And he himself helped Vincent to scramble up again.
‘Come, my young friend, what were you doing there?’ he asked. ‘You must not go playing in graveyards.’
The lad had opened his eyes, and crept away, fearfully, from the Brother, to place himself under the priest’s protection.
‘I’ll tell you,’ he said in a low voice, as he raised his bushy head. ‘There is a tomtit’s nest in the brambles there, under that rock. For over ten days I’ve been watching it, and now the little ones are hatched, so I came this morning after serving your mass.’
‘A tomtit’s nest!’ exclaimed Brother Archangias. ‘Wait a bit! wait a bit!’
Thereupon he stepped aside, picked a clod of earth off a grave and flung it into the brambles. But he missed the nest. Another clod, however, more skilfully thrown upset the frail cradle, and precipitated the fledglings into the torrent below.
‘Now, perhaps,’ he continued, clapping his hands to shake off the earth that soiled them, ‘you won’t come roaming here any more, like a heathen; the dead will pull your feet at night if you go walking over them again.’
Vincent, who had laughed at seeing the nest dive into the stream, looked round him and shrugged his shoulders like one of strong mind.
‘Oh, I’m not afraid,’ he said. ‘Dead folk don’t stir.’
The graveyard, in truth, was not a place to inspire fear. It was a barren piece of ground whose narrow paths were smothered by rank weeds. Here and there the soil was bossy with mounds. A single tombstone, that of Abbé Caffin, brand-new and upright, could be perceived in the centre of the ground. Save this, all around there were only broken fragments of crosses, withered tufts of box, and old slabs split and moss-eaten. There were not two burials a year. Death seemed to make no dwelling in that waste spot, whither La Teuse came every evening to fill her apron with grass for Desirée’s rabbits. A gigantic cypress tree, standing near the gate, alone cast shadow upon the desert field. This cypress, a landmark visible for nine miles around, was known to the whole countryside as the Solitaire.