After I had been in the house half an hour I could not help saying what was in my heart.  I thought of my past life, of my disappointment and my ennui; I walked to and fro, breathing the fragrance of the flowers and looking at the sun.  I asked her to sing, and she did so with good grace.  In the mean time I leaned on the window-sill and watched the birds flitting about the garden.  A saying of Montaigne’s came into my head:  “I neither love nor esteem sadness, although the world has invested it, at a given price, with the honor of its particular favor.  They dress up in it wisdom, virtue, conscience.  Stupid and absurd adornment.”

“What happiness!” I cried, in spite of myself.  “What repose!  What joy!  What forgetfulness of self!”

The good aunt raised her head and looked at me with an air of astonishment; Madame Pierson stopped short.  I became red as fire when conscious of my folly, and sat down without a word.

We went out into the garden.  The white goat I had seen the evening before was lying in the grass; it came up to her and followed us about the garden.

When we reached the end of the garden walk, a large young man with a pale face, clad in a kind of black cassock, suddenly appeared at the railing.  He entered without knocking and bowed to Madame Pierson; it seemed to me that his face, which I considered a bad omen, darkened a little when he saw me.  He was a priest I had often seen in the village, and his name was Mercanson; he came from St. Sulpice and was related to the cure of the parish.

He was large and at the same time pale, a thing which always displeases me and which is, in fact, unpleasant; it impresses me as a sort of diseased healthfulness.  Moreover, he had the slow yet jerky way of speaking that characterizes the pedant.  Even his manner of walking, which was not that of youth and health, repelled me; as for his glance, it might be said that he had none.  I do not know what to think of a man whose eyes have nothing to say.  These are the signs which led me to an unfavorable opinion of Mercanson, an opinion which was unfortunately correct.

He sat down on a bench and began to talk about Paris, which he called the modern Babylon.  He had been there, he knew every one; he knew Madame de B------, who was an angel; he had preached sermons in her salon and was listened to on bended knee. (The worst of this was that it was true.) One of his friends, who had introduced him there, had been expelled from school for having seduced a girl; a terrible thing to do, very sad.  He paid Madame Pierson a thousand compliments for her charitable deeds throughout the country; he had heard of her benefactions, her care for the sick, her vigils at the bed of suffering and of death.  It was very beautiful and noble; he would not fail to speak of it at St. Sulpice.  Did he not seem to say that he would not fail to speak of it to God?

Wearied by this harangue, in order to conceal my rising disgust, I sat down on the grass and began to play with the goat.  Mercanson turned on me his dull and lifeless eye: