to correct it, and went out with the cure. Outside the house
he dismissed the crowd by telling those who came round
about him that there was no pardon, only a reprieve, and a
dismayed silence at once succeeded to the clamor. Gabriel
and the cure turned into the house again, and saw a look of
anguish on all the faces the sudden silence in the village had
been understood.

" Jean-Frangois has not received his pardon, my friends,"
said the young abbe, seeing that the blow had been struck,
"but my lord bishop's anxiety for his soul is so great that he
has put off the execution that your son may not perish to all
eternity at least."

"Then is he living?" cried Denise.

The abbe took the cure aside and told him of his parish-
ioner's impiety, of the consequent peril to religion, and what
it was that the bishop expected of the cure of Montegnac.

" My lord bishop requires my death," returned the cure.
"Already I have refused to go to this unhappy boy when his
afflicted family asked me. The meeting and the scene there
afterwards would shatter me like glass. Let every man do his
work. The weakness of my system, or rather the oversensi-
tiveness of my nervous organization, makes it out of the
question for me to fulfill these duties of our ministry. I am
still a country parson that I may serve my like, in a sphere
where nothing more is demanded of me in a Christian life
than I can accomplish. I thought very carefully over this



'AH I SAVE HIS SOUL AT LEAST!"



THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 107

matter, and tried to satisfy these good Tascherons and to do
my duty towards this poor boy of theirs ; but at the bare
thought of mounting the cart with him, the mere idea of
being present while the preparations for death were being
made, a deadly chill runs through my veins. No one would
ask it of a mother ; and remember, sir, he is a child of my
poor church "

"Then you refuse to obey the bishop's summons?" asked
the Abbe Gabriel.

M. Bonnet looked at him.

" His lordship does not know the state of my health,"
he said, " nor does he know that my nature rises in revolt
against "

"There are times when, like Belzunce at Marseilles, we are
bound to face a certain death," the Abbe Gabriel broke in.

Just at that moment the cure felt that a hand pulled his
cassock; he heard sobs, and, turning, saw the whole family
on their knees. Old and young, parents and children, men
and women, held out their hands to him imploringly ; all the
voices united in one cry as he showed his flushed face.

" Ah ! save his soul at least ! "

It was the old grandmother who had caught at the skirt of
his cassock and was bathing it with tears.

" I will obey, sir " No sooner were the words uttered

than the cure was forced to sit down ; his knees trembled
under him. The young secretary explained the nature of
Jean-Francois' frenzy.

" Do you think that the sight of his younger sister might
shake him? " he added, as he came to an end.

"Yes, certainly," returned the cure. " Denise, you will
go with us."

"So shall I," said the mother.

"No!" shouted the father. "That boy is dead to us.
You know that. Not one of us shall see him."

" Do not stand in the way of his salvation," said the



108 THE COUNTRY PARSON.

young abbe. " If you refuse us the means of softening him,
you take the responsibility of his soul upon yourself. In his
present state his death may reflect more discredit on his family
than his life."

"She shall go," said the father. "She always interfered
when I tried to correct my son, and this shall be her punish-
ment."

The Abb6 Gabriel and M. Bonnet went back together to
the parsonage. It was arranged that Denise and her mother
should be there at the time when the two ecclesiastics should
set out for Limoges. As they followed the footpath along the
outskirts of Upper Montegnac, the younger man had an
opportunity of looking more closely than heretofore in the
church at this country parson, so highly praised by the vicar-
general. He was favorably impressed almost at once by his
companion's simple, dignified manners, by the magic of his
voice, and by the words he spoke, in keeping with the voice.
The cure had been but once to the palace since the bishop
had taken Gabriel de Rastignac as his secretary, so that he
had scarcely seen the favorite destined to be a bishop some
day ; he knew that the secretary had great influence, and yet
in the dignified kindness of his manner there was a certain
independence, as of the cure whom the Church permits to be
in some sort a sovereign in his own parish.

As for the ,young abbe, his feelings were so far from appear-
ing in his face that they seemed to have hardened it into
severity ; his expression was not chilly, it was glacial.

