The Olive Orchard
I
When the shore-loafers of the small Provençal port of Garandou on the Bay of Pisca, between Marseilles and Toulon, caught sight of Abbé Vilbois’ boat coming back from fishing, they went down to the beach to help him draw it in.
The Abbé was alone in the boat, rowing like a seaman, with unusual energy, in spite of his fifty-eight years. His sleeves were turned up over his muscular arms, his cassock drawn up, gathered tightly between his knees and unbuttoned at the top, his shovel hat on the seat beside him and a pith helmet covered with white linen on his head, he looked like one of those solidly built, fantastic priests from the tropics, more suited for adventure than for saying Mass.
Occasionally he looked behind to make sure of his landing, then pulled again with great energy, rhythmically and steadily, just to show the poor Southern sailors how men from the North could row. The boat shot forward, touching the sand, over which it glided as if it were going to climb up the beach on its keel, then stopped dead, and the five men who were watching drew near; they were good-natured, cheerful, and on good terms with their priest.
“Well,” said one of them with a strong Provençal accent, “had a good catch, your Reverence?”
Abbé Vilbois shipped his oars, took off his helmet, put on his shovel hat, dropped his sleeves over his arms, buttoned up his cassock and, resuming his priestly attitude—the bearing of the officiating priest of the village—he replied proudly:
“Yes, indeed, very good, three catfish, two eels, and a few rockfish.”
Going up to the boat and leaning over the gunwale, the five fishermen examined the dead fish with an expert air—the fleshy catfish, the flat-headed eels—hideous sea serpents—and the violet rockfish with zigzag stripes and gold bands, the colour of orange peel.
One of the men said: “I will carry them to the house, your Reverence.”
“Thanks, my good man.”
Shaking hands, the priest started off, followed by the one fisherman, the others staying behind to look after the boat.
The priest, robust and dignified, strode along with big, slow steps. As he still felt warm from his vigorous rowing, he took off his hat whenever he reached the slight shade of the olive-trees, to expose his square-cut brow with its straight, white hair cut short—more the brow of an officer than of a priest—to the tepid night air now slightly freshened by a faint sea breeze. The village revealed itself up on the cliff in the middle of a wide valley that ran down like a plain towards the sea.
It was a night in July. The dazzling sun, nearing the crest of the distant hills, stretched out the priest’s long shadow on the white road, buried under a shroud of dust; his exaggerated shovel hat, reflected in a broad, dark patch in the neighbouring field, seemed to clamber up the tree-trunks on the way, and drop quickly to the ground again, creeping about among the olives.
From under Abbé Vilbois’ feet rose a cloud of that fine, floury dust that covers the roads of Provence in summer, curling around his cassock like a veil and colouring its hem with a faint wash of grey over the black. He strode along with the slow, measured gait of a mountaineer making an ascent. His unruffled eyes gazed upon the village of which he had been the curé for twenty years, the village he had picked out and obtained as a great favour, and where he hoped to die. The church—his church—crowned the wide circle of houses huddled together around it with its two uneven, square towers of brown stone whose profiles had stood out for centuries over the beautiful Southern valley, more like the donjons of a fortified castle than the steeples of a church.
The Abbé was pleased because he had caught three catfish, two eels, and a few rockfish. This would be a new, minor triumph over his parishioners, who respected him chiefly because he was the strongest man in the country, in spite of his age. These little harmless vanities were his greatest pleasure. With a pistol he could cut off a flower from its stalk, sometimes he fenced with his neighbour, the tobacconist, who had been a regimental fencing-master, and he rowed better than anyone on the coast.
In addition to which, Baron Vilbois, who at the age of thirty-two had become a priest after an unfortunate love affair, had been a man of the world, well known and a leader of fashion.
Descended from an old royalist family of Picardy, staunch Churchmen, whose sons had been in the Army, the Church, and the Law for several generations, his first intention was to enter holy orders on his mother’s advice, but his father’s objections prevailed, and he decided to go to Paris, study law, and then try for some important post at the Law Courts.
As he was finishing his course, his father died of pneumonia caught on a shooting expedition on the marshes, and his
