“It is deplorable,” he murmured, “deplorable!”
“And your suicide?” demanded Abbé Lantaigne.
At this question the worthy curé of Saint-Exupère opened his full, round eyes and asked in astonishment:
“What suicide?”
“The man who hanged himself in Saint-Exupère, the miserable suicide whom you found this morning in the porch of your church.”
M. Laprune, terrified, wondering from what he had just heard, whether he or M. Lantaigne had gone mad, replied that he had found no one hanged.
“What!” replied M. Lantaigne, surprised in his turn, “wasn’t a man found this morning hanged in the porch of a door on the epistle side!”
In sign of denial, the vicar twice revolved on his shoulders a face whereon shone the sacred truth.
Abbé Lantaigne now looked like a man taken with giddiness:
“But it was the Cardinal-Archbishop who has just told me himself that you found a man hanged in your church!”