’But, my dear, it is needful that your friends should talk to you.  I am sure that you have too much sense to think that a young woman like yourself should refuse to hear her friends.’  Marie had it almost on her tongue to tell the priest that the only friends to whom she chose to listen were her uncle and her aunt, but she thought that it might perhaps be better that she should remain silent.  ’Of course, my dear, a young person like you must know that she must walk by advice, and I am sure you must feel that no one can give it you more fittingly than your own priest.’  Then he took a large pinch of snuff.

‘If it were anything to do with the Church,—­yes,’ she said.

’And this has to do with the Church, very much.  Indeed I do not know how any of our duties in this life cannot have to do with the Church.  There can be no duty omitted as to which you would not acknowledge that it was necessary that you should get absolution from your priest.’

‘But that would be in the church,’ said Marie, not quite knowing how to make good her point.

’Whether you are in the church or out of it, is just the same.  If you were sick and in bed, would your priest be nothing to you then?’

‘But I am quite well, Father Gondin.’

’Well in health; but sick in spirit,—­as I am sure you must own.  And I must explain to you, my dear, that this is a matter in which your religious duty is specially in question.  You have been betrothed, you know, to M. Urmand.’

‘But people betrothed are very often not married,’ said Marie quickly.  ’There was Annette Lolme at Saint Die.  She was betrothed to Jean Stein at Pugnac.  That was only last winter.  And then there was something wrong about the money; and the betrothal went for nothing, and Father Carrier himself said it was all right.  If it was all right for Annette Lolme, it must be all right for me as far as betrothing goes.’

The story that Marie told so clearly was perfectly true, and M. le Cure Gondin knew that it was true.  He wished now to teach Marie that if certain circumstances should occur after a betrothal which would make the marriage inexpedient in the eyes of the parents of the young people, then the authority of the Church would not exert itself to insist on the sacred nature of the pledge;—­but that if the pledge was to be called in question simply at the instance of a capricious young woman, then the Church would have full power.  His object, in short, was to insist on parental authority, giving to parental authority some little additional strength from his own sacerdotal recognition of the sanctity of the betrothing promise.  But he feared that Marie would be too strong for him, if not also too clear-headed.  ‘You cannot mean to tell me,’ said he, ’that you think such a solemn promise as you have given to this young man, taking one from him as solemn in return, is to go for nothing?’

’I am very sorry that I promised,—­very sorry indeed; but I cannot keep my promise.’