ly
coffer. It was a kind of huge commercial establishment, of which the
cures were the clerks, sly, crafty clerks, sharp as anyone must be who
does business for the good God at the expense of the country people.

He knew full well that the priests rendered services, great services to
the poorest, to the sick and dying, that they assisted, consoled,
counseled, sustained, but all this by means of money, in exchange for
white pieces, for beautiful glittering coins, with which they paid for
sacraments and masses, advice and protection, pardon of sins and
indulgences, purgatory and paradise accompanying the yearly income, and
the generosity of the sinner.

The Abbe Raffin, who knew his man, and who never lost his temper, burst
out laughing.

"Well, yes, I'll tell your father my little story; but you, my lad,
you'll go there--to the sermon."

Houlbreque extended his hand in order to give a solemn assurance:

"On the word of a poor man, if you do this for me, I promise that I
will."

"Come, that's all right. When do you wish me to go and find your father?"

"Why the sooner the better--to-night if you can."

"In half-an-hour, then, after supper."

"In half-an-hour."

"That's understood. So long, my lad."

"Good-bye till we meet again, Monsieur le Cure; many thanks."

"Not at all, my lad."

And Cesaire Houlbreque returned home, his heart relieved of a great
weight.

He held on lease a little farm, quite small, for they were not rich, his
father and he. Alone with a female servant, a little girl of fifteen, who
made the soup, looked after the fowls, milked the cows and churned the
butter, they lived hardly, though Cesaire was a good cultivator. But they
did not possess either sufficient lands or sufficient cattle to gain more
than the indispensable.

The old man no longer worked. Sad, like all deaf people, crippled with
pains, bent double, twisted, he went through the fields leaning on his
stick, watching the animals and the men with a hard, distrustful eye.
Sometimes, he sat down on the side of a ditch, and remained there without
moving for hours, vaguely pondering over the things that had engrossed
his whole life, the price of eggs and corn, the sun and the rain which
spoil the crops or make them grow. And, worn out by rheumatism, his old
limbs still drank in the humidity of the soul, as they had drunk in for
the past sixty years, the moisture of the walls of his low thatched house
covered over with humid st