“Oh, by the bye, Monsieur Chollet, I have the honour to inform you that, granting the consent of my father and mother, I am going to marry Catherine and in a fortnight she will be my wife, my very own, my property and my possession consequently. Which means, ‘let the boar who should come and root up my field beware! Let the wolf who would prowl round my sheep take care! Woe to the fox who covets my poultry! ‘Now if you have any objections to make to all this, make them, Monsieur Chollet, make them to me at once. I am listening.”

  “Unfortunately,” rejoined the Parisian who, brave though he was, was probably not sorry to be saved from an awkward predicament, “unfortunately you are not the only one listening.”

  “Not the only one?”

  “No. Do you wish me to answer in presence of a woman and a priest?”

  Bernard turned round and saw sure enough the Abbé Grégoire and Catherine on the doorstep. “No, you are right; do not speak,” he said.

  “.Then we shall meet to-morrow?” asked Chollet.

  “To-morrow, the day after, when you will, where you will, how you will.”

  “Well and good!”

  “My friend,” put in Catherine, only too pleased that the coming of the good priest had supplied her with this means of intervening, “here is our dear Abbé Grégoire, whom we love with our whole hearts and whom I for my part have not seen for eighteen months.”

  “Good day, my children, good day!” said the Abbé.

  The two young men exchanged a last look which amounted to a mutual defiance, and while Louis Chollet withdrew, bowing to Catherine and the priest, Bernard came forward with smiling brow and lips to kiss the hand of the good priest, saying, “Welcome to you, man of peace! to this house, where we ask no better than to live in peace.”

  CHAPTER XII.

  THE ABBÉ GRÉGOIRE.

  THERE are in the most ordinary lives events which seem providential. The appearance of Abbé Grégoire just at the right point, at the moment when the young men would probably have exchanged defiances, was one of these incidents.

  So as it was a long journey for the good Abbé to come between Low Mass and Vespers to the Maison Neuve, where he had only been once before, and as nothing accounted for his being there at the time of the day when he appeared, Bernard, after kissing his hand, raised his head and asked him laughingly, “What do you come here for, your Reverence?”

  “I?”

  “Yes. I bet,” went on Bernard, “that you do not guess what you came to do, or rather what you are going to do, at the New House.”

  The Abbé did not even try to solve the species of riddle which was asked him.

  “Man proposes and God disposes,” he said. “I hold myself at the disposal of God.” Then he added, “As for me, I intended merely to pay a visit to your father.”

  “Have you seen him?” asked Bernard.

  “No, not yet,” was the reply.

  “YOUR Reverence,” went on Bernard, looking tenderly at Catherine while speaking to the priest, “you are always welcome, but more welcome to-day than any other.”

  “Yes, I can fancy so because of the arrival of this dear child.”

  “To some extent on that account, dear Abbé, but a good deal on account of something else.”

  “Well, my children,” said he, looking round for a chair, “tell me about it.”

  Bernard ran for an easy-chair and putting it within reach of the priest, who, tired by his walk, was nothing loth to sit down, said, “Listen, your Reverence, I ought perhaps to make you a long speech, but I prefer to tell you the thing in two words. We want to get married, Catherine and I.”

  “Ah! ah! So you love Catherine, boy?” asked the Abbé.

  “I should think I do love her.”

  “And you, do you love Bernard, my child?”

  “Oh, with my whole soul!”

  “But it seems to me that you ought to make this avowal to your parents!”

  “Yes, your Reverence, but you are the friend of my father, you are the confessor of my mother, you are to all of us our Abbé. Well, talk it over with Father Guillaume, who will speak of it to Mother Marianne. Try to obtain their consent for us, which I hope will not be difficult, and you will see two young people made very happy. Oh look,” and he placed his hand on the Abbé’s shoulder “there is Père Guillaume coming out of his room. You know the redoubt that has to be carried, charge home! Meanwhile we will take a walk, Catherine and I, and sing your praises. Come, Catherine.”

  And the two, joyous and light as two birds, took their flight towards the door and from the door struck off through the woods. Meanwhile Père Guillaume had stopped on the landing, and the Abbé, turning towards him, greeted him with a wave of the hand.

  “I saw you coming a long way off,” began Father Guillaume, “and said to myself ‘It’s the Abbé! Why, my word, it’s the Abbé,’ only I could not believe it. What luck! and to-day of all days. I bet you have not come for us, but to see Catherine.”

  “Oh no, you are mistaken, for I did not know she had come.”

  “Then you must have been all the more delighted to find her here, eh? There, how pretty she has grown. You are staying to dinner, I hope? Oh, I warn you, your Reverence, every one that comes into this house to-day does not leave it before two in the morning.”

  And Père Guillaume proceeded to come down, holding out his two open hands to the Abbé.

  “Two o’clock in the morning!” repeated the Abbé. “Why, that has never happened to me before to get to bed at such a time.”

  “Bah, how about the midnight Mass?”

  “How shall I get away?”

  “M. le Maire will drive you home in his chaise. “The Abbé shook his head.

  “Hum! We are none too friendly, the Maire and I.”

