II.
One day last winter, struggling against a heavy wind with his open umbrella, the Abbé Faber toiled painfully up the Rue Mouffetard, on the way to his parish, and, almost certain that his toil was useless, he regretted to himself the warm fire he had just quitted in his little room in the Rue D’homond, and the folio Bollandiste which he had left lying on the table, with his eye-glasses on its open pages. But it was Saturday night, the day when certain old widows, who earned their scant income in the neighboring boarding-houses, sometimes sought absolution for the morrow’s communion. The honest priest could not, therefore, excuse himself from entering his oak box and opening, with the punctuality of a cashier, that wicket where the devotees, for whom the confessional is a spiritual savings-bank, make a weekly deposit of their venial sins.
The Abbé Faber was the more sorry to go out, because that particular Saturday was pay-day, and on such occasions the Rue Mouffetard swarmed with people, and a people not well disposed toward his cloth. However good a man one may be, it is far from agreeable to be forced to lower the eyes to avoid malevolent looks, and to stop the ears against insolent words heard in passing. There was a certain drinking-shop which the abbé particularly dreaded—a shop brilliant with gas and exhaling an odor of alcohol through its open doors, through which one could see a perspective of barrels labelled: “Absinthe,” “Bitter,” “Madère,” “Vermouth,” etc. Here, leaning against the bar, were always a band of loafers in long blouses and high hats, who saluted the poor abbé, walking quickly along the pavement, with ribald jests.
However, on this night the streets were deserted on account of the bad weather, and the abbé reached his church without interruption. He dipped his finger in the holy water, crossed himself, made a brief reverence before the grand altar, and went towards his confessional. At least he had not come for nothing. A penitent was waiting.