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. 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 paradis