Then he lost all patience and burst out:
"I mean it for those it concerns. It's as plain as a pike-staff. White dresses, indeed. A pretty thing! I never have a procession here without one of them being in the family way. No, no; you'd tire out God Almighty himself."
He left them; and Bécu's wife, who had remained silent, had to make peace between the two mothers, who, in considerable excitement, were heaping reproaches on each other on their daughters' account. But her peace-making was of such a bitterly insinuating character that the quarrel rose higher.
Oh yes! They would see how Berthe would turn out, with her velvet bodices and her piano! And Suzanne, what a first-rate idea to send her to the milliner's at Châteaudun, so that she might go the pace with the best of them!
The Abbé Godard was rushing off, when he came full upon Monsieur and Madame Charles. A broad, beaming smile overspread his face, and his hat performed a sweeping obeisance. Monsieur bowed majestically. Madame made her best curtsey. It was fated that the priest should never get off, for no sooner had he cleared the square than he was brought up by another chance encounter. This was with a tall woman of thirty, who looked quite fifty, with thin hair and a flat, flabby, bran-yellow face. Broken down and worn out by excessive exertion, she was staggering under the weight of a faggot of brushwood.
"Palmyre," he asked, "why didn't you come to mass on All Saints' Day? It's disgraceful."
"No doubt, your reverence," she groaned, "but what's to be done? My brother is cold, and we are freezing at home. So I've been picking up these along the hedges."
"La Grande is still as hard as ever, then?"
"Rather! She'd die before she'd chuck us a crust or a log."
In a dolorous voice she repeated her own and her brother's story: how their grandmother had turned them out of doors, how she had had to take refuge with her brother in an old deserted stable. Poor Hilarion, bandy and hare-lipped, lacked intelligence; indeed, despite his twenty years of age, he was so idiotic that no one would give him employment. And so she was bringing herself to death's door in working for him, tending him with the impassioned care and untiring tenderness of a mother.