Nothing was said to Marie about her sins on that afternoon after her uncle had started on his journey. Everything in the hotel was blank, and sad, and gloomy; but there was, at any rate, the negative comfort of silence, and Marie was allowed to go about the house and do her work without rebuke. But she observed that the Cure — M. le Cure Gondin — sat much with her aunt during the evening, and she did not doubt but that she herself and her iniquities made the subject of their discourse.
M. le Cure Gondin, as he was generally called at Granpere,— being always so spoken of, with his full name and title, by the large Protestant portion of the community,— was a man very much respected by all the neighbourhood. He was respected by the Protestants because he never interfered with them, never told them, either behind their backs or before their faces, that they would be damned as heretics, and never tried the hopeless task of converting them. In his intercourse with them he dropped the subject of religion altogether,— as a philologist or an entomologist will drop his grammar or his insects in his intercourse with those to whom grammar and insects are matters of indifference. And he was respected by the Catholics of both sorts,— by those who did not and by those who did adhere with strictness to the letter of their laws of religion. With the former he did his duty, perhaps without much enthusiasm. He preached to them, if they would come and listen to him. He christened them, confessed them, and absolved them from their sins,- -of course, after due penitence. But he lived with them, too, in a friendly way, pronouncing no anathemas against them, because they were not as attentive to their religious exercises as they might have been. But with those who took a comfort in sacred things, who liked to go to early masses in cold weather, to be punctual at ceremonies, to say the rosary as surely as the evening came, who knew and performed all the intricacies of fasting as ordered by the bishop, down to the refinement of an egg more or less, in the whole Lent, or the absence of butter from the day’s cookery,— with these he had all that enthusiasm which such people like to encounter in their priest. We may say, therefore, that he was a wise man,— and probably, on the whole, a good man; that he did good service in his parish, and helped his people along in their lives not inefficiently. He was a small man, with dark hair very closely cut, with a tonsure that was visible but not more than visible; with a black beard that was shaved every Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday evenings, but which was very black indeed on the Tuesday and Friday mornings. He always wore the black gown of his office, but would go about his parish with an ordinary soft slouch hat,— thus subjecting his appearance to an absence of ecclesiastical trimness which, perhaps, the most enthusiastic of his friends regretted. Madame Voss certainly would have wished that he would have had himself shaved at any rate every other day, and that he would have abstained from showing himself in the streets of Granpere without his clerical hat. But, though she was very intimate with her Cure, and had conferred upon him much material kindness, she had never dared to express her opinion to him upon these matters.
During much of that afternoon M. le Cure sat with Madame Voss, but not a word was said to Marie about her disobedience either by him or by her. Nevertheless, Marie felt that her sins were being discussed, and that the lecture was coming. She herself had never quite liked M. le Cure — not having any special reason for disliking him, but regarding him as a man who was perhaps a little deficient in spirit, and perhaps a trifle too mindful of his creature comforts. M. le Cure took a great deal of snuff, and Marie did not like snuff taking. Her uncle smoked a great deal of tobacco, and that she thought very nice and proper in a man. Had her uncle taken the snuff and the priest smoked the tobacco, she would probably have equally approved of her uncle’s practice and disapproved that of the priest;— because she loved the one and did not love the other. She had thought it probable that she might be sent for during the evening, and had, therefore, made for herself an immensity of household work, the performance of all which on that very evening the interests of the Lion d’Or would imperatively demand. The work was all done, but no message from Aunt Josey summoned Marie into the little parlour.
Nevertheless Marie had been quite right in her judgment. On the following morning, between eight and nine, M. le Cure was again in the house, and had a cup of coffee taken to him in the little parlour. Marie, who felt angry at his return, would not take it herself, but sent it in by the hands of Peter Veque. Peter Veque returned in a few minutes with a message to Marie, saying that M. le Cure wished to see her.
‘Tell him that I am very busy,’ said Marie. ‘Say that uncle is away, and that there is a deal to do. Ask him if another day won’t suit as well.’
She knew when she sent this message that another day would not suit as well. And she must have known also that her uncle’s absence made no difference in her work. Peter came back with a request from Madame Voss that Marie would go to her at once. Marie pressed her lips together, clenched her fists, and walked down into the room without the delay of an instant.
‘Marie, my dear,’ said Madame Voss, ‘M. le Cure wishes to speak to you. I will leave you for a few minutes.’ There was nothing for it but to listen. Marie could not refuse to be lectured by the priest. But she told herself that having had the courage to resist her uncle, it certainly was out of the question that any one else should have the power to move her.
‘My dear Marie,’ began the Cure, ‘your aunt has been telling me of this little difference between you and your affianced husband. Won’t you sit down, Marie, because we shall be able so to talk more comfortably?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it at all,’ said Marie. But she sat down as she was bidden.
‘But, my dear, it is needful that your friends should talk to you. I am sure that you have too much sense to think that a young woman like yourself should refuse to hear her friends.’ Marie had it almost on her tongue to tell the priest that the only friends to whom she chose to listen were her uncle and her aunt, but she thought that it might perhaps be better that she should remain silent. ‘Of course, my dear, a young person like you must know that she must walk by advice, and I am sure you must feel that no one can give it you more fittingly than your own priest.’ Then he took a large pinch of snuff.
‘If it were anything to do with the Church,— yes,’ she said.
‘And this has to do with the Church, very much. Indeed I do not know how any of our duties in this life cannot have to do with the Church. There can be no duty omitted as to which you would not acknowledge that it was necessary that you should get absolution from your priest.’
‘But that would be in the church,’ said Marie, not quite knowing how to make good her point.
‘Whether you are in the church or out of it, is just the same. If you were sick and in bed, would your priest be nothing to you then?’
‘But I am quite well, Father Gondin.’
‘Well in health; but sick in spirit,— as I am sure you must own. And I must explain to you, my dear, that this is a matter in which your religious duty is specially in question. You have been betrothed, you know, to M. Urmand.’
‘But people betrothed are very often not married,’ said Marie quickly. ‘There was Annette Lolme at Saint Die. She was betrothed to Jean Stein at Pu............