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Agnes looked up at me once, radiant and confused, then lowered her eyes again. The Chevalier broke a silence which was becoming intolerable, to me at least, who did not understand it all. "Captain de Mouret, you have been in error, and have done me no wrong. This lady here is my worshiped wife, Madame Agnes de la Mora."
As Abbe Mouret spoke these words, there was a burst of laughter at the other end of the church. The baby had just woke up on the chair where La Teuse had laid it. But it was no longer in a bad temper. Having kicked itself free of its swaddling clothes, it was laughing merrily, and shaking its rosy little feet in the air. It was the sight of these little feet that made it laugh.
Young Silvere had never even been to school at the time when Mouret was found hanging among his wife's skirts. His elder brother, not knowing what to do with him, took him also to his uncle's. The latter made a wry face on beholding the child; he had no intention of carrying his compensation so far as to feed a useless mouth.
No discomfort came to him from the great travail of love that permeated that splendid morning. 'Steady! Voriau, you mustn't eat people! some one gaily shouted in a powerful voice by way of silencing the dog's loud barks. Abbe Mouret looked up. 'Oh! it's you. Fortune? he said, approaching the edge of the field in which the young peasant was at work. 'I was just on my way to speak to you.
Doesn't she make you feel hungry, Monsieur le Cure? You should force yourself. Abbe Mouret smiled as he glanced at his sister. 'Yes, yes, he murmured; 'she gets on famously, she grows fatter every day. 'That's because I eat, said Desiree. 'If you would eat you would get fat, too. Are you ill again? You look very melancholy. I don't want to have it all over again, you know.
'Ah! well, said La Teuse in a fury, 'that bird has got to crush its heart too. But then it can't help itself. Abbe Mouret spent his days at the parsonage. He shunned the long walks which he had been wont to take before his illness. The scorched soil of Les Artaud, the ardent heat of that valley where the vines could never even grow straight, distressed him.
And, besides, was it not he who was now God, with the people kissing his golden miracle-working feet? Abbe Mouret rose. He made that sweeping gesture of Jeanbernat's, that wide gesture of negation, that took in everything as far as the horizon. 'There is nothing, nothing, nothing! he said. 'God does not exist. A mighty shudder seemed to sweep through the church.
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.
Abbe Mouret made no reply. It was a lovely night and all looked bluish in the moonlight, which lent to the distant part of the valley the aspect of a sleeping lake.
La Teuse, who well knew his habits, cried out to him, amidst the bellowing with which he shook the room: 'Make a little less noise, do! It is quite distracting. You are much too lively to-night. But he set to work on the 'Complines. Abbe Mouret had now seated himself by the window. He appeared to pay no attention to what went on around him, apparently neither hearing nor seeing anything of it.
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