Jeanne only bent her head in feeble resignation.
"What do you intend to do?" asked the priest.
"What do you wish me to do, Monsieur l"abbe?" she murmured.
"Throw yourself in the way as an obstacle to this guilty love," he answered, violently.
She began to cry, and said in a broken voice:
"But he has deceived me before with a servant; he wouldn"t listen to me; he doesn"t love me now; he ill-treats me if I manifest any desire that does not please him, so what can I do?"
The cure did not make any direct answer to this appeal.
"Then you bow before this sin! You submit to it!" he exclaimed. "You consent to and tolerate adultery under your own roof! The crime is being perpetrated before your eyes, and you refuse to see it! Are you a Christian woman? Are you a wife and a mother?"
"What would you have me do?" she sobbed.
"Anything rather than allow this sin to continue," he replied.
"Anything, I tell you. Leave him. Flee from this house which has been defiled."
"But I have no money, Monsieur l"abbe," she replied. "And I am not brave now like I used to be. Besides, how can I leave without any proofs of what you are saying? I have not the right to do so."
The priest rose to his feet, quivering with indignation.
"You are listening to the dictates of your cowardice, madame. I thought you were a different woman, but you are unworthy of G.o.d"s mercy."
She fell on her knees:
"Oh! Do not abandon me, I implore you. Advise me what to do."
"Open M. de Fourville"s eyes," he said, shortly. "It is his duty to end this _liaison_."
She was seized with terror at this advice.
"But he would kill them, Monsieur l"abbe! And should I be the one to tell him? Oh, not that! Never, never!"
He raised his hand as if to curse her, his whole soul stirred with anger.
"Live on in your shame and in your wickedness, for you are more guilty than they are. You are the wife who condones her husband"s sin! My place is no longer here."
He turned to go, trembling all over with wrath. She followed him distractedly, ready to give in, and beginning to promise; but he would not listen to her and strode rapidly along, furiously shaking his big blue umbrella which was nearly as high as himself. He saw Julien standing near the gate superintending the pruning of some trees, so he turned off to the left to reach the road by way of the Couillards" farm, and as he walked he kept saying to Jeanne:
"Leave me, madame. I have nothing further to say to you."
In the middle of the yard, and right in his path, some children were standing around the kennel of the dog Mirza, their attention concentrated on something which the baron was also carefully considering as he stood in their midst with his hands behind his back, looking like a schoolmaster.
"Do come and see me again, Monsieur l"abbe," pleaded Jeanne. "If you will return in a few days, I shall be able to tell you then what I think is the best course to take, and we can talk it over together."
By that time they had almost reached the group of children (which the baron had left, to avoid meeting and speaking to his enemy, the priest) and the cure went to see what it was that was interesting them so deeply. It was the dog whelping; five little pups were already crawling round the mother, who gently licked them as she lay on her side before the kennel, and just as the cure looked over the children"s heads, a sixth appeared. When they saw it, all the boys and girls clapped their hands, crying:
"There"s another! There"s another!"
To them it was simply a perfectly pure and natural amus.e.m.e.nt, and they watched these pups being born as they might have watched the apples falling from a tree.
The Abbe Tolbiac stood still for a moment in horrified surprise, then, giving way to his pa.s.sion, he raised his umbrella and began to rain down blows on the children"s heads. The startled urchins ran off as fast as they could go, and the abbe found himself left alone with the dog, which was painfully trying to rise. Before she could stand up, he knocked her back again, and began to hit her with all his strength. The animal moaned pitifully as she writhed under these blows from which there was no escape (for she was chained up) and at last the priest"s umbrella broke. Then, unable to beat the dog any longer, he jumped on her, and stamped and crushed her under-foot in a perfect frenzy of anger. Another pup was born beneath his feet before he dispatched the mother with a last furious kick, and then the mangled body lay quivering in the midst of the whining pups, which were awkwardly groping for their mother"s teats. Jeanne had escaped, but the baron returned and, almost as enraged as the priest, suddenly seized the abbe by the throat, and giving him a blow which knocked his hat off, carried him to the fence and threw him out into the road.
When he turned round, M. le Perthuis saw his daughter kneeling in the midst of the pups, sobbing as she picked them up and put them in her skirt. He strode up to her gesticulating wildly.
"There!" he exclaimed. "What do you think of that surpliced wretch, now?"
The noise had brought the farmpeople to the spot, and they all stood round, gazing at the remains of the dog.
"Could one have believed that a man would be so cruel as that!" said Couillard"s wife.
Jeanne picked up the pups, saying she would bring them up by hand; she tried to give them some milk, but three out of seven died the next day.
Then old Simon went all over the neighborhood trying to find a foster-mother for the others; he could not get a dog, but he brought back a cat, a.s.serting that she would do as well. Three more pups were killed, and the seventh was given to the cat, who took to it directly, and lay down on her side to suckle it. That it might not exhaust its foster-mother the pup was weaned a fortnight later, and Jeanne undertook to feed it herself with a feeding-bottle; she had named it Toto, but the baron rechristened it, and called it Ma.s.sacre.
The priest did not go to see Jeanne again. The next Sunday he hurled curses and threats against the chateau, denouncing it as a plague-spot which ought to be removed, and going on to anathematize the baron (who laughed at him) and to make veiled, half-timid allusions to Julien"s latest amour. The vicomte was very vexed at this, but he did not dare say anything for fear of giving rise to a scandal; and the priest continued to call down vengeance on their heads, and to foretell the downfall of G.o.d"s enemies in every sermon. At last, Julien wrote a decided, though respectful, letter to the archbishop, and the Abbe Tolbiac, finding himself threatened with disgrace, ceased his denunciations. He began to take long solitary walks; often he was to be met striding along the roads with an ardent, excited look on his face.
