’Monsieur le Cure is free to do as he pleases, since the parish hasn’t got to find the money,’ said old Bambousse, who came round every evening to see how the work was progressing.

Abbe Mouret spent all his savings on it.  Some of his decorations, indeed, were so awkward that they would have excited many people’s smiles.  The replastering of the stonework soon tired him:  so he contented himself with patching up the church walls all round to a height of some six feet from the ground.  La Teuse mixed the plaster.  When she talked of repairing the parsonage as well, for she was continually fearing that it would topple down on their heads, he told her that he did not think he could manage it, that a regular workman would be necessary; a reply which led to a terrible quarrel between them.  La Teuse said it was quite ridiculous to go on ornamenting the church, where nobody slept, while their bedrooms were in such a crazy condition, for she was quite sure they would all be found, one morning, crushed to death by the fallen ceilings.

‘I shall end by bringing my bed here, and placing it behind the altar,’ she grumbled.  ‘I feel quite terrified sometimes at night.’

However, when the plaster was all used up, she said no more about repairing the parsonage.  The painting which the priest executed quite delighted her.  It was the chief charm of the improvements.  The Abbe, who had repaired the woodwork everywhere with bits of boards, took particular pleasure in spreading his big brush, dipped in bright yellow paint, over all this woodwork.  The gentle, up-and-down motion of the brush lulled him, left him thoughtless for hours whilst he gazed on the oily streaks of paint.  When everything was quite yellow, the pulpit, the confessional-box, the altar rails, even the clock-case itself, he ventured to try his hand at imitation marble work by way of touching up the high altar.  Then, growing bolder, he painted it all over.  Glistening with white and yellow and blue, it was pronounced superb.  People who had not been to mass for fifty years streamed into the church to see it.

And now the paint was dry.  All that remained for Abbe Mouret to do was to edge the panels with brown beading.  So, that afternoon, he set to work at it, wishing to get it done by evening; for on the following day, as he had reminded La Teuse, there would be high mass.  She was there ready to arrange the altar.  She had already placed on the credence the candlesticks and the silver cross, the porcelain vases filled with artificial roses, and the laced cloth which was only used on great festivals.  The beading, however, proved so difficult of execution, that it was not completed till late in the evening.  It was growing quite dark as the Abbe finished his last panel.

‘It will be really too beautiful,’ said a rough voice from amidst the greyish gloom of twilight which was filling the church.

La Teuse, who had knelt down to get a better view of the Abbe’s brush as it glided along his rule, started with alarm.