One fine morning in August Lazare suddenly made his appearance, bringing with him the news of his complete success in his preliminary examinations. He had not been expected for another week, but he had wanted to take his mother by surprise. His arrival greatly delighted them all. In the letters which he had written home every fortnight he had shown an increasing interest in medicine, and, now that he was amongst them again, he appeared to be completely changed. He never spoke a word about music, but was perpetually chattering about his professors and his scientific studies, dragging them in à propos of everything, even of the dishes that were served at dinner and the direction in which the wind was blowing. He was, now, a prey to another wildly enthusiastic ambition, for he dreamed, day and night, of becoming a physician, whose wonderful skill would be trumpeted through the whole world. Pauline, when she had thrown her arms round his neck and kissed him with child-like frankness, was more surprised than the others at this change in him. It almost grieved her, indeed, that he should have dropped all his interest in music, even as a recreation. Could it be possible, she asked herself, that, when one had really loved anything, one could end by caring nothing at all about it? One day when she asked him about his symphony, he began to make fun of it, and told her that he had quite done with all such nonsense. She felt quite sad at those words. But he also seemed to be soon bored with her society, and laughed with an unpleasant laugh; while his eyes and his gestures spoke of a ten months' life which could not have been related in detail to little girls.
He had unpacked his trunk himself, so as to keep from view the books he had brought home with him, novels and medical works, some of them copiously illustrated. He no longer twirled his cousin like a top, as he had been wont to do, making her petticoats fly in a circle round her, and he even seemed quite confused at times when she persisted in coming into his room and staying there. However, she had scarcely grown at all during his absence, and she still looked him frankly in the face with her pure innocent eyes, in such wise that by the end of a week his appearance of uneasiness had vanished, and they reverted to their old intimacy and comradeship. The fresh sea-breezes had now swept the unhealthy influences of the students' quarter of Paris out of Lazare's brain, and he felt once more a child himself as he romped about with his little cousin, both of them full of vigorous health and gaiety. All the old life began anew; the racing round the table, the scampers with Matthew and Minouche through the garden, the rambles to the Golden Bay and the bathing in the open air. And that year, too, Louise, who had paid a visit to Bonneville in May, went to take her holidays with some other friends at Rouen; and so the others spent two very delightful months, without a single disagreement or misunderstanding to mar their enjoyment. When October came, Pauline watched Lazare pack his trunk for his return to Paris. He gathered together the books he had brought with him, which had remained stowed away in his cupboard without once being opened.
'Are you going to take them all back with you?' the girl asked in a melancholy voice.
'Yes, indeed,' he replied. 'I shall want them all for my studies. You have no notion how hard I am going to work. I shall want every one of them.'
The little house at Bonneville once more subsided into lifeless, monotonous quietude. Each day passed in precisely the same way as its predecessors, bringing the same round of incidents beside the ceaseless rhythm of the ocean. That year, however, was marked distinctly for Pauline. In the month of June she took her first communion, being then twelve and a half years old. By slow degrees a religious feeling had taken possession of her, but it was a religious feeling loftier than the one indicated in her catechism, whose answers she constantly repeated without understanding them. With her reflective young mind she had ended by picturing the Deity to herself as a very powerful and very wise ruler, who directed everything upon earth in accordance with principles of strict justice; and this simplified conception of hers sufficed to put her on a footing of understanding with Abbé Horteur. The Abbé was a peasant's son, and into his hard head nothing but the letter of the law had ever made its way. He had grown to be contented with the observance of outward ceremonies and the maintenance of religious practices. True, he bestowed the greatest care and thought upon his own salvation; and if his parishioners should finally be damned, well, it would be their own fault. For fifteen years he had been trying to terrify them without success, and now all that he asked of them was to come to church on the great feast days. And, in spite of the sinful state in which it rotted, Bonneville did come to church pretty regularly, drawn thither by the influence of old habit. But the priest's tolerance had degenerated into indifference as to the real spiritual condition of his flock. Every Saturday it was his custom to go and play draughts with Chanteau, although the mayor, making his gout an excuse, never set foot inside the church. But then Madame Chanteau did all that was necessary by attending the services regularly and taking Pauline with her. It was the priest's great simplicity and frankness which by degrees won Pauline over. While living in Paris, she had heard priests scoffed and sneered at as hypocrites, whose black robes concealed all manner of sins and wickedness. But the priest of that little sea-side hamlet seemed to her a thoroughly genuine, honest fellow, with his heavy boots and sun-browned neck and farmer-like speech and manner. One little fact especially impressed her. Abbé Horteur was strongly addicted to puffing away at a big meerschaum pipe, but he seemed to be disturbed by some slight scruples as to the propriety of such a habit, for whenever he wanted to smoke he always retired into his garden, and hid himself away in the solitude of his lettuce-beds. And it was the anxious air with which he hastily tried to put his pipe out of sight when he was taken unawares in his garden that touched the girl, though she could scarcely have told why. She took her first communion in a very serious and reverent frame of mind, in company with two other girls from the village and one boy. When the priest came to dine with the Chanteaus in the evening, he declared that never since he had been at Bonneville had he seen a communicant who had conducted herself with such reverence at the Holy Table.