A man who could change the disposition and manners of a
whole countryside necessarily possessed some faculty of ob-
servation, and was more or less of a physiognomist ; and even
had the cur6 been wise only in well-doing, he had just given
proof of an unusually keen sensibility. The coolness with
which the bishop's secretary met his advances and responded
to his friendliness struck him at once. He could only account
for this reception by some secret dissatisfaction on the other's



THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 109

part, and looked back over his conduct, wondering how he
could have given offense, and in what the offense lay. There
was a short embarrassing silence, broken by the Abbe de
Rastignac.

"You have a very poor church, Monsieur le Cure," he
remarked, aristocratic insolence in his tones and words.

"It is too small," answered M. Bonnet. "For great
church festivals the old people sit on benches round the
porch, and the younger ones stand in a circle in the square
down below; but they are so silent that those outside can
hear."

Gabriel was silent for several moments.

" If the people are so devout, why do you leave the church
so bare? " he asked at length.

"Alas ! sir, I cannot bring myself to spend money on the
building when the poor need it. The poor are the church.
Besides, I should not fear a visitation from my lord bishop at
the Fete-Dieu 1 Then the poor give the church such things
as they have ! Did you notice the nails along the walls ?
They fix a sort of wire trellis work to them, which the women
cover with bunches of flowers ; the whole church is dressed in
flowers, as it were, which keep fresh till the evening. My
poor church, which looked so bare to you, is adorned like a
bride, and fragrant with sweet scents ; the ground is strewn
with leaves, and a path in the midst for the passage of the
Holy Sacrament is carpeted with rose petals. For that one
day I need not fear comparison with Saint Peter's at Rome.
The Holy Father has his gold, and I my flowers ; to each his
miracle. Ah ! the township of Montegnac is poor, but it is
Catholic. Once upon a time they used to rob travelers, now
any one who passes through the place might drop a bag full
of money here, and he would find it when he returned
home."

"Such a result speaks strongly in your praise," said
Gabriel.



110 THE COUNTRY PARSON.

"I have had nothing to do with it," answered the cur,
flushing at this incisive epigram. " It has been brought about
by the Word of God and the sacramental bread."

" Bread somewhat brown," said the Abbe Gabriel, smiling.

"White bread is only suited to the rich," said the cure
humbly.

The abbe took both M. Bonnet's hands in his and grasped
them cordially.

" Pardon me, Monsieur le Cure," he said ; and in a moment
the reconciliation was completed by a look in the beautiful
blue eyes that went to the depths of the cure's soul.

" My lord bishop recommended me to put your patience
and humility to the proof, but I can go no farther. After this
little while I see how greatly you have been wronged by the
praises of the Liberal party."

Breakfast was ready. Ursule had spread the white cloth,
and set new-laid eggs, butter, honey and fruit, cream and
coffee, among bunches of flowers on the old-fashioned table
in the old-fashioned sitting-room. The window that looked
out upon the terrace stood open, framed about with green
leaves. Clematis grew about the ledge white starry blossoms,
with tiny sheaves of golden crinkled stamens at their hearts
to relieve the white. Jessamine climbed up one side of the
window, and nasturtiums on the other ; above it, a trail of
vine, turning red even now, made a rich setting, which no
sculptor could hope to render, so full of grace was that lace-
work of leaves outlined against the sky.

" You will find life here reduced to its simplest terms," said
the cur6, smiling, though his face did not belie the sadness of
his heart. "If we had known that you were coming and
who could have foreseen the events which have brought you
here ? Ursule would have had some trout for you from the
torrent ; there is a trout-stream in the forest, and the fish are
excellent ; but I am forgetting that this is August, and that
the Gabou will be dry ! My head is very much confused "



THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. Ill

" Are you very fond of this place? " asked the abb6.

" Yes. If God permits, I shall die cure of Montegnac.
I could wish that other and distinguished men, who have
thought to do better by becoming lay philanthropists, had
taken this way of mine. Modern philanthropy is the bane
of society ; the principles of the Catholic religion are the one
remedy for the evils which leaven the body social. Instead of
describing the disease and making it worse by jeremiads, each
one should have put his hand to the plough and entered God's
vineyard as a simple laborer. My task is far from being ended
here, sir ; it is not enough to have raised the moral standard
of the people, who lived in a frightful state of irreligion when
I first came here ; I would fain die among a generation fully
convinced."

