Abbe Mouret's Transgression: Chapter 5

Chapter 5

While the priest pondered the sun was heating the big church-door.
Gilded flies buzzed round a large flower that was blooming between two
of the church-door steps. Abbe Mouret, feeling slightly dazed, was at
last about to move away, when the big black dog sprang, barking
violently, towards the iron gate of the little graveyard on the left of
the church. At the same time a harsh voice called out: 'Ah! you young
rascal! So you stop away from school, and I find you in the graveyard!
Oh, don't say no: I have been watching you this quarter of an hour.'

As the priest stepped forward he saw Vincent, whom a Brother of the
Christian Schools was clutching tightly by the ear. The lad was
suspended, as it were, over a ravine skirting the graveyard, at the
bottom of which flowed the Mascle, a mountain torrent whose crystal
waters plunged into the Viorne, six miles away.

'Brother Archangias!' softly called the priest, as if to appease the
fearful man.

The Brother, however, did not release the boy's ear.

'Oh, it's you, Monsieur le Cure?' he growled. 'Just fancy, this rascal
is always poking his nose into the graveyard. I don't know what he can
be up to here. I ought to let go of him and let him smash his skull down
there. It would be what he deserves.'

The lad remained dumb, with his cunning eyes tight shut as he clung to
the bushes.

'Take care, Brother Archangias,' continued the priest, 'he might slip.'

And he himself helped Vincent to scramble up again.

'Come, my young friend, what were you doing there?' he asked. 'You must
not go playing in graveyards.'

The lad had opened his eyes, and crept away, fearfully, from the
Brother, to place himself under the priest's protection.

'I'll tell you,' he said in a low voice, as he raised his bushy head.
'There is a tomtit's nest in the brambles there, under that rock. For
over ten days I've been watching it, and now the little ones are
hatched, so I came this morning after serving your mass.'

'A tomtit's nest!' exclaimed Brother Archangias. 'Wait a bit! wait a
bit!'

Thereupon he stepped aside, picked a clod of earth off a grave and flung
it into the brambles. But he missed the nest. Another clod, however,
more skilfully thrown upset the frail cradle, and precipitated the
fledglings into the torrent below.

'Now, perhaps,' he continued, clapping his hands to shake off the earth
that soiled them, 'you won't come roaming here any more, like a heathen;
the dead will pull your feet at night if you go walking over them
again.'

Vincent, who had laughed at seeing the nest dive into the stream, looked
round him and shrugged his shoulders like one of strong mind.

'Oh, I'm not afraid,' he said. 'Dead folk don't stir.'

The graveyard, in truth, was not a place to inspire fear. It was a
barren piece of ground whose narrow paths were smothered by rank weeds.
Here and there the soil was bossy with mounds. A single tombstone, that
of Abbe Caffin, brand-new and upright, could be perceived in the centre
of the ground. Save this, all around there were only broken fragments of
crosses, withered tufts of box, and old slabs split and moss-eaten.
There were not two burials a year. Death seemed to make no dwelling in
that waste spot, whither La Teuse came every evening to fill her apron
with grass for Desiree's rabbits. A gigantic cypress tree, standing near
the gate, alone cast shadow upon the desert field. This cypress, a
landmark visible for nine miles around, was known to the whole
countryside as the Solitaire.

'It's full of lizards,' added Vincent, looking at the cracks of the
church-wall. 'One could have a fine lark--'

But he sprang out with a bound on seeing the Brother lift his foot. The
latter proceeded to call the priest's attention to the dilapidated state
of the gate, which was not only eaten up with rust, but had one hinge
off, and the lock broken.

'It ought to be repaired,' said he.

Abbe Mouret smiled, but made no reply. Addressing Vincent, who was
romping with the dog: 'I say, my boy,' he asked, 'do you know where old
Bambousse is at work this morning?'

The lad glanced towards the horizon. 'He must be at his Olivettes field
now,' he answered, pointing towards the left. 'But Voriau will show your
reverence the way. He's sure to know where his master is.' And he
clapped his hands and called: 'Hie! Voriau! hie!'

The big black dog paused a moment, wagging his tail, and seeking to read
the urchin's eyes. Then, barking joyfully, he set off down the slope to
the village. Abbe Mouret and Brother Archangias followed him, chatting.
A hundred yards further Vincent surreptitiously bolted, and again glided
up towards the church, keeping a watchful eye upon them, and ready to
dart behind a bush if they should look round. With adder-like
suppleness, he once more glided into the graveyard, that paradise full
of lizards, nests, and flowers.

Meantime, while Voriau led the way before them along the dusty road,
Brother Archangias was angrily saying to the priest: 'Let be! Monsieur
le Cure, they're spawn of damnation, those toads are! They ought to have
their backs broken, to make them pleasing to God. They grow up in
irreligion, like their fathers. Fifteen years have I been here, and not
one Christian have I been able to turn out. The minute they quit my
hands, good-bye! They think of nothing but their land, their vines,
their olive-trees. Not one ever sets foot in church. Brute beasts they
are, struggling with their stony fields! Guide them with the stick,
Monsieur le Cure, yes, the stick!'

Then, after drawing breath, he added with a terrific wave of his hands:

'Those Artauds, look you, are like the brambles over-running these
rocks. One stem has been enough to poison the whole district. They cling
on, they multiply, they live in spite of everything. Nothing short of
fire from heaven, as at Gomorrha, will clear it all away.'

