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At this he got to his feet, came over, laid a hand on the abbe's shoulder, and his voice softened: "Abbe, the woman shall be mine." "If God wills so, Iberville." "He will, He will." "Well," said Perrot, with a little laugh; "I think God will be good to a Frenchman when an Englishman is his foe." "But the girl is English and a heretic," urged the abbe helplessly. Perrot laughed again.
But bad writers are always the most shameless intruders on the time of good critics, and we find Diderot willingly spending hours over the abbé's handwriting, which was as wretched as what he wrote, and then spending hours more in offering critical observations on verses that were only fit to be thrown into the fire.
"But listen; it will be something to buy you cigars. It comes from America." And then followed the Abbe's little speech about the masters of Longueval. He went to a poor woman whose son had gone to Tunis. "Well, how is your son getting on?" "Not so bad, Monsieur le Cure; I had a letter from him yesterday. He does not complain; he is very well; only he says there are no Kroomirs. Poor boy!
"She lives at Salerno," said he, "with her daughter the Marchioness C ." I was delighted to hear the news; if it had not been for the abbe's visit, I should never have heard what had become of these ladies. I asked him if he knew the Marchioness C . "I only know the marquis," he replied, "he is old and very rich." That was enough for me.
Jacquelin, a man of forty, short, fat, ruddy, and brown, with a face like a Breton sailor, had been in the service of the house for twenty-two years. He waited at table, groomed the mare, gardened, blacked the abbe's boots, went on errands, chopped the wood, drove the carriole, and fetched the oats, straw, and hay from Prebaudet.
"You must not bring every line of discussion to a pin's point," said Bonpre smiling, as he walked slowly across the room still leaning on the Abbe's arm. "We can reduce our very selves to the bodiless condition of a dream if we take sufficient pains first to advance a theory, and then to wear it threadbare.
"He must have been out of his senses," said he, "to shoot under the King's windows," and enlarged much on the airs he gave himself. Madame de Pompadour gave this affair the best colouring she could the King was, nevertheless, greatly disgusted at it, and twenty times, since the Abbe's disgrace, when he passed over that part of the park, he said, "This is where the Abbe took his pleasure."
Distracted by these thoughts, I forgot the dinner hour; and when I saw the sun sinking behind the turrets of the castle I realized too late that my absence must have been noticed, and that I could not appear without submitting to Edmee's searching questions, and to the abbe's cold, piercing gaze, which, though it always seemed to avoid mine, I would suddenly surprise in the act of sounding the very depths of my conscience.
It remained firm and unshaken over the priest's head, with its altars and its confessional, its pulpit, its crosses, and its holy images. The world had ceased to exist. Temptation was extinguished like a fire that was henceforth unnecessary for the Abbe's purification. He was entering into supernatural peace.
Pleasing, nay most fascinating in manner, the Abbe was a man to gain all hearts. He stopped at no flattery to succeed in this. One day when following the King through the gardens of Marly, it came on to rain. The King considerately noticed the Abbe's dress, little calculated to keep off rain. "It is no matter, Sire," said De Polignac, "the rain of Marly does not wet."
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