to separate the next day after much handshaking and many
promises to write. They departed for Biarritz. I wanted to follow them.

"I was hard hit. I wanted to ask this little girl to marry me. If we
had passed eight days together, I should have done so! How weak and
incomprehensible a man sometimes is!

"Two years passed without my hearing a word from them. Then I received
a letter from New York. She was married and wrote to tell me. And since
then we write to each other every year, on New Year's Day. She tells
me about her life, talks of her children, her sisters, never of her
husband! Why? Ah! why? And as for me, I only talk of the Marie Joseph.
That was perhaps the only woman I have ever loved--no--that I ever
should have loved. Ah, well! who can tell? Circumstances rule one. And
then--and then--all passes. She must be old now; I should not know her.
Ah! she of the bygone time, she of the wreck! What a creature! Divine!
She writes me her hair is white. That caused me terrible pain. Ah! her
yellow hair. No, my English girl exists no longer. How sad it all is!"

THEODULE SABOT'S CONFESSION

When Sabot entered the inn at Martinville it was a signal for laughter.
What a rogue he was, this Sabot! There was a man who did not like
priests, for instance! Oh, no, oh, no! He did not spare them, the scamp.

Sabot (Theodule), a master carpenter, represented liberal thought in
Martinville. He was a tall, thin, than, with gray, cunning eyes, and
thin lips, and wore his hair plastered down on his temples. When he
said: "Our holy father, the pope" in a certain manner, everyone laughed.
He made a point of working on Sunday during the hour of mass. He killed
his pig each year on Monday in Holy Week in order to have enough black
pudding to last till Easter, and when the priest passed by, he always
said by way of a joke: "There goes one who has just swallowed his God
off a salver."

The priest, a stout man and also very tall, dreaded him on account of
his boastful talk which attracted followers. The Abbe Maritime was a
politic man, and believed in being diplomatic. There had been a rivalry
between them for ten years, a secret, intense, incessant rivalry. Sabot
was municipal councillor, and they thought he would become mayor, which
would inevitably mean the final overthrow of the church.

The elections were about to take place. The church party was shaking in
its shoes in Martinville.

One morning the cure set out for Roue