On reaching the little open shed near the kitchen, in order to please La Teuse he went into ecstasies over the washing; he even had to dip his fingers into it and feel it. This so pleased the old woman that her attentions became quite motherly. She no longer scolded, but ran to fetch a clothes-brush, saying: ‘You surely are not going out with yesterday’s mud on your cassock! If you had left it out on the banister, it would be clean now—it’s still a good one. But do lift it up well when you cross any field. The thistles tear everything.’
While speaking she kept turning him round like a child, shaking him from head to foot with her energetic brushing.
‘There, there, that will do,’ he said, escaping from her at last. ‘Take care of Desirée, won’t you? I will tell her I am going out.’
But at this minute a fresh clear voice called to him: ‘Serge! Serge!’
Desirée came flying up, her cheeks ruddy with glee, her head bare, her black locks twisted tightly upon her neck, and her hands and arms smothered up to the elbows with manure. She had been cleaning out her poultry house. When she caught sight of her brother just about to go out with his breviary under his arm, she laughed aloud, and kissed him on his mouth, with her arms thrown back behind her to avoid soiling him.
‘No, no,’ she hurriedly exclaimed, ‘I should dirty you. Oh! I am having such fun! You must see the animals when you come back.’
Thereupon she fled away again. Abbé Mouret then said that he would be back about eleven for luncheon, and as he started, La Teuse, who had followed him to the doorstep, shouted after him her last injunctions.
‘Don’t forget to see Brother Archangias. And look in also at the Brichets’; the wife came again yesterday about that wedding. Just listen, Monsieur le Curé! I met their Rosalie. She’d ask nothing better than to marry big Fortune. Have a talk with old Bambousse; perhaps he will listen to you now. And don’t come back at twelve o’clock, like the other day. Come, say you’ll be back at eleven, won’t you?’
But the priest turned round no more. So she went in again, growling between her teeth:
‘When does he ever listen to me? Barely twenty-six years old and does just as he likes. To be sure, he’s an old man of sixty for holiness; but then he has never known life; he knows nothing, it’s no trouble to him to be as good as a cherub!’