et
her come; I thought her uncle was sending her to prepare for her first
communion. But for two months she utterly revolutionised the whole
class. She made herself worshipped, the minx! She knew all sorts of
games, and invented all sorts of finery with leaves and shreds of rags.
And how quick and clever she was, too, like all those children of hell!
She was the top one at catechism. But one fine morning the old man burst
in just in the middle of our lessons. He was going to smash everything,
and shouted that the priests had taken his child from him. We had to get
the rural policeman to turn him out. As to the little one, she bolted.
I could see her through the window, in a field opposite, laughing at her
uncle's frenzy. She had been coming to school for the last two months
without his even suspecting it. He had regularly scoured the country
after her.'

'She's never taken her first communion,' exclaimed La Teuse below her
breath with a slight shudder.

'No, never,' rejoined Brother Archangias. 'She must be sixteen now.
She's growing up like a brute beast. I have seen her running on all
fours in a thicket near La Palud.'

'On all fours,' muttered the servant, turning towards the window with
superstitious anxiety.

Abbe Mouret attempted to express some doubt, but the Brother burst out:
'Yes, on all fours! And she jumped like a wild cat. If I had only had
a gun I could have put a bullet in her. We kill creatures that are far
more pleasing to God than she is. Besides, every one knows she comes
caterwauling every night round Les Artaud. She howls like a beast. If
ever a man should fall into her clutches, she wouldn't leave him a scrap
of skin on his bones, I know.'

The Brother's hatred of womankind was boiling over. He banged the table
with his fist, and poured forth all his wonted abuse.

'The devil's in them. They reek of the devil! And that's what bewitches
fools.'

The priest nodded approvingly. Brother Archangias's outrageous violence
and La Teuse's loquacious tyranny were like castigation with thongs,
which it often rejoiced him to find lashing his shoulders. He took a
pious delight in sinking into abasement beneath their coarse speech.
He seemed to see the peace of heaven behind contempt of the world
and degradation of his whole being. It was delicious to inflict
mortification upon his body, to drag his susceptible nature through a
gutter.

'There is nought but filth,' he muttered as he folded up his napk