They could hear the priest, who spoke in somewhat loud tones, being slightly deaf, and who was saying, "No, no; you are not so bad as all that. You are ill, but in no danger. And the proof is that I have called in as a friend as a neighbor."
They could not make out Forestier's reply, but the old man went on, "No, I will not ask you to communicate. We will talk of that when you are better. If you wish to profit by my visit—to confess, for instance—I ask nothing better. I am a shepherd, you know, and seize on every occasion to bring a lamb back to the fold."
A long silence followed. Forestier must have been speaking in a faint voice. Then all at once the priest uttered in a different tone, the tone of one officiating at the altar. "The mercy of God is infinite. Repeat the Comfiteor, my son. You have perhaps forgotten it; I will help you. Repeat after me: 'Comfiteor Deo omnipotenti—Beata Maria semper virgini.'"
He paused from time to time to allow the dying man to catch him up. Then he said, "And now confess."
The young wife and Duroy sat still seized on by a strange uneasiness, stirred by anxious expectation. The invalid had murmured something. The priest repeated, "You have given way to guilty pleasures—of what kind, my son?"
Madeleine rose and said, "Let us go down into the garden for a short time. We must not listen to his secrets."
And they went and sat down on a bench before the door beneath a rose tree in bloom, and beside a bed of pinks, which shed their soft and powerful perfume abroad in the pure air. Duroy, after a few moments' silence, inquired, "Shall you be long before you return to Paris?"
"Oh, no," she replied. "As soon as it is all over I shall go back there."
"Within ten days?"
"Yes, at the most."