“Marie, go away for five minutes to your room, while I talk to Cesaire.”

The servant cast on the man an angry glance, and went away grumbling.

The clergyman went on: 

“Come, now, spin out your yarn.”

The young fellow still hesitated, looked down at his wooden shoes, moved about his cap, then, all of a sudden, he made up his mind: 

“Here it is:  I want to marry Celeste Levesque.”

“Well, my boy, what’s there to prevent you?”

“The father won’t have it.”

“Your father?”

“Yes, my father.”

“What does your father say?”

“He says she has a child.”

“She’s not the first to whom that happened, since our Mother Eve.”

“A child by Victor Lecoq, Anthione Loisel’s servant-man.”

“Ha! ha!  So he won’t have it?”

“He won’t have it.”

“What! not at all?”

“No, no more than an ass that won’t budge an inch, saving your presence.”

“What do you say to him yourself in order to make him decide?”

“I say to him that she’s a good girl, and strong too, and thrifty also.”

“And this does not make him settle it.  So you want me to speak to him?”

“Exactly.  You speak to him.”

“And what am I to tell your father?”

“Why, what you tell people in your sermons to make them give you sous.”

In the peasant’s mind every effort of religion consisted in loosening the purses, in emptying the pockets of men in order to fill the heavenly coffer.  It was a kind of huge commercial establishment, of which the cures were the clerks, sly, crafty clerks, sharp as anyone must be who does business for the good God at the expense of the country people.

He knew full well that the priests rendered services, great services to the poorest, to the sick and dying, that they assisted, consoled, counseled, sustained, but all this by means of money, in exchange for white pieces, for beautiful glittering coins, with which they paid for sacraments and masses, advice and protection, pardon of sins and indulgences, purgatory and paradise accompanying the yearly income, and the generosity of the sinner.

The Abbe Raffin, who knew his man, and who never lost his temper, burst out laughing.

“Well, yes, I’ll tell your father my little story; but you, my lad, you’ll go there—­to the sermon.”

Houlbreque extended his hand in order to give a solemn assurance: 

“On the word of a poor man, if you do this for me, I promise that I will.”

“Come, that’s all right.  When do you wish me to go and find your father?”

“Why the sooner the better—­to-night if you can.”

“In half-an-hour, then, after supper.”

“In half-an-hour.”

“That’s understood.  So long, my lad.”

“Good-bye till we meet again, Monsieur le Cure; many thanks.”