‘Ah! it’s Brother Archangias,’ she said, turning round.  ’You came in by the sacristy then?  You gave me quite a turn.  Your voice seemed to sound from under the floor.’

Abbe Mouret had resumed his work, after greeting the Brother with a slight nod.  The Brother remained standing there in silence, with his fat hands clasped in front of his cassock.  Then, shrugging his shoulders, as he observed with what scrupulous care the priest sought to make his beading perfectly straight, he repeated: 

‘It will be really too beautiful.’

La Teuse, who knelt near by in ecstasy, started again.

‘Dear me!’ she said, ’I had quite forgotten you were there.  You really ought to cough before you speak.  You have a voice that comes on one so suddenly that one might think it was a voice from the grave.’

She rose up and drew back a little the better to admire the Abbe’s work.

‘Why too beautiful?’ she asked.  ’Nothing can be too beautiful when it is done for the Almighty.  If his reverence had only had some gold, he would have done it with gold, I’m sure.’

When the priest had finished, she hastened to change the altar-cloth, taking the greatest care not to smudge the beading.  Then she arranged the cross, the candlesticks, and the vases symmetrically.  Abbe Mouret had gone to lean against the wooden screen which separated the choir from the nave, by the side of Brother Archangias.  Not a word passed between them.  Their eyes were fixed upon the silver crucifix, which, in the increasing gloom, still cast some glimmer of light on the feet and the left side and the right temple of the big Christ.  When La Teuse had finished, she came down towards them, triumphantly.

‘Doesn’t it look lovely?’ she asked.  ’Just you see what a crowd there will be at mass to-morrow!  Those heathens will only come to God’s house when they think He is well-to-do.  Now, Monsieur le Cure, we must do as much for the Blessed Virgin’s altar.’

‘Waste of money!’ growled Brother Archangias.

But La Teuse flew into a tantrum; and, as Abbe Mouret remained silent, she led them both before the altar of the Virgin, pushing them and dragging them by their cassocks.

‘Just look at it,’ said she; ’it is too shabby for anything, now that the high altar is so smart.  It looks as though it had never been painted at all.  However much I may rub it of a morning, the dust sticks to it.  It is quite black; it is filthy.  Do you know what people will say about you, your reverence?  They will say that you care nothing for the Blessed Virgin; that’s what they’ll say.’

‘Well, what of it?’ queried Brother Archangias.

La Teuse looked at him, half suffocated by indignation.

‘What of it?  It would be sinful, of course,’ she muttered.  ’This altar is like a neglected tomb in a graveyard.  If it were not for me, the spiders would spin their webs across it, and moss would soon grow over it.  From time to time, when I can spare a bunch of flowers, I give it to the Virgin.  All the flowers in our garden used to be for her once.’