"You have only done your duty," the younger man
retorted drily ; he felt a pang of jealousy in his heart.

The other gave him a keen glance.

"Is this yet another test?" he seemed to say but aloud
he answered humbly, " Yes. I wish every hour of my life,"
he added, " that every one in the kingdom would do his
duty."

The deep underlying significance of those words was still
further increased by the tone in which they were spoken. It
was clear that here, in this year 1829, was a priest of great
intellectual power, great likewise in the simplicity of his life ;
who, though he did not set up his own judgment against that
of his superiors, saw none the less clearly whither the church
and the monarchy were going.

When the mother and daughter had come, the abbe left
the parsonage and went down to see if the horses had been
put in. He was very impatient to return to Limoges. A few
minutes later he returned to say that all was in readiness for
their departure, and the four set out on their journey. Every
creature in Montegnac stood in the road about the posthouse
to see them go, The condemned man's mother and sister



112 THE COUNTRY PARSON.

said not a word ; and as for the two ecclesiastics, there were
so many topics to be avoided that conversation was difficult,
and they could neither appear indifferent nor try to take a
cheerful tone. Still endeavoring to discover some neutral
ground for their talk as they traveled on, the influences of the
great plain seemed to prolong the melancholy silence.

" What made you accept the position of an ecclesiastic ? "
Gabriel asked at last out of idle curiosity, as the carriage
turned into the high-road.

" I have never regarded my office as a ' position,' " the cure
answered simply. " I cannot understand how any one can
take holy orders for any save the one indefinable and all-
powerful reason a vocation. I know that not a few have
become laborers in the great vineyard with hearts worn out
in the service of the passions ; men who have loved without
hope, or whose hopes have been disappointed ; men whose
lives were blighted when they laid the wife or the woman
they loved in the grave ; men grown weary of life in a world
where in these times nothing, not even sentiments, are stable
and secure, where doubt makes sport of the sweetest certain-
ties, and belief is called superstition.

" Some leave political life in times when to be in power
seems to be a sort of expiation, when those who are governed
look on obedience as an unfortunate necessity; and very many
leave a battlefield without standards where powers, by nature
opposed, combine to defeat and dethrone the right. I am
not supposing that any man can give himself to God for what
he may gain. There are some who appear to see in the clergy
a means of regenerating our country; but, according to my
dim lights, the patriot priest is a contradiction in terms. The
priest should belong to God alone.

" I had no wish to offer to our Father, who yet accepts all
things, a broken heart and an enfeebled will ; I gave myself
to Him whole and entire. It was a touching fancy in the old
pagan religion which brought the victim crowned with flowers



THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 113

to the temple of the gods for sacrifice. There is something
in that custom that has always appealed to me. A sacrifice is
nothing unless it is made graciously. So the story of my life
is very simple, there is not the least touch of romance in it.
Still, if you v/ould like to hear a full confession, I will tell
you all about myself.

" My family are well-to-do and almost wealthy. My father,
a self-made man, is hard and inflexible ; he deals the same
measure to himself as to his wife and children. I have never
seen the faintest smile on his lips. With a hand of iron, a
brow of bronze, and an energetic nature at once sullen and
morose, he crushed us all wife and children, clerks and ser-
vants, beneath a savage tyranny. I think (I speak for myself
alone) that I could have borne the life if the pressure brought
to bear on us had been even ; but he was crotchety and
changeable, and this fitfulness made it unbearable. We never
knew whether we had done right or wrong, and the horrible
suspense in which we lived at home becomes intolerable in
domestic life. It is pleasanter to be out in the streets than in
the house. Even as it was, if I had been alone at home, I
could have borne all this without a murmur ; but there was
my mother, whom I loved passionately ; the sight of her mis-
ery and the continual bitterness of her life broke my heart ;
and if, as sometimes happened, I surprised her in tears, I was
beside myself with rage. I was sent to school ; and those
years, usually a time of hardship and drudgery, were a sort of
golden age for me. I dreaded the holidays. My mother her-
self was glad to come to see me at the school.

" When I had finished my humanities, I went home and
entered my father's office, but I could only stay there a few
months ; youth was strong in me, my mind might have given
way.