  “That’s your fault,” said Guillaume. “How my fault?” asked the priest, astonished that his old friend the Forester should say he was in the wrong so at the first go off.

  “Oh yes, you have had the misfortune to repeat in his presence, ‘Thou shalt not steal thy neighbour’s goods, nor keep aught stolen wittingly.’”

  “Well,” said the Abbé, “I do not say that at the risk of going back on foot at night I will not join you. For that matter I guessed when I came here that I should stay longer than I ought, and I begged the Curé to take my place at vespers and evensong.”

  “Bravo! Why, you give me back all my good temper, Abbé!”

  “So much the better,” replied he, leaning on the Forester’s arm, “for I want to find you in that frame of mind.”

  “Me,” said the old man astonished. “Yes. You are a bit surly at times.”

  “Go on.”

  “And to-day in particular.”

  The Abbé paused and looked at Guillaume in a peculiar way.

  “What?” asked the Forester.

  “Well, to-day, I have here and there two or three things to ask you.”

  “Me! Two or three things?”

  “Well, let us call it two, not to frighten you.”

  “For whom?”

  “You must, for that matter, be used to it, Père Guillaume; every time I hold out my hand to you, it is to say, my dear Monsieur Watrin, charity, if you please.”

  “Well what is it? Let us see,” asked the old man, laughing.

  “In the first place about old Pierre.”

  “Oh yes, poor devil. I know his misfortune. That vagabond of a Mathieu has managed to get him sent away from M. Raisin’s.”

  “He had been there twenty years and because of a letter lost the day before yesterday...”

  “Monsieur Raisin was in the wrong,” said Guillaume. “I have told him so already this morning and you must tell him the same, when he comes back. You do not turn away a servant of twenty years’ standing: such a servant is part of the family. I should not turn away a dog that had been ten years in my yard.”

  “Oh, I know your good heart, Père Guillaume. So I started out early in the morning to make a collection for the man. Some gave me ten sous, others twenty. Then I thought of you. I said to myself I will go to the Maison Neuve on the SOISSONS Road: it is a league and a half there and a league and a half back, three altogether. I will rate Guillaume at twenty sous the league, which will make three francs. Not to mention that I shall have the pleasure of shaking him by the hand.”

  “Lord reward you, reverend sir. For you have a good heart.”

  And feeling in his pocket he brought out two five-franc pieces and gave them to the Abbé.

  “Oh,” said the latter, “ten francs! It’s a deal for your income, dear Monsieur Watrin.”

  “I owe something more than other people, since it was I who picked up that whelp of a Mathieu, and it was to some extent from my house that he started out to do the mischief.”

  “I should prefer,” said the Abbé, turning the five-franc pieces over in his fingers, as if he felt compunction in depriving the poor household of such a sum, “I should prefer, dear Father Guillaume, for you to give me only three francs, or even nothing at all, and instead let him have leave to pick up a little wood in your beat.”

  Père Guillaume looked the Abbé straight between the eyes, as they say, then with a fine look of simple-minded uprightness said, “The wood belongs to his Highness, the Duke of Orleans, my dear Abbé, whereas the money is mine. So take the money and let Pierre take care not to touch the wood. Now that matter is settled, let us go on to the other. Come, what else have you to ask me?”

  “I have taken charge of a petition.”

  “To whom?”

  “To you.”

  “A petition to me? Well, let us see it.”

  “It is verbal.”

  “Who is it from?”

  “Bernard.”

  “What does he want?”

  “He wants...”

  “Well, do finish!”

  “Well, he wants to get married.”

  “Oh, oh, oh!” cried his father.

  “Why, ‘oh, oh ‘? Is he not old enough?”

  “Oh yes! But whom does he want to marry?”

  “A good girl whom he loves and who loves him.”

  “If only it is not Mademoiselle Euphrosine that he loves, I will let him take what wife he likes, if it were my grandmother.”

  “Set your mind at rest, my worthy friend. The woman that he loves is Catherine.”

  “Really? really?” cried the old man joyously. “Bernard loves Catherine and Catherine him?”

  “Had you no idea of it?”

  “Aye, but I was afraid I might be mistaken.”

  “You consent, then?”

  “With all my heart,” cried Guillaume. Then suddenly checking himself, added, “But...”

  “But what?”

  “Why only that I must speak to the old woman about it. All that we have done for twenty-six years has been done by common consent. Bernard is her son as well as mine. So the old woman must be told. Yes, yes, that is so; it must be done.”

  Then going and opening the kitchen door he called, “Hi, mother, come here.”

  He then went back to the Abbé, grasping his pipe between his teeth and rubbing his hands, which with him was a sign of the greatest satisfaction.

  “Ah, that rascal of a Bernard. It is quite the slyest trick he has played in his life.”

  At this moment Madame Watrin appeared at the door of her kitchen, wiping her forehead with her white apron.

  “Well, come, what is it?” she asked.

  “Come here, I tell you,” rejoined Guillaume.

  “Oh, how stupid of you to disturb me like that just as I was making my paste.”

