"Mesdames!"

The priest\'s massive frame filled the narrow door; the tones of his mellow voice seemed also suddenly to fill the air, drowning all other sounds. The grace of his manner, a grace that invested the simple act of his uncovering and the holding of his calotte in hand, with an air of homage, made also our own errand the more difficult.

I had already begun to murmur the nature of our errand: we were passing, we had seen the manoir opposite, we had heard it was to rent, also that he, Monsieur le Curé, had the keys.

Yes, the keys were here. Then the velvet in Monsieur le Curé\'s eyes turned to bronze, as they looked out at us from beneath the fine dome of brow.

"I have the keys of the garden only, mesdames," he replied, with perfect but somewhat distant courtesy; "the gardener, down the road yonder, has the keys of the house. Do you really wish to rent the house?"

He had seen through our ruse with quick Norman penetration. He had not, from the first, been in the least deceived.

It became the more difficult to smooth the situation into shape. "We had thought perhaps to rent a villa, we were in one now at Villerville. If Monsieur le curé would let us look at the garden. Monsieur Renard, whom perhaps he remembered—

"M. Renard! Oh ho! Oh ho! I see it all now," and a deep, mellow laugh smote the air. The keenness in the fine eyes melted into mirth, a mirth that laid the fine head back on the broad shoulders, that the laugh that shook the powerful frame might have the fuller play.

"Ah, mes enfants, I see it all now—it is that scoundrel of a boy. I\'ll warrant he\'s there, over yonder, already. He was here yesterday, he was here the day before, and he is afraid, he is ashamed to ask again for the keys. But come, mes enfants, come, let us go in search of him." And the little door was closed with a slam. Down the broad roadway the next instant fluttered the old curé\'s soutane. We followed, but could scarcely keep pace with the brisk, vigorous strides. The sabots ploughed into the dust. The cane stamped along in company with the sabots, all three in a fury of impatience. The curé\'s step and his manner might have been those of a boy, burning with haste to discover a playmate in hiding. All the keenness and shrewdness on the fine, ruddy face had melted into sweetness; an exuberance of mirth seemed to be the sap that fed his rich nature. It was easy to see he had passed the meridian of his existence in a realm of high spirits; an irrepressible fountain within, the fountain of an unquenchable good-humor, bathed the whole man with the hues of health. Ripe red lips curved generously over superb teeth; the cheeks were glowing, as were the eyes, the crimson below them deepening to splendor the velvet in the iris. The one severe line in the face, the thin, straight nose, ended in wide nostrils in the quivering, mobile nostrils of the humorist. The swell of the gourmand\'s paunch beneath the soutane was proof that the curé was a true Norman he had not passed a lifetime in these fertile gardens forgetful of the fact that the fine art of good living is the one indulgence the Church has left to its celibate sons.

Meanwhile, our guide was peering with quick, excited gaze, through the thick foliage of the park; his fine black eyes were sweeping the parterre and terrace.

"Ah-h!" his rich voice cried out, mockingly; and he stopped, suddenly, to plant his cane in the ground with mock fierceness.

"Tiens, Monsieur le Curé!" cried Renard, from behind a tree, in a beautiful voice. It was a voice that matched with his well-acted surprise, when he appeared, confronting us, on the other side of the tree-trunk.

The curé opened his arms.

"Ah, mon enfant, viens, viens! how good it is to see thee once again!"

They were in each other\'s arms. The curé was pressing his lips to Renard\'s cheek, in hearty French fashion. The priest, however, administered his reproof before he released him. Renard\'s broad shoulders received a series of pats, which turned to blows, dealt by the curé\'s herculean hand.

"Why didn\'t you let me know you were here, yesterday, Hein? Answer me that. How goes the picture? Is it set up yet? You see, mesdames," turning with a reddened cheek and gleaming eyes, "it is thus I punish him—for he has no heart, no sensibilities—he only understands severities! And he defrauded me yesterday, he cheated me. I didn\'t even know of his being here till he had gone. And the picture, where is it?"

It was on an easel, sunning itself beneath the park trees. The old priest clattered along the gravelly walk, to take a look at it.

"Tiens—it grows—the figures begin to move—they are almost alive. There should be a trifle more shadow under the chin, what do you think?"

