LAbbe Constantin | Page 6

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 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 his work, he said in
his heart a little prayer for the repose of those among his dead whose
fate disturbed him, and who might be still detained in purgatory. He
had a tranquil and childlike faith.
But among these graves there was one which, oftener than all the others,
received his visits and his prayers. It was the tomb of his old friend Dr.
Reynaud, who had died in his arms in 1871, and under what
circumstances! The doctor had been like Bernard; he never went to
mass or to confession; but he was so good, so charitable, so
compassionate to the suffering. This was the cause of the Cure's great
anxiety, of his great solicitude. His friend Reynaud, where was he?
Where was he? Then he called to mind the noble life of the country
doctor, all made up of courage and self-denial; he recalled his death,
above all his death, and said to himself:
"In paradise; he can be nowhere but in paradise. The good God may
have sent him to purgatory just for form's sake--but he must have
delivered him after five minutes."
All this passed through the mind of the old man, as he continued his
walk toward Souvigny. He was going to the town, to the solicitor of the
Marquise, to inquire the result of the sale; to learn who were to be the
new