nd white lilac in gilded china vases.
Formerly, every Sunday at high mass, and every evening during the month
of Mary, Mademoiselle Hebert, the reader to Madame de Longueval, played
the little harmonium given by the Marquise. Now the poor harmonium,
reduced to silence, no longer accompanied the voices of the choir or the
children's hymns. Mademoiselle Marbeau, the postmistress, would, with all
her heart, have taken the place of Mademoiselle Hebert, but she dared
not, though she was a little musical! She was afraid of being remarked as
of the clerical party, and denounced by the Mayor, who was a Freethinker.
That might have been injurious to her interests, and prevented her
promotion.

He had nearly reached the end of the wall of the park--that park of which
every corner was known to the old priest. The road now followed the banks
of the Lizotte, and on the other side of the little stream stretched the
fields belonging to the two farms; then, still farther off, rose the dark
woods of La Mionne.

Divided! The domain was going to be divided! The heart of the poor priest
was rent by this bitter thought. All that for thirty years had been
inseparable, indivisible to him. It was a little his own, his very own,
his estate, this great property. He felt at home on the lands of
Longueval. It had happened more than once that he had stopped
complacently before an immense cornfield, plucked an ear, removed the
husk, and said to himself:

"Come! the grain is fine, firm, and sound. This year we shall have a good
harvest!"

And with a joyous heart he would continue his way through his fields, his
meadows, his pastures; in short, by every chord of his heart, by every
tie of his life, by all his habits, his memories, he clung to this domain
whose last hour had come.

The Abbe perceived in the distance the farm of Blanche-Couronne; its
red-tiled roofs showed distinctly against the verdure of the forest.
There, again, the Cure was at home. Bernard, the farmer of the Marquise,
was his friend; and when the old priest was delayed in his visits to the
poor and sick, when the sun was sinking below the horizon, and the Abbe
began to feel a little fatigued in his limbs, and a sensation of
exhaustion in his stomach, he stopped and supped with Bernard, regaled
himself with a savory stew and potatoes, and emptied his pitcher of
cider; then, after supper, the farmer harnessed his old black mare to his
cart, and took the vicar back to Longueval.