As they returned into Rognes, Hyacinthe jerked out an oath:
"Wait, wait, you dirty troll, and I'll make it pretty hot for you!"
By the grassy wayside, La Trouille was leisurely driving her geese under the muttering downpour. At the head of the dripping, delighted flock, walked the gander, and when he turned his big yellow beak to the right, all the other big yellow beaks went to the right too. The child, taking fright at her father's words, sped home to see to the dinner, followed by a file of long-necks, which were all stretched out in the rear of the outstretched neck of the gander.
[CHAPTER IV.]
The following Sunday happened to fall just on All Saints' Day, the first of November; and, on the stroke of nine, the Abbé Godard, who was priest of Bazoches-le-Doyen, with subordinate charge of the ancient parish of Rognes, reached the top of the slope which led down to the little bridge over the Aigre. Rognes, more important in days of yore, but now reduced to a population of barely three hundred souls, had had no priest of its own for years, and seemed completely indifferent to the fact, insomuch that the municipal council had lodged the rural constable in the half-ruined parsonage.
So, every Sunday, the Abbé Godard walked the two miles between Bazoches-le-Doyen and Rognes. Being stout and dumpy, with a neck red at the nape and so swollen at the throat as to tilt his head backward, he compelled himself to this exercise for the sake of his health. On this particular Sunday, finding himself late, he was puffing terribly, with his mouth wide open in his apoplectic face, the fat of which half smothered his small snub nose and tiny grey eyes; and, despite the livid, snow-laden sky, and the premature frost which had followed the storms of the week, he was swinging his hat in his hand, having bared the thick tangles of his grizzled, carroty hair.
The road made an abrupt descent, and on the left bank of the Aigre, before reaching the stone bridge, there were only a few houses, a sort of suburb, through which the Abbé rushed tempestuously. He did not even cast a glance, either up or down stream, on the slow, limpid river winding through the meadows amid clumps of willows and poplars. On the right bank began the village proper, a double row of frontages edging the high road, while others climbed at random up the slope; and just past the bridge one found the municipal offices and the school, an old barn raised a floor higher and white-washed. For an instant the Abbé hesitated, and then craned his neck into the empty entrance-hall of the school. When he turned round, he cast a searching glance into two taverns facing him: the one having a neat shop-front, filled with flasks, and surmounted by a little yellow wooden sign bearing the inscription: Macqueron, grocer, in green letters; the other merely having its door decorated with a holly-branch, and displaying in black upon a roughly-whitened wall the words: Lengaigne. Tobacco. The priest was making up his mind to enter a steep lane between these two houses, a short ascent leading straight to the front of the church, when he caught sight of an old peasant and stopped.
"Aha! so it's you, Fouan. I'm in a hurry, but I wanted to see you. Tell me, what's doing? It's out of the question for your son, Buteau, to leave Lise in the plight she's in, with her figure unmistakably on the increase. She is one of the 'Handmaidens of the Virgin.' It's a disgrace, a disgrace!"