The Abbe perceived in the distance the farm of Blanche-Couronne; its red-tiled roofs showed distinctly against the verdure of the forest.  There, again, the Cure was at home.  Bernard, the farmer of the Marquise, was his friend; and when the old priest was delayed in his visits to the poor and sick, when the sun was sinking below the horizon, and the Abbe began to feel a little fatigued in his limbs, and a sensation of exhaustion in his stomach, he stopped and supped with Bernard, regaled himself with a savory stew and potatoes, and emptied his pitcher of cider; then, after supper, the farmer harnessed his old black mare to his cart, and took the vicar back to Longueval.  The whole distance they chatted and quarrelled.  The Abbe reproached the farmer with not going to mass, and the latter replied: 

“The wife and the girls go for me.  You know very well, Monsieur le Cure, that is how it is with us.  The women have enough religion for the men.  They will open the gates of paradise for us.”

And he added maliciously, while giving a touch of the whip to his old black mare: 

“If there is one!”

The Cure sprang from his seat.

“What! if there is one!  Of a certainty there is one.”

“Then you will be there, Monsieur le Cure.  You say that is not certain, and I say it is.  You will be there, you will be there, at the gate, on the watch for your parishioners, and still busy with their little affairs; and you will say to St. Peter—­for it is St. Peter, isn’t it, who keeps the keys of paradise?”

“Yes, it is St. Peter.”

“Well, you will say to him, to St. Peter, if he wants to shut the door in my face under the pretense that I did not go to mass—­you will say to him:  ’Bah! let him in all the same.  It is Bernard, one of the farmers of Madame la Marquise, an honest man.  He was common councilman, and he voted for the maintenance of the sisters when they were going to be expelled from the village school.’  That will touch St. Peter, who will answer:  ’Well, well, you may pass, Bernard, but it is only to please Monsieur le Cure.’  For you will be Monsieur le Cure up there, and Cure of Longueval, too, for paradise itself would be dull for you if you must give up being Cure of Longueval.”

Cure of Longueval!  Yes, all his life he had been nothing but Cure of Longueval, had never dreamed of anything else, had never wished to be anything else.  Three or four times excellent livings, with one or two curates, had been offered to him, but he had always refused them.  He loved his little church, his little village, his little vicarage.  There he had it all to himself, saw to everything himself; calm, tranquil, he went and came, summer and winter, in sunshine or storm, in wind or rain.  His frame became hardened by fatigue and exposure, but his soul remained gentle, tender, and pure.