Then they were really going to dismember this magnificent domain, which,
escaping all mutilation, had for more than two centuries always been
transmitted intact from father to son in the family of Longueval. The
placards also announced that after the temporary division into four lots,
it would be possible to unite them again, and offer for sale the entire
domain; but it was a very large morsel, and, to all appearance, no
purchaser would present himself.

The Marquise de Longueval had died six months before; in 1873 she had
lost her only son, Robert de Longueval; the three heirs were the
grandchildren of the Marquise: Pierre, Helene, and Camille. It had been
found necessary to offer the domain for sale, as Helene and Camille were
minors. Pierre, a young man of three-and-twenty, had lived rather fast,
was already half-ruined, and could not hope to redeem Longueval.

It was mid-day. In an hour it would have a new master, this old castle of
Longueval; and this master, who would he be? What woman would take the
place of the old Marquise in the chimney-corner of the grand salon, all
adorned with ancient tapestry?--the old Marquise, the friend of the old
priest. It was she who had restored the church; it was she who had
established and furnished a complete dispensary at the vicarage under the
care of Pauline, the Cure's servant; it was she who, twice a week, in her
great barouche, all crowded with little children's clothes and thick
woolen petticoats, came to fetch the Abbe Constantin to make with him
what she called 'la chasse aux pauvres'.

The old priest continued his walk, musing over all this; then he thought,
too--the greatest saints have their little weaknesses--he thought, too,
of the beloved habits of thirty years thus rudely interrupted. Every
Thursday and every Sunday he had dined at the castle. How he had been
petted, coaxed, indulged! Little Camille--she was eight years old--would
come and sit on his knee and say to him:

"You know, Monsieur le Cure, it is in your church that I mean to be
married, and grandmamma will send such heaps of flowers to fill, quite
fill the church--more than for the month of Mary. It will be like a large
garden--all white, all white, all white!"

The month of Mary! It was then the month of Mary. Formerly, at this
season, the altar disappeared under the flowers brought from the
conservatories of Longueval. None this year were on the altar, except a
few bouquets of lily-of-the-valley a