With these enigmatic words, he dismissed the young lover, who returned to the chateau, vexed and disturbed by his strange reception.

The moment the door of the presbytery had closed behind Claudet, the Abbe Pernot, flinging to one side all his preparations, began to pace nervously up and down the principal garden-walk.  He appeared completely unhinged.  His features were drawn, through an unusual tension of ideas forced upon him.  He had hurriedly caught his skullcap from his head, as if he feared the heat of his meditation might cause a rush of blood to the head.  He quickened his steps, then stopped suddenly, folded his arms with great energy, then opened them again abruptly to thrust his hands into the pockets of his gown, searching through them with feverish anxiety, as if he expected to find something which might solve obscure and embarrassing questions.

“Good Lord!  Good Lord!  What a dreadful piece of business; and right in the bird season, too!  But I can say nothing to Claudet.  It is a secret that does not belong to me.  How can I get out of it?  Tutt! tutt! tutt!”

These monosyllabic ejaculations broke forth like the vexed clucking of a frightened blackbird; after which relief, the Abbe resumed his fitful striding up and down the box-bordered alley.  This lasted until the hour of twilight, when Augustine, the servant, as soon as the Angelus had sounded, went to inform her master that they were waiting prayers for him in the church.  He obeyed the summons, although in a somewhat absent mood, and hurried over the services in a manner which did not contribute to the edification of the assistants.  As soon as he got home, he ate his Supper without appetite, mumbled his prayers, and shut himself up in the room he used as a study and workshop.  He remained there until the night was far advanced, searching through his scanty library to find two dusty volumes treating of “cases of conscience,” which he looked eagerly over by the feeble light of his study lamp.  During this laborious search he emitted frequent sighs, and only left off reading occasionally in order to dose himself plentifully with snuff.  At last, as he felt that his eyes were becoming inflamed, his ideas conflicting in his brain, and as his lamp was getting low, he decided to go to bed.  But he slept badly, turned over at least twenty times, and was up with the first streak of day to say his mass in the chapel.  He officiated with more dignity and piety than was his wont; and after reading the second gospel he remained for a long while kneeling on one of the steps of the altar.  After he had returned to the sacristy, he divested himself quickly of his sacerdotal robes, reached his room by a passage of communication, breakfasted hurriedly, and putting on his three-cornered hat, and seizing his knotty, cherry-wood cane, he shot out of doors as if he had been summoned to a fire.