len petticoats, came to fetch the Abbe Constantin to make with
him what she called 'la chasse aux pauvres'.

The old priest continued his walk, musing over all this; then he
thought, too--the greatest saints have their little weaknesses--he
thought, too, of the beloved habits of thirty years thus rudely
interrupted. Every Thursday and every Sunday he had dined at the castle.
How he had been petted, coaxed, indulged! Little Camille--she was eight
years old--would come and sit on his knee and say to him:

"You know, Monsieur le Cure, it is in your church that I mean to be
married, and grandmamma will send such heaps of flowers to fill, quite
fill the church--more than for the month of Mary. It will be like a
large garden--all white, all white, all white!"

The month of Mary! It was then the month of Mary. Formerly, at this
season, the altar disappeared under the flowers brought from the
conservatories of Longueval. None this year were on the altar, except
a few bouquets of lily-of-the-valley and white lilac in gilded china
vases. Formerly, every Sunday at high mass, and every evening during the
month of Mary, Mademoiselle Hebert, the reader to Madame de Longueval,
played the little harmonium given by the Marquise. Now the poor
harmonium, reduced to silence, no longer accompanied the voices of the
choir or the children's hymns. Mademoiselle Marbeau, the postmistress,
would, with all her heart, have taken the place of Mademoiselle Hebert,
but she dared not, though she was a little musical! She was afraid of
being remarked as of the clerical party, and denounced by the Mayor, who
was a Freethinker. That might have been injurious to her interests, and
prevented her promotion.

He had nearly reached the end of the wall of the park--that park of
which every corner was known to the old priest. The road now followed
the banks of the Lizotte, and on the other side of the little stream
stretched the fields belonging to the two farms; then, still farther
off, rose the dark woods of La Mionne.

Divided! The domain was going to be divided! The heart of the poor
priest was rent by this bitter thought. All that for thirty years had
been inseparable, indivisible to him. It was a little his own, his very
own, his estate, this great property. He felt at home on the lands
of Longueval. It had happened more than once that he had stopped
complacently before an immense cornfield, plucked an ear, removed the
husk, and said to himself:

"