The Abbé Godard's features lost their stern expression, and a thrill of charity swept away his wrath. He began fumbling in his pockets, but could only find seven coppers.
"Lend me ten francs," said he. "I'll give you them back on Sunday. Good-bye till Sunday, then."
Then he rushed on again, in a fresh burst of haste. Although it was quite certain that the good God whom they had forced him to bring amongst them would send all these cursed villagers to roast in hell, still, that was no reason why they should be left in too great suffering and tribulation in this life.
When Delhomme joined the others, he found himself in the midst of a violent quarrel. For some time the funeral party had stood quietly watching the sexton shovelling the soil on to the coffin. Presently, however, chance having brought Macqueron and Lengaigne close together beside the grave, the latter began to abuse the former on the subject of the plots. The family group, which had just been going away, thereupon remained to listen, and soon took an excited interest in the war of words, to which the sound of the falling soil furnished a muffled, regular accompaniment.
"You had no right to do it!" cried Lengaigne. "Your being mayor made no difference at all! You ought to have followed the row! You only shove yourself close up to my father to annoy me. Confound it all! You haven't gained your ends yet, I can tell you!"
"Aren't you going to shut up!" replied Macqueron. "I have paid for the plot, and it's my own property. And when my time comes, it won't be a foul swine like you who will prevent me from being laid there."
The two men had stepped apart, and each was now standing by his own plot, the few feet of earth where they would some day sleep their long sleep.
"But, you confounded villain, can you stomach the thought that we shall be lying there, shoulder to shoulder, like a couple of bosom friends? As for me, it makes my blood boil to think of it! To think that, after being enemies all our lives, we shall patch up a peace down there, and lie quietly side by side! No, no, indeed! No patching up, no forgetting for me!"
"Ah, well, I don't care a curse! You can blow yourself out with rage till you burst, if you like, but I've too much contempt for you to trouble myself about knowing whether your carcass will rot near mine or not!"
This scornful reply capped Lengaigne's exasperation; and he blurted out that if he lived the longer, he'd come in the night and dig up Macqueron's bones and toss them outside the graveyard, rather than submit to lie beside them. Macqueron sniggered, and said he should like to see him do it; and then the women joined in the fray, that dark, skinny wench, Cœlina, making an angry attack upon her husband.