  Then suddenly catching sight of the visitor, whom she had not noticed, “What, the Abbé Grégoire!” she cried. “Your servant, your Reverence. I did not know you were there, but for that there could have been no occasion for calling me.”

  “Good,” said Guillaume to him, “you hear, you hear. There she is off.”

  “Are you well?” she went on. “And your niece, Mademoiselle Alexandrine, is she well? You know that every one in the house is delighted over Catherine coming home?”

  “Well, well, well! You will help me to put a martingale on her, won’t you, your Reverence, if I cannot manage her alone?”

  “Why did you call me, then,” rejoined Marianne, with a remnant of bitterness from her late outbursts, “if you keep me from paying my respects to his Reverence and asking him his news?”

  “I called you to give you the chance of doing me a favour, my dear.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “The favour of giving me your opinion in two words and plainly on an important matter. Bernard wants to marry.”

  “Bernard! marry? And whom?”

  “His cousin.”

  “What, Catherine?”

  “Yes, Catherine. And now, your opinion. Come, quick, out with it.”

  “Catherine,” she replied, “is a good child, an excellent girl.”

  “That sounds well. Go on.”

  “Who could not put us to shame...”

  “Get along! Get along!”

  “Only, she has nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Absolutely nothing.”

  “Woman, do not weigh in the balance a few miserable crowns and the lifelong misery of these poor children.”

  “But all the same, father, it is ill living without money.”

  “Yet ‘tis still worse for folk living without love.”

  “Ah, that’s true,” murmured she.

  “When we married,” went on the father, ““had we any money? No, we were as poor as a couple of Church mice, not to mention that to-day we are not yet very rich. Well, what would you have said then if our relatives had wished to separate us on the pretext that we lacked some hundreds of crowns to set up house with?”

  “Yes, all that is very well,” replied the mother, “But that is not the only obstacle.”

  And she uttered these words in a tone which made Guillaume understand that if he thought all was done he was mistaken, and that difficulty was going to arise as serious as unexpected.

  “Good,” said he, bracing himself too for the struggle. “What is this obstacle? Come, now.”

  “Oh, you understand me quite well.”

  “No matter. Do as if I did not understand you.”

  “Guillaume, Guillaume,” said she, shaking her head, “we cannot put this marriage on our conscience.”

  “And why so?”

  “Good Lord, why because she is a heretic.”

  “Oh, wife, wife,” cried he, stamping his foot, “I guessed that would be the stone of stumbling, and yet I would not believe it.”

  “What would you have, father? As I was twenty years ago, so I am to-day. I opposed as much as I could the marriage of her poor mother to Friedrich Blum. Unfortunately she was your sister. She was free and did not need my consent. Only I said, ‘Rose, remember my prophecy. It will bring you ill luck to marry a heretic.’ She did not listen to me and married him and my prediction has come true. The father was killed, the mother is dead, and the little girl was left an orphan.”

  “Well, you are not going to reproach her with that, surely?”

  “No, but I reproach her with being a heretic.”

  “Why, wretched woman!” cried he, “do you know what a heretic is?”

  “It is a creature that will be damned.”

  “Even if she is virtuous?”

  “Yes, even if she is virtuous.”

  “But if she is a good mother, a good wife, a good girl?”

  “Even if she is all that.”

  “Even if she had all the virtues?”

  “All the virtues put together make no difference, once she is a heretic.”

  “A thousand million devils!” cried the exasperated old man.

  “Swear if you like,” said Marianne. “But swearing will not change it.”

  “You are right. So I will have no more to do with it.”

  Then turning towards the worthy priest, who had listened to all this discussion without uttering a single word, he said, “And now, your Reverence, you have heard: I have no more to do with it. Now it is your turn.”

  Then darting out of the room like a man in a hurry to breathe the open air, he cried, “Oh, woman, woman! You must have been created and sent into the world to damn the human race!”

  But meanwhile, shaking her head, she was muttering to herself, “No, it’s no use his talking; it is impossible. Bernard shall never marry a heretic. Anything people like, but not that. No, no, no, not that!”

  CHAPTER XIII.

  FATHER AND SON.

  FATHER GUILLAUME having gone out, the ABBE

  Grégoire and Madame Watrin remained facing each other.

  There is no need to say that the Abbé had accepted the mission which the old Forester had entrusted to him when he left the scene of action, not like a man beaten, but as one who hesitates to employ, in order to conquer, arms which he would feel ashamed to use.

  Unhappily, for thirty years past Marianne had been his penitent, and he knew well the woman with whom he would have to deal. And as Madame Watrin’s besetting sin was obstinacy, he had no great hopes of succeeding where Guillaume had failed.

  So in spite of his air of confidence it was with a certain internal misgiving that he entered on the question.

  “Dear Madame Watrin,” said he, going closer to her, “have you no other objection to this marriage than the difference of religion?”

  “I, Monsieur l’Abbé?” she replied. “None! But it seems to me that is enough.”

  “Come, come! in all conscience, Mother Watrin, instead of saying ‘no,’ you ought to say ‘yes.’”