“Perrine,” said the old man who had entered, speaking Breton, “it is arranged. I have left Marie-Pierre behind at Coatsaliou’s house to fetch him.”
The woman who sat dozing in the ingle-nook gave a start. “Eh, ma Doué, is it you, Mathurin? What did you say? I was half asleep.”
The aged Breton, thin, bent, his meagre white hair falling over his bowed shoulders, began to shuffle towards her, then, as if remembering something, stopped, and slipping his bare feet out of straw-stuffed sabots, pattered on noiselessly without the latter. “Listen,” he said, sitting down beside his wife. “When Coatsaliou brings the good priest safe from Besné to his house he will find Marie-Pierre there—I left him behind on purpose—and when the Révérend has refreshed himself, Marie-Pierre will tell him how we have here a wounded Vendean, and how we fear he is dying, and that he cannot have the sacraments because Monsieur le Recteur is driven away. Then Marie-Pierre will bring the abbé here, and he can confess the young man and give him the last sacraments and go on his way.”
Madame Gloannec, many years younger than her husband—she was his second wife—lifted her coiffed head and looked doubtful. “You say it is arranged, Mathurin, but supposing the priest cannot come? After all, he is himself escaping, is he not, from Nantes? Perhaps he will think the risk too great.”
“Is it likely, Perrine, that he will not come when he hears that the young man is dying without the sacraments, and he a priest of the Vendeans!”
“You do not know who he is, the abbé?”
“No more than Noel Coatsaliou himself. But Noel says that he must be somebody very important, because of the money that must have been spent to get him out of Nantes, and the difficulty of making all these arrangements for guiding him to the coast. Probably he is very holy; it will be blessed for us to have him in this house.” He took snuff vigorously, and with an air appreciative of future spiritual benefits.
“And for the young man,” added his wife. “Thank God that we have been able to get him a priest at the last. . . . But to think,” she added sadly, “that there was a time when we thought we should save the poor boy.”
“Dame! I never thought so, with a wound like that!”
“Then why did you and Marie-Pierre bring him in, at such a risk?—No, Mathurin, you know you thought so, too. . . . It is six weeks yesterday since you found him.”