She was smiling, for she had caught sight of the Abbé's pipe beneath his blouse. The priest quickly pulled it out again, with that cheerful laugh to which he was addicted whenever he was discovered smoking.
'It's very silly of me,' he said. 'People would think I had been committing a crime. See! I am going to light it again before you!'
'I tell you what, your reverence!' Pauline exclaimed gaily; 'come and lunch with us and the Doctor, and you can smoke your pipe afterwards.'
The priest was delighted, and immediately replied:
'Well yes, I accept. I will follow you directly. I must just put my cassock on. And I will bring my pipe with me; I promise I will.'
It was the first luncheon, since Madame Chanteau's death, at which the dining-room had re-echoed with the sound of laughter. Abbé Horteur smoked his pipe after dessert, and this made them all merry, but he evinced such genial humour over this indulgence that it at once seemed quite natural. Chanteau, who had eaten heartily, grew quite lively under the cheering influence of this fresh stir of life in the house. Doctor Cazenove told stories about savages, while Pauline beamed with pleasure at hearing all the noise, hoping that it might perhaps draw Lazare from his moody despondency.
After that luncheon, Pauline determined to revert to the Saturday dinners, which had been broken off by her aunt's death. The Abbé and the Doctor came regularly to these repasts, and the family life was resumed on its old lines once more. They jested together, and the widower would clap his hands on his legs and protest that, if it wasn't for that confounded gout, he would get up and dance, so jovial did he feel. It was only Lazare who still remained in an unsettled state; his gaiety was forced, and he often shook with a sudden shudder while he was noisily chattering.
One Saturday evening, in the middle of dinner, Abbé Horteur was summoned to the bedside of a dying man. He did not even wait to empty his glass, but set off at once, without paying any heed to the Doctor, who had visited the man before coming to dine and had told the Abbé he would find him already dead. The priest had shown himself so weak in intellect that evening that as soon as his back was turned Chanteau remarked:
'There are times when there seems to be very little in him.'
'I would willingly change places with him,' Lazare roughly rejoined. 'He is much happier than we are.'