Henri raised his chin. Henri had undergone the process of transformation in our absence. He was now M. le Marquis de Pompadour—under the heart-shaped arch of the great trees, he was standing, resplendent in laces, in glistening satins, leaning on a rusty, dull-jewelled sword. Renard had mounted his palette; he was dipping already into the mounds of color that dotted the palette-board, with his long brushes. On the canvas, in colors laid on by the touch of genius, this archway beneath which we were standing reared itself aloft; the park trees were as tall and noble, transfixed in their image of immutable calm, on that strip of linen, as they towered now above us; even the yellow cloud of the laburnum blossoms made the sunshine of the shaded grass, as it did here, where else no spot of sun might enter, so dense was the night of shade. The life of another day and time lived, however, beneath that shade; Charm and the curé, as they drooped over the canvas, confronted a graceful, attenuated courtier, sickening in a languor of adoration, and a sprightly coquette, whose porcelain beauty was as finished as the feathery edges of her lacy sleeves.

"Très bien très bien" said the curé, nodding his head in critical commendation. "It will be a little masterpiece. And now," waving his hand toward us, "what do you propose to do with these ladies while you are painting?"

"Oh, they can wander about," Renard replied, abstractedly. He had already reseated himself and had begun to ply his brushes; he now saw only Henri and the hilt of the sword he was painting in.

"I knew it, I could have told you—a painter hasn\'t the manners of a peasant when he\'s painting," cried the priest, lifting cane and hands high in air, in mock horror. "But all the better, all the better, I shall have you all to myself. Come, come with me. You can see the house later. I\'ll send for the gardener. It\'s too fine a day to be indoors. What a day, hein? Le bon Dieu sends us such days now and then, to make us ache for paradise. This way, this way—we\'ll go through the little door—my little door; it was made for me, you know, when the manoir was last inhabited. I and the children were too impatient—we suffered from that malady—all of us—we never could wait for the great gates yonder to be opened. So Monsieur de H—— built us this one." The little door opened directly on the road, and on the curé\'s house. There was a tangle of underbrush barring the way; but the curé pushed the briars apart with his strong hands, beating them down with his cane.

When the door opened, we passed directly beyond the roadway, to the steep steps leading to the church. The curé, before mounting the steps, swept the road, upward and downward, with his keen glance. It was the instinctive action of the provincial, scenting the chance of novelty. Some distant object, in the meeting of two distant roadways, arrested the darting eyes; this time, at least, he was to be rewarded for his prudence in looking about him. The object slowly resolved itself into two crutches between which hung the limp figure of a one-legged man.

"Bonjour, Monsieur le curé." The crutches came to a standstill; the cripple\'s hand went up to doff a ragged worsted cap.

"Good-day, good-day, my friend; how goes it? Not quite so stiff, hein—in such a bath of sunlight as this? Good-day, good-day."

The crutches and their burden passed on, kicking a little cloud of dust about the lean figure.

"Un peu cassé, le bonhomme" he said, as he nodded to the cripple in a tone of reflection, as if the breakage that bad befallen his humble friend were a fresh incident in his experience. "Yes, he\'s a little broken, the poor old man; but then," he added, quickly renewing his tone of unquenchable high spirits—"one doesn\'t die of it. No, one doesn\'t die, fortunately. Why, we\'re all more or less cracked, or broken up here."

He shook another laugh out, as he preceded us up the stone steps. Then he turned to stop for a moment to point his cane toward the small house with whose chimneys we were now on a level. "There, mesdames, there is the proof that more breaking doesn\'t signify in this matter of life and death, Tenez, madame—" and with a charming gesture he laid his richly-veined, strong old hand on my arm—a hand that ended in beautiful fingers, each with its rim of moon-shaped dirt; "tenez—figure to yourself, madame, that I myself have been here twenty years, and I came for two! I bought out the bonhomme who lived over yonder.

"I bought him and his furniture out. I said to myself, \'I\'ll buy it for eight hundred, and I\'ll sell it for four hundred, in a year.\'" Here he laid his finger on his nose—lengthwise, the Norman in him supplanting the priest in his remembrance of a good bargain. "And now it is twenty years since then. Everything creaks and cracks over there: all of us creak and crack. You should hear my chairs, elles se cassent les reins—they break their thighs continually. Ah! there goes another, I cry out, as I sit down in one in winter and hear them groan. Poor old things, they are of the Empire, no wonder they groan. You should see us, when our brethren come to take a cup of soup with me. Such a collection of antiquities as we are! I catch them, my brothers, looking about, slyly peering into the secrets of my little ménage. \'From his ancestors, doubtless, these old chairs and tables, say these good frères, under their breath. And then I wink slyly at the chairs, and they never let on."

Again the mellow laugh broke forth. He stopped again to puff and blow a little, from his toil up the steep steps. Then all at once, as the rough music of his clicking s............