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Updated: May 5, 2025
The baroness seldom went to church, though she liked priests, from a sort of religious instinct peculiar to women. She had, in fact, entirely forgotten the Abbe Picot, her priest, and blushed as she saw him. She made apologies for not having prepared for his visit, but the good man was not at all embarrassed.
Then the two priests rose to go, and the Abbé Picot kissed Jeanne, who nearly cried when she said good-bye. A week afterwards, the Abbé Tolbiac called again. He spoke of the reforms he was bringing about as if he were a prince taking possession of his kingdom. He begged the vicomtesse to communicate on all the days appointed by the Church, and to attend mass regularly on Sundays.
The baroness, born in a philosophical century and brought up in revolutionary times by a father who did not believe very much in anything, did not often go to church, although she liked priests with the sort of religious instinct that most women have. She had forgotten all about the Abbé Picot, her curé, and her face colored when she saw him.
But when I carried the whip to the doctor's house that night, M. Picot received it with scant grace! Whispers gall-midges among evil tongues were raising a buzz that boded ill for the doctor. France had paid spies among the English, some said.
The committee, not finding Monsieur Picot at home, went straight to the Minister of Public Instruction; and the minister flew to the Tuileries and saw the King; and the 'Messager' came out this evening strange to say, so early that I could read it in my carriage as I drove along with an announcement that Monsieur Picot is named Chevalier of the Legion of honor, with a pension of eighteen hundred francs from the fund devoted to the encouragement of science and letters."
And all the while he was smiling as though my going to the court were an odd notion. "If I could but find a master," I lamented. "Come to me of an evening," says M. Picot. "I'll teach you, and you can tell me of the fur trade." You may be sure I went as often as ever I could. M. Picot took me upstairs to a sort of hunting room.
Breakfast was served for the family, the curé from Yport, the Abbé Picot, and the witnesses. Then everyone went to walk in the garden till dinner was ready. The baron and the baroness, Aunt Lison, the mayor, and the abbé walked up and down the baroness's path, and the priest from Yport strode along the other avenue reading his breviary.
And Abbe Picot once more began to regret his village, the sea which he saw from his parsonage, the little valleys where he walked while repeating his breviary, glancing up at the boats as they passed. As the two priests took their leave, the old man kissed Jeanne, who was on the verge of tears. A week later Abbe Tolbiac called again.
There was a brief interval of silence. Picot tossed off a glass of the white wine and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Of course," said he. "It was just the same at Froeschwiller; the general who would give battle under such circumstances is a fit subject for a lunatic asylum. That's what my captain said, and he's a little man who knows what he is talking about.
That is the sword of a gentleman, and I will run it through the heart of any man who says he will hurt a hair of the head of Pierre Philibert, or the Bourgeois, or even the old Huguenot witch, as you call Dame Rochelle, who is a lady, and too good to be either your mother, aunt, or cater cousin, in any way, De Pean!" "By St. Picot! You have mistaken your man, De Pean!" whispered Cadet.
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