" One dreary autumn evening my mother and I took a
walk by ourselves along the Boulevard Bourdon, then one of
the most depressing spots in Paris, and there I opened my
8



114 THE COUNTRY PARSON.

heart to her. I said that I saw no possible life for me save in
the church. So long as my father lived I was bound to be
thwarted in my tastes, my ideas, even in my affections. If I
adopted the priest's cassock, he would be compelled to
respect me, and in this way I might become a tower of
strength to the family should occasion call for it. My mother
cried bitterly. At that very time my older brother had
enlisted as a common soldier, driven out of the house by the
causes which had decided rny vocation. (He became a
general afterwards, and fell in the battle of Leipsic.) I
pointed out to my mother as a way of salvation for her that
she should marry my sister (as soon as she should be old
enough to settle in life) to a man with plenty of character,
and look to this new family for support.

"So in 1807, under the pretext of escaping the conscrip-
tion without expense to my father, and at the same time de-
claring my vocation, I entered the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice
at the age of nineteen. Within those famous old walls I
found happiness and peace, troubled only by thoughts of
what my mother and sister must be enduring. Things had
doubtless grown worse and worse at home, for when they came
to see me they upheld me in my determination. Initiated,
it may be, by my own pain into the secret of charity, as the
great apostle has denned it in his sublime epistle, I longed to
bind the wounds of the poor and suffering in some out-of-the-
way spot ; and thereafter to prove, if God deigned to bless my
efforts, that the Catholic religion, as put in practice by man,
is the one true, good, and noble civilizing agent on earth.

"During those last days of my diaconate, grace doubtless
enlightened me. Fully and freely I forgave my father, for I
saw that through him I had found my real vocation. But my
mother in spite of a long and tender letter, in which I ex-
plained this, and showed how the trace of the finger of God
was visible throughout my mother shed many tears when she
saw my hair fall under the scissors of the church ; for she



THE CURE OF MOXTEGNAC. 115

knew how many joys I was renouncing, and did not know the
hidden glories to which I aspired. Women are so tender-
hearted. When at last I was God's, I felt an infinite peace.
All the cravings, the vanities, and cares that vex so many
souls fell away from me. I thought that heaven would have
a care for me as for a vessel of its own. I went forth into a
world from which all fear was driven out, where the future
was sure, where everything is the work of God even the
silence. This quietness of soul is one of the gifts of grace.
My mother could not imagine what it was to take a church for
a bride ; nevertheless, when she saw that I looked serene and
happy, she was happy. After my ordination I came to pay a
visit to some of my father's relatives in Limousin, and one of
these by accident spoke of the state of things in the Mon-
tegnac district. With a sudden illumination like lightning
the thought flashed through my inmost soul ' Behold thy
vine ! ' And I came here. So, as you see, sir, my story is
quite simple and uninteresting."

As he spoke, Limoges appeared in the rays of the sunset,
and at the sight the two women could not keep back their
tears.

Meanwhile the young man whom love in its separate guises
had come to find, the object of so much outspoken curiosity,
hypocritical sympathy, and very keen anxiety, was lying on
his prison mattress in the condemned cell. A spy at the door
was on the watch for any words that might escape him waking
or sleeping, or in one of his wild fits of fury ; so bent was
justice upon coming at the truth, and on discovering Jean-
Franc.ois' accomplice as well as the stolen money, by every
means that the wit of man could devise.

The des Vanneaulx had the police in their interest; the
police spies watched through the absolute silence. Whenever
the man told off for this duty looked through the hole made
for the purpose, he always saw the prisoner in the same atti-



116 THE COUNTRY PARSON.

tude, bound in his strait waistcoat, his head tied up by a
leather strap to prevent him from tearing the stuff and the
thongs with his teeth. Jean-Franc.ois lay staring at the ceil-
*ing with a fixed desperate gaze, his eyes glowed, and seemed
as if they were reddened by the full-pulsed tide of life sent
surging through him by terrible thoughts. It was as if an
antique statue of Prometheus had become a living man, with
the thought of some lost joy gnawing his heart ; so when the
second avocat general came to see him, the visitor could not
help showing his surprise at a character so dogged. At sight
of any human being admitted into his cell, Jean-Francois
flew into a rage which exceeded everything in the doctor's
experience of such affections. As soon as he heard the key
turn in the lock or the bolts drawn in the heavily-ironed door,
a light froth came to his lips.

