‘What, are you up then, you humbug?’ exclaimed the astonished doctor.
‘So you were coming to bury me, were you?’ growled the old man harshly. ‘I don’t want anybody. I bled myself.’
He stopped short as he caught sight of the priest, and assumed so threatening an expression that the doctor hastened to intervene.
‘This is my nephew,’ he said; ‘the new Curé of Les Artaud—a good fellow, too. Devil take it, we haven’t been bowling over the roads at this hour of the day to eat you, Jeanbernat.’
The old man calmed down a little.
‘I don’t want any shavelings here,’ he grumbled. ‘They’re enough to make one croak. Mind, doctor, no priests, and no physics when I go off, or we shall quarrel. Let him come in, however, as he is your nephew.’
Abbé Mouret, struck dumb with amazement, could not speak a word. He stood there in the middle of the path scanning that strange solitaire, with scorched, brick-tinted face, and limbs all withered and twisted like a bundle of ropes, who seemed to bear the burden of his eighty years with a scornful contempt for life. When the doctor attempted to feel his pulse, his ill-humour broke out afresh.
‘Do leave me in peace! I bled myself with my knife, I tell you. It’s all over, now. Who was the fool of a peasant who disturbed you? The doctor here, and the priest as well, why not the mutes too! Well, it can’t be helped, people will be fools. It won’t prevent us from having a drink, eh?’
He fetched a bottle and three glasses, and stood them on an old table which he brought out into the shade. Then, having filled the glasses to the brim, he insisted on clinking them. His anger had given place to jeering cheerfulness.
‘It won’t poison you, Monsieur le Curé,’ he said. ‘A glass of good wine isn’t a sin. Upon my word, however, this is the first time I ever clinked a glass with a cassock, but no offence to you. That poor Abbé Caffin, your predecessor, refused to argue with me. He was afraid.’