'We should never despair of sinners,' said Abbe Mouret, all inward
peacefulness, as he leisurely walked on.

'But these are the devil's own,' broke in the Brother still more
violently. 'I've been a peasant, too. Up to eighteen I dug the earth;
and later on, when I was at the Training College, I had to sweep, pare
vegetables, do all the heavy work. It's not their toilsome labour I find
fault with. On the contrary, for God prefers the lowly. But the Artauds
live like beasts! They are like their dogs, they never attend mass, and
make a mock of the commandments of God and of the Church. They think of
nothing but their plots of lands, so sweet they are on them!'

Voriau, his tail wagging, kept stopping and moving on again as soon as
he saw that they still followed him.

'There certainly are some grievous things going on,' said Abbe Mouret.
'My predecessor, Abbe Caffin--'

'A poor specimen,' interrupted the Brother. 'He came here to us from
Normandy owing to some disreputable affair. Once here, his sole thought
was good living; he let everything go to rack and ruin.'

'Oh, no, Abbe Caffin certainly did what he could; but I must own that
his efforts were all but barren in results. My own are mostly
fruitless.'

Brother Archangias shrugged his shoulders. He walked on for a minute in
silence, swaying his tall bony frame, which looked as if it had been
roughly fashioned with a hatchet. The sun beat down upon his neck,
shadowing his hard, sword-edged peasant's face.

'Listen to me, Monsieur le Cure,' he said at last. 'I am too much
beneath you to lecture you; but still, I am almost double your age, I
know this part, and therefore I feel justified in telling you that you
will gain nothing by gentleness. The catechism, understand, is enough.
God has no mercy on the wicked. He burns them. Stick to that.'

Then, as Abbe Mouret, whose head remained bowed, did not open his mouth,
he went on: 'Religion is leaving the country districts because it is
made over indulgent. It was respected when it spoke out like an
unforgiving mistress. I really don't know what they can teach you now in
the seminaries. The new priests weep like children with their
parishioners. God no longer seems the same. I dare say, Monsieur le
Cure, that you don't even know your catechism by heart now?'

But the priest, wounded by the imperiousness with which the Brother so
roughly sought to dominate him, looked up and dryly rejoined:

'That will do, your zeal is very praiseworthy. But haven't you something
to tell me? You came to the parsonage this morning, did you not?'

Thereupon Brother Archangias plumply answered: 'I had to tell you just
what I have told you. The Artauds live like pigs. Only yesterday I
learned that Rosalie, old Bambousse's eldest daughter, is in the family
way. It happens with all of them before they get married. And they
simply laugh at reproaches, as you know.'

'Yes,' murmured Abbe Mouret, 'it is a great scandal. I am just on my way
to see old Bambousse to speak to him about it; it is desirable that they
should be married as soon as possible. The child's father, it seems, is
Fortune, the Brichets' eldest son. Unfortunately the Brichets are poor.'

'That Rosalie, now,' continued the Brother, 'is just eighteen. Not four
years since I still had her under me at school, and she was already a
gadabout. I have now got her sister Catherine, a chit of eleven, who
seems likely to become even worse than her elder. One comes across her
in every corner with that little scamp, Vincent. It's no good, you may
pull their ears till they bleed, the woman always crops up in them. They
carry perdition about with them and are only fit to be thrown on a
muck-heap. What a splendid riddance if all girls were strangled at their
birth!'

His loathing, his hatred of woman made him swear like a carter. Abbe
Mouret, who had been listening to him with unmoved countenance, smiled
at last at his rabid utterances. He called Voriau, who had strayed into
a field close by.

'There, look there!' cried Brother Archangias, pointing to a group
of children playing at the bottom of a ravine, 'there are my young
devils, who play the truant under pretence of going to help their
parents among the vines! You may be certain that jade of a Catherine is
among them. . . . There, didn't I tell you! Till to-night, Monsieur le
Cure. Oh, just you wait, you rascals!'

Off he went at a run, his dirty neckband flying over his shoulder, and
his big greasy cassock tearing up the thistles. Abbe Mouret watched him
swoop down into the midst of the children, who scattered like frightened
sparrows. But he succeeded in seizing Catherine and one boy by the ears
and led them back towards the village, clutching them tightly with his
big hairy fingers, and overwhelming them with abuse.

The priest walked on again. Brother Archangias sometimes aroused strange
scruples in his mind. With his vulgarity and coarseness the Brother
seemed to him the true man of God, free from earthly ties, submissive in
all to Heaven's will, humble, blunt, ready to shower abuse upon sin. He,
the priest, would then feel despair at his inability to rid himself more
completely of his body; he regretted that he was not ugly, unclean,
covered with vermin like some of the saints. Whenever the Brother had
wounded him by some words of excessive coarseness, or by some over-hasty
churlishness, he would blame himself for his refinement, his innate
shrinking, as if these were really faults. Ought he not to be dead to
all the weaknesses of this world? And this time also he smiled sadly as
he thought how near he had been to losing his temper at the Brother's
roughly put lesson. It was pride, it seemed to him, seeking to work his
perdition by making him despise the lowly. However, in spite of himself,
he felt relieved at being alone again, at being able to walk on gently,
reading his breviary, free at last from the grating voice that had
disturbed his dream of heavenly love.

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