He was a narrow-minded priest, but kind to his people, a religious leader with a soldier’s temperament, a guide who forcibly led the sinner into the narrow way: the poor blind sinner lost in the forest of life where all our instincts, our desires, our tastes, are bypaths which lead us astray. But much of the man of old days remained. He still liked violent exercise, sport and fencing, and he detested all women with the unreasoning fear of a child before some hidden danger.
II
The sailor who was with the priest felt the usual southern longing for a chat, but dared not begin, for the Abbé exercised great authority over his flock. At last he ventured:
“So you are comfortable in your little house, your Reverence?”
The bastide was one of those tiny houses frequented in summer by the Provençals of town and country in search of fresh air. The Abbé had rented this retreat in the middle of a field, five minutes’ walk from the presbytery, which was too small and enclosed in the centre of the parish, right up against the church.
Even in summer he did not live regularly at the cottage: he only went there occasionally for a few days to be amongst the fields and trees and to do some pistol-practice.
“Yes, my friend,” said the priest. “I am very comfortable there.”
The low dwelling, looking as if it had grown like a Provençal mushroom, appeared among the trees. It was painted pink, its surface being speckled over with stripes and spots, split up into little bits by the olive leaves and branches from the trees in the open field.
At the same moment they saw a tall woman moving about in front of the door, getting the little dinner-table ready as she went backwards and forwards, with methodical leisureliness setting the cloth for one, a plate, table-napkin, piece of bread, and glass. She had on the little cap worn by the women of Arles: a pointed cone of black silk or velvet from which grows a white starched mushroom.
When the Abbé was within hearing distance, he called out:
“Eh, Marguerite?”
She stopped to look round and, recognising her master, said:
“Oh, it’s you, your Reverence?”
“Yes, I am bringing a good haul, you must grill me a catfish at once, cooked in butter, only butter, you hear?”
The servant, who had come to meet the two men, examined the fish the sailor was carrying, with an expert eye.
“But we have already got a chicken cooked with rice.”
“Never mind that, tomorrow’s fish is not as good as fish fresh from the sea. I am going to have a really choice meal, it does not often happen; moreover, it is not a great sin.”
The servant picked out the fish and, as she was carrying it away, turned round:
“A man has been here three times to see you, your Reverence.”
Showing no interest, he asked:
“A man! What kind of man?”
“Well, the kind of man whose looks do not recommend him.”
“What! a beggar?”
“Perhaps, I don’t know. I rather think he is a maoufatan.”
Abbé Vilbois laughed at the Provençal word meaning a bad lot, a tramp, for he knew how frightened Marguerite was, and that when she was at the cottage she was always thinking they were going to be murdered.
He gave the sailor a few pence, and was preparing to wash his face and hands (having kept his old habits of neatness and cleanliness), when Marguerite called out from the kitchen, where she was scraping the blood-flecked scales that came away from the fish like tiny pieces of silver:
“There he is!”
The Abbé turned towards the road and saw a man, who seemed in the distance to be very badly dressed, walking towards the house with very small steps. He awaited him, still smiling at his servant’s fright, thinking: “Upon my word, she must be right, he certainly looks a bad lot.”
Without hurrying, the unknown individual drew near, hands in his pockets, and his eyes fixed upon the priest. He was young, with a fair, curly beard, and hair that fell in curls beneath his soft felt hat, a hat so dirty and crushed that no one could have guessed its original colour and shape. He wore a brown overcoat, trousers that hung in a fringe over his ankles, and string-sandals that gave him a slack, silent, disquieting walk—the hardly perceptible slouch of the tramp.
When a few steps away from the priest, he took off the ragged cap that covered his head with a flourish, exposing a withered, dissolute, but well-shaped head, bald on the top—a sign of fatigue or of early debauchery, for the man was certainly not over twenty-five.
The priest immediately took off his hat too, for he felt that this was no ordinary vagabond, or unemployed, neither was he the habitual jailbird wandering about between two prisons who had forgotten all speech except the mysterious language of the convict.
“Good day, your Reverence,” said the man. The priest replied simply: “Good day,” not wishing to call this doubtful, ragged passerby “sir.” They stared at each other; the fixed steady look of the tramp made Abbé Vilbois feel uncomfortable, distressed as one feels when facing an unknown enemy, and overpowered by one of those strange feelings of uneasiness that send shivers through body and blood. At last the vagabond said:
“Well! do you recognise me?”
The priest replied, very astonished:
“Me? Not at all, I don’t know you.”
“Ah! You don’t know me. Look at me again.”
“What is the good of looking at you? I have never seen you before.”
“That is true enough,” said the other ironically, “but I will show
