You want to forget.  Very good.  But I do not want to forget, and I shall not forget.  Oh, I well know what it is your want, Messieurs les Cures; you want young girls, quite young girls, green fruit, which you pick like that at the Confessional, or in some corner, without appearing to touch it, and all the while praying to God.  I am aware of that, you know.  You cannot teach any tricks to me.  You did not get up early enough, my good master.  Your Suzanne! there is what would please you.  You would not tell her that she is revolting.  Affected thing!  But they will give you them, wait a little. Go and see if they are coming, Jean.  The little girls come like that and throw themselves at your neck!  You would allow it perhaps.  That is what would be revolting.  But the mammas are watching, and the papas are opening their eyes.  You hear, Monsieur le Cure?  The papas; that is what annoys you.  Papa Durand.

—­Here! cried a voice of thunder from the bottom of the stair-case, and it resounded in Marcel’s ears like the trumpet of the last judgment.

Pale and terrified, he questioned Veronica with his eyes.

—­It is he, she said, hurrying to the landing-place.

LVIII.

PROVOCATION.

  “For her, for her I will drink the cup to the dregs.”

  A. DE VIGNY (Chatterton).

—­A thousand pardons, said the Captain, but the door was open and I have knocked twice.  Monsieur le Cure, I have the honour to salute you.  I am not disturbing you?

—­Not at all, Monsieur le Capitaine, quite the contrary, I am happy to see you; please come in, stammered Marcel, trying to conceal his confusion, and to look pleasantly at the old soldier.  He eagerly brought forward an arm-chair for him, the one on which Suzanne had sat.

“Ah,” he thought, “if he knew that his daughter was there, at this same place!”

The Captain sat down, and, tapping his cane on the floor, seemed to be seeking for a way of entering on his subject; he appeared anxious, and Marcel noticed that he no longer had his decisive scoffing manner.

—­Monsieur le Cure, he said after a moment’s silence, you must be a little surprised to see me ... although, after what I believe I heard, I may not be altogether a stranger here.

—­My parishioners are no strangers, Captain.

—­Parishioner! oh, I am hardly that.  I was not making allusion to that title, but to my name, which was uttered at the very moment when I was at your door.

—­Your name, Captain, said Marcel growing red; but there are several persons of your name.

—­That is what I said to myself.  There is more than one donkey which is called Neddy, and more than one Papa Durand in the world. Papa! that recalls to me my position as father, sir, and the purpose of my presence here.

Marcel trembled.