest.

'I'd take my oath you are going to speak to me about the repairs of
the church,' he exclaimed, as he clapped his earthy hands. 'Well, then,
Monsieur le Cure, I can only say no, it's impossible. The commune hasn't
got the coin. If the Lord provides plaster and tiles, we'll provide the