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Updated: May 20, 2025
Upon such bountiful occasions he insists on Tanrade and myself dining with him at the presbytery as long as these luxuries last, refusing to dine with either of us until there is no more left of his own to give. The last time I saw him, I had noticed a marked change in his reverence. He was moody and unshaven, and his saucerlike hat was as dusty and spotted as his frayed soutane.
I clutched the creature in both hands, and, hurling him on to the floor of the coach, I stamped on him with my heavy boots. He had drawn a pistol from the front of his soutane, but I kicked it out of his hand, and again I fell with my knees upon his chest. Then, for the first time, he screamed horribly, while I, half blinded, felt about for the sword which he had so cunningly concealed.
When he had put on his oldest soutane, we started with a packet of candles and a ball of string. Priests' gardens are often very interesting, and the one through which we now passed pleased me greatly. It was a long strip, in two or three terraces, upon the rocky hillside. Many fruit-trees, but chiefly almond, cherry, and peach, were scattered over it.
They stood in a group about me these men who had been in battles, come out safely, and were again advancing to the firing line as smilingly as one would go into a ballroom while I pointed out the towns and answered their questions, and no one was calmer or more keenly interested than the Breton priest, in his long soutane with the red cross on his arm.
To-night, he was the politician the conspirator quick of eye, curt of speech. He held out his hand for the letter. "You are to read it, as Monsieur le Marquis instructs me, Monsieur Albert," hazarded the Abbe, touching the breast pocket of his soutane, where Monsieur de Gemosac's letter lay hidden, "to those assembled."
The fury of the gaming-house and the riot of Zaton's seemed far away. The triumphs of the fencing-room even they grew cheap and tawdry. I thought of existence as one outside it, I balanced this against that, and wondered whether, after all, the red soutane were so much better than the homely jerkin, or the fame of a day than ease and safety.
C'est trop beau." He fell a prey to a screaming ecstasy, in the midst of sagely nodding heads, before Charles Gould's imperturbable calm. And only the priest continued his pacing, flinging round the skirt of his soutane at each end of his beat. Decoud murmured to him ironically: "Those gentlemen talk about their gods."
The old man wore a tattered garment, a miracle of shining cleanliness, which had once been a soutane of smooth black cloth, but was now a mass of patches and threadbare at shoulders and knees. He seemed deeply intent in the task of polishing his shoes, and having delivered himself of his little admonition, he very solemnly and earnestly resumed his work.
I was keenly alive to the exceptional study of human nature presented by this fine specimen of an old rustic priest, who was not the less to be respected because he took a great deal of snuff, hated shaving, wore hob-nailed shoes of the roughest make, and a threadbare, soup-spotted soutane with frayed edges.
He did not look up into his face, but appeared to be watching his slim hands, which were moving nervously upon the surface of his black soutane. "My son," he said smoothly. "As you know, I am a great advocate for frankness. Frankness in word and thought, in subordinate and superior. I have always been frank with you, and from you I expect similar treatment.
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