kindling with delight swung the sorry covering about his head and
cried three times:

"Ora! Or-r-ra! Ora-a-a-a!"

But away in the night Madame Sosthene, hearing an unwonted noise, went
to Bonaventure's bedside and found him sobbing as if his heart had
broken.

"He has had a bad dream," she said; for he would not say a word.

The cure of Vermilionville and Carancro was a Creole gentleman who
looked burly and hard when in meditation; but all that vanished when
he spoke and smiled. In the pocket of his cassock there was always a
deck of cards, but that was only for the game of solitaire. You have
your pipe or cigar, your flute or violoncello; he had his little table
under the orange-tree and his game of solitaire.

He was much loved. To see him beyond earshot talking to other men you
would say he was by nature a man of affairs, whereas, when you came to
hear him speak you find him quite another sort: one of the Elisha
kind, as against the Elijahs; a man of the domestic sympathies, whose
influence on man was personal and familiar; one of the sort that heal
bitter waters with a handful of salt, make poisonous pottage wholesome
with a little meal, and find easy, quiet ways to deliver poor widows
from their creditors with no loss to either; a man whom men
reverenced, while women loved and children trusted him.

The ex-governor was fond of his company, although the cure only
smiled at politics and turned the conversation back to family matters.
He had a natural gift for divining men's, women's, children's personal
wants, and every one's distinctively from every other one's. So that
to everybody he was an actual personal friend. He had been a long time
in this region. It was he who buried Bonaventure's mother. He was the
connecting link between Bonaventure and the ex-governor. Whenever the
cure met this man of worldly power, there were questions asked and
answered about the lad.

A little after 'Thanase's enlistment the priest and the ex-governor,
who, if I remember right, was home only transiently from camp, met on
the court-house square of Vermilionville, and stood to chat a bit,
while others contemplated from across the deep mud of the street these
two interesting representatives of sword and gown. Two such men
standing at that time must naturally, one would say, have been talking
of the strength of the defences around Richmond, or the Emperor
Maximilian's operations in Mexico, or Kirby Smith's movements, hardly
far