do my best, your reverence.”
“ ‘Thou shalt not swear vainly by the name of God, nor by any other,’ ” resumed Maritime. “Have you occasionally sworn oaths?”
“No oh, no, not that! I never swear, never. Sometimes, in a moment of hot temper like, I may say ‘God blast.’ But I never swear.”
“But that is swearing,” said the priest, and added severely: “Don’t do it any more. I pass on to the next: ‘Thou shalt spend the Sabbath in serving God devotedly.’ What do you do on Sundays?”
This time Sabot scratched his ear.
“Well, I serve the good God in the best way I can, your reverence. I serve Him … at home. I work on Sundays …”
The rector magnanimously interrupted him:
“I know you will behave better in the future. I pass over the three next commandments, as I am sure you have not sinned against the two first, and we will take the sixth with the ninth. To proceed: ‘Thou shalt not take another’s goods, nor retain them wittingly.’ Have you ever in any way taken what did not belong to you?”
Théodule Sabot was indignant:
“Certainly not! Certainly not, your reverence! I’m an honest man, that I swear. As for saying that I’ve not once or twice taken an extra hour over a job when I could, as for that I won’t say. As for saying that I’ve never put a few centimes on to a bill, only a few centimes, as for that I won’t say. But I’m not a thief, oh, Lord, no!”
“Taking a single centime constitutes a theft,” answered the priest severely. “Don’t do it again.—‘Thou shalt not bear false witness nor lie in any way.’ Have you told lies?”
“No! that I haven’t. I’m not a liar; that’s one of the things I pride myself on. As for saying that I’ve never told a tall story, as for that I won’t say. As for saying that I’ve never tried to make another fellow believe what wasn’t true, when it suited me, as for that I won’t say. But as for being a liar, well, I’m no liar.”
“You must keep a closer watch upon yourself,” said the priest simply. Then he pronounced: ‘The works of the flesh thou shalt not desire save only in marriage.’ Have you ever desired or possessed any woman but your own wife?”
“No!” cried Sabot sincerely. “Certainly not, your reverence! Deceive my poor wife? No! No! Not so much as with the tip of my finger, and no more in thought than in deed. I swear that.” He paused for a few moments, and then continued in a lower voice, as though a sudden doubt had assailed him:
“As for saying that when I go to town I don’t ever go to a house—you know what I mean, a gay house—and fool about a bit and have a change of skin for once—as for that I won’t say. … But I pay, your reverence, I always pay; and if you pay, that’s that, eh?”
The rector did not insist, and gave him absolution.
Théodule Sabot is at work on the repairs to the choir, and goes to communion every month.
A Vendetta
Paolo Saverini’s widow lived alone with her son in a poor little house on the ramparts of Bonifacio. The town, built on a spur of the mountains, in places actually overhanging the sea, looks across a channel bristling with reefs, to the lower shores of Sardinia. At its foot, on the other side and almost completely surrounding it, is the channel that serves as its harbour, cut in the cliff like a gigantic corridor. Through a long circuit between steep walls, the channel brings to the very foot of the first houses the little Italian or Sardinian fishing-boats, and, every fortnight, the old steamboat that runs to and from Ajaccio.
Upon the white mountain the group of houses is a yet whiter patch. They look like the nests of wild birds, perched so upon the rock, dominating that terrible channel through which hardly ever a ship risks a passage. The unresting wind harasses the sea and eats away the bare shore, clad with a sparse covering of grass; it rushes into the ravine and ravages its two sides. The trailing wisps of white foam round the black points of countless rocks that everywhere pierce the waves, look like rags of canvas floating and heaving on the surface of the water.
The widow Saverini’s house held for dear life to the very edge of the cliff; its three windows looked out over this wild and desolate scene.
She lived there alone with her son Antoine and their bitch Sémillante, a large thin animal with long shaggy hair, of the sheepdog breed. The young man used her for hunting.
One evening, after a quarrel, Antoine Saverini was treacherously slain by a knife-thrust from Nicolas Ravolati, who got away to Sardinia the same night.
When his old mother received his body, carried home by bystanders, she did not weep, but for a long time stayed motionless, looking at it; then, stretching out her wrinkled hand over the body, she promised him a vendetta. She would have no one stay with her, and shut herself up with the body, together with the howling dog. The animal howled continuously, standing at the foot of the bed, her head thrust towards her master, her tail held tightly between her legs. She did not stir, nor did the mother, who crouched over the body with her eyes fixed steadily upon it, and wept great silent tears.
The young man, lying on his back, clad in his thick serge coat with a hole torn across the front, seemed asleep; but everywhere there was blood; on the shirt, torn off for the first hasty dressing; on his waistcoat, on his breeches, on his face, on his hands. Clots of blood had congealed in his beard and in his hair.
The old mother began to speak to him. At the sound of her voice the dog was silent.
“There, there, you shall be avenged, my little one,
