The whole distance they
chatted and quarrelled. The Abbe reproached the farmer with not going to
mass, and the latter replied:

"The wife and the girls go for me. You know very well, Monsieur le Cure,
that is how it is with us. The women have enough religion for the men.
They will open the gates of paradise for us."

And he added maliciously, while giving a touch of the whip to his old
black mare:

"If there is one!"

The Cure sprang from his seat.

"What! if there is one! Of a certainty there is one."

"Then you will be there, Monsieur le Cure. You say that is not certain,
and I say it is. You will be there, you will be there, at the gate, on
the watch for your parishioners, and still busy with their little
affairs; and you will say to St. Peter--for it is St. Peter, isn't it,
who keeps the keys of paradise?"

"Yes, it is St. Peter."

"Well, you will say to him, to St. Peter, if he wants to shut the door in
my face under the pretense that I did not go to mass--you will say to
him: 'Bah! let him in all the same. It is Bernard, one of the farmers of
Madame la Marquise, an honest man. He was common councilman, and he voted
for the maintenance of the sisters when they were going to be expelled
from the village school.' That will touch St. Peter, who will answer:
'Well, well, you may pass, Bernard, but it is only to please Monsieur le
Cure.' For you will be Monsieur le Cure up there, and Cure of Longueval,
too, for paradise itself would be dull for you if you must give up being
Cure of Longueval."

Cure of Longueval! Yes, all his life he had been nothing but Cure of
Longueval, had never dreamed of anything else, had never wished to be
anything else. Three or four times excellent livings, with one or two
curates, had been offered to him, but he had always refused them. He
loved his little church, his little village, his little vicarage. There
he had it all to himself, saw to everything himself; calm, tranquil, he
went and came, summer and winter, in sunshine or storm, in wind or rain.
His frame became hardened by fatigue and exposure, but his soul remained
gentle, tender, and pure.

He lived in his vicarage, which was only a larger laborer's cottage,
separated from the church by the churchyard. When the Cure mounted the
ladder to train his pear and peach trees, over the top of the wall he
perceived the graves over which he had said the last prayer, and cast the
first spadeful of earth. Then, while continuing hi