He listened in the next room where his uncle was in bed, and heard his loud breathing.

—­And the hag who is watching still beneath the limes!  And the father who is at Vic, and who, I doubt not, is snoring too.  Come, all goes well! all goes well!

But he stopped, ashamed of himself.

—­Decidedly, he said to himself, I have become in a few days utterly bad.  I did not believe that it was possible to make such rapid progress in evil.  But nonsense.  Is it evil?  Has not God made wine to be drunk, flowers to be plucked, and women to be loved?  As to that weather-beaten old soldier, why should I feel any pity on his account?  He has been insolent, he has detested me without my ever having done anything to him; I have loved his daughter, his daughter has loved me, we are quits.  I do not see why I should distress myself about an adventure which would make so many people happy, and for which all my brethren would have very quickly sold the sacred Host and the holy Pyx besides.  Ah, my dear uncle, good father Ridoux, sleep, sleep in peace.  How greatly am I your debtor for what you have done for me, unwittingly and in spite of yourself; for, have you not, by urging me to drink more than is my custom, in order to draw my secret from me, given me the courage to undertake what I should never have dared to dream of? Audaces fortuna juvat.  Oh, Providence!  Providence!  She is mine, the girl with the dark eyes is mine!

He heard a slight noise in the corridor.

—­Good never comes alone, he continued, it always has evil for an escort.  Behind the sweet form of the angel, the grinning face of Satan.  He is coming upstairs and knocks at the door.

He had not lighted his lamp again, and he carefully refrained from answering.  He heard Veronica, trying to open the door and calling him in a low voice.  But he pretended to be deaf, and quietly got into bed, all the while cursing his accomplice, and thinking of the clumsy trap into which he had fallen like a fool, and of that thick and filthy spider’s web where, like an unwary and silly fly, he had daubed his wings.

What a difference between the chaste resistance of Suzanne, her tears and her defeat, and the hideous advances of that old courtesan of the sacristy!

In place of that unclean creature, accomplished in crime, oozing hypocrisy from every pore, he had an adorable, loving, charming mistress, such as he had never dared to dream of.  And all this alteration in a few hours! because he had faced it out, because, excited by intoxication, he had taken his courage in both hands, and because he had dared.

Oh, why had he not dared ere this?  He would not be under the infamous yoke of his servant.  And how many priests, he said to himself, for want of a little boldness, are devoted to a degrading concubinage with faded old spinsters!