As she returned to the kitchen she saw Abbe Mouret standing by the gate of the farmyard.  Desiree had stopped him there to make him feel a capon which she had been fattening for some weeks past.  He told her pleasantly that it was very heavy, and the big child chuckled with glee.

‘Ah! well,’ said La Teuse in a fury, ’that bird has got to crush its heart too.  But then it can’t help itself.’

IV

Abbe Mouret spent his days at the parsonage.  He shunned the long walks which he had been wont to take before his illness.  The scorched soil of Les Artaud, the ardent heat of that valley where the vines could never even grow straight, distressed him.  On two occasions, in the morning, he had attempted to go out and read his breviary as he strolled along the road; but he had not gone beyond the village.  He had returned home, overcome by the perfumes, the heat, the breadth of the landscape.  It was only in the evening, in the cool twilight air, that he ventured to saunter a little in front of the church, on the terrace which led to the graveyard.  In the afternoons, to fill up his time, and satisfy his craving for some kind of occupation, he had imposed upon himself the task of pasting paper over the broken panes of the church windows, This had kept him for a week mounted on a ladder, arranging his paper panes with great exactness, and laying on the paste with the most scrupulous care in order to avoid any mess.

La Teuse stood at the foot of the ladder and watched him.  And Desiree urged that he must not fill up all the windows, or else the sparrows would no longer be able to get through.  To please her, the priest left a pane or two in each window unfilled.  Then, having completed these repairs, he was seized with the ambition of decorating the church, without summoning to his aid either mason or carpenter or painter.  He would do it all himself.  This sort of handiwork would amuse him, he said, and help to bring back his strength.  Uncle Pascal encouraged him every time he called at the parsonage, assuring him that such exercise and fatigue were better than all the drugs in the world.  And so Abbe Mouret began to stop up the holes in the walls with plaster, to drive fresh nails into the disjoined altars, and to crush and mix paints, in order that he might put a new coating on the pulpit and confessional-box.  It was quite an event in the district, and folks talked of it for a couple of leagues round.  Peasants would come and stand gazing, with their hands behind their backs, at his reverence’s work.  The Abbe himself, with a blue apron tied round his waist, and his hands all soiled with his labour, became absorbed in it, and used it as an excuse for no longer going out.  He spent his days in the midst of his repairs, and was more tranquil than he had been before; almost cheerful, indeed, as he forgot the outer world, the trees and the sunshine and the warm breezes, which had formerly disturbed him so much.