Financially, the year was not so prosperous for the Chanteaus. The rise in the price of deal, for which Davoine had been hoping for a long time past, did not take place, and so only bad news came from Caen, for, being driven into selling at a loss, the business was in a bad way indeed. Thus the family lived in the most meagre fashion, and were only able to make their income of three thousand francs cover the necessary expenses by practising the most rigid economy. Lazare, whose letters to herself she kept strictly private, was Madame Chanteau's chief source of anxiety. He was apparently leading a life of extravagance and dissipation, for he constantly applied to her for money. When she went to Caen in July to receive Pauline's dividend, she made a fierce attack upon Davoine. Two thousand francs which he had previously given to her had been sent to Lazare, and now she succeeded in wringing another thousand francs out of him, and these she at once despatched to Paris. For Lazare had written to tell her that he would not be able to come home unless he was provided with the means of paying his debts. Every day during a whole week they expected his arrival amongst them, but each morning a letter came announcing that his departure had been put off till the morrow. When at last he did actually start for home, his mother and Pauline went as far as Verchemont to meet him. They met there, kissed each other on the high-road, and walked home together, followed by the unoccupied coach, which carried Lazare's luggage.
Lazare's return home that year was by no means so gay as his previous triumphal surprise. He had failed to pass an examination in July, and was embittered against all his professors, of whom he fell foul throughout the evening. The next morning, in Pauline's presence, he threw his books upon one of the shelves in the wardrobe, exclaiming that they might lie there and rot. This sudden disgust for his studies alarmed her. She heard him scoff bitterly at medicine, and deny its power to cure even a cold. One day when she was attempting to defend it from his attacks, in an impulse of youthful belief, he sneered so bitterly at her ignorance of what she was talking about that his remarks brought a hot blush to her cheeks. But, all the same, he said, he had resigned himself to being a doctor; as well that kind of humbug as any other: everything was equally stupid at bottom. Pauline grew quite indignant and angry at the new ideas which he had brought home with him. Where had he got them from? From those wicked books he read, she was quite sure; but she dared not discuss the matter fully, held back as she was by her own ignorance, and feeling ill at ease amidst her cousin's sneers and innuendoes and pretences that he could not tell her everything. The holidays glided away in perpetual misunderstandings and bickerings. In their walks together the young man seemed to be bored, and declared that the sea was wearisome and monotonous. As a means of killing time, however, he had taken to writing verses, and composed sonnets on the sea with great elaboration and fastidiousness of rhymes. He declined to bathe, saying that he had found that cold baths disagreed with his constitution, for, in spite of his denial of all value to medical science, he now indulged in the most sweeping and authoritative opinions, condemning or curing people with a word. About the middle of September, when they were expecting Louise's arrival, he suddenly expressed his intention of returning to Paris, saying that he wished to prepare for his examination again. He really thought that his life would be unbearable between two little girls, and wished to get back to the Latin Quarter. Pauline's manner to him, however, became gentler and more submissive the more he did to vex her. When he was rude and sought to distress her, she merely looked at him with those tender, smiling eyes of hers, whose soft influence was able to soothe even Chanteau when he groaned and moaned amidst one of his attacks of gout. She thought that her cousin was in some way out of health, for he looked upon life like a weary old man.
The day before his departure Lazare manifested such delight at the prospect of leaving Bonneville that Pauline burst into tears.
'You don't love me any more now!'
'Don't be a goose! Haven't I got to make my way in life? A big girl like you to be crying! The idea of it!'