In person, Jean-Francois Tascheron, twenty-five years of
age, was short but well made. His hair was stiff and crisp,
and grew rather low on his forehead, signs of great energy.
The clear, brilliant, yellow eyes, set rather too close together,
gave him something the look of a bird of prey. His face was
of the round dark-skinned type common in Central France.
One of his characteristics confirmed Lavater's assertion that
the front teeth overlap in those predestined to be murderers ;
but the general expression of his face spoke of honesty, of
simple warm-heartedness of disposition it would have been
nothing extraordinary if a woman had loved such a man pas-
sionately. The lines of the fresh mouth, with its dazzling
white teeth, were gracious ; there was that peculiar shade in
the scarlet of the lips which indicates ferocity held in check,
and frequently a temperament which thirsts for pleasure and
demands free scope for indulgence. There was nothing of
the workman's coarseness about him. To the women who
watched his trial it seemed evident that it was a woman who
had brought flexibility and softness into the fibre inured to
toil, the look of distinction into the face of a son of the



THE CUR& OF MOiMT&GNAC. 117

fields, and grace into his bearing. Women recognize the
traces of love in a man, and men are quick to see in a woman
whether (to use a colloquial phrase), " love has passed that
way."

That evening Jean- Francois heard the sound as the bolts
were withdrawn and the key was thrust into the lock ; he
turned his head quickly with the terrible smothered growl
with which his fits of fury began ; but he trembled violently
when through the soft dusk he made out the forms of his
mother and sister, and behind the two dear faces another
the cure of Montegnac.

" So this is what those barbarous wretches held in store for
me ! " he said, and closed his eyes.

Denise, with her prison experience, was suspicious of every
least thing in the room ; the spy had hidden himself, mean-
ing, no doubt, to return ; she fled to her brother, laid her
tear-stained face against his, and said in his ear, " Can they
hear what we say ? ' '

"I should rather think they can, or they would not have
sent you here," he answered aloud. " I have asked as a
favor this long while that I might not see any of my family."

" What a way they have treated him ! " cried the mother,
turning to the cure. " My poor boy ! my poor boy ! " She
sank down on the foot of the mattress, and hid her face in
the priest's cassock. The cure stood upright beside her. "I
cannot bear to see him bound and tied up like that and put
into that sack "

" If Jean will promise me to be good and make no attempt
on his life, and to behave well while we are with him, I will
ask for leave to unbind him ; but I shall suffer for the slightest
infraction of his promise."

" I have such a craving to stretch myself out and move
freely, dear M. Bonnet," said the condemned man, his eyes
filling with tears, " that I give you my word I will do as you
wish."



118 THE COUNTRY PARSON.

The cur6 went out, the gaoler came, and the strait waist-
coat was taken off.

"You are not going to kill me this evening, are you?"
asked the turnkey.

Jean made no answer.

" Poor brother ! " said Denise, bringing out a basket, which
had been strictly searched, "there are one or two things here
that you are fond of; here, of course, they grudge you every
morsel you eat."

She brought out fruit gathered as soon as she knew that she
might see her brother in prison, and a cake which her mother
had put aside at once. This thoughtfulness of theirs, which
recalled old memories, his sister's voice and movements, the
presence of his mother and the cure all combined to bring
about a reaction in Jean. He burst into tears, and for a mo-
ment was completely overcome.

"Ah! Denise," he said, "I have not made a meal these
six months past ; I have eaten because hunger drove me to
eat, that is all."

Mother and daughter went out and returned, and came and
went. The housewifely instinct of seeing to a man's comfort
put heart into them, and at last they set supper before their
poor darling. The people of the prison helped them in this,
having received orders to do all in their power compatible
with the safe custody of the condemned man. The des Van-
neaulx, with unkindly kindness, had done their part towards
securing the comfort of the man in whose power their heritage
lay. So Jean by these means was to know a last gleam of
family happiness happiness overshadowed by the sombre
gloom of the prison and death.

" Was my appeal rejected ? " he asked M. Bonnet.