Gilberte and Julien were always seeing him when they were out riding, sometimes in the distance, on the other side of a common, or on the edge of the cliff, sometimes close at hand, reading his breviary in a narrow valley they were just about to pa.s.s through; they always turned another way to avoid pa.s.sing him. Spring had come, enflaming their hearts with fresh desires, and urging them to seek each other"s embraces in any secluded spot to which their rides might lead them; but the leaves were only budding, the gra.s.s was still damp from the rains of winter, and they could not, as in the height of summer, hide themselves amidst the undergrowth of the woods. Lately, they had generally sheltered their caresses within a movable shepherd"s hut which had been left since autumn, on the very top of the Vaucotte hill. It stood all alone on the edge of the precipitous descent to the valley, five hundred yards above the cliff. There they felt quite secure, for they overlooked the whole of the surrounding country, and they fastened their horses to the shafts to wait until their masters were satiated with love.
One evening as they were leaving the hut, they saw the Abbe Tolbiac sitting on the hill-side, nearly hidden by the rushes.
"We must leave our horses in that ravine, another time," said Julien; "in case they should tell our whereabouts," and thenceforth they always tied their horses up in a kind of recess in the valley, which was hidden by bushes.
Another evening, they were both returning to La Vrillette where the comte was expecting Julien to dinner, when they met the cure coming out of the chateau. He bowed, without looking them in the face, and stood on one side to let them pa.s.s. For the moment his visit made them uneasy, but their anxiety was soon dispelled.
Jeanne was sitting by the fire reading, one windy afternoon at the beginning of May, when she suddenly saw the Comte de Fourville running towards the chateau at such a rate as to make her fear he was the bearer of bad news. She hastened downstairs to meet him, and when she saw him close, she thought he must have gone mad. He had on his shooting-jacket and a big fur cap, that he generally only wore on his own grounds, and he was so pale that his red moustaches (which, as a rule, hardly showed against his ruddy face) looked the color of flame.
His eyes were haggard and stared vacantly or rolled from side to side.
"My wife is here, isn"t she?" he gasped.
"No," answered Jeanne, too frightened to think of what she was saying; "I have not seen her at all to-day."
The comte dropped into a chair, as if his legs had no longer strength to support him, and, taking off his cap, he mechanically pa.s.sed his handkerchief several times across his forehead; then he started to his feet, and went towards Jeanne with outstretched hands, and mouth opened to speak and tell her of his terrible grief. But suddenly he stopped short, and fixing his eyes on her, murmured, as if he were delirious: "But it is your husband--you also--" and breaking off abruptly, he rushed out towards the sea.
Jeanne ran after him, calling him and imploring him to stop. "He knows all!" she thought, in terror. "What will he do? Oh, pray heaven he may not find them."
He did not listen to her, and evidently knowing whither to direct his steps, ran straight on without any hesitation as to the path he should take. Already he had leapt across the ditch, and was rapidly striding across the reeds towards the cliff. Finding she could not catch him up, Jeanne stood on the slope beyond the wood, and watched him as long as he was in sight; then, when she could see him no longer, she went indoors again, tortured with fear and anxiety.
When he reached the edge of the cliff, the comte turned to the right, and again began to run. The sea was very rough, and one after the other the heavy clouds came up and poured their contents on the land. A whistling moaning wind swept over the gra.s.s, laying low the young barley, and carrying the great, white seagulls inland like sprays of foam. The rain, which came in gusts, beat in the comte"s face and drenched his cheeks and moustaches, and the tumult of the elements seemed to fill his heart as well as his ears. There, straight before him in the distance, lay the Vaucotte valley, and between it and him stood a solitary shepherd"s hut, with two horses tied to the shafts. (What fear could there be of anyone seeing them on such a day as this?)
As soon as he caught sight of the animals, the comte threw himself flat on the ground, and dragged himself along on his hands and knees, his hairy cap and mud-stained clothes making him look like some monstrous animal. He crawled to the lonely hut, and, in case its occupants should see him through the cracks in the planks he hid himself beneath it. The horses had seen him and were pawing the ground. He slowly cut the reins by which they were fastened with a knife that he held open in his hand, and, as a fresh gust of wind swept by, the two animals cantered off, their backs stung by the hail which lashed against the sloping roof of the shepherd"s cot, and made the frail abode tremble on its wheels.
Then the comte rose to his knees, put his eye to the slit at the bottom of the door, and remained perfectly motionless while he watched and waited. Some time pa.s.sed thus, and then he suddenly leapt to his feet, covered with mire from head to foot. Furiously he fastened the bolt, which secured the shelter on the outside, and seizing the shafts, he shook the hut as if he would have broken it to atoms. After a moment he began to drag it along--exerting the strength of a bull, and bending nearly double in his tremendous effort--and it was towards the almost perpendicular slope to the valley that he hurried the cottage and its human occupants who were desperately shouting and trying to burst open the door, in their ignorance of what had happened.
At the extreme edge of the slope, the comte let go of the hut, and it at once begun to run down towards the valley. At first it moved but slowly, but, its speed increasing as it went, it moved quicker and quicker, until soon it was rushing down the hill at a tremendous rate. Its shafts b.u.mped along the ground and it leaped over and dashed against the obstacles in its path, as if it had been endowed with life; it bounded over the head of an old beggar who was crouching in a ditch, and, as it pa.s.sed, the man heard frightful cries issuing from within it. All at once one of the wheels was torn off, and the hut turned over on its side. That however, did not stop it, and now it rolled over and over like a ball, or like some house uprooted from its foundations and hurled from the summit of a mountain. It rolled on and on until it reached the edge of the last ravine; there it took a final leap, and after describing a curve, fell to the earth, and smashed like an egg-sh.e.l.l.