Then mute affliction dwelt in Bacadou’s farmhouse, sharing the breath and the bread of its inhabitants; and the priest of the Ploumar parish had great cause for congratulation.  He called upon the rich landowner, the Marquis de Chavanes, on purpose to deliver himself with joyful unction of solemn platitudes about the inscrutable ways of Providence.  In the vast dimness of the curtained drawing-room, the little man, resembling a black bolster, leaned towards a couch, his hat on his knees, and gesticulated with a fat hand at the elongated, gracefully-flowing lines of the clear Parisian toilette from which the half-amused, half-bored marquise listened with gracious languor.  He was exulting and humble, proud and awed.  The impossible had come to pass.  Jean-Pierre Bacadou, the enraged republican farmer, had been to mass last Sunday—­had proposed to entertain the visiting priests at the next festival of Ploumar!  It was a triumph for the Church and for the good cause.  “I thought I would come at once to tell Monsieur le Marquis.  I know how anxious he is for the welfare of our country,” declared the priest, wiping his face.  He was asked to stay to dinner.

The Chavanes returning that evening, after seeing their guest to the main gate of the park, discussed the matter while they strolled in the moonlight, trailing their long shadows up the straight avenue of chestnuts.  The marquise, a royalist of course, had been mayor of the commune which includes Ploumar, the scattered hamlets of the coast, and the stony islands that fringe the yellow flatness of the sands.  He had felt his position insecure, for there was a strong republican element in that part of the country; but now the conversion of Jean-Pierre made him safe.  He was very pleased.  “You have no idea how influential those people are,” he explained to his wife.  “Now, I am sure, the next communal election will go all right.  I shall be re-elected.”  “Your ambition is perfectly insatiable, Charles,” exclaimed the marquise, gaily.  “But, ma chere amie,” argued the husband, seriously, “it’s most important that the right man should be mayor this year, because of the elections to the Chamber.  If you think it amuses me . . .”

Jean-Pierre had surrendered to his wife’s mother.  Madame Levaille was a woman of business, known and respected within a radius of at least fifteen miles.  Thick-set and stout, she was seen about the country, on foot or in an acquaintance’s cart, perpetually moving, in spite of her fifty-eight years, in steady pursuit of business.  She had houses in all the hamlets, she worked quarries of granite, she freighted coasters with stone—­even traded with the Channel Islands.  She was broad-cheeked, wide-eyed, persuasive in speech:  carrying her point with the placid and invincible obstinacy of an old woman who knows her own mind.  She very seldom slept for two nights together in the same house; and the wayside inns were the best places to inquire in as to her whereabouts.  She had either passed, or